ALUMNI PROFILE
Third time’s the charm Waco O’Guin gets another shot at a comedy series by Emily Grant Waco O’Guin (BFA ’00) and his partner in comedy Roger Black always wanted to have a show on Comedy Central. And now, it looks as if they will. The animated series “Brickleberry,” named after a street in Athens, is tentatively scheduled to air on the popular comedy network next fall. O’Guin began his comedy career in college with “The DAMN! Show,” which aired on Athens local cable for one episode in 1998. “The show was a little dirty, not really dirty,” O’Guin recalls. “But someone put it on after church on Sunday instead of late at night. They cancelled the show after that.” Black joined “The DAMN! Show” in 2000 after O’Guin saw him doing stand up in Athens. The two then moved their act from the small screen to the stage and began to perform at the Georgia Theatre. “The DAMN! Show” consisted of live stand up and skits as well as pre-taped skits featuring characters such as Yucko the Clown and a cartoon koala bear that drinks too much. “People became familiar with the skits and the characters,” O’Guin says. “One of our cast members moved to L.A., so in the show we ‘killed off’ his character, and some of our fans thought we were serious!” Those shows at the Georgia Theatre later aired on the dorm channels at UGA and became popular with the college crowd. “Students would tape the show and make copies to send to their friends at other colleges,” O’Guin says. “We started going on tour to other college towns to perform.” With tapes and DVDs of their show circulating across the country, MTV caught on to the popularity and wanted to start a pilot of the show on their network. The show was called “Stankervision.”
Waco O’Guin (left) and Roger Black
PETER FREY
“‘Stankervision’ was pretty much the same as ‘The DAMN! Show,’” O’Guin says. “We had a bigger staff, and we were able to really crank out shows. We also got to do more animated and Yucko segments.” “Stankervision” aired for eight episodes in 2005. Since then O’Guin and Black have been working on “Brickleberry.” “Right when we got off MTV, we began coming up with ideas for new shows. We’ve always wanted to do an animated show,” Black says. “‘Brickleberry’ is an animated show that makes fun of park rangers who take their job too seriously.” They came up with the idea from O’Guin’s father-in-law, a former park ranger. The show is about a park that is in danger of being shut down. In order to turn its future around, the park brings in a female ranger from Yellowstone National Park who threatens the current male ranger’s pride. O’Guin and Black had some help from a fellow comedian, Daniel Tosh, in getting their show on Comedy Central. Tosh, who is the host of the TV show “Tosh.0,” is an executive producer and the voice of one of the characters on the show. “We share an agent with Daniel, and he was looking for a project,” O’Guin says. “We’re lucky that he liked [the show]. He really had a hand in getting it sold.”
DECEMBER 2011 • GEORGIA MAGAZINE
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