Interview with Anna Brisbin AKA Brizzy Voices

Anna Brisbin is a Voice Over Artist with over 70 IMDB credits and over 2 million subscribers on YouTube. Check out her channel and don't forget to subscribe to mine.

If I Was To Create a Soundtrack for Each Best Supporting Actress Oscar Winner (Part I)

Recently, I made a pair of videos tracing every Best Supporting Actress from 1936 onwards. 

Through the process of making my own YouTube videos, I've discovered that choosing your own music to provide background is one of the more creatively fulfilling parts of the project. I always thought it was obnoxious of documentarians to overly indulge in their own music as part of their narrative.

I'm pretty old school with my music collection. I don't use Spotify or Itunes plus. I just have my own cloud-backed collection of songs that numbers around 275 right now. With an exception or two, I thought it would be fun to just stick to what I had in my library. Here's how I settled on my choices for this video.

1936: Gale Sondegaard, Anthony Adverse

Testing 1, 2, 3, Barenaked Ladies

 

1.       I make a pun about how Anthony Adverse can be mistaken for school-house rock, and Barenaked Ladies has always struck me as a kindergarten-friendly band.

2.       Testing, 1, 2, 3 sounds like a good way to kick off the series

3.       I wanted to set the template right away as a series in which I would be anachronistic in my selections

4.       The line in the song “Can anybody hear me?” is the way I feel about the series, and it’s sung in a more shruggish way, which I hope to adopt.

1937: Alice Brady, In Old Chicago

How High the Moon, Hoagy Carmichael, performed by Todd Lines

 

1.       Simply an old-timey song for a movie set in the 1880s

2.       A need for balance from the Baranaked Ladies

 

1938: Faye Bainter, Jezebel

Ex’s and Oh's, Ellie King

1.       Jezebel is a film about a woman who’s shamed for being sexually loose.  The narrator of Ex’s and Oh’s  is clearly promiscuous and unapologetic

2.       The line in the chorus “the Ex’s and Ohs they haunt me” is symbolic of the shunning that happens in Jezebel

 

 

1939: Hattie McDaniel, Gone with the Wind

Set Fire to the Rain, Adele

1.       To honor the first Black Oscar winner, it seems fitting to have something that feels gospel-like and Adele’s voice feels like comparable to a Black diva like Whitney Houston or Aretha Franklin.

2.        Hattie McDaniel’s win also marks social change, and setting things on fire seems sweeping.

3.       The city of Atlanta literally burns down.

1940: Jane Darwell, Grapes of Wrath

Hoedown, Aaron Copeland

 

1.       Pretty simple here. It’s a film set alongside Westward expansion. Copeland was pure Americana and Hoedown (the “Beef, it’s what’s for dinner” commercial soundtrack) is synonymous audially with the West

1941: Mary Astor, The Great Lie

Hollywood, Marina and Her Diamonds

1.       In this installment, I discussed Astor’s past of scandal and how it almost ruined her.

2.       This song is sung by a European popstar who is obsessed with Hollywood. I suspect the narrator is speaking more of the tabloid culture of Hollywood

2.       The glamour of Hollywood might be better represented in the Maltese Falcon—the movie with the tagline “The Stuff Dreams are made of”—that came out in the same year

 

1942: Teresa Wright, Mrs. Miniver

Extraordinary, Liz Phair

1. Extraordinary is a descriptor of Wright’s talent. She was such a remarkable catch on Broadway that multiple studios bid over her

2. Teresa Wright was also determined to be taken seriously for her acting and not as a sex symbol. She went so far as to create a contract by which it would be virtually impossible to portray her in a sexy manner  

3.       3. I'm not that familiar with Liz Phair outside of some songs she heavily plugged on the talk show circuit in the 2003-2004 era when I was more glued into Live with Regis and Kelly and the late night talk shows. But this is very much a girl power ballad

1943: Katina Paxinou; For Whom the Bell Tolls;

Another Life, Soundtrack to Bridges of Madison County (performed by Whitney Bashor)

1.       I’m digging the idea of linking one soundtrack to cover.

2.       This is one of the films I didn’t’ see, but it’s about a romance during a war. Written by Hemmingway, it can’t be anything but nostalgic which is what the song is drenched with

3.        

 

1944:  Ethel Barrymore, None but the Lonely Heart

I’ve Got Rhythm, George Gerswhin, covered by jazz pianist Hiromi

 

1.       I love Japanese jazz pianist sensation Hironi. Like someone a little more obscure like Marina and her Diamonds, it’s fun to promote them

2.       The Barrrymore family clearly is a talented one

1945: Anne Revere, National Velvet

Sports Song, Weird Al Yankovic

This song is a parody of spectator sports, and what can I say, National Velvet is kind of a bland movie. Not every song in my library is one that I like. Sometimes you download something based on the artist's previous reputation and the title of the song. At least I have a use for it now.

1946: Anne Baxter, Razor’s Edge

Everything’s Just Wonderful, Lilly Allen

Baxter plays an alcoholic on the verge of losing it. Allen’s song -- with a whirling chord structure that intentionally deceives the listener about where the tonic is (Coldplay's "Clocks" is another example) -- has a sense of spinning out of control with the music while the lyrics falsely belie a sense of coming together.
 
1947: Celeste Holm, Gentlemen’s Agreement
Caution, The Killers

1.       This was not an easy one to pick because there weren’t that many songs in my library about infiltrating the Jewish community to fight anti-semitism. I thought the movie wasn’t particularly credible so I don’t think the hippie-ish songs in my library really captured how I felt about the film

2.       Again, I liked something anachronistic here.

3.       There is an unbridled optimism of the song which reflects both Celeste Holm’s character, Anne Dettrey, in the film along with the closing speech of the film by (a somewhat jarring) speech by  Gregory Peck’s mom that she  thinks the future is going to be a better place.

4.     Gregory Peck’s character is certainly a muckraker, which matches this sort of gleeful lyric:
“If I don’t get out of this town. I just might be the one who burns it down”

5.     Anne is a character who’s kind of glamorous and the film explores class in a lot of ways, which matches the lyrics:

“Never had a diamond on the sole of her shoes

Just black top, white trash

Straight out of the news”

1948: Claire Trevor, Key Largo
Kokomo, Beach Boys

This is the obvious choice because these are the two first words of the song and it does take place in a tropic climate. If I were to be really nitpicky, I would point out that this is more of a noir than a beach film like the Tom Cruise flick Cocktail. But I had to work with the confines of my library.

1949: Mercedes McCambridge, All the King’s Men
Saints Hallelujah (Traditional/G.F. Handel mash-up),arranged and performed by Canadian Brass

 

1.       All the King’s Men is about the governor’s race in Louisiana, so I knew I had to go with the wonderful array of New Orleans jazz

2.       This song mashes a traditional New Orleans tune with a classical element. Louisiana is a big melting pot anyway.

3.       This song also has a call and response element with jazz riffs (typical to New Orleans jazz) that echoes the energy between a politician and his supporters at a rally. Even the word Hallelujah can be used as an “amen” in response to a political point

 

1950: Josephine Hull, Harvey
Human, The Killers

The song is about a narrator re-examining his humanity. This is what Josephine Hull’s character is badly in need of in this film about a man whose positive contributions to the world are through an imaginary rabbit.

1951: Kim Hunter, Streetcar Named Desire

Summertime, George Gerswhin, covered by Scary Pockets featuring Olivia Kuper Harris

 

1.     The film is set in a poor multi-cultural neighborhood in New Orleans. It’s a Southern setting (again, New Orleans), so I wanted something jazzy again.

2.       Gerswhin was a precursor to big band jazz and the funk group  Scary Pockets gives this jazz tune a fine remix. I didn’t want something that was squarely in the jazz era

3.       You have to admit this gives the jazz tune a nice twist

4.       There’s a sense of the sweltering heat in this tune

1952: Gloria Graeme, Bad and the Beautiful
Entry March of the Boyars, Johan Halvorsen, performed by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra

I haven’t seen Bad and the Beautiful, so I mostly riffed off the circus film “Greatest Show on Earth” which came out in the same year. I always associate circuses with Eastern European gypsy culture. This is a Russian march.

1953: Donna Reed, From Here to Eternity
Don’t Worry Baby, Beach Boys

This is the quintessential Hawaii film so the Beach Boys fits. Additionally, it’s a very fitting theme of quelling the calm before the storm.

1954: Eva Marie Saint, On the Waterfront

Diamonds are Forever, Shirley Bassey

This has more to do about the fact that Eva Marie Saint’s role in North by Northwest was a predecessor to the classic Bond girl than anything with the movie.

1955: Jo Van Fleet, East of Eden

Hazy Shade of Winter, Bangles

1. The song begins: “Time, time, time, see what’s become of me, as I look around to my possibilities” (matched by a very odd uncanny valley between major and minor resolution). This film is an allegory for the Garden of Eden where time didn’t really exist and then it did when they were banished

2. Additionally, a lot of the shots of Jo Van Fleet as brothel owner Kate look old and withered

3. The song is also very place-specific. There’s a verse of the salvation army band (religious allegory, again?)

4. James Dean, the star of the film, is also frozen in time

1956: Dorothy Malone, Written on the Wind

Havana, Camilla Cabello

Although it’s set in Texas, I tried to make the point that Douglas Sirk was the predecessor of R-rated envelope-pushing drama.  So I needed something very sensual and modern to push the envelope.

1957: Miyoshi Umeki, Sayonara

Chinatown, My Chinatown; Glenn Mills, arranged by Luther Henderson, performed by Canadian Brass

This jazz number--more tin pan alley than dixieland—is a lively tune that couldn’t sound more oriental when It first crosses your ears. This is to honor the first East Asian actress to win an Oscar. I’d almost be concerned it was just a flat racial stereotype, but Umeki also appeared in Flower Drum Song.

1958: Wendy Hiller, Separate Tables
Marriage of Figaro, Mozart

This is a stuffy British film (albeit a good one), so I needed something classical.

1959: Shelley Winters, Diary of Anne Frank

Inside My Mind This Time, Welcome to Florida

I figured there wasn’t anything I could use to capture the tragedy of the Holocaust. My only other option was Schindler’s List but I figured that would be too derivative. In place, I felt that this punk rock song about doing things by your own tune was the best.

1960: Shirley Jones, Elmer Gantry

Henney Buggy Band, Sufjan Stevens

This film is about a Midwestern preacher and huckster. It’s an inversion of Midwestern Americana. Shirley Jones most famous roles are in the most Middle American of musicals in The Music Man and Carousel. This is very much a Middle American song: A peppy folk number.

Final Thoughts on 2022 in Film

-Stephen Spielberg thanked Tom Cruise for saving movies with Top Gun. You can call the film over-rated due to how big it blew up but, by that standard, a lot of things are overrated. Think of how little you expected when you walked into that theater and think of how you (most likely) were moved; how well done all of the film's elements were. Moreso, think of how this was not a Marvel film and managed to rule the Box Office for 3 weeks in the middle of Summer. It was the top grossing film of the year in an age where the only stuff thriving is superheroes and cartoons.

-Best director is likely going to two guys named Daniel. Although I don't love Oscars being used as lifetime achievement awards (like Don Ameche in Cocoon or Lee Grant in Shampoo who were indistinguishable from the rest of their casts when they won Academy Awards; I'll go to my grave saying Al Pacino did a great job in Scent of a Woman if people stop comparing it to the 70s), I tend to think it's a little embarrassing to have people who aren't particularly accomplished in that category. More than any other award, we can't tell what a director does from a single film since he relies on various craftsmen and actors to create his vision. The best director award comes close to reflecting a list of the best, but when you have the guy who directed Rocky (can't remember his name), Delbert Mann or Tom Hooper, you run a risk that the award is diluted. I'd prefer if the award went to someone with somewhat of a track record for doing big things.

-We need to just collectively admit this was not a particularly good year for American films:

*Baz Luhrmann is an erratic and polarizing guy. Whatever your opinion of him or this movie is, we should recognize this was not something that all viewers considered a success. I found it to not vary enough from the typical beats of the biopic to merit any special recognition.

*Tar is 2 hours and 37 minutes long. My friend Khari typically avoids films over two hours and while I disagree with that method of film going, this was a film that could have easily been told in an hour and 45 minutes. It's set in a highly specialized world of orchestral conducting and does little to explain why waving your arms in front of a group of classical musicians merits millions of dollars

*The Whale was gross (although that was probably the point) and a bit heavy-handed in its metaphors (the guy loves in a city with more thunder than any other). It's interesting.

*The Banshees of Inisherin is about two people who are mentally off and the film doesn't acknowledge that.  One person basically spends the whole movie whining that the other isn't his friend and the other responds in the worst way imaginable: Self-harm, not locking his door, etc. It's supposedly also about the Irish civil war and loneliness and coping, but all that stuff is muddled in the background. I could see someone reading it differently, but it didn't work for me.

-The result of the lack of decent films and the momentum behind films that were actually pretty good (at least in my opinion) like Empire of Light and Armageddon Time resulted in a bunch of foreign films like Everything Everywhere All At Once, RRR, Bardo, and Triangle of Sadness either getting nominated for BP or getting close. RRR and Triangle of Sadness I found to be terrific films but I also rarely add foreign films to my viewing diet so that was a positive effect on me.

-In spite of the Glass Onion's length, it worked as a critique of rich people. The Menu, Triangle of Sadness, and Death on the Nile also had this element which was a nice new direction. For films.

-Underrated films to me: Deep Water, The Bubble, Where the Crawdads Sing, Armageddon Time, Metal Lords, and Amsterdam

-Unfortunately, there is a sphere of entertainment-centered journalists who will always manufacture some controversy about how Hollywood doesn't properly honor people of color. They continue to attempt to drive headlines around this cause even when the facts don't support their case. This year, their double standard was highly evidence when Michelle Yeoh's broke existing campaign rules to knock down competitor Cate Blanchett.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/michelle-yeoh-deletes...

I don't think that Michelle Yeoh should be raked over the coals or even found guilty, but she violated a rule about campaigning by taking a potshot at a fellow nominee on social media.

There is no source that Andrea Riseborough directly marketed the film herself illegally (it was the director's wife who was under suspicion) and she investigated and found innocent, but her name will now be tainted because she's not really a name in the industry anyway.

That Michelle Yeoh gets all this support because of a strong double-standard here where if you're on the right side of what the identity politics crowd perceives to be social justice, you got cheered for getting on your soap box no matter what you say.

The more egregious thing here is that it's not even Andrea Riseborough's control that she was White when she had the greatest Cinderella story campaign in recent Oscars memory. The story doesn't matter: Just her skin color.

And I'm repeating myself here, but the absurdity of citing racism due to a (very probable, beforehand) snubbing of a four-time Oscar nominee dilutes the word beyond belief.

TV Reviews: Hollywood (Ryan Murphy's latest), Upload, Waco

Patreon Details: http://www.patreon.com/okjournalist

So much good TV! The list of what I'm watching is growing exponentially with Ozark's 3rd season and Dead To Me's 2nd season starting to jump into my rotation on top of Castle Rock's 2nd season.

The following YouTube video covers (in order) Unorthodox (Netflix), Hollywood (Netflix), Upload (Amazon Prime), Waco (Paramount Network), and Middleditch and Schwartz (Netflix). Two of these are covered in my last post. I'll cover the other three in more detail below along with "Never Have I Ever" which is a gem. 

Hollywood (Netflix)-Ryan Murphy's umpteenth flashy TV show tells the story of the Golden Age of Hollywood through the memoir of  (for lack of a better word) Hollywood pimp Scotty Bowers. Bowers opened a gas station in Los Angeles after the war where he arranged for discrete sexual liaisons for a number of men and women including many closeted celebrities. He wrote about it in a tell-all book that's a loose guide here. Key word is "loose" here. Bowers story is flattened in the service of the story that Ryan Murphy and crew really want to tell which is an intersectionalist revisionist story about how great inclusion is.

The series has been unfavorably compared to Tarantino's revisionist yarns because he's not as strong of a storyteller to pull off the difficult tightrope. Aside from bad storytelling, another charge is that his often-sensationalist bents have proved offensive here as he's dishonoring Rock Hudson by completely making up his backstory. Personally, I'm more shocked by Scotty Bowers who's pimping industry was more like sex slavery: His sex workers don't have the option of refusing down jobs that make them uncomfortable. When the Scotty Bowers figure (Dylan McDermott) makes the case to one of his straight workers that he should service gay people because they have to live in the shadows and this will make them happy (yes that really happens), it's a pretty egregious conflation between the kind of sex positivity and a progressive work space.

But the series suffers more from not having a deep focus. I can push aside the blatant progressive messaging but if it's not trying to say the kinds of things that have been said a hundred times in better ways ("Glow", "Orange is the New Black," etc.), this is a show that glides on the belief that just showing people in Hollywood of yore is enough of a story. It's borderline watchable but not highly memorable.

Upload (Netflix)-I've never particularly found the idea of human consciousness particularly appealing. "Transcendence" and "Ghost in the Shell" are among my least favorite films (you'd think I would have learned my mistake the first time) out and I found the gobbledy gook about how the mind works in "Lucy" to be dull. But if the mind isn't the sole focus of the show, then we're onto something.

From the guy who adapted the Office to American television (Greg Daniels), this show is so ironclad in its world-building that there aren't many plot holes to fish around in. Unlike "Star Trek", this is a world that broaches the topic of post-scarcity realistically.

The basic gist is a guy dies in a version of the future where people’s consciousnesses can get uploaded into a sort-of virtual retirement community.

Getting into this man-made version of heaven is like shopping for a retirement community and the dead rely on their living families to continually pay the bills.  Our protagonist (Robbie Arnell) is a man whose ticket to Lakeview (a place that looks like Alberta’s Lake Louise, see below) is sponsored by a rich girlfriend (Allegra Edwards) who’s um...let's just say she's got issues. His single mom can’t afford to pay his bills putting him in a situation where he's indentured to her. It's creepy. Like Alexander Payne's underrated film "Downsizing", this is a series that explores how a humanity-saving solution doesn't necessarily solve socio-economic disparity.

The series features a good love triangle and a solid group of supporting characters including a shallow self-proclaimed best friend (Kevin Bigley), a kid who died at the age of 11 (Rhys Slack) who is stuck in the afterlife that way, and typical office politics for the people who operate the system in the real world. It's not particularly funny, but it's breezy, thoughtful and deeply effective as light science-fiction.

Waco (Paramount)-Like "People vs OJ Simpson" (one of Ryan Murphy's best projects), this story is written in history and the series is about revisiting something we already remember in the news from a distanced lens. Think prestige TV's version of I Love the 90s with better actors. And damn, this is a fine ensemble with Andrea Riseborough ("Birdman"), Paul Sparks ("Greatest Showman"), John Leguazimo, Melissa Benoist ("Glee", "Whiplash"), Keiran Culkin ("Succession") and the great Michael Shannon. At the center of it is Taylor Kitsch (Taylor who? Yeah, not sure who he is either) who plays cult leader  David Koresh.

As for portraying who's the good and bad guy, the show plays it relatively even-handedly. The show makes it pretty clear that David Koresh is a non-violent person. He and his followers horde guns which serves as a relevant commentary on how many Americans west of the Mississippi view gun rights. Michael Shannon's stand-out performance as an FBI agent in charge of the negotiation is also distanced from moral judgments because he's not the person who screwed up the situation in the first place. The central question with him is whether he'll be able to defuse the situation and that's a good ingredient to a thriller.

The show also attempts to ask what made Koresh so charismatic and I didn't leave with a clear answer. On the one hand, he unilaterally makes decisions for the group and he is the only person in the compound who gets to have sex AND that includes with all the other parishioner's wives. On the flipside, he's an ace at leading bible study. So who knows? At the end of the day, I felt that there was an answer that made sense to the characters but I didn't feel like I could actually live in those characters' shoes. That might have been the difference between a good and great show.

My New YouTube Video Channel on Films Where'd You Go Bernadette, Late Night, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

This past Sunday, I woke up extremely lethargic and stayed in bed until a little past noon so I decided I needed a project. At the start of 2018, I thought I'd review every film I'd seen in 2017 but that never got off the ground so I thought I'd start again and I didn't even get out of bed. Over the course of the next 24 hours whether taking a bath, waiting for a restaurant or switching metros, I reviewed all but three of the films I'd seen in 24 hours.

The first was "Where'd You Go Bernadette" which was my third favorite film of the year because it managed to squeeze in complex issues of mental health with a light comedic tone in what was kind of a PG movie. 

The second was "Late Night" written by Mindy Kaling about her own experiences as a diversity hire in many writer's rooms including "The Office." For a film that likely begins with a an agenda about visibility and how the world is all smiles and rainbows if we include POC and women, it has a surprisingly good amount of nuance.

I did "Zombieland" and "The Good Liar" before I got out of bed. I haven't uploaded those ones but I also did "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" the next morning as I was leaving for upstate New York the next morning.

 

Haters Back Off Season One Review: A YouTube Celebrity Tries to Make it Episodically

Colleen Ballinger created a unique YouTube persona with legs in Miranda Sings. She's also a likable personality. Sincerity works in the favor of most YouTubers as they create vlogs and tweet to authentically connect with fans and Miranda has succeeded in connecting to her fans outside of her character.

Most of them know she's a very talented singer in her own right. In sketch-sized bits, the Miranda Sings character is quite brilliant as Jimmy Fallon's audience has gotten the chance to see a couple times.  .

Still, this only buys a small amount of of goodwill when you have to transfer an unlikable character into a narrative format. In this version, Miranda Sings, a horrible singer whose flirtations with YouTube gives her delusions of grandeur, tries to achieve fame with her deluded uncle (Steve Little).

The show's inherent weirdness also has a whiff of Tim Burtonesque suburbia (the framing of the house recalls "Edward Scissorhands") and the uncle's circuitously empty get-rich schemes recall Mike Judge.

Part of the origin of Colleen Ballinger's idea was her perception as a classically-trained musician that YouTube was giving rise to a coddled generation of singers who thought they were stars simply because they are getting internet views. That commentary is definitely apparent here: Miranda Sings is bratty to sociopath levels here, but she has an army of enablers. Her mother (Angela Kinsey) is afraid to say no to her, her (possibly intellectually challenged) uncle (Steve Little) fosters the worst parts of her self-esteem by a misguided belief that she'll be a star, and the boy next door inexplicably pines for her as if she's remotely worth the trouble.

The net effect of all these characters' combined idiocy is that you have to suspend your disbelief quite a bit. When you realize how terrible of a person Miranda Sings is, there's no reason to really want to try either. While many worthwhile TV shows have featured irredeemable characters, it's generally a tricky line to pull off.

It generally helps if there's an awareness in the TV show's universe that the person is, in fact, terrible (off the top of my head: "Legit", "The League", "It's Always Sunny", and "Curb Your Enthusiasm") and the show has the level-headed sister Emily but it's hard to explain away all the other people in Miranda's immediate sphere (the pastor who wants to date Miranda's mom) who aren't just yelling for poor Emily to be transferred to child protective services ASAP.

The show has a small smattering of moments of warmth in the first few episodes but for the most part, it's a tiring retread of the same problem-ridden characters continuing to do harm to themselves/ In the medium of TV that can be less tolerable to the viewer.






If you can hang on to the end of the first season,   SPOILERS AHEAD the show starts to turn things upside down in the penultimate episode with a game-changing season finale in which most of the characters wake up to the reality of their experiences. I'm not sure I'd recommend one should watch every episode until you get to the juicy stuff and I would have to fault the show for lacking an movement in the first six episodes.

Still, the season finale takes on an added level of depth that was lacking through much of the season. The ending has the haunting aura of a  Stephen King novel or a Twilight Zone Show episode. Miranda achieves fame but sells her soul and family in the process. I'm not sure if I'd recommend viewers stick it out to the en

Interview with "Obama Girl" Producer Ben Relles

When I worked for ReelSEO, I scored this interview with then-Barely Political head Ben Relles in early 2013. Unfortunately, Relles has changed positions so this interview is no longer relevant to what Relles does or what Barely Political currently is. However, Relles was so kind to lend his time to me and what he said was so insightful that it should be published somewhere. So here you all go:

The 2008 election, featuring a ready-made caricature in Sarah Palin, was the first Presidential Election in which YouTube was part of the cultural ethos, and by most standards Barely Political emerged as the biggest buzz generator of that election cycle with Amber Lee Ettinger AKA Obama Girl, who made appearances on SNL and Bill O'Reilly after her hit "I Got a Crush in Obama" (ironically, made in 2007 when he was still a Senator) became one of the internet's most viral videos with 25.8 million views and 100 million overall channel views in 2008.

While Ettinger played the role of Obama Girl, it was Ben Relles who recruited the talent, co-wrote the music, and invested $2,000 of his own money to create the video series that would go on to revolutionize the way YouTube would eventually influence political elections.

Relles, a Pennsylvania native, is a 1997 graduate of the University of Wisconsin with a degree in journalism and a certificate in business administration, and started his first online marketing company his senior year of college. A decade later, Barely Political, would be his second venture as he foresaw that internet video would be the new frontier.

Six years later, Barely Political is currently the 40th most subscribed channel on youtube at 2.35 million subscribers and ranks 23rd in page views with 1.6 billion. The site has expanded to an in-house team of writers, performers, producers and the channel's director/editor in Tom Small. The content has also expanded to music video parodies (known as the "Key of Awesome" series) as well as parodies of comic book characters among other series.

Additionally, Ben Relles served as VP of programming and content development for Next New Networks which helps YouTube artists increase the visibility of their channel. Next New Networks was bought out directly by YouTube and in March of 2012, Relles was named head of creative development for YouTube's Next Lab.

Q. Who are the comedy influences of you and the crew at Barely Political?A: For me personally, my dad.  He just cracks me up and it was fun when we were launching the Barely Political channel that I was able to get his advice on all that early decisions..  Aside from him, I'd say sketch comedy shows I grew up watching -- Saturday Night Live and Mr. Show being the biggest two.

I think the crew at Barely Political (the writers are Mark Douglas, Todd Womack, and Bryan Olsen) all have different influences but that's part of what keeps our videos unique.  We have writers with years of experience with sketch, improv and stand up and that serves us well for a YouTube channel. 

Q:  What inspired you to go in the field of comedy?

A: I always loved comedy and tried my best to find project where I could try and be funny.  I middle school I made short silly movies at home.  In college I wrote a humor column.  After college I tried doing stand up for a few years.  But I really felt like I landed on a something when I found YouTube.  With YouTube you can make a short funny video, and if it hits on something really funny then a few days later millions of people are sharing it with their friends. That never gets old to me so I want to stay connected to that.

Q. How do you think the landscape for politically oriented comedy is different these days (in terms of both making comedy and watching comedy) then it was 15 years ago before the widespread use of the internet and how is it the same?

A: I think it's different in that the internet democratized political comedy -- especially that's the case with what YouTube did.  A lot of that started with Jib Jab in the 2004 election when their videos were being seen as much as Saturday Night Live or The Tonight Show or any other mainstream political comedy channel.  And then recently you see hundreds of funny sketches on YouTube being done by people all over the world that are funny and really original.  Bad Lip Reading, Alphacat, and Sarah Silverman all come to mind.  I also think individuals have a chance to shape people's perception of candidates through YouTube in ways you couldn't before.  Gaffes do become more costly when they are being remixed and spoofed within 12 hours.

On the other hand in some ways the fundamentals of what makes for great political comedy are very similar.  People love seeing politicians get called out on their BS, and I think the best political comedy does that.

Q: Most rewarding part of your job for you and the crew at Barely Political?

A: For me it's getting to work with the Barely Political team.  I started the site but had no idea I'd get to work with such hilarious people who would build the channel to over 2 billion views.  I love that they have built such a huge, loyal fan base.

Q: What would you say to newcomers who aren't familiar to your brand about what Barely Political is today and why should they check it out?

A: We started as a political comedy channel, but that's not our channel any more.  We have different comedy videos for different people.  Comic book fans should check out our series "Super Therapy."  Pop music fans should check out "The Key of Awesome".  Everyone should check out our recent sketch "Deck Maintenance".  I thought it was pretty hilarious.

Q: Is it fair to say that you didn't do as much in the 2012 Cycle with politics? How much ambition on the part of your site was there to replicate the magic of Obama girl.

I made the observation that you are more focused on comic book geeks than political wonks in your demographic?

A: That is fair to say.  I wouldn't say its comic book geeks as main audience.  Key of Awesome is nearly half our views, and that's more aimed at music fans.  

Obama Girl was a unique thing.  A lot of people think that character genuinely shaped people's opinions of Obama and the video is in textbooks, museums, was on SNL, GMA, etc.  But in terms of audience, our channel still is more geared toward pop culture than politics. Obama Girl is at about 100 million total views across the series. Key of Awesome is closer to 1 billion.

Q: So in the last four years, you've moved away from political humor. Was that a conscious decision at some point to decide to move in a different direction or did you simply watch the traffic and follow it?

A: Right, during the 2008 election we were doing mostly political sketches.  We made a lot of Obama Girl videos, and we were working with the Gregory Brothers on the Autotune the News videos.  Then we wanted to start a new channel for non-political sketches, but we already had so many subscribers on the Barely Political channel we figured we'd just put everything in the same place. 

Q: Was rebranding your site from Barely Political to Key of Awesome a difficult move? 

A: The Key of Awesome took off and became popular so quickly it made the decision easy to have the Key of Awesome series on our Barely Political channel.  But I'd say it was tricky in 2009 trying to balance the Obama Girl videos with the Key of Awesome with some of the remixes Michael Stevens (now the host of Vsauce) was writing which I thought were brilliant, but were tricky to have all on one channel.  I think we have about 2 billion views so far on the channel, and over 1 billion of them are from the Key of Awesome so we've made it work.

Q: You're current position is to promote people's channels and help people promote their channels better. Do you think that the success of one channel on YouTube happens at the expense of another person's channel (in other words, is it a zero sum game?), or that in your position, you can help competing channels each get more views?

A: No I don't think the success of one one channel happens at the expense of another channel, there are always new audiences coming to YouTube and spending more time on the site. 

Q: On an appearance on Anderson Live, you helped a girl follow her passion of making videos for her own YouTube channel. How often do you get the opportunity to directly reach out to someone like that and help them?

A: I love working with people who are brand new to making videos YouTube.  My usual advice to people is to just get started and posting videos and not over think the first one.  Make videos about something you love and see how it goes.  When they make that leap and then become a regular YouTube creator I love it.

Q. According to UW-Madison News You invested $2,000 into the Obama Girl video when you created it. Did you expect to recoup your investment monetarily? YouTube lowers the barrier for entry significantly, but for the people that invest money into making a better product, do you advise them to invest that money with the mindset that they'll be able to make it back if the video is good enough?

A: I did think we'd make the money back.  I thought the video would be popular and we were ready to go with iTunes, T-Shirts and ring tones and all that.  But creators certainly don't need $2000 to make great content on YouTube.  In most cases I think YouTube creators first build an audience, then once they do they start putting more of the adsense towards more ambitious videos.

Q. Could you elaborate on the music making process at Key of Awesome? If I'm not mistaken, you have some people do the singing beforehand and everyone on screen is lip-synching. Why do you do it this way? Also, why do you only have a couple people sing rather than some of the actors singing themselves?

A: The actors definitely do the singing usually.  They just record it in advance to make sure they get a version that sounds great.  Mark Douglas writes the lyrics.  And often he also sings the lyrics and stars in the video.

Q: Is Kristen Brancaccio of The Intern Diaries really still an intern [Ed Note: Kristen Branaccio was just featured on Project Greenlight as a finalist], or is she like the Tonight Show's Ross the intern, where she was originally an intern, and then kept the title after graduating the internship. 

A: Right the latter.  She started as an intern, and now helps with all aspects of the channel.  She's awesome.

Q: Key of Awesome is very interactive with the Comment Videos, is that part of some strategy to pull people in or is that just fun to make?

A: I would say they are fun to make, but end up being a great way to interact with fans.

Q: You've hired more than a couple people at Barely Political to help write. Is that helpful to have different people write one parody song or does it tend to clutter up the process. Does one person write one parody song or is a Key of Awesome song written by committee?

A: I would say with these guys it helps.  Everything is written by Mark Douglas, Todd Womack and Bryan Olsen.  Those guys work really well together and I think most videos at this point the writing is collaborative in one way or another.

Q: You, Ben, are fairly anonymous to Key of Awesome/Barely Political subscribers which is ironic because even the director shows up in the videos here and there. Is that by design?

A: I wouldn't say it's by design.  I started the channel 6 years ago, and I love the whole team and the channel, but day to day I don't get involved in the production process of the videos.  And I can't keep a straight face on camera for some reason.

Q: How much are you a music studio? Is it easy to reproduce the music (do you just use a pre-recorded track like karaoke?) for the Key of Awesome, or do you make the music from scratch?

A: Not a music studio, but do make music from scratch.