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ALL-ACCESS PASSby Bryce Edmonds Here’s a fact: The Video Station in Boulder has three copies of Weird Al Yankovic’s classic film UHF. Here’s another fact: When I rented it recently it meant the store was rented out of all three copies. One last fact: That’s scary shit. We’re talking about possibly one of the worst films in history here—although it’s not without its funny moments. If you haven’t seen it, Weird Al gets to manage the UHF television that his uncle wins in a poker game. (If you’re too young to know what UHF is, then please look it up.) The station becomes successful on the strength of a programming line-up that includes Wheel of Fish, Name That Stain, The Wonderful World of Phlegm, Fun with Dirt and Stanley Spadowski’s Clubhouse (starring a young Michael Richards, better known as Kramer from “Seinfeld.”) |
Now, the old UHF wasn’t exactly public access television, but it was the equivalent at the time. You watched the major stations on VHF and when you were desperate you turned to UHF. For public access, the image of a Weird Al line-up of shows is hard to beat. As stellar as Fun with Dirt might be, it’s not a big ratings draw. Or is it?
Try to guess the following show. Geniuses at a UHF station in Minneapolis—the last rated station in the market—program a show about a man and his robot companions orbiting the earth and watching bad movies while talking back to the screen and each other. Later, the show becomes the centerpiece for a burgeoning cable comedy channel and goes on to fame, fortune and the rest. Yes, welcome to the history of “Mystery Science Theater 3000.”
Try to guess the following star. For two years on Canadian public access cable, this now famous individual took his show to the people and animals. Known for sucking on cow’s teats and other acts of comedic genius, his show gets picked up on a Canadian cable comedy channel and runs two more years. Next, he breaks into the American market with his own show on a music video station and gets engaged to a major U.S. star. Yes, welcome to the history of Tom Green and his career.
Of course, there’s always Wayne’s World, which catapulted Mike Myers and Dana Carvey (to a lesser extent) to the peaks of film stardom as public access geeks who make it big.
Denver Community Television (DCTV)—Denver’s public access cable— has Channels 57 and 58 with plans to expand original programming into Channel 59. Channel 58 sticks (with one glaring exception to be mentioned later) to religious and metaphysical programming such as The Nation of Islam, Songwriters Choice in Christian Music and Chi Kung: Developing Energy. Channel 57 is a hodgepodge of talk shows, sports, educational, variety and entertainment programs including Vietnamese News and Entertainment, Big John: Wine Man, Colorado Out Spoken and Falcon Action Little League Football. Both stations are on the air from noon until midnight, seven days a week. Many of the programs are produced locally, many are not.
The requirements for becoming a producer are minimal—one orientation meeting, one studio production workshop and $25 to offset the cost of the workshop. You must then complete one studio production to get a certificate. A field production workshop is also available at $25 for anyone interested in taking his or her show on the road, so to speak. This workshop includes lessons on editing techniques.
C. Axl Cones fakes it. That’s right, the man who has been described by a fan as “the bad boy of cable access” is really a nice guy. But the revelations don’t stop there. His real name is not C. Axl Cones. He picked up “Axl” along the way because of Guns and Roses’ frontman Axl Rose, Eddie Murphy’s character—Axel Foley—from Beverly Hills Cop, and because he thought it sounded like a bad boy’s name. The “Cones” are, well, you know, cones, as in the slang for breasts. The “C.” is the remnant of his real name, which is Chris Mateer.
The Cone Zone, a talk show modeled after a mix of Howard Stern, David Letterman and low-brow punditry, is his stab at cable access stardom. Bits like Stripper Trivia—wherein audience members answer (mostly with his help) trivia questions in a strip-poker-style attempt to reduce one male and one female stripper to their birthday garments— and his “two cents” monologue—which is often punctuated with grimace-inducing one liners that assault the audience members’ sense of decorum— are how Mateer hopes to become the next success story. With 36 shows under his belt and a toehold into syndication with broadcast of his show in Hollywood, Mateer may be off to a good start. More than 100 people attended his audience appreciation show, although it’s important to know he was offering free booze afterwards.
Mateer is one of those polarizing figures. He personally neither drinks nor does drugs, but he spent years in the heavy metal scene where almost everyone was. He makes derogatory comments about the homeless, but professes to a personal belief system that doesn’t adhere to the things he says. “I say the things that people want to say but won’t,” he says. Things that, like shock jock Stern, are probably going to offend someone—if not lots of people. After making several Columbine jokes, Mateer received calls “from both ends of the spectrum.” One caller said that Mateer was the “most despicable person with the most degrading show” and then the caller went on to say that he watches every week.
Mateer is conscious of the position he holds but says he is comfortable accepting whatever praise (or blame) comes his way. “I’m not judging people,” he says. “Who the hell am I to judge people? We’re just having fun and people have to be responsible for their own actions.”
Crystal Cartier has four shows on cable access; A Matter of Perspective, A Matter of Perspective-Gospel Hour, What’s up with That?,” and System Analysis. She and her husband, Lee, also produce several others via their production company, Love Story. By her own count, she is involved with over seventeen different shows on DCTV
You may know Cartier as the woman who filed a lawsuit in 1994 alleging Michael Jackson was guilty of copyright infringement over the song “Dangerous” and he was forced to appear in federal court in Denver. She lost the case, but it was this experience that started her on the road to self-proclaimed cable access royalty. After the trial, a Channel 2 newsperson told her she had such presence she should be on television. The trial also galvanized her desire to tell “her side instead of just lies and soundbites.” In fact, Cartier calls public access the “last bastion of freedom of speech” and as a “victim” of mainstream media, it is her mission to promote free speech television and fight for others that have been unjustly treated.
A conversation with Cartier is likely to become sidetracked with talk of the Bible or conspiracy theory. Her shows are frequently punctuated with calls in support of, or asking for support from, God. She has been known to cry on air. She also believes public access is what it is by design, not accident. “It looks so crappy so no one will watch,” she says. “We’re loose cannons and not controlled by anyone, so we can speak freely.” As convoluted as her points sometimes get, she may just have a point. (Interestingly, she was calling for the overhaul of the Electoral College system before the election.)
Fernando Moreno is the Executive Director of DCTV. The position used to be called Station Manager, and the revised title reflects Moreno’s philosophy of public access television. His goals are to build the strength of the organization and be relevant in order to keep public access part of the cable landscape. This focus is not without difficulties, however. “Just seven or eight years ago, it was shocking for people to hear that we are not a sandbox,” says Moreno. “We are a soapbox and we need to change people’s perception of public access.”
It quickly becomes clear Moreno holds an unenviable position. The prevailing perception of public access is it exists for those who simply want a forum to create their own show or as a training ground for a career in television. Moreno, on the other hand, believes that public access should be used for “community building,” as he calls it. The topic of the most recent DCTV newsletter is just that. “Denver Community Television has started the process of using television as a community development tool,” reads the issue. “Most people recognize television as the most effective communication tool of this century, but few people use it to assist in community development.”
This focus is grounded in his philosophy and also in the nature of his position. He is a public servant and every public servant, like it or not, is directly influenced by the political climate. In Moreno’s case, he must be able to demonstrate with hard facts— as our scientific method culture dictates—that DCTV is impacting lives. For instance, DCTV is currently working on a project with Hill Middle School to create a game show from the Middle Ages. Students will play contestants and answer questions as if they were living during that time period. The show will have an educational focus, and taping the program will allow it to be used in classrooms. The children’s families will be brought in to watch the taping so the entire family unit will be affected, and students will learn basic television production. It is easy to see this one production will have a wide impact on the community. In short, this is a very fundable project. Fundable because it can be shown to have an impact. Fundable because in today’s political climate, it needs to be.
The problem is public access television is—as my high school driver’s education teacher used to say about driving—a privilege, and not a right. In fact, it was almost less than that if the lovely and talented Senator Jesse Helms had had his way. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 overhauled the Communications Act of 1934. Major lobbying efforts were launched by both commercial and public interest groups to affect the final form of the bill. Until the eleventh hour, public access was mandated as a right, but then Helms stepped in and put forth an amendment to ax public access entirely. A compromise was reached, and cities are now allowed to negotiate for public access as part of the franchise agreement with their local cable company, but it is in no way guaranteed, as many cities now know.
The unfortunate lesson here is politics reaches its hand into everything. The supremely unfortunate lesson is that Denver might have missed the boat. A few years ago, AT&T renegotiated its contract with the city of Denver. The new contract phases out the portion of the monies from the agreement that were to fund operational costs at DCTV. There is still an equipment budget, but if the studios can no longer operate, who cares if we have the funds to purchase new cameras? It will increasingly become part of DCTV’s job to solicit funds from grants, donors and the like to keep the station running. And, yes, this will effect us, whether we believe it or not.
As crappy as public access can be at times, it is still—as the name states—access to the most powerful medium on the block. Groups with a desire to put their message out to the public, but with little to no budgets have this small but effective opportunity. Now, it will increasingly fall to those groups, in conjunction with DCTV staff, to help find funding. There will be little incentive for the studio to put shows on the air that will not help bring in revenue. It’s sort of the public access, Twilight Zone version of standard commercial television— bring in the bucks or off the air you’ll go. It’s hard to imagine, say, a young Tom Green getting the go ahead to produce his show. That is, of course, unless his viewers were willing to fork over some dough. What will be created is a situation wherein only the most heavily funded or grant-begging savvy groups will have the access and the public will get screwed.
Just in case you think there is no hope, a brief case study. Portland, Oregon, has three public access stations for a metro area roughly equivalent to Denver’s. Two are better off than the third, and the former have enough money that they are able to hand out their own grants. The lesson of the case study is that public opinion and activism translate into votes, something politicians are willing to fight even the corporate giants to get. All the AT&T lawyers on the planet are helpless against the tide of public opinion when it is coupled with action, giving politicians a reason to do the right thing.
Public access television might at first seem like a trifling thing, but don’t be fooled, someone has worked hard to deny us that access and they must have a reason, be it financial or otherwise.
One other thing: Tom Green didn’t make it to where he is now on his own. The first year his show was on a national Canadian cable channel, it was a co-production between that channel and the public access station where Green’s show originated. In exchange for the ability to have a program produced with cheap labor (read: public access cable volunteers and staff), equipment and, therefore, an incredibly slim budget, the national channel gave the locals the right to premier the show. The intangibles such as experience for the local crews, international press for the public access channel and the strengthened presence of that venue for talented artists and community voices may well be worth more than imagined as a model for channels—especially American—that are fighting to stay alive.
It gives Ricki Vincent great pleasure to imagine the following scenario: Just after viewing an episode of their favorite religious programming, a couple stays tuned only to find they are watching a horde of puppets in hell, including the Marquis de Sade calling for a devil to “pinch his nipples.” So it is that Dante’s Place is seriously out of place on DCTV’s channel 58.
Vincent and Kasi Clark created this unholy puppet show out of a love of Jim Henson and his Muppets, a hatred for Disney for pulling Brian Henson’s (Jim’s son) show off the air, and a stack of props from a failed partnership to create haunted houses. One season—eight shows and one documentary—later, Dante and crew can be seen on DCTV, at Georgia Tech and on several internet sites including www.ifilm.comand www.alwaysi.com. There is also interest from several other colleges and web sites. The second season began on November 24.
As a show producer who has obviously benefited from the creative outlet public access provides, Vincent is a proponent of the system. While stating the equipment is the best the city can afford, it is still not great and the Dante team has invested in their own digital studio computer setup. The staff of DCTV, however, has been “a huge monstrous help” and he believes everyone should tune in to see what they are missing and perhaps, try out making their own shows. “There are so many people with great ideas,” Vincent says. “For many, this is their only creative outlet and the cable systems should be made to provide access.” When asked if he would consider a Tom Green style production partnership he readily replies, “Heck, yeah. Everyone should check out the channels. There’s some great stuff out there.” . For more information, visit DCTV’s website: www.dctv.org.
Denver Public Access TV has gone morbid, ushering in the twisted puppet comedy, Dante’s Place, a satiri-cal variety program in the tradition of the old Muppet Show. However, for these performers, offending any particu-lar gender, sexual preference or reli-gious sect only helps to encourage their unconventional creativity.
Ricki Vincent, the co-founder, producer, director and head writer for Morbid Fantasies Productions, explains the show’s premise quite simply. If you broke “The Rules” at any time during your life, you are sent to the 13th level of hell and forced to entertain Lucifer’s minions for the rest of eternity. Some of these notorious and depraved personalities include tyrannical leaders such as Adolf Hitler, murderers like Lizzy Borden, musicians Liberace and Kurt Cobain as well as Biblical figures Cain and Abel. In total, there are more than 30 troublesome characters, all swimming in the splendor of free speech to get a rise out of everyone sanctimonious.
Ricki formerly honed his comedic talents by working the stand-up comedy circuit. After retiring from stand-up in 1991, he became a body-piercer, and soon found his sense of humor was quite beneficial for calming his clients before he put a needle through their skin. Consequently, in ‘96 he opened VooDoo, now a successful body art establishment in Denver.
Kasi Clark is the show’s other co-founder and is also Ricki’s partner in life. The tattoo artist, writer, poet and former repressed Catholic found it easy to supply plenty of material for “Dante’s Place” due to her education in an all-girl Catholic school. Such experience gave Kasi volumes of formidable knowledge on organized religion and a myriad of ways to poke fun at all its quirky manners of conduct and custom.
Both lovers of Jim Henson’s work and devoted fans of Brian Henson’s Muppets Tonight, Ricki and Kasi became doggedly determined to create their own show after Tonight was taken off the air. However, not wanting to mimic any of Henson’s work, Ricki and Kasi decided to give the program an edge of its own by stirring up anything controversial using a demented ensemble of homemade puppets, and mediums from television and movie parodies to musical numbers.
They called it a mission in “Guerrilla Puppetry,” and the show’s preparation turned out to be arduous task pushed on by intense passion for the art. Four months, fifty pounds of foam rubber, and numerous hot glue burns later, the cast was complete.
They recruited an equally big fan of puppetry and comedy—Ricki’s son Kyle Vincent—who joined the production during its infancy to help with puppet design. He also does voices and writes scripts.
Ricki and Kasi soon learned, much to their delight, they were hardly the only adults who liked to play with dolls. Cory Gilstrap, the show’s stage director, has performed as a professional puppeteer for ten years, working locally as well as partaking in national projects with CBS and MTV’s “Liquid Television.” Matt Bassano originally signed on to write the theme song and one other musical number in trade for a tattoo. Hilary Blair is an accomplished actress and puppeteer who splits her schedule between acting and teaching at the Denver Center Theater Academy. D.T. Gates is another puppeteer with a background in video and short film, and producer/videographer Ken DeBacker tapes the program.
The show is hosted by Dante, an effeminate imp. Each week it is Dante’s personal duty to make sure the nether-world’s most infamous citizens pay for their sins by performing a circus of sketches and musical numbers for their audience. Possibly in tribute to Henson and his Muppets, the show’s leading lady is the scandalous Lucreatia Boregia. She is a breasty, leather-clad evil adaptation of Miss Piggy who forges a love/hate relationship with Dante by being the prominent prankster and biggest bane of his existence.
The original plan was to develop a fan base on the Internet, but this proved to be too costly. They then turned to Community Television, where AT&T Denver Channel 58 was able to provide the medium for getting Dante’s Place up and running.
The crew spent six tiresome hours a night in the back of the tattoo shop creating backdrops and performing skits. Ricki says it took five months of hard work, lots of caffeine and thousands of cigarettes before they had eight shows in the can. Now Dante’s Place is making its maiden voyage through Denver’s air-waves in hopes of expanding the show through other public access and college stations throughout the United States by the end of the year.
—Garret Kolb
