Thank you for doing this, Mr. Vicchioni.
It’s Vecchione. It’s vek-ee-own. Not Viccioni-
Never mind that. The question everyone is asking… is Sex Ed dead?
No. Not at all. It may be wrapped in a linen cloth and laid in a tomb with a stone in front of it, but no, we’re not done with it yet. With 40 million YouTube channel views, 85+K subscribers, and viewers emailing me personally asking for more, I am deeply heartened by the reaction. The show wouldn’t be alive if it weren’t for the audience, which has become international at this point. If anything, I want to finish the show for them. Thankfully, I still retain all rights and copyrights to the show, no mean feat given the sharks we’ve swam with.
Can you give us some examples?
(chuckles) Oh, there is nothing I would love more than to name names, because that would be unprofessional of me. Let’s say there is a certain ex-agent of mine I would love to see get hit by a bus.
It’s a miracle you did not become bitter.
On the contrary, I wear my bitterness proudly. In fact, I call it hard-earned wisdom.
Do you plan on getting a new agent?
I would love to work in the industry in whatever capacity, truly. The trick is finding someone who can honestly answer the question “Do you work for me or do I work for you?”
What are some examples of your hard-earned wisdom, looking back at Sex Ed?
Well, for starters, I would have made Sex Ed as a movie. We had planned a complete arc for the characters, and had we just filmed a third act, I could be the proud owner of a feature, with a beginning, middle and end.
Secondly, and more importantly, if we truly wanted Sex Ed as a legitimate corporate TV show, we should have had partners. What we encountered when we pitched the show to the networks was that we had no eight hundred pound gorilla with us, meaning: someone established in show business that could convince the gatekeepers we knew what we were doing. An insurance policy, basically. I mean, why would anyone trust a bunch of newcomers – albeit newcomers with vision and passion – with no television experience? Why would a network give them millions of their dollars? Simply because they’re likable? I thought the pilot would be enough evidence of what a group of dedicated professionals could accomplish together when they were inspired by the material. But looking back, perhaps it was naïve to think we could penetrate the system by sheer quality. We were like the Little Rascals who put on a show and went a-calling to Hollywood.
We got pretty far, though. Pitching Showtime without an agent, without a manager, without anything but a bunch of press clippings and a DVD, heck, that’s a victory in my book.
Speaking of books…
Yes, I can’t help going the DIY route. I’m going into self-publishing.
Why on earth would you do that?
In the three years of shopping Sex Ed around town, I wrote two screenplays, Devil’s Catch and The Amish Girl, both in the horror genre. Either a script becomes a movie or it becomes nothing, which is such a waste for a writer. I don’t understand anymore why anyone would spend months or years of their lives writing a screenplay that exists only as a screenplay. If it’s a good story, it can exist in any medium. It deserves to be read by the public, not just by friends. Luckily, Amazon has given writers the means to finding our own audience and building upon that. So I took a look at my scripts, rewrote them as prose, and decided to become a published author.
Sounds like a lot of work.
Prose is everything screenwriting is not. There were a lot of late nights.
Is that what you’ve been doing this last 9 months?
More like two years! It was quite the learning curve. But I got the books to look and read how I had envisioned them, so I’m quite happy to send them off to the world as my little representatives. They may not win the Pulitzer, but they won’t be a national disgrace either. Frankly, I think they’re better than most self-published books out there at the present.
Can you tell us a little about them?
No.
What? Come on now…
No. Not… yet.
Really?
Come back in a few weeks. I’ll give the details. They’re a-coming.
Come on now…
Trust me. No one is reading this by this point.
Fine. Be like that.
I will. I am.
(tears up remaining questions) Okay, wise guy. So what’s next?
Well, I’ve got this here new blog, where I plan to continue my misadventures in Hollywood, this time with added book nonsense. It’s going to be a lot of fun, with book trailers, alternate covers, pre-production art, and a possible Kickst-
(interrupts) Hey. One last Sex Ed question… are you in touch with any of the cast?
I can’t get any of them to “like” their Sex Ed page on Facebook.
Thank you very much, Mr. Vacchyoni.
That’s Vecchione! Vek-ee… ah never mind.
Recent Comments