Today we’d like to introduce you to Jason Klamm.
Jason, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I started doing improv and sketch with my comedy partner Dan Gomiller in middle school, in Laurens, New York. That’s when our love of comedy started, creating video and audio tapes together – probably a hundred or so hours, total. In the late 90s, when home digital video editing became a reality, Dan and I took the next leap and started making short films and music videos and learning non-linear editing. Sometime in 2000, we saw an Indian music video that had gone viral (a term that didn’t exist yet) and decided we’d do our own version.
Sometime in 2001, we shot our video, entitled “Tunak Tunak Tun,” the same name as the original video, and edited a postage-stamp sized video (352 by 240!) and uploaded it to Dan’s website, lordofdance.com. In a matter of weeks, the video spread across the planet – probably because there wasn’t much out there, but also because it was familiar, and very dumb – and shut down the server Dan was hosted at. It was getting more than 12,000 hits a day, and YouTube hadn’t even been invented yet. Dan and I spent that year capitalizing on that and creating our first comedy album, Shoestrings, while I was attending film school at Columbia College Chicago.
My final semester at Columbia was here in LA, and I chose to stay. Originally, I thought I’d be a screenwriter and a producer. I wrote dozens of scripts in my first few years, but those didn’t go anywhere, so I started making my own things more actively. I started StolenDress.com thinking it would be a resume site for young filmmakers, and it just developed into the place I would put my videos before YouTube came along. I had another semi-viral hit, “Dinosaurs: They Certainly Were Big” that won an early internet short film contest, which was played on Frontier Airlines, got the attention of the science community, and got me my first press, in the New York Times.
I started developing a number of projects, like my fake presidential campaign and an early web series. After years of insane jobs and extra work, I eventually discovered podcasts and, when I realized I was no longer making stuff that I could finish fast enough for my taste, I decided to see if I could turn my love of comedy albums into a podcast. After starting the Comedy on Vinyl podcast, things started falling into place. I finished my first movie, “Looking Forward” (about my fake presidential campaign) and put it on YouTube, finished a documentary “Lords of Soaptown” and sold it to a distributor, and I started acting more regularly, in the monthly sell-out stage show “A Drinking Game,” where I’ve played Marty McFly, Hans Gruber and even Vizzini in The Princess Bride.
After realizing podcasts were my thing, I launched two more of my own – Dan and Jay’s Comedy Hour (with Dan Gomiller) and Dispatches from Fort Awesome (about the show NewsRadio, with my buddy Allen Rueckert), and started releasing other people’s podcasts, as well. The StolenDress Podcast Network was born when I realized I needed deadlines and I wanted an excuse to meet my heroes. I’ve met Harry Shearer, Rachel Bloom, Tommy Chong, comedy legends like Rusty Warren and Doctor Demento, and the podcast even made history when we premiered a lost Bob Newhart track in 2015. Since 2011 I’ve personally produced almost 600 episodes.
I still make films and I’m currently working on my third book, and the podcast network is the thing that keeps me motivated, I love the opportunity to tell a variety of stories and help other people get their stories out there.
Has it been a smooth road?
The biggest struggles along the way have been financial, but since entertainment has always been there in one way or another, I was always motivated. I felt sure when I got here that I was locked in and that success was only a matter of time – unfortunately, I was financially taken advantage of for several years and, in 2009, I was effectively homeless. Friends kept me from sleeping in my car, so I was incredibly lucky.
Once I was back on my feet, I still ran into the same old obstacles, like rejection, but they were becoming less and less important. The key was that I continued to make things. I’m a strong believer that quantity can breed quality, as long as you’re determined to always do better next time. Which is hard with podcasts, especially if they have a strict format, but that’s why you have to keep experimenting and keep adapting.
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the StolenDress Entertainment story. Tell us more about the business.
StolenDress Entertainment is the umbrella under which everything I produce falls – movies, short films, podcasts, books. I also launched Celery Sound Records, a comedy album distributor a couple of years ago, but that’s another wing of StolenDress, which has always been geared toward helping voices find some kind of audience. Podcasts are the easiest way to do that, which is why I’m always branching out and trying smaller things – like this limited podcast I have coming up where my buddy Nic Robes and I discuss the discography of The Presidents of The United States of America. It’s a way to get outside of my comfort zone and let Nic, the music expert, take the reins – if I’m in almost everything I personally produce, I want to make sure I keep it interesting.
I think our concentration on comedy as an overarching theme at StolenDress sets us apart because I genuinely believe in the power of comedy to educate and change people’s minds. It isn’t instantaneous, but comedy is a proven effective educational tool and laughter has medical benefits. Of course, we have to spread the word about everything we make, and while you can find all this stuff on social media as a matter of necessity, another thing that sets us apart is that our engagement and concentration is on the product itself. I’d rather take the time to make funny stuff than compose a perfect tweet. But I do try.
How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
Podcasting is so incredibly up in the air, but we’re realizing that since there’s still some financial growth, despite the flooded marketplace, there’s still the opportunity for something to catch and do really well. At least for now. Also, since podcasting is a medium, there are unlimited ways to tell stories, do interviews, even just talk at the audience. Podcasts will probably exist as long as there’s an internet and a desire to be heard. Especially once video sharing sites go the way of the dodo, Much as I love working in a visual medium as much as I have, I think humans desire to hear other human voices as a source of comfort, so there will most likely always be a place for audio. Which is another reason why I’m so passionate about comedy albums.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://stolendress.com
- Phone: 818-861-9189
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: http://instagram.com/jasonklamm
- Facebook: http://facebook.com/stolendress
- Twitter: http://twitter.com/jklamm
- Other: http://comedyonvinyl.com
Image Credit:
Photos by Jennifer Smith
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