- White Collar Poet. mockumentary web series premieres Aug. 15 at wwwwhitecollarpoet.com.
What would you be doing right now if you didn't have to worry about money? That's the question explored in a new webbased mockumentary comedy series created by Capilano University film graduates.
White Collar Poet is the story of Richard Scribe, an affluent and successful insurance broker who abruptly decides his true calling is poetry. To the chagrin of his coworkers and the bemusement of passersby, Scribe takes his rhymes to the streets.
"He really is trying to spread the word," laughs producer and director Michael Grand. "Here's this character, a really successful businessman whose life is turned upside down when he has this epiphany and decides he has to get in touch with his artistic side, and he thinks everyone else in his financial world really needs to as well."
The first full-length episodes will be available at www. whitecollarpoet.com on Aug. 15, but you can already check out the prologue and a few teaser shorts online. The whole project, which will start with an eight-episode "season," came about almost as a joke.
"We had a great time working with David Lewis, the actor who plays Scribe, before and I was just itching to go out and have some fun with an actor I'd worked with. David was up for it and I said
'Let's just go out and do a little experiment.' I gave him a couple of poems and we just went downtown and shot for a couple of hours. That's what turned into what you see in the prologue on the website. We had so much fun we decided we could make a series out of it. It was almost on a whim; there was very little preparation or planning. People on the street were happy to play along. I think most people really thought he was an insurance broker. Some of them knew David was an actor after they talked to us, but some of them thought he was just this out-there guy. A lot of it was him just going with it. He's a really brave, committed actor."
Scribe's somewhat lacklustre skills as a bard, and the puzzled reaction of his sidewalk audience, make for some good comedy. But beneath the surface is something quite thoughtful, driven by the experiences of Grand and co-producers James Brown and Douglas Kerr, as well as cameramen Louvens Remy and Tom MacLeod, all of them Capilano grads.
"I think for all of us doing filmmaking," Grand says, "there's this kind of straddling of two worlds. You have these creative things you want to do, stories and characters, and do something artistic and say something. But at the same time, it's very difficult to actually make money doing that. So you're stuck between what you would like to do if you didn't have to think about money, and this whole other thing about paying bills and putting food on the table."
Scribe's story turns the idea inside out - he already has a bulging bank balance. But can a person who spent their whole career dealing with hard numbers pivot into a life of art?
"The character comes from this idea that you can't assume that accountants and lawyers and whatever don't have a dream of being a musician or an actor or a painter. You can't just assume people don't have this other side that maybe they had to shelve.
Everyone has an artist in them but it's easy to lose touch with that and hard to find the time to connect. So this character has no art in his life but now he's trying to make up for lost time and go all-out."
Grand said he's excited to be launching a web series, his first. Beyond the inexpensive distribution, it also allows for fans to interact with Scribe. The rookie wordsmith maintains a Twitter account, and you can even request a personalized poem from him.
"So far the feedback's been really great," Grand says. "We think people will really like it, it's just a question of getting some eyeballs on it."
balldritt@nsnews.com
