I didn’t think the third season of my podcast Worst Movies Ever Played would ever come out. Like the protagonist in the second act low point, I’d lost all hope. I worried WMEP S3 would be yet another project in my graveyard hard drive of lost creative endeavors.
Well, I’m happy to admit I was wrong! The new season of 10 episodes is already airing care of the Faustian Nonsense network. We got our happy ending! 👏
Worst Movies Ever Played is an actual play podcast where we improvise cheesy 80s movies with the help of a roleplaying game, then layer in music and sound effects to give the episodes a filmic feel. This season we have great special guests: Joan Ford (Dropout), Ian Abramson (Conan), Lars Kenseth (The New Yorker), Robin Higgins (UCB Theater), and Joey Clift (Spirit Rangers)! Together, we created weird new movies this season about fast food aliens, vampire football teams, and butt-slicing cavemen. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. No Blockbuster card needed.
So why did I think the season was going to be “lost” media? I performed an autopsy on my inbox to remember all the details of this weirdly lengthy creative endeavor…
We began production on season 3 in summer of 2021. More than four years ago. That’s when we recorded the first “movie” of the season with Ian, a take-off on Mac and Me, the infamous 1980s McDonalds commercial disguised as a kids’ movie. At the time, we (me, Patrick Baker, and Brent Butler, all co-hosts and producers) were trying to record and edit episodes simultaneously for efficiency’s sake.
My memory was that our pipeline got clogged around this time. I thought it was because we switched editors. The first two seasons were edited by a very talented editor named Julian Mundy, who couldn’t continue working on the project. After a short search, I found us a replacement in the equally talented Stephen Indrisano, who ended up cutting the full season. The transition was more seamless than I remembered. The editor switch wasn’t why the season took four long years. So what happened?
According to my emails, we kept scheduling and cancelling record dates throughout season 3. COVID slowed down our momentum. Brent installed clear plastic shields in his makeshift recording studio, so we’d feel safer meeting in person, as would guests. (The episodes we recorded over Zoom didn’t feel the same as when we were at the table together.) But I think the larger problem was one any roleplaying game group will be familiar with. Adult Schedules! Even more terrifying than Gelatinous Cubes! Patrick had a demanding job at Buzzfeed and Brent travelled a lot as a documentary filmmaker. Unfortunately, we lost potential guests because we kept cancelling recording dates, which was frustrating for me, the person who booked (and tried to book) the majority of guests for season 3.
By the time we finished recording all the episodes for season 3, it was February 2023. A year and a half or so from when we started. It was a funny episode, our spin on Highlander called Tartans Are Forever, where I play an immortal caveman CEO who clubs his business rivals and subordinates to death. Unfortunately, I got bad stomach aches halfway through the record, but I pushed through to finish the game. I think my grouchiness from feeling sick helped the performance. “Use it,” they say.
Stephen was editing episodes in-between recording dates to speed up this process, as opposed to waiting for all the episodes to be in the “can” and editing in batch. The editing process took a long time, because of how tricky the episodes are to cut. Stephen would sift through hours of tape at the table, going on long riffs and switching back and forth between our characters and ourselves at the table, then boil it all down to two rough cuts about an hour each. The three of us listened to the rough cut, wrote up our notes with time codes, and sent them over within two weeks. (It was my responsibility to make sure we got Stephen notes in a timely manner.) If another cut was necessary, we’d run the process over again. All told, I think each episode took about two months to edit and lots of emails back and forth.
Around this time, tragedy struck at our first network. Worst Movies Ever Played debuted on Starburns Audio in 2021. At first, we were excited to be on Starburns, home to shows by Dan Harmon, Adam Conover, and Gilbert Gottfried! It felt legitimizing for our cobbled together operation. But once we debuted, and it became clear to the folks in charge our show was going to be the smallest fish in their medium-sized pond, we didn’t get many benefits from being part of the network. They didn’t push our show across the network much, or allow us to record in their professional studio, or help us book comedian guests. But we didn’t have to think about hosting fees or stuff like that, which was definitely a plus. Unfortunately, as we were working on season 3, the founder of Starburns Audio died unexpectedly. Rest in peace, Land Romo. I never met him, but I appreciate that he allowed us into his party in the first place.
No one at Starburns Audio bothered to email us that Land had died. A big email was sent to every show on the network… except ours, I guess. In their email, they said Starburns Audio was promptly shutting down. I found out the news a week later in a podcast industry newsletter. I scrambled to find us a new network, worried that Starburns was going to flip off the proverbial lights and WMEP would go proverbially off the air. (Proverbs!?) Luckily, by summer of 2023, we signed a contract with the cool folks at Faustian Nonsense. They have a much dorkier, more TTRPG friendly slate of shows, and I think we’re a better fit on their network overall.
By spring of 2023, Stephen finished all his edits. As he finished, cuts were being sent to our Sound Designer Adam Baker. Adam is Patrick’s brother, who just so happens to be a Hollywood sound designer! (He worked on films like The Invisible Man and Upgrade.) Adam loves Worst Movies Ever Played and really enjoys working on it. But over the years, he’s had less and less free time with a slate of films and commercials on his plate. It took Adam a long time to turn around each episode, because he puts a lot of care into mastering, adding perfect music cues, and original sound effects. Adam is the secret sauce that makes the show so much fun to listen to, in my opinion. Adam finished his final sound design pass and the trailer by winter of 2024.
We had plans to launch in January of this year, but there was confusion over who was supposed to write the descriptions for the podcast episodes. We talked about it at a breakfast meetup. 7 am was the only time all our schedules coordinated, so breakfast at a tiny diner it was. I thought I remembered Patrick saying he would write the descriptions? After the diner meetup, there was radio silence between us about WMEP for months. I could’ve checked in about the descriptions at any time. I thought about doing just that several times, or bringing it up when I saw Patrick at several different parties over the course of the year. I didn’t.
Here’s why I feel bad about season three. Over the course of the show’s history, I’ve been the unofficial scheduling producer. I would get things organized from record dates to edits to launches. But after the second season started airing, I could see the show wasn’t gaining traction. The listenership numbers were low, but there also wasn’t a small, dedicated fanbase either, so far as I could tell. I can’t remember ever getting an email or a DM from a listener. (Patrick and I maintained social media accounts for a while, including a Twitter that feels like it’s trapped in a digital Swamp of Misery I never want to visit.) I can count on one hand the number of times a friend randomly told me they listened and enjoyed the show.
If WMEP was a weekly, cheap, easy-to-produce podcast, the lack of traction wouldn’t have meant anything to me. The podcast would be just an excuse to hang out. Three Guys Have Important Opinions on Marvel Movies: The Podcast. But WMEP is a narrative show, a really special and funny show, that takes a lot of coordination and planning, and it’s honestly kind of expensive to hire an editor and sound designer. I felt like I wasn’t getting as much out of the project as I was putting in, which I told Patrick and Brent plainly during a production meeting. At one point, I suggested we just play the game without making a podcast. In my opinion, playing the game was the most fun part! We could play the game together a lot more if we spent less time turning it into a show. For Brent and Patrick, though, I think having a creative side project, even a slow, difficult, and expensive one to produce, was the reason for the season.
The descriptions got completed last month and now the show is finally airing. Four years. Woof. I could’ve gotten us over the finish line faster, but I spaced out on the show. We all did, I think. I know my reasons why I flaked, but I haven’t talked to Brent and Patrick about it yet. We had a breakfast scheduled last week, but it got cancelled last minute. Currently, there are no plans to reschedule.
🎲 Your Turn: Have you ever worked with friends on a project? How did it go? Do you ever find it difficult to balance friendship and creative responsibilities? I want to hear from you! Reply to this email directly or tell the whole world your thoughts by hitting the orange button below.
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