Can't Get Arrested

Q & A with Adi Dardik

Adi Dardik was our PA on Can’t Get Arrested.  I asked her five questions.  She gave me five answers.  Here they are:

On Saved by the bell, Dennis’s character was more caring, and had to deal with all of Zach Morris’s pranks… on Can’t Get Arrested, he wants the attention, but it shows a comedic side, and this character is definitely funnier!!!  I think Dennis Haskins is just a great actor and any role he takes he is great on it.

I’ve only watched it in two languages. I never got to see the show in Hebrew, because I left Israel as a toddler. I grew up watching the show in Spanish, then when I moved to the States 11 years ago, started watching all of the re-runs in English. At first it was funny to hear them with a different voice, but then, not only I got used to it but I realized I like their real voices much better (not to offend the voice over actors).  The show is definitely better in English, because it was written that way. There are things that are not translatable to any other language.

I am new in LA, and was not able to go to South Florida to spend Thanksgiving with my family. Dave and Melissa were kind enough to invite me to celebrate with them, their family and friends. I had a lot of fun, I ate delicious food and we played pictionary… Go team boobs! Joey was one of my favorite characters on the show, and now that I know Dave, I can tell, just as his character he is a great person; caring and funny.  I would have never thought in a million years I was going to celebrate any holidays with him, although I did secretly wish I could have been in Hawaii and Disney with the Full House family while watching the show.

Blake Goza: A Man of Many Faces

Blake Goza is an actor.  If you asked him, I bet he wouldn’t define himself that way.  He’d probably mention that he’s the director of development for a film production company.  Maybe he would tell you of his love of art, or his admiration for the world’s best nail benders, and he might even regale you with stories of growing up in Kansas City, where he was taught down home Midwestern values by Kirk Goza.  But we know none of that matters.  Because we know that acting’s king.  And Blake Goza is King of the Actors.

I was home last week for Thanksgiving and one day I had lunch with my Aunt Lynn.  We were having salads (Greek for me, Caesar for her.  Advantage: me) when she asked me about future projects.  She wanted to know which actors from Can’t Get Arrested I’d like to work with again.  I said I would love to work with all of them again (which, by the way, is totally untrue, they’re all terrible, but it sounds diplomatic and mature to say stuff like that), but that whatever I was making next would probably have Blake in it.

My aunt replied, “Oh, he’s great.  He’s so funny in all the stuff you’ve made, but always in different ways.  He’s like a comedy Meryl Streep.”

If you want to see more work from the Meryl Streep of sketch comedy videos that involve crystal meth, check out the stuff we’ve put on Funny or Die.

Episode 4: Full House Reunion & More

Episode 4 of Can’t Get Arrested is a fun one, and there’s a lot packed into it.  We have an Irv scene, we have Tristan and Rylan, we have Candace Cameron Bure, and we have another news report.

The Full House reunion scene was a lot of fun to shoot.  David (director), Matt (DP), Michael (producer), and I (me), all grew up watching Full House as kids, so it was pretty surreal.  I was voted down by the other Can’t Get Arrested movers and shakers, but I really wanted to put in audience reaction in the pause after Dave says, “Cut it out.”  I feel like huge laughter and applause would have been hilarious in a very weird and jarring way.  I get why the idea wasn’t liked, though.  Obviously having four episodes without audience reaction, and then suddenly introducing it is a strange thing to do, but still.  Pretty good idea, I say.

I also really like the news report in Episode 4.  Olev Aleksander played our reporter, filling Stephanie Allynne’s huge shoes.  He is the Steve Young to her Joe Montana.  We decided not to use Stephanie for this one because we only had audio for Candace’s part, and we figured it would be less confusing to go from a male voice to Candace’s female voice.  Another factor was that Stephanie was a nightmare to work with (patently untrue).

But anywho, Olev was great.  You could even say he, “Nailed it.”  The first and last lines of the broadcast, which are my two favorite lines in the episode, were lines we came up when we were shooting the news.  David asked me if we could shoot somewhere that looks like a zoo.  There’s a park near my apartment, so we shot there.  On set, we came up with the line referencing the fact that it’s just a park that we hope looks like a zoo.  Oh man, we’re so hilarious.

David came to set with the line about Siri being racist, which I find very funny.

I don’t like the scrolling news ticker in this episode as much as I liked Episode 3’s scrolling news ticker, but I guess there’s some funny stuff in there.  Here are the headlines I wrote this time:

• Neo-Nazis Change Name to Neon-Nazis to Attract Rave-Goers
• So Justin Bieber and Usher are Having Sex, Right?
• On the Next “Kitchen Nightmares”: That British Chef Yells at People
• Herman Cain Sexually Assaults 12 Women in Bed Bath & Beyond
• Stupid NBC Idiots Bench “Community”
• Dippin’ Dots Files for Bankruptcy, Spelling a Future Without Ice Cream
• Snoop Dogg Releasing Line of Swizzle Sticks, Unsure of What to Call Them
• Woody Allen Signs on to Direct “Human Centipede 3”
• Will Smith Opening Bel-Air Poster Store Called “Fresh Prints”
• What Ever Happened to Rick Moranis?
• Today in Business News, Transactions and Mergers Took Place.

I’m probably going to make a sketch comedy video at some point of what Human Centipede 3 would look like if Woody Allen directed it.  So… don’t steal that.  Or whatever.

Episode 4 problems? No problem.

David Odio is an editor extraordinaire.  Saturday, November 19th, I was taking care of my producer duties, drinking on the wrong side of the country at a bar in Maryland.  David, meanwhile, was slaving away at his computer in LA, editing Episode 4 so you people (“you people” said with love) could enjoy watching it Monday morning. 

That night, I got an email from David saying the Can’t Get Arrested hard drive crashed.  Disaster.  Did it mean we had to push Episode 4 back at all?  Absolutely not.  You know why?  Because David Odio is an editor extraordinaire (you should know this already, it was the first sentence of this post).

Hire him for stuff and pay him lots of money.

News Ticker

The news segment in Episode 3 came together pretty last minute.  As written, the news piece would be heard, not seen, but that’s obviously not so exciting, so we decided to shoot something.  Luckily we were able to get the hilarious Stephanie Allynne to play Angelica Fritzman, our news reporter.

A fun aspect of the news report was that it allowed us to write some extra jokes to work in as a scrolling news feed at the bottom.  I didn’t expect many people to actually read the news feed, but a lot of people have emailed us about it.  Because we cut away from the news, you can’t actually read everything in there, so listed below are the jokes I wrote for that part:

• Billy Crystal drops out of Oscar hosting duties.  He will be replaced by Eddie Murphy, who will be in makeup that makes him look like Billy Crystal.

• Anti-depressant prescriptions on the rise to coincide with holiday season and release of Adam Sandler’s “Jack and Jill.”

• Charlie Sheen still eager to make “Major League 3.” Questions loom as to whether or not he knows the first and third base lines are just chalk.

• Andy Dick is annoying.

• “Desperate Housewives” is still on TV?  That’s surprising.

• Dennis Haskins reportedly involved in karaoke-bar brawl after patron sings Elvis Presley’s “Hound Dog.” Haskins allegedly left yelling, “That’s my song, dammit!”

• “Twilight” star Taylor Lautner invol… ahh, who cares.

• Today the stock market did some stuff.  That’s both the NYSE and NASDAQ.

• Just a reminder: There was a time when Whoopi Goldberg was a huge movie star.

This tweet from Kato is my favorite part of Episode 3.  When we showed up to shoot the news scene, David came with this idea.  It’s great.

Late Additions to Episode 2

The editing process on Can’t Get Arrested has been a fun one.  Some of my favorite parts of Episode 2, in particular, have come from editing.  I thought you may be interested in finding out about those last minute editing jokes here.

The scene in which Dave, Jodie, and Dennis look at the computer felt a little long to us and we wanted to edit it down.  The easiest way to do that was to cut away from the actors and show the computer screen, which we realized would be a great opportunity to work some new jokes in.

David pitched the name “AndersonMiniCooper” as one of our article commenter names, and I thought it was hilarious.  I told him I thought it would be funny if we followed it up by giving Anderson Cooper-themed names to all of the commenters.  So that’s how that bit of weirdness ended up in the episode.

As for the one non-Anderson Cooper name, that was a joke really just to amuse us.  Kadroll is a commenter on Youtube who wrote, “Wow - that was a waste of time.” in the comments of Can’t Get Arrested Episode 1.  We thought it would be fun to put that into Episode 2.

In the script phase and even while shooting we hadn’t considered the idea of seeing comments.  Luckily David is a quick and skilled editor, and he was able to make it happen at the last minute.

The next place we thought we could get a funny visual joke was when Dave gets a text from Kato.  We never gave Dave a specific text to read, which left a lot of leeway for us here.  We took that leeway and we got absurd with it.

David and I spent a lot of time talking about what the Kato text should say.  Early on I threw the phrase “murder people” out there, so it quickly turned into building the rest of it around that.  As for why we have Kato refer to himself as “K-TRAIN”, that decision was quite simple, since Kato refers to himself that way in real life.

David came up with the idea that we add a second text, which I think is really funny and unexpected.  We liked that it would be an incredibly threatening text conveyed in a really childish way.  I don’t know for sure, but I think it may have been David’s roommate, Nick, who came up with putting a winky face at the end.  If it was you, Nick, great work.  We salute you.

Edit Complete

How can you find out with certainty that your edit is finished?  Well, you simply check to see if Matt Macar is asleep with his hand down his pants, of course!

A Look at Jordan Rozansky (me)

A lot of people (not one person) have been saying, “Jordan, we read all of your posts about the web series, but we don’t know anything about you.”

Well people (again, nobody at all), I hear you loud and clear (silent and nonexistent).  This blog will continue to be the #1 place on the Internet for Can’t Get Arrested news (actually, tied for #1 with the Can’t Get Arrested Twitter, Facebook, and website), but I’m going to start writing periodically about other things, too.

I have referenced on occasion that my mom is my only reader, but that’s of course not true.  How could it be true if you (dad) are reading this right now?

My dad hasn’t been mentioned on the blog before, but I figured you, the readers (mom), might enjoy this email I received from him this weekend.  Maybe it’ll help you understand where I come from.

Email Subject: Life is good

Email Body:

Can’t Get Arrested, Episode 2 premieres tomorrow on the Internet.  Watch it.

Episode 2 Coming Along

I went over to David’s last night to look at an early cut of Episode 2.  It’s coming along really nicely, and I think it’s a stronger episode than the first one. 

Here are some notes on Episode 2.  Based on comments we received after Episode 1, I thought you may find them interesting:

- Irv Steenstein, Dave’s manager, is not in Episode 2.  That will make some people very happy, and it will make others very sad.  Good/bad news, Irv will be back for Episode 3.

- Tristan and Rylan, the two paparazzi idiots played brilliantly by Blake Goza and Eric Moneypenny, are great in Episode 2.  Episode 1 really only scratched the surface on these guys, and Episode 2 is where they get to shine some more.  After this one they will appear one more time, in Episode 4.  These two characters are my two favorites in the show.

- I don’t think we ever actually hear Tristan or Rylan referred to by their character names in the series, but we gave them those names because I didn’t want them listed as Paparazzi #1 and Paparazzi #2, like they are on IMDB.  Also, a few weeks before we started shooting, a friend of mine had a baby boy and named him Rylan.  I thought it was a cool name, so that’s why it’s in the show.

- Episode 2 is the first of two episodes in which Kato Kaelin appears.  He was really funny when we were shooting and I’ve never met a more upbeat, high-energy guy in my life.

- Dennis Haskins, who was so funny in his little cameo at the end of Episode 1, is back in a more substantial role this week.  After this week he pops up once more in the series, but I won’t tell you where.

- I don’t want to spoil anything, so I’ll just say this: To find out if President Barack Obama appears in Episode 2 of Can’t Get Arrested, you’ll need to tune in this week and see for yourself…

Episode 2 premieres Monday, November 7th.  If you want a little taste of what’s to come, check out this short EPISODE 2 TEASER that David put together.