Homeless George

Posted on October 10, 2008

A few weeks ago I acted in two videos for some guys (Chris Little, Shannon Cook, and Chris Landa) trying to start up a web series called Back Alley: Life on the Street. The idea behind the series is to parody popular sitcoms by populating their episodes with homeless characters. We shot an episode based on Seinfeld’s soup nazi in which I play (against type) George. Technically, the part I play was filled by Newman in the actual show, but they went ahead and called me George in order to have some continuity with future episodes.

I was concerned at first that the drug content and stereotypes would be offensive. The producers and I exchanged e-mails and had a good conversation about it. They were really receptive to my concerns and addressed them respectfully. Shannon (who wrote and directed the episode) had some pretty good points, and I felt good about proceeding. I think the final product is pretty much what Shannon said it would be: a kind of satire based on exaggeration of stereotypes, and not offensive at all.

We also shot an episode based on The Office in which I played Dwight. I like to think that’s against type, but whenever I tell my friends, “I played Dwight,” they all say, “Yeah, I can totally see that.” That hasn’t been posted yet, but I’ll embed it here once it’s up. In any case, both episodes were a blast to do. I hope we get to do more.