Will Shepard, writer-director with the Watertown, MA-based animation company, Soup2Nuts, easily connected with aspiring film students at his workshop on April 3rd at Brandeis University.
Entertaining a crowd is something that comes easily to Shepard, a twenty-something invited to the second annual Sundeis film festival for his ability to create laughs for all ages, including the target audience of nine to 14-year old girls who watch “O’Grady High,” his weekly cartoon series on the N Channel.
“I was astounded at the way we were able to create a virtual community around “O’Grady,” girls who talk about the show online,” Shepard said on Sunday. “Girls that age, I am finding out, feel like they’re the only one going through what they are going through.”
“One girl from Kansas will write, ‘OMG (O My God), I just saw the new O’Grady show it is so good.’ Then someone from Nebraska writes, ‘OMG, I liked that show too!'”
That is a promising sign. Earlier in the conference, Gary David Goldberg, creator of such TV hits as “Family Ties” and “Spin City,” worried that TV watching is no longer the shared family experience that it once was, causing the fragmenting of the TV watchers into target marketing audiences, specifically, the 18-34 demographic.
However, O’Grady provides evidence that there can be diversity in TV, especially now that there are cable outlets and not just the three major networks, ABC, CBS and NBC, that Goldberg recalls from his first years in television in the early 1970s.
“We try to challenge the audience, push the audience to respond to what we put on TV,” Shepard said of “O’Grady,” which he describes as a high school stuck in a sort of surreal “Twilight Zone.”
What is it that nine to 14 year old girls all understand about high school? There are these random rules imposed by parents, teachers, and social groups, and kids spend so much time think about these rules, and themselves, that a meteor could hit their town and they wouldn’t notice,” Shepard said.
There is a three to four month lag between writing an episode of “O’Grady” and the time it is aired, so, Shepard said that he is always concerned about making a joke or a reference that is too topical.
Those are the jokes that he saves for Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update – Shepard continues to send jokes to SNL, where he worked with the cast and lead writers for three years.
However, Shepard said there are also the pitfalls of using material that is too stale, as Goldberg explained in his lecture, which preceded Shepard.
When I was working at a conference room table with the writers on one of my shows, I made sure that each one of them had a handkerchief,” Goldberg explained. “They were told to throw in the handkerchief whenever there was a bad idea. The first time was when I brought something up, and one of the younger writers said, ‘I don’t know this, but I’d like to help you. Can you explain it again, like, that happened when I was minus nine.'”
Insights like these were of great benefit to the film students at the workshops like Arnon Shorr, the founder of the Sundeis festival.
What’s been amazing is to see people in the business willing to come here and share their ideas, and encourage us to get into the industry and follow our dreams,” Shorr said.
Shorr was one of the film students who watched the episode of “O’Grady” that Shepard brought to Sundeis for viewing.
“In this show, ‘Noggin,’ a gong goes off in their heads and people lose their train of thought at random moments, that’s the ‘Twilight Zone’ effect,” Shepard said.
The show starts with some early gags. One involves the high school principal, who announces over the loudspeaker that two children are to report to detention after school.
The names? The principal doesn’t get to the names – the gong goes off in his head. Detention – what detention?
“Uh, I see here that I have a piece of paper with the names of two students on it,” the principal says haltingly. “Congratulations for being on this piece of paper!”
Other episodes of “O’Grady” have similar premises. One show is focused on sweating – the more you sweat, the more the part about yourself that makes you nervous – your nose, your foot – grows bigger. Another is focused on what happens when you’re angry – each time you get angry, you create a clone of yourself, not a good thing if you’re self-conscious about what you look like.
Shepard said that his company chose the company name Soup2Nuts because it was hoping to become like the old saying suggests, an all-in-one film factory.
“The old expression is you do a dinner party from the soup course to the after dinner nuts, and we want to be that way – writing, casting, recording, animation, original music,” Shepard said.
Shepard said that the four main characters include two male standup comics and two staff members at Soup2Nuts who will come in and talk for hours into a tape recording. Some dialogue is already written, some is ad libbed on the topic of the show. Later, Shepard will cull the best bits of the audio and tailor the art to the best lines that were recorded.
O’Grady has enjoyed success on “Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist,” another animated series that has benefited from the revolution created when the Simpson’s first aired in the late 1980s.
“Sometimes it’s hard – you still have to convince the TV executives that you can get an audience for your show,” Shepard said. “You may have this quirky idea, and get rejected. But there are more stations out there, and there are stations looking more and more to find something new to put on the air.”
For more information about “O’Grady High” and Shepard, please check www.soup2nuts.com.
