Special Message from Mixerman...
Mixerman here. By the time I wrapped up The Daily Adventures of Mixerman -- a daily blog about my time with a bidding war band and an infamous producer -- I was reaching well over 150,000 unique visitors a day. Since then, the story has been published as a book by Hal Leonard, and produced as an Audioboook, currently available on iTunes and Audible.com.
To date, there has never been a television show set in a recording studio, and for good reason. It actually has to be written by someone who has spent their life in a recording studio, and the studio itself would have to be an important part of the story, otherwise, it appears as nothing but yet another lousy Hollywood rendition of the creative process, with the usual trite scenes that bare no resemblance to what a studio session is actually like.
If you were one of the many tens of thousands that read this story when I originally published it, then I am coming to you for your help. If you derived great entertainment from my daily installments that summer many years back, if you found yourself getting up just a little earlier than usual so that you could read what crazy fucked up shit was going on in my session, then I would ask you to help us fund the making of this Pilot Episode.
If you are one of the tens of thousands who got your copy of The Daily Adventures of Mixerman from a Torrent site, if you enjoyed the story and never paid a dime for that experience, then now is the time to atone for your sins. Now is the time to pony up just a little money, so that you might find yourself watching The Daily Adventures of Mixerman as a television show.
If we can make the Pilot, we can sell the show. Of this there is no doubt. We are at a time, that fan funding followed by online reaction can sell a show written by a television outsider. The Internet is now making it so that we, the people, can dictate what art gets made and what doesn't, and I'm coming to you to help me make that a reality.
In an effort to accomplish this goal, I have teamed up with Thomas Marino, an independent film-maker, who has just completed a documentary about Joel-Peter Witkin. We have been hard at work on the script, and with plans for funding, and given that the story is so widely known, we are attempting to fund this through you, the fans.
And if you're coming here completely unfamiliar with The Daily Adventures of Mixerman, please go to mixerman.net and start reading it for yourself. Then come back and donate what you can, and be a part of television history.
Thanks,
Mixerman
Funding Campaign Goal
Our goal is to raise $150,000 in order to shoot a 90-minute pilot episode of Mixerman Chronicles. Ideally, we would like to exceed that goal, but it’s the minimum we need to make this show of the quality we envision.
What will we use that $150,000 for? Why to make the 90 minute Pilot Episoide Prequal to the Daily Adventures of Mixerman. If you think it’s expensive to make a record, multiply it by ten to make a proper film or television series.
The Foundation
On July 27, 2002, a mysterious music insider started chronicling online, the day-to-day adventures of a recording he was making for a large record company. It was a little slice of the rock and roll dream – a young band promised stardom, a big budget, and a famous producer. However, instead of the story we’d all heard about getting to the top, riding in limos, and being chased by throngs of screaming fans, this was something different. It had gone terribly wrong. Not only had the wheels fallen off, but, as one delved further, you started to see the truth illuminated: this immethodical circus was not the exception. Perhaps it was the rule. Perhaps it always had been.
Industry professionals immediately identified with the empirical details, and the uninitiated were equally drawn in by this rubbernecking view of making records. There was wide-spread speculation as to the who, when, and where of it, but clearly Mixerman was not a poseur.
By its fourth week on the Internet, the diary was getting 25,000 hits a day and drawing increasing attention from every stripe of the music business, as well as other bloggers, internet junkies, and insiders. It was a phenomenon.
The Adaptation
Combining the biting satire of Spinal Tap with the matter-of-fact social commentary of Seinfeld, “Mixerman Chronicles” is a half-hour comedy/drama series based on Mixerman’s online diary and subsequently published book. The television series continues and expands on Mixerman’s sardonic navigation through the stagnant swamp of the modern music world, a world populated by characters who put the “fun” in “dysfunction”. If Joseph Heller had a son in the music business, it might well be Mixerman, a quirky and keen observer of the human condition. Part social critic, part voyeur, and part betrayer of the industry’s confidence, Mixerman is an everyman who tries valiantly to resurrect the creative energy he once experienced in the music business.
As narrator, tour-guide, and humorous off-color commentator, Mixerman supplements the viewers fly-on-the-wall perspective with a no-holds-barred play by play of his session with a bidding war band – a band not worthy of an opening salvo let alone a war. Mixerman must navigate through a session where political ramifications are the norm, personal boundaries are treated with contempt, usual power hierarchies are routinely abandoned, and self-appointed committees seemingly decide even the most mundane of tasks – a session in which nothing is sacred, not even the privacy of the session itself. And while the band, their manager, the label executives, the producer, and the studio staff are initially unaware that their potentially embarrassing antics are being watched by an ever-growing audience of internet voyeurs, it is surely only a matter of time before Mixerman’s diary is discovered.
Like any good expose writer, Mixerman chooses fitting aliases to protect the identities of his subjects, beginning with himself. Yes, as hard as this may be to accept, Mixerman is an alias. Even the band is provided a name befitting only the most volatile and oftentimes offensive crew of numbskulls – Bitch Slap, a band name oddly representative of Mixerman’s powerless situation accentuated by a driving need to fix all that is wrong.
The Pilot Episode
The Pilot Episode will be shot as a three-act, 60-minute prequel to the story as it exists in the book. The storyline for the Pilot will conclude upon the completion of Mixerman’s first day with the band – Bitch Slap.
There are many options today for placing a show like this. There are subscriber-based networks, like HBO, Showtime, and Netflix. There are cable networks, like AMC, Bravo, USA, FX, and about a hundred others. There’s network television. And there’s internet options that are available. Unfortunately, it’s exceptionally difficult to sell a show with unproven writers. And the goal isn’t to sell the concept and pass it off to a “showrunner” who has never made a record in his or her life. It’ll be pure crap. That’s why we have to make it ourselves, and that’s why you have to pledge your support. Otherwise, it likely won’t ever get made.
The Main Characters
MIXERMAN, Bitch Slap’s entirely overqualified and refreshingly opinionated recording engineer, has the uncanny ability to keep his head while all those around him lose theirs. In his mid 30s, and of towering stature (he sometimes thinks of himself as “larger than life”), Mixerman has weathered many storms in an industry driven by the whims of change. Part of his past success has relied on his ability to be in the right place at the right time, but signing onto the Bitch Slap project has been more like being in the wrong place at precisely the worst time. Thoroughly disgusted by the dysfunctional state of the music industry and his inability to effect change, he uses his intelligence, wit, sarcasm, talent, and underground web diary to draw attention to the absurdity around him. He is Holden Caufield in the center of a confederacy of dunces, and he routinely ignores his inner voice that screams “evacuate”.
WILLY SHOW, Bitch Slap’s mid-50s, laidback, infamous producer, who knows just what to do when trouble arises. Nothing. Rather, he takes to the age-old art of intervention; he rolls a fatty and passes it around to anyone within smoking distance. A tireless slacker, Willy knows what is required to make a great album: a good band, team effort, unflagging discipline, and clear-headed thinking. Unfortunately, he has none of these at his disposal.
WANDA WARES, a statuesque, gorgeous, mid-30s, African-American woman, who makes her living managing the likes of Mixerman and Willy Show, which is more than a full-time job. This feisty and remarkably athletic woman seemingly bests anyone in any given situation, making her an intimidating force, both physically and intellectually. While she certainly wouldn’t want to trade any of her business success, she feels it’s time to ramp up her efforts to attain long-postponed familial goals. With her present suitors being wholly unqualified, Wanda believes that she would find assured contentment in rekindling her long abandoned personal relationship with the only person she can actually see eye to eye with – Mixerman. If only he had a clue.
PENNY PINCHER, Bitch Slap’s recently appointed, tightly wound, forty-something, A&R Rep, fits the definition of a M.I.L.F. save for the “mother” part of the equation. This petite, sexy, and somewhat buxom blonde presents the most extraordinary combination of high-powered executive and dirty little whore in her dangerous 4” stiletto heels. Penny’s business sense, which involves playing both sides against both sides, is well honed as she “blows” her way past the competition and “rises” through the ranks of Easter Island Records.
Bitch Slap – The Band
DUMAS, Dumb Ass, Bitch Slap’s pasty white, wholly inadequate drummer has no sense of timing and no talent. Despite his often-maligned arrhythmic signature feel (to put it kindly, an odd push-me, pull-you lope), he is pathologically concerned with any attempts to edit his performance. Fashionably and socially inept, and with the mind of a child, he is the embodiment of the term, “ignorance is bliss”. His marked inability to communicate through anything other than a circuitous nature has the effect of frustrating those around him to hair-pulling exasperation. Most fascinating of all is his invariable feigning of retardation, which prompts Mixerman to wax philosophical, “Why would a retard act like a retard?”
HARMON NEENOT, Bitch Slap’s below average, pugnacious bass player. He is without a doubt, the most vocal, and certainly the most abrasive member of the band. Fueled by his own incriminating secret, Harmon spends an inordinate amount of time on a tireless quest to discover the skeletons in the closets of those around him. This 20ish, goateed, “urban hillbilly” (a term he prefers to redneck), has several atrocious and couth habits, the worst being his constant finger sniff post anal exploration. He’s the ultimate manifestation of the old saying, “don’t touch that because you don’t know where it’s been.”
YORE, Bitch Slap’s lead guitarist and most proficient musician, is also the oldest and most experienced member of the band. With three unsuccessful major label deals under his belt, and at the ripe old age of 27, Yore fears that Bitch Slap is his last chance at success in this youth-driven industry. Oddly, his experience provides him with no additional credibility in the eyes of his bandmates, as they all consider themselves well versed in the major label machinations, particularly the money trail. As a consequence of his previous failures, Yore can usually be found seeking solace in a bottle of Markers Mark. While his band has grown accustomed to his melancholy demeanor, it proves disconcerting for most everyone else. Yore lives by his oft-verbalized mantra, “I hate my life.”
JOHNNY ENIGMA, Bitch Slap’s wholly average singer, could never be accused of having no soul; after all, he put the “sol” in solipsist. Fortunately, what this 20ish front man lacks as a singer he more than makes up for as a poseur. With his strikingly good looks and “vintage” fashion sense, Johnny firmly believes that his divine purpose on this earth is to fill the void left by Jim Morrison’s early exit. While Johnny certainly aspires to be a good singer (although, he does nothing towards this goal), he absolutely devotes himself to his appearance. In between regular hair repairs, he works diligently on his teeth with a peculiar flossing device and a compact mirror, both of which he keeps in some kind of purse, or, as Johnny prefers, “European wallet.” Although he sometimes can appear to be a nice, sincere person, he’s probably the kind of guy that you loath to work with.
Additional Characters
LANCE NEPHEW, the 18 year old studio house assistant and resident slacker, embodies everything great about career placement in corporate America: nepotism. His close relationship to his super producer uncle, Willy Show, affords him the opportunity to break into the highly competitive rock recording world. With no experience, zero knowledge, and a sense of entitlement he wears like a codpiece, Lance often works effectively as Mixerman’s smart-ass and ever-hindering, “anti-assistant.” And all Mixerman ever wanted was a sidekick.
MARV ELLIS, President of Easter Island Records, is considered one of the original moguls of the music business, but every dog has its day. While many of his peers have long retired, this stylish, gregarious leader is intent on going down with the ship that he built. Several bad business decisions, such as signing the band Bitch Slap for two million dollars, have put his company at risk and his empire in danger of takeover by parent company, Monolithic Media. His seemingly calm demeanor belies the pressure he feels to release a “hit” record from a band he signed purely to win an ego-driven bidding war. If Marv’s ego had a name, it would probably be Bitch Slap.
SHORTYPANTS, Bitch Slap’s gruff manager, exudes class with a capital “K.” This 50ish, overweight, chain-smoking, snake-oil salesman, brings new meaning to the word “misfit” as he gallivants through LA in his steer-horn-adorned convertible Cadillac. So out of step is this misplaced cowboy, he’s actually approaching current standards of stylish nirvana with his polyester pants that zip from the side, and his enormous Porsche sunglasses. Yosemite Sam personified, Shortypants certainly has the interests of his band at heart, as evidenced by his threats to “whoop” anybody who tries to fuck with his “boys”.
FINGAZ, a.k.a. Fast “Fingaz” McGuillicutty, at the tender age of 20, makes a decent living as a digital editor, but his true desire is to make “mad loot” as a rap artist. This lily-white, short, skinny, spike-haired, toe head, who wears a parka in July, speaks Ebonics and has taken on the persona of a socio-economically challenged ghetto youth. He claims to be a black man in a white man’s body. In an effort to integrate this metamorphosis into his daily life, he has adopted the term “wegro” to adequately describe this racial anomaly. This absurdity is further compounded by his constant insistence that he is a member of a disadvantaged race. Fingaz says very little, but tends to have perfect timing for saying just the wrong thing at precisely the wrong time.
