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THE OTHER GIG: LARRY YOUNG, PRISONER
PITCHMAN
by: Matt Brady (Newsarama)
While Larry Young may best be known for heading up AiT/PlanetLar
as well as being an outspoken comic industry pundit, he also
has a secret life. Thanks to a childhood friend, Young is
also an occasional pitchman. His latest work up: re-imagining
The Prisoner for the Sci-Fi Channel – as a reality
show.
The short(ish) version of the story runs like this – back
in Proctor, Vermont, the (then) young Larry Young met up
with Rick Austin, a guy who shared the same interests as
Larry. “Larry actually dressed up like Spock and went
to the premier of Star Trek: The Motion Picture,” Austin
said. “I saw him there, and thought it was a really
ballsy move to be wearing those ears in Proctor, Vermont.
He talked me into dressing up like Darth Vader and going
to the premiere of The Empire Strikes Back. We entertained
each other’s affection for the genre – we were
on the same wavelength from the first time we hung out.”
Young’s obsession took him closer to comic books,
while Austin’s passion for comics faded in the late ‘80s.
As a result, Austin sold his collection, bought a camcorder,
and headed off for the television industry. Austin moved
through the ranks of the television industry, and eventually
landed in a place where he was able to offer a pretty sweet
gig to his friend – write their own Star Trek episode.
“Rick and I wrote The Big Picture Special Edition:
The Star Trek Logs for MTV in late '92 that was basically
a ‘lost episode’ of Star Trek: The Next Generation,” Young
said. “Marina Sirtis, as Counsellor Troi, recalled
the events of Star Trek VI up on the library computer of
the Enterprise, as if they were historical documents, and
interspersed with that were interviews with the cast and
clips from the old show. It was a blast meeting the cast
and crew - Rob Legato shot it for us, who now works for Digital
Domain and did the effects on Titanic, Apollo 13, and Harry
Potter - and it was also a bit of peek behind the curtain
to go through all the sets that I'd seen on television so
much.”
Austin: “So there were Larry and I, Star Trek geeks
form high school, standing on the bridge of the Enterprise,
shooting our own little episode. It was a complete Star Trek
geek’s wet dream come true.”
Fast forward about ten years, and Austin sought out Young
for another project. This time, Austin was approaching Young
in his official capacity – Vice President of Alternative
Programming for the Sci-Fi Channel.
“We were trying to think of things that would make
good reality shows, and one of the things that fell to me
was to scour existing properties and see if there was some
way we could re-jigger those things to see if they could
be turned into something interesting as a reality show,” Austin
said. “In doing so, I came up with The Prisoner.
“Larry and I had both been fans of The Prisoner growing
up, and I’d gotten more into it, and grown to appreciate
it more as I got older. It was a Kafka-esque, stylized, intellectual
show that was unlike anything else that had ever come out.
I don’t think you could ever do that show today.”
But what impressed Austin about the show, decades after
it originally aired, is how similar it was to a reality show.
In the original series, a former British secret agent resigned
in disgust from his position, was gassed in his flat, and
woke up in The Village. It was an idyllic setting where nothing
ever went wrong – if you didn’t question who
was in control, who you were, and why you couldn’t
leave.
“The premise of it is like a lot of reality shows
today – you put a person in a circumstance that he
has to figure out how to get out of, or at least what the
hell is going on and what moves he has to make to escape,” Austin
said. “That sounded like a reality show to me. So when
I pitched it up to my boss, very vaguely, I got the okay
to go ahead and try and develop it. The first person I thought
of was Larry, because Larry loves The Prisoner.”
Young got to work, firing ideas and pitches off to Austin. “It
was a collaboration,” Austin said. “I asked Larry
to go back and watch all The Prisoner episodes from the angle
of: if this was a reality show, what elements could we keep,
and what would we have to lose? How close it would have to
be to the real Prisoner franchise. Could we create a new
village? The Village in this show is a very, very stylized,
ultra-polished, very mysterious uber society that he’s
placed in the middle of and can’t figure out where
he is. Could we recreate something like that? Could we go
to the actual location of the Village, which is a hotel in
Wales - Hotel Portmeirion, could we take that over, and put
real people in that situation? If we did, what would be the
rules of the show?
“I gave him all of those tasks, he’d come up
with ideas, and get them to me, I’d give him some feedback
and we’d keep working on it. It was really a productive
version of the things we used to do as kids."
Young came up with an idea that had teams of people deposited
in The Village and then told that they had team goals (that
were in direct opposition to one another, but unknown to
the team members), but both with the overall goal of escaping
the game.
For legal and other reasons (there were some good ideas
in the pitch that Austin doesn’t want to see just given
away on the Internet for free), that’s about all that
can be said for the pitch.
So – since you haven’t seen anything about a
Prisoner-based reality show coming to Sci-Fi this fall, it’s
pretty safe to assume that Young’s pitch went the way
of about 99% of all the other pitches for potential new shows.
“We came up with something that probably still wasn’t
fully fleshed out, but was a great starting point,” Austin
said. “At the same time we were developing this, we
didn’t have the rights to The Prisoner, so we were
exploring that direction as well – could we call the
show a Prisoner follow-up of sorts? It was pretty confusing,
but it looked like there was a possibility. Rights situations
are always complicated – I believe there is a Prisoner
movie in development, the television rights are always confusing,
and when it comes to ‘re-imagining’ a piece of
fiction into something that’s a reality show, it’s
very confusing as to whether that’s a remake or something
new. Those were all things we didn’t have answered
at the time, but were looking into.
“But, in terms of the concept of the show, we had
something that I thought was very exciting. Ultimately, we
pitched it up, and they thought it was interesting, but they
felt that The Prionser title and franchise was very niche,
but the name itself would not be something that would grab
a mainstream audience. There wouldn’t be millions and
millions of people saying , ‘Oh, I’ve got to
watch that re-imagining of The Prisoner show!’ in fact,
it might have been a hindrance to getting the same type of
audience that might be watching Paradise Hotel on Fox or
Survivor on CBS.”
It was serious concern, given that a ballpark budget put
the cost per episode of a Prisoner-based reality show at
about $800,000 each. “As interesting as my bosses thought
this idea was, they felt that it wouldn’t be the show
that would grab that mainstream audience an get all of the
press and buzz it would need,” Austin said. “Unfortunately,
as much as we’d like to be doing lots of programming
that serviced our core audience and that made the hardcore
science fiction fans happy, our goal is to redefine and expand
what sci-fi can be. If sci-fi as seen by our channel is really
only about the old shows, space, and ‘science fiction,’ then
we’re really limited. We have to be doing shows that
can appeal to a broader audience – people that don’t
necessarily consider themselves sci-fi fans who are, at the
same time, going to see Spider-Man or Hulk or The Matrix
or X2. Those are the kind of people that we have to have
a pretty good feeling that are going to show up to a show
that we’re gong to sink a lot of money into.”
At the end of the day, Austin said that he’s keeping
Larry close for the next pitching opportunity that comes
down the line. “Larry and I will probably always be
shooting around ideas and trying to develop things here and
there. Larry’s not experienced in television, and that’s
a plus and a minus. A lot of times, you end up working with
people who’ve spent 10 or 20 years in television, and
you’re ending up with ideas that you’ve seen
before that are only mainstream ideas – ideas that
are very derivative. ‘Let’s do Survivor with
aliens, let’s do All in the Addams Family.
“It’s great to keep in touch with folks like
Larry who have their brains focused on new ideas and ideas
that are out there enough and other realms and venues than
what you may be focused on day to day. Larry’s always
been a guy thinking outside the box with a million ideas,
and you’ve got to keep people like that around you.”
And a call from Austin is one that Young will always be
willing to answer. “Making comics is pretty hectic
for me, but writing this was a great way to keep my hand
in with the fiction writing, have another little TV experience,
and have a chance to work with my oldest friend on something
very cool,” Young said. “We've never really talked
about this, but I know he must feel as I do that having the
two young geeks who stood in line for The Empire Strikes
Back twenty years ago growing up to be making entertainments
for other young geeks to enjoy is actually quite a privilege.
I know he loves science fiction and I love the comics, so
it doesn't get much better than that, working in a field
you love.”
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