I've eaten at restaurants that sold fast food and cell phones but no massages. Someday, I will when life imitates Jones' Good Ass BBQ & Foot Massage. This and other commercial parodies, starring comedian Robert Hines, were made by a sketch group called Big Dog Eat Child. .
Based out of Alsip, Illinois, the group holds the record for the "longest looping sketch performance", performing a 3 1/2 minute sketch 102 times. They will be debuting a new show called Intergalactic Sex Rodeo on May 29 at the Lakeshore Theater in Chicago.
Pedro Castro, who has directed many of the BDEC films, talked to me about the Jones' series and other projects.
How long have you guys been together?
We've been together for 6 years this Memorial Day.
What are you working on now?
We've just been busy as balls getting together the following: A) pushing the new Jones' Video, B) a college tour in the fall, C) getting ready to help on a Comedy Pilot that will shoot in Mid-July, D) Rehearsing for our new show, Intergalactic Sex Rodeo, E) Thinking about the next Jones' Video.
What's Intergalactic Sex Rodeo?
ISR is a variety comedy show that will include our sketch comedy, x-rated comics and dancers from the Varitease Cabaret.
How did the Jones' series come about?
The idea of Jones' Big Ass Truck Rental & Storage was conceived about 4 years ago. It was a sketch we used to perform (we only did it twice). In Chicago, we take the I90/94 expressway when we go to the city around the Garfield exit, there is a large warehouse called Lawrence Super Truck Rental & Storage. The sign was painted all over the building in ugly red and green letters.
So we made fun of it and riffed on it, then my brother started to act in this character named Toby Jones and was naming stuff that he could store. We thought is was funny but when we did the sketch; it didn't get the POP we thought it would . We still thought the idea was funny so we put it in our archive and let it sit.
We've known Robert Hines since 2004 but it wasn't until the summer of 2008 when we saw him perform at a club in Evanston, Illinois (he's a traveling comic) when we thought, "This guy would be great for the Jones' Big Ass Sketch".
So after the set, we asked him if he'd be willing to do the video. He agreed (which was awesome) and in August of 2008 we filmed at our practice space (which used to be an old meat processing plant in the Chicago Stockyards). It took about 6 hours. I had to rent a U-Haul truck to haul in all the junk from our house. We had a written script but we let Robert riff. There were some things that had to be done on the mark but the video was 80% of what Robert was saying.
FUNNY ASIDE - We had to wait until October to finally edit the footage. We didn't have a computer powerful enough to accept our copy of Avid Liquid (we won that in a film festival in LA a year earlier). When we finally got the computer up and running, we told our DP (Mike Larocco -- he does camerawork for all of our stuff) that we're gonna pick it up from his house. Well, while we were on the way there, his mom was picking up laundry and Mike give her his shorts (the tape was inside his pocket). Once he realized what transpired, the tape was completely submerged in the washing machine. He got the tape out of the machine right before the soap cycle. All of this would have been lost ...
So after Mike pulled me to his room and told me what happened we got the wet taped and with a q-tip dried the film, bit by bit. We did this for about 2 hours. Some footage was lost but mostly everything else was intact. So we finally got it to transfer to our computer.
What was your favorite phone message?
Other than the messages we get from radio stations and industry people, our favorite message is one where this guy just keeps talking about what he wants to store; the message was about 5 minutes long and unbelievably funny.
What were some of the things people honestly wanted to store? Or fry?
There were some serious calls that wanted to receive actual quotes and left their real phone numbers. We get a lot of requests for storing dead bodies, weed, buses, boats and dead pets.
For BBQ, some of messages are a little sillier. But again we get requests (not infrequently) from people who want to fry their own children (fucking sick!). We also get messages from people who want to fry giraffe's feet, elephant trunks and pandas. They also ask often if they offer "happy endings" with the foot massages.
Do you have plans to do more with Robert Hines?
Oh yeah. We are most likely going to do another Jones' video and will definitely include him in future projects. He's our friend.
What do you do for work?
Currently I'm unemployed and looking for a job in the copywriter field.
What are you currently reading?
I just finished reading Batman: The Killing Joke by Alan Moore.
What are you currently listening to?
"Kinda Like A Big Deal" by Clipse
What inspires you?
Anything that I can make fun of. Anything that yields knock out laughs. Good comedy movies. I just saw Slap Shot last night for the first time and that's the kind of experience I think our group wants to create someday.
BDEC presents the Intergalactic Sex Rodeo at the Lakeshore Theater on Friday, May 29, Friday, June 27th and July 31st at midnight.
