The Initial Inspiration: or A False Start
Thanksgiving 1992
Coming Soon: A Christmas Gift - My mom tells me that she and my dad are going to get me a camcorder for Christmas. This immediately sparks an interest with me. I decide that what I don't want to do is use my camcorder to shoot trips to the zoo and birthday parties and basically the sorts of things dads always shoot. I'm going to use my camera as a creative outlet. Not only will I be able to document my friends, but I can also tell stories in the process.
December 11, 1992
My dad is killed in a random freeway shooting on his way back home from work. Christmas kind of just passes us by. I don't even really care at that point. Mom says that she'll eventually get my Christmas present for me which in a way is the last Christmas gift my dad would ever get me. Although he isn't around to help me pick it out, it was at least partially his idea.
The Rest of December 1992
Since I knew that I was still going to get this camcorder, I decided to spend some time writing a script. I wrote one based around me Chris, and a friend of ours, Brett Gardner. We were always getting together practically every weekend to write songs in our futile attempt to get a band together, so why not on one of those occasions make a short movie?
The Bet - The script I write is based on Brett's constant ramblings that he thinks he is a werewolf and a joke I heard some stand-up comic tell one time. The script was called The Bet and it's about these two guys, played by me and Chris, who hold a wager about whether Brett really is a werewolf as he claims. Chris decides that he is going to prove that Brett is a werewolf by getting a silver bullet made. If the silver bullet kills Brett then it proves that he is a werewolf. My character is so stupid that he doesn't realize that a silver bullet would kill anyone werewolf or not.
Chris and Brett read my short script and like the idea of getting together to do something creatively with a camera. The only problem is I don't yet have this camera, but that's not really too much of a problem. At least we would have something to do once I finally did get it.
January 1993
The Adventures of Tim and Jim - I find some inspiration and write a second script around me, Chris, and Brett. I decide to call my and Chris' character Tim and Jim. Chris' character Tim was the brains of the two, devising the devious schemes that were ultimately destructive. My character was Jim the guy who followed Tim around getting into trouble with him. I know this kind of sounds like the concept behind Beavis&Butt-Head but believe me I didn't hear of that show until the summer of the same year. So, you can't really accuse me of ripping off Mike Judge, although I'm sure I was ripping some other concept off that I can't readily remember.
The Means to Create Arrives - Sometime toward the end of the month, I finally get my camcorder. One Friday night, my mom and I drive out to Incredible Universe, which I think is out of business now, and I get my prized possession a Panasonic VHS-C Palmcorder. So you'd think that we would have been on our way to making great movies? Well not quite. Our creative energies were still wrapped up in trying to get this band together. I had pretty much lost interest in music at that point and things just were not panning out very well overall.
Basically I used my camera to do what I hadn't wanted to do in the first place, although I did manage to get some footage of my college buddies that I can still put on for a few laughs.
May 1993
I get out of school for the summer. Chris and I spend many a night hanging out at Stop N' Go and talking about what we're going to do over the break. We come up with the Summer Camp List which contains a few things that we had been planning to do like getting together to watch all five of the Planet of the Apes movies back to back. Also on that list is the idea that we should finally get together to shoot The Bet and the Tim and Jim story. I figure that The Bet could be worked as a Tim and Jim story and that we could do a whole series of these for our own personal pleasure.
June 1993
We still haven't gotten together to do anything by this time. Chris and Brett are still too preoccupied with the band.
July 1993
The Discovery of Public Access - We continue to talk about doing these little movies. I realize that there would be a forum where we could share our work with other people, not just our friends and families: public access. Chris mentions a friend named Ziggy that he hadn't talked to in a while that he knew had talked about doing a public access show a while back. He was sure he never got it done for lack of equipment. I tell Chris that he needs to call this guy, so we can all get together.
In the meantime, we start watching public access to see what kind of programming is on there. Generally we are very disappointed because 99% of everything on the Fort Worth channel is religious. All it is is hours upon hours of static shots of preachers delivering sermons. There are also a few talent shows and that sort of thing that isn't very interesting. There is only one shining jewel in the entire Fort Worth public access line-up: Myles of Smyles.
Myles and Myles and Myles of Smyles - I had seen Myles of Smyles a couple of years ago and fortunately it was still on. The show, while obviously amateur, was still very funny and entertaining. What I found particularly appealing was that since it was an amateur effort, you knew that these were very ordinary people creating this show. These people were more accessible than your average television entertainer and I think it was that which made the show work better for me.
Sniffles is Born - Chris and I knew that we had to join the ranks of Myles of Smyles. We wanted to do these Tim and Jim stories for certain, but they would almost have to wait because there was no way that our two little short things would ever be able to carry one full half hour program let alone several. Doing them would prove to be too complex for us. So what we planned to do was to go with some type of newsmagazine/sketch comedy type of show while we waited until we were ready for Tim and Jim.
Our thought was that if we filled up a show with a lot of interviews and documentaries about the local Fort Worth scene, we could crank them out fairly quickly. Chris came up with the name Sniffles based on the joke that after you said the name you were supposed to sniffle. He even came up with an instrumental theme song and we were on our way - sort of...
First we had to get a hold of some guidelines about what the station expected in the program, like length, technical stuff, and what you could or could not do. We called the cable office, they took our names and addresses, and said that a set of rules would be forthcoming. And so we waited, and waited, and waited some more.
While we're waiting, we start to get our show underway. The first thing we do is to do a story promoting the Star Trek fan club I belonged to (how geeky of me!). Ultimately the footage didn't work in my mind. I just didn't know where to go with it and considering the way our show has turned out now, it would never have fit anyway.
We continue to wait for these public access rules. One Saturday morning - we had stayed up all night at my mom's house - Chris comes up with an idea to do for a sketch. My job was just to follow him with the camera as he does his thing. In the short bit that we did, he paces around the living room fretting over the fact that the public access rules haven't come in yet. He leaves the house and goes out to the mailbox where he talks to the hollow inside of the mailbox about his woes over having to wait what seems like an eternity for them to come. We eventually reshot those scenes.
That same morning we also talked about how we were going to use that footage for the show. Chris came up with the idea that it should be the first thing we do on our first show. Somehow his hyperactivity would lead into a big chase and fight scene between me and him. At the end of this big, long, drawn out fight, we're supposed to be laying around broken and battered. Chris asks the pivotal question, "So, do you want to do a show?"
August 1993
After a few weeks of waiting, the public access rules still haven't come in the mail. We decide to pay a visit to the cable office ourselves to see if they had copies of them there and if maybe they had just forgotten about little ol' us. They didn't have them there either. Apparently what the problem was that the guidelines were in the process of being rewritten. That's why they were taking so long to get to us.
It just so happened that Dennis Myles, producer, star, and generally our hero of the Myles of Smyles show, had an office in the same building. If we hadn't come into the building at precisely the right time we would have missed him. I know this probably means nothing to most people, but to Chris and me, it meant a lot. He offered us some advice. He told us that we shouldn't bother to put our first episode on until we had three of them done. He'd seen other people put their first shows on without any backup and when the time came to put on the second show, they didn't have one. So they basically lost their time slots. You lose your time slot, nobody knows where to find you, you don't garner any following. He also offered me some advice about type of VCR I needed to have to edit the show with(a 4 head).
While we continued to wait for the public access rules we continued to shoot some sketches like the Luke Perry interview(episode 2) and a couple of moderator sequences. In one Brett introduces a sketch which we still have yet to shoot about cheesy public access music. Chris and Brett also do the last moderator sequence in which they argue over how the name of the show is supposed to be said, with the sniffle or not. We also did the original beginning to our Que Clinic sketch(episode 3) with me, Chris and Brett. With the exception of the Luke Perry thing, none of that other stuff will probably make it to the show.
By the end of the summer the public access rules finally came in. Almost too little too late although it probably shouldn't have.
September 1993
Chris and I get together to shoot a couple of scenes for our mockumentary on grassrolling. We still haven't finished that yet.
October 1993
Chris and I shoot the Soda Bottle in the Air thing(episode 3) and part of another sketch we really haven't satisfactorily completed that's supposed to be a movie trailer for a Steven Segal movie. Chris also gets footage of individual footage of us standing next to a tractor waving at the camera. He says that he's not sure what he wants to do with it, but he'll figure out something. We also do a moderator sequence that we've called The Abrupt Angle Changes sketch. We're probably going to have to reshoot that one.
Fall 1993
Chris and I don't get anything else done. We don't even mention the fact that we were trying to get a show together. He and Brett are still trying to get a band together and I've pretty much removed myself from that scene because I'm so burned out on it. Maybe there was something in the water affecting creativity and people's motivations to be creative because by this time Myles of Smyles is no longer on either.
December 1993
Our goal had been to get three episodes done by the end of the year. At this point we didn't even have one. I even mentioned to Chris, "You know what? We're definitely not going to get our show done." His usual reply, "don't worry. We will. We'll figure something out." We didn't.
Christmas was also coming up and mom took me around looking for equipment so that I could edit my show with. I looked for video edit controllers and VCRs with jog shuttles and audio/video insert capabilities. I found nothing.