Mittwoch, 3. Juni 2009

The story of Saddam - The little dictator

So now here´s in english how it all began... and didn´t happen in the end.


(Thanx to Roland Slawik for the hilarious drawing)


At the end of 2006 Saddam was history and Comedy Central Germany was looking for new, crazy comedy-show concepts. At least - that´s what they told german comedy writers.

Suddenly I had this idea: What if Saddam reincarnates? As a childrens´ toy?
Something like "Toy Story" meets "South Park".
I startet gathering ideas and wrote the concept "Saddam - The little dictator" as a sitcom with moving-mouth puppets.
Sure as hell Comedy Central Germany had to go nuts about this funny, crazy idea.

Unfortunately - they didn´t. Comedy Central Germany started with `Funniest Homevideo´-shows and some otherwise rejected german comedians.

But I didn´t want to give up so early (and I knew that one year later the Saddam-reincarnation-twist wouldn´t be very convincing anymore).
So I sent the concept to Brainpool (one of the largest german production companys mainly involved in comedy). They really liked it and I met with some important people.
Everybody knew that this kind of bold comedy wouldn´t get made at the mainstream TV stations, but Brainpool was just about to start its own website "MySpass.de" (it´s a german pun: `Spass´= `Fun´) and they wanted to produce Saddam exclusively for this website.

Some more meetings followed. I had to battle hard for my visions: Sometimes they wanted a dictator still alive as the main character, sometimes they wanted to dress up `punch&judy´ puppets as Saddam and the other characters to save money. But in the end they agreed that it had to look good and at least a little convincing.

Then they asked me to write a 10-minute-pilot. I locked myself in my room and after some days it was done. I proudly presented my pilot to the folks at MySpass and they loved it.

End of story. Already.
That´s how television works... even if it´s just online TV: The most ambitious project "MySpass.de" was scaled down financially a lot before it even started and only some very little productions were launched. Today, "MySpass" mainly is a platform with recycled television content from the Brainpool archives.

So long,
Tom

P.S.: Comedy Central Germany is no longer a TV channel on its own. They share their frequenzy with NICK. Which once again shows to the world: Germans got no humor and german comedy writers´ got no new ideas - so they don´t need their own Comedy Central. Depressing!

Keine Kommentare: