Go Behind The Scenes of the Now-Infamous Jay Whatley Freak Out Video
We wanted to find a unique way to promote a hilarious LA Film Prize film, and I hope we delivered.
Earlier this week, I sat down with a good friend to talk about his submission into this year's Louisiana Film Prize. Once he came to the studio with the true star of the film, Jeremy Smith, our ideas became flowing. We simply didn't want to do just another atypical sit-down interview. We wanted to get people's attention, and present it in a way where the joke is obvious, but people respect it.
We quickly decided that I would insinuate that I'm the big star of his movie, even though I only appear in one scene. His coy reaction to my assertion would send me over the edge, launching me into a full-on freak out in front of the camera. Then, towards the end, he would call mew by my real name, and I would fly over the desk and the beatdown was on, all while Jeremy filmed from the outside subtly promoting Sammy Dees.
It came together so nicely, and took a couple hours to shoot and about three hours to edit. I'm sure it would have taken Josh about 10 minutes to edit, but I am no stud director.
Anyways, after a night of suggesting on Facebook that Josh and I were no longer friends, and that I would release this bombshell video the next day, we finally released it. It garnered a lot of attention, and rightfully so, however, I did receive a few reactions that I did not see coming. I noticed on several threads who shared the video, some people still didn't really think it was a joke. Instead, they thought that I was an egotistical jerk. One listener in particular wrote that he had been listening to me for years and will stop immediately because he witnessed the type of person I am when I'm not on the air.
Obviously, those reactions were the minority by a long shot, but I certainly never intended or expected our video to get interpreted as real, so I hope this article helps to clear anything up!
If you want to see the behind the scenes stuff, you can see that below.
The full video is below as well.
Don't forget to check out Sammy Dees: Car Salesman Extraordinaire at the Louisiana Film Prize!