There Just Aren’t Enough Grains of Salt Out There
News! Well, for internet values of “news”:
Australian cult comedy blogger David Thorne has confirmed new forays into TV, with an eight-part HBO series and a one-off snowboarding mockumentary with Chris Lilley.
Hmm, guess that answers those “what will Chris Lilley do now that his career is over” questions. Let’s read on.
The Lilley project is a one-hour mockumentary starring the pair, called Cold Feet: America’s Bunny Slopes. “It’s about two individuals who embrace the snowboarding culture to the fullest extent but do not know how to snowboard,” says Thorne.
“Chris plays Derek, a Shaun White devotee to the extent of dying his hair red, while I play his best friend Josh who spends more time trying on different outfits and buying new gear than on the snow.
“Chris and I first met a couple of years ago at a function and share a similar sense of humour. In his words, ‘We’re like peas in a pod. Except I’m talented and famous’.”
Wow, sounds great! So of course, we decided to try and find out more because we’re actually interested in this stuff and not a mainstream media organisation that just prints quotes from self-confessed “internet pranksters” about how they’re going to be working with people way more famous than they are. And look what we found:
The 40-something has also been working with Australian comedian Chris Lilley on a mockumentary called Cold Feet; America’s Bunny Slopes, due for release around September.
“I’d been a fan of Chris Lilley since seeing Summer Heights High so when he emailed me to say he’d read an article I wrote (Missing Missy) and we should work on a project together sometime, I was fairly stoked,” Thorne says.
“We played with a couple of ideas but nothing progressed until Cold Feet; America’s Bunny Slopes.
“It’s a one-hour mockumentary about two individuals who embrace the snowboarding culture to the fullest extent but do not know how to snowboard.”
We’re not really surprised that someone might forget the details of exactly how they first met their friend and artistic collaborator. We’re slightly more surprised that no-one seems to have bothered to actually ask Chris Lilley about this – or even phoned the production company he works with exclusively, Princess Pictures, who you can reach here. Then again, who has time to do such things in today’s fast-paced world? Even if it’s, you know, their job*?
Meanwhile, not so long ago, Chris Lilley said this:
”Everyone is like, ‘Why don’t you go to Hollywood and get in some big show like Modern Family?’. But to me that’s boring,” says Lilley. ”Why would I want to read someone else’s lines when I can write my own, then edit them, and decide what happens?”
And from the same article:
When Lilley is in Los Angeles to liaise with HBO, he sometimes meets American comedy producers and stars who invariably ask him how many writers he has working on his show. They usually assume the answer is 10 to 12, but as Lilley explains, it’s just him. He writes by himself, and only about the characters that excite him.
So it looks like we’re going to sit on our hands just a little longer before we start getting excited about Cold Feet.
*This is a downside of being seen as “a reclusive genius” who doesn’t announce his projects until the last minute – journalists assume you won’t respond to inquiries so they don’t even bother making them.
I hold the same views on Lilley as you guys, but i actually think Thorne is very funny, his piece on faulty snowboard gloves is brilliant (as is a lot of his other stuff) so there is the potential that 50% of this show could be good
But you have to think it may all split apart for “creative differences”
We’d love it if Lilley started working with other people – his work desperately needs an outside viewpoint at this stage, as it’s basically disappeared up its own arse. But considering his extremely long-standing refusal to work with other people, it just seems a little odd that suddenly he’d be co-writing something with a (relatively) obscure guy and that it would be coming out with zero pre-publicity in a little over two months.
Derek sounds just like an older version of the extreme sports character he played on Big Bite. The one thing you can never accuse him of is originality, but hopefully some (credited) creative input lift this series as high as “mediocre”.
It’s pretty grim when the number one element making this story sound plausible is that the lead character sounds like something Lilley already did fifteen years ago.