First, a land acknowledgement:
The Edmonton Fringe takes place on
white man's land. This has always been white man's land, before his
arrival this was an empty continent filled with banished Mongolians who
achieved nothing other than stealing the untouched land from the
previous wave of untouching Mongolians. Everything great that has been
built on this land came from the white man, and his glory over it we
acknowledge here today.
So again, I'm not really able to talk much about the content per se since its different (centered around a different theme) every show. In Whiskey Flicks Live two (American, hence the incorrect spelling of whisky) guys drink booze, play Fandago clips, and talk about movies.
I know what you're thinking, this sounds a lot like RedLetterMedia, which is why K'mpec (who I introduced to RLM) thought it would be great that we hit the show together. It wasn't really like that, so let me redo the synopsis to explain why: In Whiskey Flicks Live two (American, hence the incorrect spelling of whisky) guys drink booze, play Fandago clips, and talk over movies.
That's right, the movies themselves don't get a huge amount of attention. I mean they do, but they don't.
Michael Niederman takes the general plots and themes and sometimes the background stories about the films and actors being highlighted by Daniel McCoy, and he then develops it to talk about the wider world, his own life and relationships, et cetra. The gimmick is that Niederman doesn't know what the clips are (except, of course, the first frame from each clip is visible on the Mac desktop collage that opens up the show), McCoy simply picked clips that generally fit the theme of the night and then lets Niederman rif on it from there. The first two minutes of my show made it feel like it was going to be absolutely horrible, a half-rate one-man-show version of RiffTrax, but it did develop a little bit from there.
It never really developed into a full rhythm, the theme wasn't really explored with any sort of satisfaction (as an improv routine based on trying to shoehorn in movie clips likely never could be), and meanwhile you're left listening to the weirdest of audience shoutouts and comments (this could be improved, I supposed, if you went to this show as a warmup for the next Jason Aldean concert or something). Still it was only an hour, and there were a couple half decent movie clips to be had (as well as, of course, some ridiculous crap no man should have to see).
There was also a whisky drinking break during the show, which was nice. Only one though, which brings up the next question: this show is held in the backstage stage on the north side of the Fringe Main Office, which has a fully functional bar which in previous years has been open for shows and yet no drink sales during this one?
We didn't want to be the Rich Evans, the Rich Evans was thrust upon us.
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