Interviewer: Does this exist somewhere? Can we watch this?
Rudd: It does exist somewhere, yeah.
Fey: In Amy Poehler’s living room.

!!! holy flashback!

these are some photos i took wayyyy back in 2004 when amy poehler, tina fey, paul rudd, will arnett, maya rudolph, jack mcbrayer, rachel dratch, and pretty much every other comedy idol i ever had, did a live stage production of Sixteen Candles. it was a pilot for VH1. i accidentally ended up the official photographer for this and the other shows in this series after taking some stealth photos in the front row at the first one and passing them on to amy miles, who co-created the show with amy poehler. it was called Soundtracks Live! they also did Pretty in Pink and Fast Times at Ridgemont High. all but this one were put on at the ucb theatre in new york, which was basically my favorite place on earth.

it’s too bad this all happened long before i had a good camera and more technical knowledge, but man, i still love these photos so much. what a great time in my life this was. i spent a crazy amount of time at the ucb, seeing amazing show after amazing show for little to no money. i developed [and still have] giant crushes on jack mcbrayer and paul scheer and rob huebel and miriam tolan and jackie clarke and aziz ansari and probably a hundred others.

for much of that time, i was still living in south jersey, so it was a good 2.5-3 hour drive/train trip each way, but i loved it so much that i did it happily. scheer and mcbrayer [THE GREATEST IMPROV DUO EVER. EXCEPT FOR MAYBE TJ AND DAVE. BUT THAT’S KIND OF DIFFERENT. OKAY, THAT’S ENOUGH, CAPS LOCK.] would often do their two-man improv show at, like, 11pm on a tuesday night, and i’d be like “okay LET’S DO THIS.” because they just made me the happiest. aziz would do his free weekly show, crash test, super late on monday nights, and i’d go to them whenever i could, even if it meant sprinting to penn station to catch the last train of the night or crashing in the city and playing hooky from work the next morning.

aaaanyway, this pilot never saw the light of day because they apparently couldn’t clear the rights to the movie, but paul and tina just mentioned it in an interview for their upcoming film and the internet is apparently going nutso to find out details, because suddenly, my [oft-neglected] flickr page has over 10,000 views in one day!  2004,  I HAVE MISSED YOU. also, really glad to see that people are linking the source album here! good job, internet!

it is so bizarre and wonderful to have this resurface so many years later, and it’s very good timing, as i’ve been reaching for something to be excited about lately.

—————
here’s the whole sixteen candles set.

and one from the second run of pretty in pink.

[and some rehearsal shots from that one!]

there are a couple more sets that aren’t on flickr [the first run of p.i.p. and fast times], but that i just rediscovered on an ancient cd-r. woo!

(via mrgreendidit)