The Point Radio: Steampunk For Fun And Profit

It’s two different views of one historical period. First, the Steampunk genre is at the heart of a new competition series on The Game Show Network. Host Jeannie Mai talks about the deeds and the drama of STEAMPUNKED. Then mix DOWNTON ABBEY with KEEPING UP WEITH THE KARDASHIANS and you get ANOTHER PEROID. Creators Natasha Leggero and Riki Lindhome tell us where the idea for this Comedy Central hit came from.

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Transcript

The Point Radio. Hey, it's Mike Raub. Steampunk finally comes out of the books and into television. As a new game show coming up, you got to find out about it. We'll give you the full details coming up.

Plus, if you've seen another period on Comedy Central, creators Ricky Lindholm and Natasha Ligario talked to me about where it all came from. Let's get to The Point. This is The Point. The Point Radio.

Get The Point Radio. Steampunk is a concept that you may be familiar with. It's been a part of comics and science fiction for a while. And now it's also part of a new reality competition show on the Game Show Network. Hosted by Jeannie Mai, who was more than happy to fill us in on the basics.

Steampunk is a subgenre that is inspired by the Victorian era and science fiction. So it is an aesthetic. It's a culture. It's a lifestyle. And the best part about Steampunk is that none of this can be bought.

Everything that you see about Steampunk is something that was handcrafted or designed by what we call makers. Makers are people who are passionate about Steampunk. They handcraft the pieces that you see, the designs that you see in order to live what they envision in their minds.

And so when GSN saw that this community of Steampunk that is all around the world, by the way, and how passionate and how talented they are, they thought, oh, my gosh, it only makes sense, of course, to throw them into a competition, have them applaud each other. No, I'm just kidding, but kind of in order to win the prize of $100,000 and be named at the top best Steampunk maker.

So how does the show work? We basically scoured the US to find who are the best Steampunk makers. So the best that we found are a combination of being carpenters, their fashion designers, their watchmakers, their bakers. Each of them are usually specific to one type of talent or several.

But the hard part is in order to win the hundred thousand dollars, you have to be really good at everything. And so each week, these these Steampunk makers are on teams and they make a room for a manor. At the end of the competition, we have a beautiful manor. We have one person eliminated each week. And then we have one left-lone standing maker that is then crowned and wins $100,000.

All right. It is reality. That means there should be some drama coming up, right? Oh, there's drama, right? I want to say I've never been on a show before where the the E.M.C. came twice. Came twice during the R and Taping.

I mean, I know they stand by, but I've never seen them actually used. I saw journeys. I saw blood pressure monitors. I saw bandages. And remember that these makers are very passionate.

Number one, some are a little crazy. Number two. And there's heavy machinery around. Number three. So GSN had a big insurance bill on their hands to really like think this. She's done so much in her career from big events like Miss USA to her daily gig on The Real. I was curious what brought her to try a game show.

Although it's a game show and it's one of my most respected networks, game show network, to me, the world of Steampunk is alive and it's it's very it's very refreshing. I was first introduced to Steampunk when I was 16 in San Francisco. And I just remember how sexy and how empowering it felt. I remember walking into a club and just meeting some people that were so sweet and so

passionate and so inspiring that it made me want to take on that that that that art of making your own things. And I believe that today in America that we should all be inspired by the world of and start to look at life in everything that we throw away or anything that we discard because there is life in it. There is something that can be recycled or remade or refurbished into something new and and

and actually be proud about something that you can stand your name on. So how did she get started with the business? Was she one of those little girls who like to practice in front of her mirror with her hairbrush acting as a microphone? Yes, I actually was, except my hairbrush was a chopstick and my mirror was my family.

It was my entire family from Vietnam that my mom and my dad immigrated over from Vietnam. And they were just we were a three bedroom house with 15 people living in in it. And it was just so much fun and so rambunctious and so unexpected that it made me become the host. I am today because I love taking care of people. I love hosting people and I love making people feel good.

When it comes down to it, Jeannie really believes that Steampunk is pretty unique as far as the television landscape. There isn't a competition show involving Steampunk out there. Number one, there's no show out there. And number two, that you, every single person, whether you're a mother, your grandmother,

you're a doctor, a teacher, a nurse, you will learn how to make something on your own from the show. Think about that. The power of being able to make something on your own. That is something we should all have as a gift. Catch episodes of Steampunk every Wednesday on the Game Show Network.

The flight radio. Sorry TV fans, Apple says you've got to wait a little longer. That's part of what's going on in pop culture right now. If you want to stay in touch with Wizard World Chicago next weekend without even leaving your house, well, you can do that with ConTV, a new service that Wizard has put together in

cooperation with Verizon. Live panels will be covered as well as other original programming and there'll even be some free giveaways online as well. You can sign up at WizardWorld.com and keep in mind there's also a free promotion going on this month as well.

If you're waiting for Apple's new live TV service to be delivered over the Internet, well, it's not going to be here for a while. Latest rumors are it's been postponed until sometime early next year due to a number of deals that still weren't completed yet. Original rumors over the summer told us so that it would come along with a few other Apple

announcements sometime next month. All the things that Lucasfilm, Disney and Marvel didn't tell us at Comic Con are coming out over the last weekend at D23, the Expo in Anaheim, including a new director for Episode 9, a new poster they revealed for Star Wars The Force Awakens and a lot more as well. Jurassic World director Colin Trevorrow has been announced as the director for Episode 9, the third

in the new trilogy of interconnected films. Brian Johnson will direct Episode number 8, which will be released in 2017, by the way, on the very same date, given 40 years as the release of the original Star Wars film. Hollywood types are calling the concept The Office meets the DC Universe, but what it really is is powerless. A half hour work place comedy series set in the DC Universe came from creator Ben

Quinn, who did A to Z last year for the network. And the story takes place in a world where superheroes and villains are everywhere and normal people need insurance to survive the catastrophes that are caused every time those two factions run into each other. No word yet on which official DC characters will appear in the series.

And again, NBC has just ordered a pilot so far. Another period is one of those unique comedy central shows that well needs a little bit of an explanation. And the best one we can come up with is you take Downs and Abbey and you combine it with Keeping Up with the Cardassians.

Think about that for a second and then talk to Ricky Lindholm and Natasha Ligerio, creators of the show who are happy to talk about where the whole idea came from. Well, we wanted to create something together. And so I came to Ricky with a couple different ideas. One of them took place in the turn of the century, but it was kind of dramatic.

And then another one was like a fake reality show about like the biggest idiots that I could think of. And then she was like, why don't we combine those and make a reality show at the turn of the century? And I was like, oh, that would be cool. And then we went to Newport, Rhode Island and went on all these house tours and really started researching these people who were living in America at the you know, between 1900 and 1910.

And you can still see all of these amazing houses in Newport. People weren't paying income tax at the time. So it was just this like golden age where people were living like rappers in America. And so we're no antitrust laws, no income tax just at all. And so everyone like is obsessed with Downs and Abbey.

I was always obsessed with watching it. All my friends are watching it. But I don't think people really realize that America had its own like very strong period as well that was pretty short lived. But it was like a decade.

So so we're kind of taking our show taking place at this time period. Another period also has a lot of great guest stars. Well, Ben Stiller is going to be on an episode which were so excited. He produced the show. So we were excited that he he plays Charles Ponzi, who's the person who invented the Ponzi scheme.

So he's actually comes and steals money from our family. So everyone's kind of loosely based in history. Jack Black's going to be on the team plays a pageant host. Host of pageant, but cabbages, babies and women. Competing against each other.

Because the first human beauty pageant was around this time and it used to just be cabbages and birds. So we're the we're the humans that kind of spark all of the history of the insanity of beauty pageants. With all these comedy minds involved, is there a lot of improv in the show? I mean, we have some of the most amazing improvisers on our show from like Tom Lennon to David Wayne to Brian Husky to Michael !

It's like so what happens is, you know, we work really hard on the scripts to make sure we love them as they are. But then when we have time, like it's always great to get like one or two more takes because some of the best stuff ends up being stuff that was improvised. We have one of our writers, Moshe Kasher. He's on set kind of throwing out all and he also plays Dr. Goldberg. So he's the first Jewish doctor in America.

He's also pansexual. So that's exciting. Also in the cast, Michael Ian Black, who talked about how he got involved. For me, it was I mean, it's like anything was an audition. I got a call. Do you want to audition for this thing?

I said, all right. They said, prepare a classical monologue. I said, really? That's seems like it's a period show. So if you could do like something Shakespeare or something Greek and I'm like, Jesus. So I did. And I did Cleopatra's speech. And where she confronts Mark Anthony

and her it's her death speech right after she's been bitten by the ass. And can we find one of you back somewhere? I'm sure. Oh, yeah. No, I posted it on my own YouTube channel. So you should check that out.

And they loved it. And the rest. You know, here I am. Actress Padgett Brewster actually wasn't in the original cast. No, I someone else played my part in the presentation that they made. And then she booked a network TV show that would not allow her to do this.

So I just did the table read to fill in until they got somebody. And then after I did the table read, they were like, you know, OK, you know, you want to do it? And I was like, hell, yeah, I want to do it. I was thrilled. Working on the show, Natasha and Ricky told me that they still get caught up in that whole era of history.

We got obsessed. We had to look because the great thing is the more you learn, the more comedic material we had, like that, like the cat, the cabbage versus birds and then women are added to a beauty. We didn't make that up. Women couldn't vote at the time. And actually, when you go to Newport, there's one house called Rosewood.

And they're like, this is where the first woman's suffrage meeting was held. And, you know, so there there there is so much history in this area. I mean, the whole reason we were interested in Newport is I read this book and 90 percent of the wealth in America in this decade was all in Newport, Rhode Island. And it's this tiny place. And like all of the buildings are just, you know, marble that was constructed in Florence and then they break down the house and ship it across the sea and then rebuild it there.

And it's just very exaggerated. New episodes of another period every Tuesday on Comedy Central. And catch up right now at Hulu or at CC dot com. The point. And does it for right now.

Thanks for coming along. And by the way, if you enjoy what we do, let the folks know on the Web sites where you find us because they'd like to hear about it as well. Check in and leave a comment on ComicMix dot com or get the point radio dot com or subscribe to us in the iTunes podcast directory on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are easy to find under the point radio. And we're just as easy to find right back here in a few days. Get the point radio dot com.