“It’s very important to put out programming that’s branded to the network. “The driving force behind this television isn’t, to my mind, it’s got to be cheap,” Miller says. Indeed, the cable network has produced such cult classics as “Celebrity Death Match,” “Beavis and Butt-head” and “Super Adventure Team” on budgets that are just a fraction of what the major networks spend on prime-time programming.
#WATCH SIFL AND OLLY SERIES#
“When you find something creative, you don’t necessarily have to throw hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars at it to make it good,” says John Miller, a senior vice president of original series development at MTV and an executive producer of the show.
The show is produced that way, MTV says, because it works, not because it’s cheaper. “It’s edited in someone’s house too,” Lynch adds. Lynch, who was part of the Liverpool institute’s first graduating class, then performs the puppetry to the soundtrack in a living room of another friend’s house in the San Fernando Valley. Sound for the show is recorded at a friend’s house in Nashville. In fact, in terms of production, “Sifl & Olly” is just a step above “America’s Funniest Home Videos”-and a small step at that. And despite the use of elaborate lighting techniques and some interesting special effects, that figure’s probably not too far off the mark. “The show costs about $13.50 an episode to make,” Lynch jokes. The cable network, which has consciously sought programming that is offbeat and low-tech, offered to develop the idea into a half-hour series. When he did, however, it proved worth the wait. But it was 18 months before Brian Graden, an executive vice president of programming for MTV, returned any of Lynch’s several dozen phone calls about using the video clips here. The Europeans loved the puppets and quickly began using the video clips as buffers between shows. Before Lynch sent the original videos off to Crocco, he made copies of 10 short skits and sent those tapes to MTV and its European counterpart, MTV Europe. I hope you enjoy.It’s that quirky unpredictability that sold MTV on the show-although it was anything but an easy sell in the States.
#WATCH SIFL AND OLLY FULL#
There are full episodes on there (or just search “Sifl and Olly Chester” that’s enough). If you don’t, you may suffer from the downside of the cult culture: without discovering it, it’s hard to appreciate why people love it so much. Mention of the phrase “crescent fresh” nearly twenty years later will have us quoting the sketch in which a dreadlocked sock puppet tries to explain what the hell that phrase actually means. They would have Rock Facts, have a word with Chester (the character pictured up top), and check in with the Precious Roy Shopping Network.įor its devotees, it was a perfectly beautifully absurd show that worked in its own world of logic and we loved it. The titular characters would speak at a microphone in front of a green backdrop and greet the people at home, then take calls from listeners. It was a pretty structured almost talkshow show. It was Mike Judge-ian in its straddling of the line between smart and stupid, though, – and this is not saying much – it was much smarter than Beavis and Butthead. He and his friend Matt Crocco made all of these audio recordings and Lynch used sock puppets for a visual and Sifl and Olly was born. It was a sock puppet show created by Liam Lynch ( Fake Songs and the director of the Tenacious D movie). Sifl and Olly was a sock puppet show on MTV in the late nineties. But for Woz, Broder, ASR (pronounced “asser”) and me it was always Sifl and Olly. Sodano would come over and everyone would watch The Sopranos. In the spring, Prince had a Mets game on every day.
But I ended up “living in” and getting to know some guys that I might not have had the chance to. Seniors usually move into collegetown and get an apartment. I lived in my fraternity house when I was a senior in college. But there’s one show that I love that no one ever seems to talk about.
I might even include Space Ghost Coast to Coast in that category. I put The State in that category, along with the radio work of Jean Shepherd. But I think there’s a deeper level of cult stuff where the average person hasn’t heard of it. There’s so called cult stuff like KISS, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Dr. I’m always intrigued by entertainment that means a lot to a select group of people. Whenever I want to respond in the affirmative and say something to the effect of, “cool” or “gotcha” I’ll often say, “rock.” People then incorrectly complete the phrase they think I’m going for and say, “on.” It’s not “Rock on.” It’s just, “Rock.” That’s it.
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