Steve Gadlin, Drawer of Cats, Wants To Make a Game Show For You.
By Karl Klockars in Arts & Entertainment on Mar 15, 2011 3:20PM
When we last checked in with Steve Gadlin, he was riding high off a fresh wave of Groupon-induced cat drawings. Gadlin, creator and sketcher-in-chief of IWantToDrawACatForYou.com, has now turned his attention away from felines, and toward game shows.
He and his Blewt! Productions co-conspirators (who are also behind Impress These Apes) are turning what started as a late-night performance show called "Don't Spit The Water," into a full-fledged game show pilot set to air on one of the stations under the Weigel Broadcast banner (which happens to be owned by Gadlin's boss).
There's just one catch - they've got to front some dough.
"Don't Spit The Water" is a riff on the old 70's game show "Make Me Laugh," but the stakes are raised in the form of a mouthful of water, which, as you might have gathered, they are instructed not to spit. (Jack Tripper be praised.) Instead of straight standup, however, Gadlin describes their crew of laughmakers as "absurdist performance artists who get in their face and do strange things." In the end, the contestants are on the line for what has traditionally been a mystery prize, with a lot of buildup and what Gadlin laughingly calls a "disappointing reveal." The stakes for the real show have the potential to be...well, Gadlin is coy about what they'll use, but he says "it's something everyone wants and nobody needs."
Gadlin and the Blewt!-ers have turned to Kickstarter to generate the $6k they need to get up and running. ComedySportz has donated the space, and now they just need the Kickstarter cash for things like building the set, paying the production crew, and whatever incidentals rear their head. Why use Kickstarter instead of just finding some sponsors? "We've got a large base of people who've been involved with the show for a very long time. The original plan was that I was going to foot everything with this. [But] this is a cool way for us to [let people] also feel part of making this happen. There's a nice hippy feel to it. It seemed like the most viable option at this point," Gadlin says.
If and when they reach their fundraising goal, they'll shoot a show and it'll run at least once, sometime, on WCIU or its sister stations. So if you pony up some cash to help, are you funding a one-and-done shoot? Or are you helping start the first of what could be many episodes of something that barely exists around Chicago anymore - locally produced entertainment television?
"I'd be happy with both," Gadlin says. "In one sense, it's a last ditch effort. We want to do this our way, and if we can get this to air once, we can say we tried hard, and it's a pretty cool prize at the end. Ultimately, I have visions of this being the next 'Bozo Show.' I want this to be the 'hipster date of the year.' It's always been more appealing to me to make it a local thing than to make it a national thing."
To kick in some dough for Gadlin and his crew, check out their Kickstarter link, and they've got some incentives available (free cat drawings!), tickets and commercial time available for backers to sweeten the deal. Their first donor could be a good omen - Gadlin said that Al Parinello, the first person who ever paid Andy Kaufman to do comedy, kicked in the first $1k.