BWW Previews: SNARKY SIDEKICK A New Webseries by Matthew Starr

The live action component of Matthew Starr's new webseries, Snarky Sidekick had a premiere event on January 25th at UCB East in New York City that starred Don Fanelli (30 Rock, The Chris Gethard Show, Letterman), Siobhan Thompson (BBC America), and Matthew Starr (CollegeHumor, The A.V. Club, UCB). The house was packed and the event was a great kick-off for the new series.

Snarky Sidekick is inspired by films like Indiana Jones and National Treasure. After action hero/treasure hunter Tom Raker (Don Fanelli) dies, his snarky, nerdy sidekick Simon (Matthew Starr) must lead the treasure hunt to find the priceless Native American artifact before it falls into the wrong hands.

Snarky Sidekick's original score was composed by Matthew Rubano of Taking Back Sunday, and it was produced by Thursday Shoots, a production company whose work has been featured on Above Average, CollegeHumor, Huffington Post, Tubefilter, WebSeries Channel, and the newly launched YouTube Nation.

Thursday Shoots is an experienced production company from Long Island who share the goal of creating quality film and video content. Their recent work has been featured on Above Average, CollegeHumor, Huffington Post, Tubefilter, WebSeries Channel, and the newly launched YouTube Nation.

Conceptually, SnarkySidekick is an entire action/adventure movie crammed into seven, 3-5 minute episodes. The first episode is the beginning of the adventure and the last is the climax. Each episode focuses on a different action hero moment: cracking a code, seducing a woman, stealing information, etc. All of the episodes are being released at once because of its great binge-watching potential.

For the production, Thursday Shoots did an amazing job bringing Snarky Sidekick to life. If nothing else, Snarky Sidekick was an ambitious production--one episode takes place on the side of a cliff, one inside of an ancient Native American cave--and Thursday Shoots never backed down from a challenge.

Creator Matthew Starr speaks to the difficulty of creating a cave: "The cave almost didn't happen because I thought I could build it myself. I went to Home Depot and bought a bunch of cardboard and spray paint and just thought that would be good enough. It was such an incredible failure. Thursday Shoots ended up reaching out to a friend who had experience building haunted houses who created an amazing cave for us."

The production was completed over 10 shooting days, spread out over about a month. Filming took place mostly on Long Island. Snarky Sidekick was successfully crowd-funded using IndieGogo.

Starr commented about the cast. "For the performance, I have to admit, I wrote the part of Simon for myself because playing a wise-cracking nerd in an action movie has always been my dream role. It was as much fun as I hoped it would be. Siobhan Thompson is amazing as Heather; the beautiful, book-smart woman. Siobhan and I worked with each other for a long time on Maude Night at UCB and also on a previous web series called The Spirit of Adventure. She is originally from England and she has a degree in Archaeology from the University of Bristol. She put her education to work and added so much to Heather. Don Fanelli plays the recently-deceased action hero Tom Raker. He was so good, we had to make his part bigger. All of the people who feature in Snarky Sidekick deliver incredible performances. I don't want to give away too much about them for fear of spoilers."

Starr spoke about the Soundtrack. "One final thing that really sets Snarky Sidekick apart is the original score from Matthew Rubano. Our directors Tom and Kevin work with him on the UCB Digital team, The Backyard. We approached him aboutSnarky Sidekick and basically asked him to create a John Williams score but he totally delivered. All of his music supports and elevates the episode."

Starr also commented, "When I started writing Snarky Sidekick a little under a year ago, I set out just wanting to make something where I was proud of every aspect of the project. This is the closest I've come with any project to reaching that goal and I am very excited for everyone to see it."

The episodes of Snarky Sidekick are all live at the following link now: http://youtu.be/nNRb5z-iSH8?list=PLyo0QkZ3x24mKS2OD_uBmfjLt94ae_QWQ

You can follow Snarky Sidekick on Facebook and Twitter and visit their website at www.snarkysidekick.com.