Papa's World

April 7, 2008 @ 06:26

Several months after I was flushed from the radio business, I got a call from former colleague Pete Cugno, aka Scary Bald Headed Pete.

Peter was checkin' up on me, to see how I was doing in the new frontier of nothingness and the in the process of the conversation he told me about his idea for a cartoon. It would be based on his family, with the focus on his lovable grandparents Nonna and Papa, his father Paulo and his whacked out Uncle Vince.

I was familiar with these characters because Peter had introduced them on The Edge back in the late nineties. Pete would tell hilarious stories about his grandparents, and he produced several episodes of Uncle Vince's diaries that were well received by the radio audience.

Pete always had it in the back of his mind to bring the family to life through animation and when he mentioned his plans to me during our conversation, I encouraged him to follow the dream and go for it.

And that's when he paid me a wonderful compliment by asking me to be part of it.

Pete wanted me to help him write it and co-produce it, and having nothing on my hands but time I readily accepted.

It's been a lot of fun but a real eye opener but a lot of work as well. Pete and I started by writing three half hour episodes (22 minutes) and laying down the sound tracks.

We presented this to an animator and quickly found out that animation is expensive and was well beyond our budget, so we looked for other opportunities.

We found out that Tele-Toons was conducting a contest of sorts whereby they would consider submissions from several people and eventually grant 200 thousand dollars towards the production of a pilot.

We were not chosen, but we weren't discouraged either, because we knew nothing comes easy when it comes to the entertainment biz, especially in Canada. Not only that, but it was important for Pete to hold onto control of this project, and he was afraid we might lose control if someone bank-rolled it from the very beginning.

We went back to the drawing board and decided rather than dump a whole pile of money into one pilot; we would spend less money on a series of trailers. We would take highlights from the scripts and turn them into trailers of episodes that don't exist yet.