TV's New Face
The unconventional, animated Internet films by two brothers have drawn worldwide attention - and now an Emmy nomination in an emerging category.
By CHASE SQUIRES
Published April 18, 2006
Last week, Orrin and Jerry Zucker were a couple of guys from Massachusetts with an Internet habit. Now they're up for an Emmy.
They didn't go to Hollywood. They haven't been on television. They're just two funny guys with an idea and a bunch of computers. That's how the Internet is changing TV.
The Zucker brothers were amusing friends and each other on the Internet with a series of short, animated films based on the weird things that befall Jerry. Then the National Television Academy selected their work, It's Jerry Time! www.itsjerrytime.com, as one of six nominees for the first Emmy award for programming produced for nontraditional platforms. The category has been dubbed "the iPod Emmy."
"We're this weird hybrid between a blog and vlog and a show and a journal," Orrin Zucker said, slinging around tech terms in a telephone interview from his office outside Boston. "I don't know what we are."
The Internet, they're proving, is the perfect battlefield for little guys to face off against big guys. Their competition for the Emmy includes AOL's worldwide broadcast of last summer's Live 8 concerts, MTV and a cell phone version of Fox hit 24. But making a show on the Internet doesn't require a big budget (Orrin estimates the Jerry Time budget is "zero"), and it doesn't take a network of affiliates or a transmitter or anything, just a computer and a connection.And inspiration.
What the brothers came up with is a funny, sometimes poignant, sometimes pointless collection of animated shows based on Jerry's daily trials.
Somehow, life is just a bit tougher than it should be for the 46-year-old, saucer-eyed bachelor with the perpetual 5 o'clock shadow. His landlord is cranky, his date is a karate nut, the bartender at a local establishment eyes him suspiciously. He's a man perpetually out of place who recounts his woeful tales in a hypnotic monotone while piano music he composed tinkles in the background.
Orrin had been hearing Jerry's tales for years when he decided in September that something had to be done.
"If you had to listen to the stories he's been telling me for the last 46 years, you would need an outlet, too," Orrin said, laughing.
Just like his cartoon alter ego, "You would probably need some Prozac, too," Jerry deadpanned.
Orrin exaggerates. It hasn't been 46 years. He's 44.
The way it works, Jerry ad-libs a monologue. Orrin takes the recorded story and uses computer programs to cut and paste images and synch computer-generated mouths to the words.
"It's like paper dolls," he said. "But they move."
What comes out is one brother's visual interpretation of the other's life.
The duo's creativity stretches back to their childhood in Buffalo, N.Y., where their father ran a camera shop. As kids, they drew comics (Maggot Man was an early go), made stop-action movies with an old Super 8 movie camera, and followed hockey. A treasure trove of childhood memorabilia is on their Web site. It's marked "shoebox."
The brothers now run a television title animation company, Ozone Inc. Viewers who watch DIY network or the Sci-Fi Channel may have seen their work.
The company "specializes in developing motion graphics from concept through completion for broadcast, advertising and corporate branding," the Web site says.
It's Jerry Time! is just a creative outlet, Orrin said. They haven't made any money on it, despite getting more than 100,000 Web site hits. They only recently put up an online tip jar to collect donations to defray costs for the bandwidth the site consumes. There haven't been any advertisers or sponsors yet. Makers of the cutting-edge Slingbox Internet TV gadget did ask about product placing the device in Jerry's animated apartment.
The brothers turned the company down. A Slingbox, they decided, would never really end up in Jerry's apartment. He doesn't even have a microwave. He still uses the old Jiffy Pop popcorn, the kind that comes in a metal pan.
Orrin is married with four boys, but Jerry really is single. He does have a girlfriend, and is not seeking groupies, but he has been getting some unusual mail as a result of the show. A woman in China began sending him squid recipes. In a cryptic note, the woman, named Candy, added at the end of a recipe, "Hope no one will be killed and cut into pieces to feed the pig again."
Jerry said he pondered that last part.
"Again?"
They were working in anonymity until the Emmy nomination. Then they started getting phone calls from news organizations. Even with the fame, they weren't going to speculate on the future or expect a television deal.
"From what I've observed, about 98 percent of all the entertainment derived on the Internet is about people embarrassing themselves or people being embarrassed. It's really America's Funniest Home Videos on the Internet," Orrin said. "It's television by the people for the people. But on the other hand, there's the problem. This is the blessing and the curse, be careful what you ask for."
They clearly recognize the power of video. In a spoof, the two knock off Leni Riefenstahl's famous Nazi propaganda film Triumph of the Will. But where row after row of Nazi soldiers poured across the screen to stirring martial music, the brothers have inserted row after row of marshmallow Peeps. It's called Triumph of the Peeps."I was in a store, and it was after Easter, and there were just boxes and boxes of Peeps, and I thought, 'They look kind of like soldiers,' " Jerry said. "So I bought $7 worth."
That's just how their minds work. Go with it.
The brothers may not go much farther with It's Jerry Time. Sometimes creative differences cause friction, and each episode takes about two weeks to make. But it's fun while it lasts.
"It hasn't come to physical blows . . . yet," Jerry said. "It's hard to say how long we're going to be doing this. I think we've at least committed to a year."
Chase Squires can be reached at (727) 893-8739 or squires@sptimes.com His blog is www.sptimes.com/blogs/tv.