Monday, December 1, 2014

Sketchbook now available online!

From Rick Katschke's (wife's) laptop:

Back in 2007, Drew Steck and I met, improvised together, got along well, played Confidential Mission at the movie theater (JUSTICE SHOT!) and created a movie for the 24-hour film competition.  Our 24-hour film "High Ceiling" was the crowd-pleaser of the festival and we received a lot of compliments from total strangers afterwards.  We wanted to do something longer in the 30-minute range and then it turned out Drew was moving to California so we had a really limited window to create a sketch collection.  I wrote the script in a week and we shot Sketchbook over the course of about 4 or 5 days.

Drew went off to California and edited it together, cutting bits that didn't work and also the complete quote from my favorite line in the script "Two roles of toilet paper?  Yeah, we can make a bomb out of that".  Sketchbook was complete in early 2008 and when Drew flew back around Easter, we decided to record an audio commentary for the movie.  We had so much fun doing it that we recorded a SECOND audio commentary.  Then when he was home for the summer, we started a podcast called "The Internet's Maximum Potential", which is such a bad ripoff of Maximumfun.org, I'm amazed I didn't recognize it at the time.  "IMP" helped me understand how podcasting worked and from there I started my own show "Host and Guest", which has led to all sorts of adventures and interactions in my life.

I didn't know it at the time but Sketchbook was one of the most important creative endeavors of my life (is it possible to talk about a project without sounding pretentous?).  However, only a limited number of people have actually seen the whole thing, warts and all.  It apparently had a following at the University of Miami and some of the bits are really loved by people who have only seen excerpts (Spy Ghosts, Bandana Brothers, Warhol-esque, En Route).  In fact, my second cousin Ethan loves Bandana Brothers so much that he wanted us to make a full-length spin-off.  Since we haven't gotten around to it, he's taking matters into his own hands and is making a Bandana Brothers comic book.  Drew and I have dibs on the first copy, but with Ethan's permission, I'll post his work online when it is ready.

The bottom line is that Sketchbook is a fun little half hour with two bits that don't really work (both of the Jimmy scenes are just poorly written, but Andrew Nelson helps make the first one better than it deserves to be) but a lot more that do work and are funny.  Drew and I had a lot of fun making this movie and we think everyone that acted in the movie or worked behind the scenes had fun as well. Only one friendship was completely destroyed over the making of the movie (my previous sentence holds true though), but any neutral party would agree that Drew and I are the good guys when you hear the story of what happened.  Maybe another time.

-Rick

Here it is:
The Sketchbook by Drew Steck & Rick Katschke from Rick Katschke on Vimeo.