Peter Kafka

Recent Posts by Peter Kafka

"The Chronicles of Rick Roll" Is The YouTube Movie You Don't Have To See

Say this for Andrew Fischer: He knows how to promote an unmade movie.

Fischer is the guy behind “The Chronicles of Rick Roll,” which is apparently made up entirely of breakout YouTube memes/characters/novelties. Which means that it’s catnip for people like, um, me to write about.

Here’s a concise explainer from the AP:

The film stars [Antoine] Dodson, known for the Bed Intruder Song, Bear Vasquez (“Double Rainbow Guy”), Brian Collins (“Boom Goes the Dynamite”), Ben Schulz (“Leeroy Jenkins”), Gary Brolsma (“Numa Numa”), and Stephen and Jack Quire (“Greatest Freakout Ever”). Together they account for hundreds of millions of YouTube views.

So you’re sorta, maybe kinda interested right? Alas, Fischer’s trailer teaser undermines the thing, by suggesting that this really will be like the world’s worst “Saturday Night Live” movie — 90 minutes of something that should only go on for 90 seconds.

The happy medium, of course, already exists: Compilation clips/tributes of YouTube stars are already big hits on Google’s site and beyond.

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There’s a lot of attention and PR around Marissa, but their product lineup just kind of blows.

— Om Malik on Bloomberg TV, talking about Yahoo, the September issue of Vogue Magazine, and our overdependence on Google