Broken Frontier

Broken Frontier speaks to comics writer and former Ape entertainment Editor-in-Chief Jason M. Burns about his new live action web series Adults Only.

BROKEN FRONTIER: For those who don’t know, tell me who you are and what is Adults Only?

JASON M. BURNS: My name is Jason Burns and I’ve been writing in the comic industry for the past six or seven years or so. Most recently I was working as the Editor-in-Chief at Ape Entertainment. I left the company in February to start my own company called Plymouth Rock Creative, which is essentially a digital production company. We’ll be shooting a number of different web series and this is our first called Adults Only. It’s about a former Olympic gold medalist, a gymnast from the 80s, so basically think of somebody along the lines of Michael Phelps. In that day and age, he was America’s sweetheart for a short period of time – he was on the cover of every magazine, on all the TV shows, etc. When that fame went away, twenty-something years later he’s down on his luck and he has to take a job managing an adult video and novelty store, which is where he sort of rediscovers himself.

BF: What’s the rating on this show? Is it x-rated?

BURNS: No, we’re trying for a hard PG-13. There are swears in the show but we bleep them out much like in Arrested Development or It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, so our goal was to not make the adult video store a part of the story itself. It’s a place where all of these people are collecting a paycheck and that’s just the setting so we don’t consider it even an R rating.

BF: So he’s a former American sweetheart down on his luck working at an adult video store – where did this idea come from?

BURNS: When I started to break down what was going to be the first project that the new company did, I wanted to make sure that we could do something that was successful from a production standpoint, as well. There was a budget for everything we were doing and we knew that we had to cut corners where we could, so part of going in and writing the scripts for the story that we were going to shoot first was making it as limited in terms of the settings that we had to build.

Within the show, the majority of it takes place at the adult video novelty store, and then every episode he goes across the street to a coffee shop where he builds a relationship with a girl who works there. She doesn’t really know anything about what he’s currently doing at the adult video store. She just thinks twenty-something years later he’s still involved in the gymnastics world in some way shape or form and he never corrects her otherwise. He’s juggling two lives.

The nugget of the idea came from something I was working on years ago and just put in a notebook and when we started putting together the TV show I just looked at what was available for us to shoot in an accessible format and this was the one we rolled with first.

BF: Excellent. So tell me about the cast.

BURNS: The cast, for me, was really an amazing thing because when we started putting this show together and building the company, the idea was that we’d shoot it with local actors living in the Boston area. We were going to hire mostly local actors. I reached out to a couple of friends in the film and TV space, they read the scripts. One of them, Ronnie Marmo, who plays Crotch on the show, really liked it and asked if he could show it to a couple of friends, one which was Vinny Pastore who played Big Pussy on The Sopranos, and Brianna Brown, who is on General Hospital with Ronnie. We signed those two on to the show and from there we continued signing other names and recognizable faces based off of having everybody involved. We signed Sebastian Bach, the former lead singer of Skid Row; Danny Nucci, who was in Titanic and The Rock; and Adrienne LaValley, who people in this area, the New England area, will know as the National Floors Direct spokesperson – she’s basically on every Red Sox game, so everybody knows who she is. The main star, Todd Poudrier, is an indie actor that I’ve known for almost ten years now who I actually wrote the part around, so he was more or less the first one involved because I thought of him from the start.

BF: You mentioned Sebastian Bach, who is from an 80s hair band, so I immediately want to know how he got involved in this and what his role is on the show?

BURNS: He plays a character named Shifty. He’s in two episodes. And I should also mention that Brian Austin Green is also on the show and he’s in two episodes as well. But essentially, Sebastian plays a character named Shifty, and when I wrote the project I knew I wanted to have different people from different areas involved, so if I could get somebody from a rock band for the role I wanted to do because the character was written in that rock edge type way, and I knew Sebastian Bach was into acting because I knew he was on “Gilmore Girls” for a while, he was on Broadway for a number of different plays including “Jekyll and Hyde,” so I knew that he was an actor, and I also knew that he was a really big comic fan so I figured we could connect on that as well when I reached out to his management about the part. We just sort of took a swing in the dark to see if he’d be interested. He was actually one of the last people we got to sign on. For me it was exciting because I was a huge rock fan. I will say, out of the biggest surprises in the show, I knew he was a good actor, but he’s also hilarious. His comedic timing is brilliant, so when he shows up in the episodes I think people are going to be really surprised.

BF: So where can people find this on the web? How many episodes are there?

BURNS: Right now the trailer is available on FunnyOrDie.com, which is where we are actually going to start launching the episodes in late October. We are going to launch a total of eight episodes. The first two episodes will launch one week, and then for four consecutive weeks we’ll launch an additional episode, and then on that sixth week we’ll launch the final two episodes. So over the course of a six week span, we’ll release all eight episodes. And they’re averaging between seven and ten minutes each.

BF: Is this your first web series?

BURNS: It is. It’s my first web series and I’ve been working in TV and film for the past couple years strictly as a writer, so there’s projects that I’ve been working on that haven’t seen the light of day and may never see the light of day. Just from the standpoint of a creator wanting to see something through to the end, this outlet allows me to do that, and it allows so many filmmakers to do that because you can actually have an audience and I think now more than ever it’s an acceptable distribution channel for people. I think people are actually seeing content created for the web as viable content. It’s no longer second-tier. It’s just as good as what you can see on some cable networks.

BF: You said you got your start in the comics industry and writing for film and TV, so what about those experiences helped you create your first web series?

BURNS: In terms of the comic book stuff, what helped me is just the fast-paced nature of what we do to put the show together. It all happens pretty quick. We started in February, we shot it in July, and we have it ready in October. For me, being behind the scenes in comics for so long and juggling books as a project manager, even more so as a writer and creator, having been an editor and having to put together a full swing of books, it can a sprint. Especially to get books out on time for a certain date like San Diego Comic Con and holidays and stuff like that. Having that experience in terms of production has allowed me to move into producing the web series in a pretty seamless way. Not only did I write and produce the series, but I also directed six of the eight episodes, so in retrospect, I probably took on too much, but also having worked in the comic book industry for as long as I have, it allows me to juggle it without passing out every day.

BF: [Laughs] So what can viewers expect from Adults Only? Tell me what to get excited for.

BURNS: What I’m hoping people will do outside of just laughing at the series, because at its core it’s a comedy, is to see it as a character piece, too. I want people to watch the series and follow along with the characters and by the conclusion of episode eight I want people to be excited for a second season. That will enable us to go back and revisit it. The series ends in a cliffhanger way that allows us to jump into a second season, but it’s going to be all up to the fans. I think the performances are what people are really going to latch on to. Sebastain Bach did an amazing job. Danny Nucci is amazing. Vinny Pastore, Big Pussy, people know him everywhere. From the bottom of the cast to the top of the cast, everybody did a great job. I still have to pinch myself to even imagine they were in the project. I want people to be able to see this as an actual series that you would see on cable or a network television show and look beyond that it’s a web series because at its core it’s a TV series.

Adults Only will release its first two episodes on October 26 on FunnyOrDie.com.