For the first time since I started writing this blog, I have no idea what to say.
I’ve been over here hemming and hawing, waiting until the last second, avoiding the task completely, and its not because I don’t have anything to express, to the contrary, I feel like a shaken up bottled soda with the cap still on, ready to explode, I just have no way to get it out.
In that magical way that art and life intersect sometimes, I feel like I am experiencing the doubt and subsequent insights Holster would be experiencing at this particular moment in our story.
Here Holster is, constantly pushing Tallulah in the direction of what she feels will be the answer to getting her more ratings, trying to be infinitely more clever in her marketing ploys, trying harder and harder to give the audience what she perceives they want, but what if she’s wrong? What if its true what Tallulah says, that all she really needs to do is be her authentic self and that that will eventually lead to the success they both desire? What if trust, patience and the courage to be one’s unique self is all that is required?
Being an artist can sometimes feel like being a left handed person in a right handed world. You know you don’t fit in but there’s still the pull to try, especially in situations where you are surrounded by the right handed people. You try to fit yourself into their box, do as you think they would want you to do, be as you think they would want you to be, as if that is the road to any kind of success. But what if you being your left handed self is really all those right handed people really want?
Anyway, these are the thoughts rolling around in my mind this morning as I contemplate spending the day in, what is for me, the right handed world. I intend to do something different today. I intend to draw from the continuous inspiration that is Tallulah Grace, a woman who doesn’t fit in this world at all and clearly isn’t bothered by it. Wish me luck.
Which leads me to…
Industry Tip #21
Have the courage to be your authentic self. It’s the most original idea you’ve got.
And without further ado, enjoy Episode 6 of Season 2
Can I just tell you how disheartening it is to spend the whole of your adult life honing your skills, perfecting your craft, then spending countless hours creating, writing and producing content for Youtube to the best of your entertaining abilities, only to be shown up by a cat? Lots of cats. Kittens even?
I mean, come on!!! Take that one little Black kitten with the white paws, how long has he even been alive? 8 weeks? And all he had to do was throw his cute little paws up in the air each time his owner quit tickling him and you people swoon. At least make him work for it a little bit. He didn’t even have to get up out of bed and boom! You’re giving him million of views.
He doesn’t appreciate it. He just goes on his merry little way never even acknowledging his millions of Facebook fans. He is completely unconcerned with the coveted gift of going viral you have bestowed upon him. I’d become his manager and embezzle all his ad dollars to get back at him but he wouldn’t care about that either.
Yes its a sad reality we content creators will have to face: the fact that in the ratings game of life we are simply no match for the, always entertaining, but eternally ungrateful, house cat.
Which is why in our game of one up-man-ship in Season 2, the one where Holster keeps torturing Tallulah with more and more co-hosts who she claims she has hired because they are trending, she can’t help but bring in the sure fire ratings maker, the almighty cat. Tallulah had asked for just one episode that she could do in the style that she wished the show to be, but Holster just couldn’t do it. She had to “cheapen it all with a cat”
Which brings me to…
Industry Tip #20
If you can’t beat em, join em.
And now, without further ado I bring you Episode 5 of Season 2. I’m not sure what I love most about this episode, the fact that Mhairi actually did do research about the tomato soup sandwich, the fact that both my daughter and my cat attempt to steal the show, the fact that yet again Mhairi challenged me to create/edit something I never would have created on my own but sincerely love (meaning that whole b & w segment,) or the barrage of epic insults Tallulah hurls at Holster, all I know is we packed a lot into this 5 minutes of fun and it ended up doing quite well for us on the Festival circuit.
This episode still makes me laugh the most out of all of them (thus far) and its largely because of Tallulah’s extreme reaction to it. I have never seen her get so flustered. (And yes, I am talking about Tallulah here, not Mhairi)
The funny thing about the creative process is that, just like you, the audience, we, as creators, are also still getting to know our own characters every step of the way. Sometimes you really don’t know how a character is going to behave in a certain situation, until you put them in it.
You develop the character well, give them a problem, and then do your best to get out of the way, so that your character can tell you exactly how they feel about this particular situation, and that is exactly what happened in this episode, to hilarious effect.
Mhairi and I knew that bringing Gigi (the Can Can girl, brilliantly played by our dear friend Charlotte, who actually is an authentic French Can Can girl) into the situation would likely bring out Tallulah’s jealous streak, but I don’t think either of us really expected this strong of a reaction.
From the moment I called action and Gigi entered from stage right Tallulah had an almost visceral reaction to her being there, she actually turned red at one point, often clutching her pearls as if they were safety rails on a train, as if her very life depended on getting this woman off her “stage”. She was not having it and it was hilarious.
Tallulah really just took over, but it was perfect, because I believe, in that moment, Tallulah perfectly embodied that primal fear so many of us women share. The fear of “what if all the things I do to better myself, to be smart, talented, kind, giving and wise, what if none of that really matters? What if the only real value we have in this world is how good we look naked? And p.s. there’s already a million younger girls out there who look better naked.”
It’s easy for women to get locked into that fear, because, if we are looking for it, we can easily find societal evidence of it everywhere (case in point, this and our twerking episode still have the largest views to this day, so we could read all sorts of things into that) and next thing you know we are obsessed with getting older, worrying about skin creams, tummy tucks and gray hairs, as if taking care of these things will somehow increase our value.
But honestly, I’ve always believed we can find evidence of whatever we are looking for, everywhere, and therefore, in times of fear, its best to back up and remind ourselves that we are the ones that get to decide what makes us valuable. We get to decide what determines our worth. We get to rest in the knowing that we are the sum of ALL our magnificent parts.
And when we take the time to honor, appreciate and really know in our hearts what’s valuable about ourselves, then we can come to a place where Holster’s response to Tallulah’s question “who wants to see this?” “Everyone” is absolutely true. Because like an exquisite piece of art, who doesn’t like to look at a half naked pretty girl once in a while? They make us smile.
Which brings me to….
Industry Tip #19
When navigating such tricky intersections as art and commerce, allow yourself to dance on the edge of what’s comfortable a little bit. That’s what art is for: to challenge us, to help us find that line. There is no growth in playing it safe.
So without further ado here is Episode 4 of Season 2 where we find Tallulah hanging on to her baguette for dear life, while simultaneously helping us laugh through all our fears.
Episode 3 made Mhairi and I both laugh out loud even at the first thought of it. (Yes that’s what we were cracking up about during our writing session in Malibu, in case you were wondering Jamie Foxx. 🙂 )
Whether people realize it or not, we are fully aware of the ridiculousness of Tallulah constantly banging on about the fact that she is a “classically trained mime” even though she literally never stops talking.
Tallulah is quite possibly the chattiest Mime that ever existed. In fact, if there was a society for Mimes, I am pretty sure Tallulah would have been kicked out by now for talking too much. But she would never admit it. No darling, she would say she left because they were droll, banal and terrible conversationalists.
So as we were coming up with all these ways to keep messing with Tallulah over the course of Season 2, we knew we had to throw a mime into the mix.
We found the perfect one in Mhairi’s dear friend Jabez Zuniga. I had never worked with him before but had a feeling that he was going to be great and he did not disappoint. The dichotomy of him back there, finding all these great moments, and Mhairi, straight faced, not having a clue what he was up to was, for me, hilarious.
When she finally did discover him and then accuses me of not even finding a real Mime. “He’s probably from Burbank or something” I almost had to break character and laugh. I don’t know where she comes up with this stuff, but she genuinely cracks me up, despite the fact that she’s my friend. Which brings me to…
Industry Tip #17
If you are making comedy, you better make yourself laugh. If you’re not even making yourself laugh, then you should keep honing it and developing it until you do.
And now for the ultimate test, does it make you, the audience, laugh? That’s what really counts. Without further ado, here is Episode 3 of Season 2 “There’s a Mime in the Kitchen!!!”
Well that was the plan anyway. Mhairi and I had decided that Season 2 was going to be all about the very real pressure that web creators are under to have their videos go viral, to gain the coveted status of “trending.”
We figured if Tallulah has her own web cooking show, then her lack of trending status would surely be her biggest obstacle to gaining all the success, acclaim and hats she desires and it was Holster’s job as Producer to remedy this. The trouble was, Holster and Tallulah had very different ideas about what type of content would cause that success. Holster felt Tallulah needed a popular co-host to help her stir up ratings, and lets just say Tallulah disagreed.
We thought, “wouldn’t it be funny if Tallulah chose to have Marge on the show, because in her eyes Marge proves how important she is, after all she’s saved a life?” Tallulah figures this will get things moving, and give her the proper acclaim she deserves but in the end it backfires because Marge starts trending instead?” We knew this would bring out Tallulah’s green-eyed monster and add to all sorts of fun.
To go a step further, we thought “wouldn’t it be doubly funny if we could actually get Marge to trend on twitter? Like in real life”
So that became the plan. We took to the twittersphere and created twitter accounts for Tallulah, Holster and Marge and then as the episodes started being released we started tweeting.
We had an awesome time tweeting back and forth in real time, in character, shared a lot of laughs, and even had quite a few fans join in on the fun, but in the end, as it turns out, you kind of need to already have a decent sized and engaged audience, for this kind of storytelling to really work.
While we may not have succeeded in making Marge trend, we did discover how much fun Improving with our fans on twitter can be, so you can expect much more of this behavior in the future. In fact if you enjoy a little Improv banter yourself you can always feel free to chat with Tallulah and the gang by following and tweeting to these accounts Tallulah, Holster & Marge now. Which leads me to….
Industry Tip #16
If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. (cliche for a reason) Can’t tell you how many times this has proven to be true in this business. Persistence is everything.
And without further ado, here is Episode 2 of Season 2, featuring the triumphant return of the newly trending Marge #SaveMarge (and yet another slam dunk performance from Tami Hillberry & Mhairi Morrison who have proven themselves to be one take wonders, with Improv no less.) I love how Marge is suddenly dressed more like Tallulah, copying her every move. Little moments of genius, all found in the moment.
Literally. Mhairi and I came up with the entire outline for Season 2 of Feathers and Toast while hanging out in what has become our favorite place in the world for getting away and creating, Malibu. And just a few feet to the left of us, the entire time, was Jamie Foxx.
Yes, okay, he wasn’t actually aware he was participating with us, for all he knows he was just there hanging out with his family, silly him, but for two girls who had made it their mission that day to not come home until they had created comedic gold, the realization that there was an Academy Award winner sitting within ear shot of us really got the ole creative juices pumping. So thanks Jamie Foxx for being our silent partner, and no, you can not have any royalties. 🙂
Creating Season 2 was way easier than creating Season 1 because we now had a years worth of character development, and experience collaborating, on our side.
Thanks to our fans, we knew that their favorite part of our show was the Behind The Scenes bits, and thanks to our industry peeps we knew that collaboration with the right talent was one of the golden tickets to trending in the digital space, so we put that knowledge in our creative stew and started stirring.
Then we added a heaping helping of story plot lines that we knew we wanted to push forward, and a dash of our own personal angst as artists and voila! We had an 8 episode arc that centered around the age old battle between art and commerce with lots of special guest opportunities (which I believe the trailer below illustrates pretty well so I won’t overstate it here). And of course this leads me to….
Industry Tip #14
When scheduling important writing sessions, try to make sure your favorite Academy Award winners can be seated right next to you. I’m kidding. The real tip is to allow yourself to go off-road a bit, meaning if a place like Malibu inspires you, go there. That’s the beauty of being a writer, you can go places, explore things, even in the middle of a Tuesday when everyone else is at work. Allow your mind to soar, to flounder for awhile inside of the question, let it get uncomfortable even, refuse to settle on an idea just to settle, and then just before the brain starts to hurt too much and your faith in yourself as a writer is lost, boom, out pops your golden ticket.
And now without further ado, the trailer for Season 2. (Which btw we did not edit until we had edited all the episodes of the season first. See. We took our own advice) Have you watched Season 2 yet? If not I hope you will consider watching it along with us over the coming weeks.
So here’s a little behind the scenes story that is just plain ole odd but has never been publicly talked about.
As many of you who have been following the story know, Mhairi and I were at the point where we had been working together on Feathers and Toast for about a year.
We had produced and released Season 1 and then spent even more time producing and developing the Tallulah character through our Tallulah Talks Back and Holiday Tidbit series and our social media efforts were slowly starting to pay off as evidenced by the uptick of people suddenly using the word Darling, but we were hardly trending.
I was at a point where I was thrilled with what we were doing, loved every minute of it, but was still very unsure of where this project was going to lead. Were we ever going to get a wider audience? Was this project something I was ever going to be able to make a living off of? Was it in my financial best interests to keep going?
This was all the stuff rolling around in my head as I took a much needed break over the Christmas holidays and then something happened that I will never forget.
It was my birthday and I was roaming around this really cool bookstore with a friend of mine, just jabbering away, and then as I turned a corner I stopped dead in my tracks.
There on the book shelf, facing out and just staring at me was a book with a woman on the cover that looked strikingly similar to Mhairi and the title of the book read “Tallulah, Darling of the Gods.” What????
Naturally I immediately grabbed it off the shelf and opened it up and the first words I read were something along the lines of “there I was sitting on the side of tub as Tallulah had her bath, drinking champagne.” The hairs stood up on the back of my neck. I was motionless, mouth open.
Seeing the confusion on my face, my friend, who is a bit older than me says, “that’s Tallulah Bankhead, you’ve never heard of her?” To which I reply “Noooo.” And she says “She was an amazing theater actress back in the 20’s, I just assumed that’s who you based your Tallulah character after.” Still completely freaked out I just said “Uh, nooooo.”
The truth is I didn’t even know who she was and I was pretty positive Mhairi didn’t either. She had mentioned who her inspirations were to me many times before (mostly Lucille Ball) and never once did Tallulah Bankhead ever get brought up.
Obviously I had to buy the book and the second I got home I dove into it. The more I read the weirder it got. How could we have created a character so similar to someone we didn’t even know exists?
And the similarities weren’t just between Tallulah and our Tallulah, there were striking similarities between her and Mhairi. Odd similarities like the fact that they both have quick metabolisms and need to have food by their bed at night, and that they both love the newspaper The Guardian so much that they had/have people ship it in.
The second I got back to LA I decided to give Mhairi the book as a present, but I warned her before she opened it. As I handed her the package, I said “now listen, if you know who this person is, then this will just be a nice gift, but if you don’t, it might freak you out a little.” And as it turns out my suspicions were right, she had no idea who Tallulah Bankhead was, her mouth dropped and she was, in fact, completely freaked out.
Now to this day, I still have no idea what it all means or how Tallulah Bankhead plays into our story. Or why I just happened to find this book sitting, cover out, presentational style, at a random used book shop in Daytona Beach, Fl (a shop I didn’t even know existed until my friend suggested we go to it that morning). Or why I found that book at the exact time that I was questioning where this show would go, but what I do know is that it all felt way too coincidental for me and “coincidences” are something I have learned to never over look.
Throughout my life, whenever “coincidences” start showing up with any sort of frequency, it has always ended up being because I was on the right track, so right there and then I recommitted to the show. I knew there would be a Season 2 and likely many more, which brings me to…
Industry Tip #14
Creative projects are a bit like relationships, deep down, whether we want to admit it or not, we know when something is working and when it is not. If at every turn the doors keep opening, and synchronicity’s keep happening, then those are the ones you should stick with, no matter how long or windy the road. Go with your gut.
I leave you with a video I later found on Youtube that is of Tallulah Bankhead guest starring on *gasp* The Lucille Ball show. Seeing her in person made the similarities even more striking. Would love to hear your thoughts on all this? Coincidence? Or something more?
Art really does just imitate life sometimes.
