Sometimes you have what you think is a good idea for a new project and either that project never happens, due to timing or some unforeseen circumstances or because that idea is dumb. Here’s a couple ideas of mine I’ve had over the years that I never fully worked out or completed. If you think one of these ideas is actually great and want to invest time/money/work in it… I may be interested, email me at Samuel.j.Priest@gmail.com
Comedians On Bikes Getting Tacos.
I think you get it, right? You already get it. This was going to be a little webseries that was both a parody and an homage and maybe a little of a tribute to Jerry Seinfeld’s Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. Duh. My version was going to follow a very similar format, but obviously on bikes.
It’d be an excuse to talk to comedians from both the Chicago stand up world and the Chicago sketch/improv world who are a little bit above me in status and/or are friends of mine who I find hilarious. And we’d do it on our bikes. Or, in what could have been a lucrative tie in, the city’s booming Divvy Bike rentals. We’d shoot the beginning just like Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, but instead of close up montage shots and voiceover about a classic old and cool car, it’s a voiceover and close up camera shots of my 1979 burnt orange schwinn. Or maybe it’s 1978. I’m not sure. Possibly it’s from the 80s. It’s got 18 speeds, front and rear breaks, the tape is coming off a little on the handlebars, but I’ll fix that sometime soon I guess. etc, etc.
The logistics of even having conversations on separate bikes would have been difficult, much less the logistics of shooting it video-wise and getting decent sound, so we wouldn’t spend a LOT of time actually on our bikes. Definitely some establishing shots and random bit of a dialogue in between “the meet up” the “taco place” and the “dining place”.
I chose tacos instead of another alternate to ‘coffee’ because I love tacos. And Chicago has a lot of taco huts with walk up windows that I’m assuming wouldn’t be much of a hassle to shoot right outside of. Also we could incorporate food trucks if we ventured to downtown Chicago. We wouldn’t necessarily be beholden to tacos, we’d expand to other street food type things, like hot dogs.
Once we got our meal, we’d go to a nearby park or outdoor space to partake in them, shooting that. So, theoretically the episodes would follow the 1) establish the bikes 2) introduce the comic 3) ride bikes to restaurant 4) get tacos 5) ride bikes/walk to nearby outdoor space 5) eat tacos/talk 6) real fun natural conversation that puts a button on the whole short little episode.
I still really like this idea. I think it has fluctuating elements of rip-off/homage/parody/chicago-comedy-uniqueness to it that it’d be a hit. But, time and effort wise, I think it would be an ordeal unless I hooked up with a production company. So for now, and probably forever, the idea simply didn’t.
Dickghost.
Dickghost was pretty much a fully formed idea whenever it hit me. Only the details have changed. Essentially it would be 2 kids playing around with a Ouija board and at first they’re laughing when the only word they spell is ‘dicks’ but then they get frustrated after about the 3rd or 4th ‘dicks’ and either are upset with each other or think the board is broken. THEN, a dickghost appears from out of a darkened doorway and says “diiiiiiicccckkkksss” Black out.
Pretty simple, right? So why won’t any hollywood producers give me 8 million dollars to produce a short test real for a possible future film based on this idea? I have no idea.
Here’s a version of the sketch I put online in late 2013: http://abominableindustries.com/2013/07/28/dickghost-a-sketch-by-samuel-priest/ That includes a sketch of what could possibly be the ‘dickghost.’
A shorter, snappier version was done in the rehearsal process for a Writing 6 show I was a part of in early 2014 but unfortunately did not make it past the rehearsal process.
This doesn’t have to be a live sketch, it could very easily be a digital short. Get at me, Steven Spielbergz.
Adventure Journalism Blog
This was an idea I had for quite a while. Simply put it was going to be an Adventure Journalism blog, where each post was essentially a chapter from a different book, new location, right in the middle of the action. But then halfway through each ‘story’ it would just devolve into terribly over descriptive literotica. Like, the worst kind.
Unfortunately this was not necessarily MY idea. Upon revisiting some old stand up albums on a road trip, I realized I heard Michael Showalter do this very thing on his album ‘Sandwiches and Cats’ with the aptly titled “Erotica” You can listen to it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qbDAm_pv14
I have a notepad full of ideas on this, most of which were unique and would have made the project not a total rip off from Mr. Showalters. For whatever reason, my protagonist I decided should be named J.P. Morgan Chase. Small things like that. But alas, there’s not enough time in the day. So this is another… Idea that Didn’t!
Abominable Industries.
Technically this idea kind of DID happen. AbominableIndustries.com or AbominableIndustries.wordpress.com is and was a thing. But the original goal was to start a sort of weekly web blog zine of humorous prose not just from me, but from a rotating group of writers, and if each person contributed just one thing a week, we’d have daily content and it’d get us into a cool habit of writing on a regular basis and we’d have somewhere to put our writings that didn’t fit other places but that we could put them online that wasnt just a OUR NAME with a dot net or com afterward and also we’d be inspired by what other people wrote or posted and everything would be great and we’re all so talented and let’s encourage each other and yes, yes, yeah!!!!
Except it only really lasted the summer of 2013. And after the first week or so, some people stopped contributing. It was hard to find replacement writers when a pedigree hadn’t exactly been established. And once the weather began to turn, even I stopped posting things once a week. I reformatted the site, as it was no longer being updated regularly, I tried to de-emphasize the blog aspects of it. But when it was starting to turn into just a place to keep archived copies of that one summer I actually churned out a few things, I thought I should just make a website for me if I’m making this old website into a website for me. So I made this instead of fully updating ‘abominable industries’ to fit my needs. Most of the writings on here though still link directly to that old site.
Here’s the last logo I made for it when I was figuring out what to do with it still:
Samuel Priest is Not a Realtor 