Today we’d like to introduce you to Everything Now Show. They and their team shared their story with us below:
The show was created by Alex Allsup and Rocky Pajarito in the summer of 2018. Today, the show is produced by four friends- Rocky Pajarito, Jake Ellenbogen, Chris Tcholakian, and Grant Crater. Alex left the show in 2022 to focus on his full-time job as a producer, but still occasionally appears on the show as a guest performer.
Each of the four of us included some information for all of these questions – hopefully, that’s not too confusing, lol. The author of the response is listed at the beginning of their contribution.
Rocky Pajarito:
The show was born out of a dissatisfaction with the traditional workflow of developing, producing, shooting, and editing short films and web series content. Alex Allsup and I had just finished film school and were working for BuzzFeed when we decided to turn a weird house made of brick and wood in North Hills into a happy place for general creative merriment. In-between improv practices and jam sessions (and the one time Alex built a half pipe for our backyard) we’d been trying to think of some kind of project to collaborate on.
Looking at all the equipment we had for traditional independent filmmaking purposes – nice DSLR cameras, a gaming PC fit for editing, microphones & amplifiers for music – Alex thought a livestream show could be feasible with the tools at our disposal and also a worthwhile direction for our creative energy.
I was a huge fan of The Chris Gethard Show and the likes of Giant Bomb’s content, so I felt this idea seemed exciting and rife with potential. Our housemate Will Hajjar, a gonzo musician and genius in my opinion, was a frequent user of Twitch and encouraged us to explore the platform. So we sat around and started developing ideas, landing on this kind of Wayne’s World-esque variety show operated by two step-brothers and their friends out of their mom’s basement. Alex hosted the show as Radic-Al, a spiritual man with a long mane and personality stuck in the 70s, and I was his stepbrother/sidekick/on-stream engineer Russell. Will was our silent and mysterious bandleader named Spanxxx.YeahBaby, who was half man, half website rocking various guitars a Casio. It had the fidelity and spirit of public access television, and less than 20 people watched our first run or so.
The first show was 18 minutes and was mostly a series of crash zooms and Alex screaming into a mic hooked up to a loop pedal. Funny enough, the few folks who tuned in for our baby steps ended up being integral to the development and future of the show, namely Jake Ellenbogen, Chris Tcholakian, and Julie Greiner, whom we had performed improv with in college. Most of our shows in the beginning were cast with alumnus of our improv team, including Sydney Adams who would be a main team member for a stint.
While I love the first 20 or so episodes of the show, they were very planned out in a sitcom/sketch/improv hybrid that took way too much time to pull off consistently, so we pivoted. We switched to a PowerPoint presentation-driven format that satirized edutainment and took way too much time to pull off consistently, so we pivoted again.
By what was almost a fluke, we landed on a format that indulged and thrives off of improvisation, functioning as a rotating door of characters coming in and out of a situation hosted by one performer, often someone doing a job— it feels a bit like the podcast version of Comedy Bang! Bang! but with a green screen-based visual edge and interaction heavy components. Once we decided to hone in on this as the engine of the show, we were able to create some consistency, and as more and more stars aligned, we were able to start developing an audience.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Jake Ellenbogen: When people think of “Twitch” and “Live Streaming” they usually don’t think of “interactive improv comedy show.” People are usually coming to Twitch to watch 22-year-olds play Fortnite for 8 hours a day, so building an audience for our type of content on that platform has been a challenge. Because Twitch doesn’t really know how to categorize us, it’s not often that a viewer will accidentally stumble across our channel. We’ve had to get creative with advertising — posting clips on other social media and depending a lot on word of mouth.
The pandemic was also a major challenge for us. A lot of people would say to us, “Oh, I bet the pandemic really helped you guys because nobody could go outside and way more people were watching live-streaming content!”- but the reality is that our show (like most improv comedy) works best when the performers are in the same room. So much of comedy is about timing and rhythm, something that’s tough to capture over a Zoom call. We tried to keep doing shows with performers calling in remotely- but the energy was never quite the same. Thankfully we were able to do enough to keep the show and audience alive long enough to weather the lockdowns.
Then, in October of 2021, we were faced with our biggest challenge when the house where we shot the show (and where three of us lived) burned down in a freak house fire. Thankfully we all made it out safely — but our studio was completely destroyed. The show went on a four-month hiatus as we looked for a new place to live and produce the show. There was a while when we thought that was going to be the end of the Everything Now Show. Thankfully, we eventually found our current house, and the attached garage has made the perfect space for the new Everything Now Show studio.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
Jake Ellenbogen: People are always asking us “What is the show?” and honestly, we have never really figured out a great way to describe it. The best we’ve come up with is- The Everything Now Show is an “Interactive Livestream Comedy Show”. A typical episode usually revolves around a “Host” character who guides the audience through the 2-hour show and is forced to interact with a series of bizarre and eccentric strangers. Sometimes it’s an Uber driver picking up passengers. Sometimes it’s a hiring manager interviewing job applicants. Sometimes it’s a casting director, auditioning actors for the next big blockbuster- or a courtroom judge hearing the pleas of alleged criminals. These scenarios and locations are visually brought to life using special effects and the giant green screen we’ve hung in our garage.
What separates the Everything Now Show from a typical sketch or improv show (besides being live-streamed on the internet) is that the audience can interact with performers throughout the entire show. While driving in the Uber, an audience member watching at home can pay a couple of bucks to “change the radio station”, prompting a performer to improvise a satirical talk-radio segment or a parody advertisement. During a courtroom scene, a viewer can call a witness to the stand to be cross-examined. During a job interview scene, they can force the hiring manager to call the job applicant’s reference. Viewers can also vote in polls to determine how events will unfold and submit images that become integral parts of the story. The thesis of the Everything Now Show is “Comedy YOU Control”.
Chris Tcholakian:
We tried to find something that was true to our interests yet kept up with the accelerating nature of the media landscape. We all share a love of comedy and improvisation and were raised on the internet. We sensed the next evolution of comedic performance would be increasingly online and catered much more sharply to the specific audience member. Over time, we established three core elements of our show; interactive, improvised, and live-edited. Once we could see everything through that prism, the show started to have its own specific logic we continue to build out.
We pride ourselves on that formula, specifically that we’ve been able to create an entertainment product that is constantly being informed by the audience. Active choices the audience makes throughout the show is the motor of what we do, and then it’s up to us to tie it up into a bow, make it fun and visually interesting, and let the symbiosis chug along. In a traditional improv show, you’re getting a few words to inspire what happens next. We’ve gone much further, creating an active dialogue between viewer and performer.
Grant Crater:
It’s easy to look at the improv comedy scene in LA and feel a degree of frustration. Yes, a few well-known venues and outlets permit improvisors and comics to find success with sizable audiences, but all too often talented performers are relegated to tiny black box venues, scant audience attendance, and infrequent opportunities to ply their craft. Rather than bemoan the state of things or feel boxed in by the scene’s various gatekeepers, we’ve built something engaging, sustainable, and creator-driven. We answer to no one but ourselves and our audience. As the scene continues to face existential threats in the form of malicious real estate freaks and a cultural landscape that routinely devalues art outside one’s living room, it’s not just possible but likely that the ENS model will be a viable and palatable alternative to a world where shows like ours are harder and harder to find IRL.
So, before we go, how can our readers or others connect or collaborate with you? How can they support you?
Chris Tcholakian: With the caveat that the best way to support us would be giving us thousands of dollars so we can do this full-time and scale up – the second best way to help is to watch the show and tell your friends! Tune in and interact! Not only does it help legitimize the show, but as we said earlier, it actively informs the trajectory of each episode. When people chip in their ideas, their jokes, where they want to see the episode move, it creates a functionalist momentum that makes the show better than we ever could.
We also hope to keep expanding our talent pool of guests we have on the show. We’ve already gotten to work with some of our comedic heroes, and we want that list to continue to grow. Just like the audience, getting all these different strong comedic voices in-studio makes the show that much better.
Pricing:
- THE SHOW IS FREE TO WATCH
Contact Info:
- Website: Twitch.tv/EverythingNowShow
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everythingnowshow/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/everything_now_
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@EverythingNowShow
Image Credits
Jake Ellenbogen took all the BTS photos, and the two screenshots of the show.
