Halifax comedy troupe hoping to turn YouTube fame into mainstream success
HALIFAX - A year ago, Halifax comedy troupe Picnicface had a small, local following thanks to word of mouth and a bi-weekly sketch show at a Halifax bar.
Then last spring, the eight-member group posted a short video on YouTube about a fake energy drink called Powerthirst.
With the click of a mouse, Powerthirst snowballed into an online phenomenon, racking up a whopping eight million hits and spawning a worldwide fan base.
"We weren't even thinking about the Internet," says troupe member Evany Rosen, a philosophy student at Dalhousie University in Halifax.
"We were making videos for our shows."
The Powerthirst video parodies macho sports drink ads, promising "electrolytes, powerlytes and more lytes than your body has room for" in flavours like rawberry and shockolate - "it's like adding chocolate to an electrical storm!"
The video took on a life of its own after comedy heavyweight Will Ferrell handpicked Powerthirst as one of his favourites on his site, funnyordie.com.
A year later, the group is pitching a TV show, has an agent in Los Angeles and a partnership with YouTube.
Not bad for a sketch troupe that rarely performs outside their hometown, where crowds now start lining up more than an hour in advance to get seats for their bar shows.
Thanks to the YouTube partnership, the group gets some revenue based on the number of clicks their videos attract, but they say there's no fortune to go along with their online fame - yet.
The group's members - all in their 20s - still have other jobs or rely on acting gigs to make ends meet.
"The Internet doesn't have enough money to pay eight people," says member Bill Wood, who toured Europe and Canada with other sketch troupes before joining Picnicface.
Cheryl Hann, a native of the tiny community of Quirpon, N.L., confirms the web exposure has yet to deliver much in terms of hard cash.
"I'm a security guard - it's awful."
Still, they're hoping to emulate a handful of other groups that have transformed their Internet celebrity into something more substantial.
One of the best-known examples is the New York-based group Lonely Island, whose online videos caught the attention of Saturday Night Live producers and scored the aspiring filmmakers a deal to produce the show's digital shorts.
The group is best known for SNL's raunchy "Dick in a Box" sketch, featuring Lonely Island member Andy Samberg and singer Justin Timberlake. The skit went on to become a much-clicked web video and even won an Emmy award for best song.
Since Picnicface produced Powerthirst, TV producers have come courting. But the group has been wary, turning down several offers.
"We really want to make sure our comic sensibility doesn't get spoiled," said troupe member Andrew Bush, who also writes on the side for CBC's This Hour Has 22 Minutes and CTV's Robson Arms.
The group has struck a partnership with the Toronto-based company behind Showcase's comedy series Kenny vs. Spenny.
"They're letting us do a sitcommy-sketch hybrid comedy," Bush said. "Collectively, we don't have a lot of television experience, so they're trying to take what we do well on the web and take it to the television screen."
The group remains based in Halifax while growing their global fan following, and they're hoping to do the same if they move into television.
"We're pushing to have it shot in Halifax and it seems to me the production company doesn't mind that," Bush said.
"Halifax has an interesting charm to it, and I don't think we'd be where we are if we were in Toronto or Vancouver ... plus the drinks are a lot cheaper here, too."
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On the web: www.youtube.ca/picnicface
News from �The Canadian Press, 2008
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