Roboshithead

Flipping through various cable channels one Saturday night, I came upon pornographer and heroic First Amendment crusader Al Goldstein being interviewed by two young men on Manhattan Neighborhood Network's (MNN) channel 34. It was the end of the interview and Goldstein dispensed the sage advice of living life to its fullest without regret and fearlessly striving, regardless of failure.
"What's the name of this show again?" Goldstein asked.
"Roboshithead," one of the hosts reminded him.
Afterward, the show's logo appeared on the screen along with a phone number and a Web site address. I visited the ROBOSHITHEAD Web site (www.geocities.com/roboshithead) and found that the show mostly airs original short films made by its two hosts.

The show airs Saturday at midnight, and its Web site claims that the show's producers will send a tape of their films to interested viewers. I e-mailed the show and soon received a video in the mail from Chuck, one of the co-hosts.
The tape consisted of several strange but extremely funny short films. The films they make are shot with one small camcorder and are low (almost no) budget. They involve strange plots that often mix absurd comedy with science fiction. Some of the Roboshithead films I've seen to date include: Optimal Pursuit, which is described on the Web site as a "masturbatory friendship comedy"; Chinese Friends, the adventures of an angry father, his small, abnormal child and a Chinese friend; Crime Beer, a "homosexual brewing adventure" featuring a beer that makes people gay; and The Sex Ambulance, in which four needy people meet in a special "sex ambulance" - filmed in a real ambulance.
I request the chance to interview the two hosts and watch them shoot their next film. I am told to report to an address on the Upper East Side. It is an upscale building with a doorman, and I recognize it as the setting of the film Maximum Capacity, which depicts what could happen if four people are trapped on an elevator for one-billion years.
Ian Garrick and Chuck Stern have been friends since middle school and are now seniors in college. Chuck majors in English at New York University. Ian attends Wesleyan University, majors in physics, and plans to attend graduate school at MIT next year to study aeronautical engineering.
They started Roboshithead about two years ago. When they originally applied to have a show on MNN, they missed the filing deadline, but were able to sway the network administrators after Chuck concocted a sympathetic story of Ian's death being the cause of their delay. So far no one at the network seems to have noticed that Ian is still alive. "They're pretty laid back there," says Ian.
"The whole show is sort of a parody of how grandiose cinema has been recently," says Chuck, explaining the show's title. "There's nothing more grandiose than Roboshithead."
Chuck also sings and plays keyboards in an experimental rock band, Time of Orchids. Time of Orchids will be touring the country this summer and Chuck plans to "distribute Roboshithead to the needy masses." Time of Orchids plans to record a new record this year, which will feature guest vocals from Kate Pierson of the B-52s. Cast member Keith Abrams is the drummer for Time of Orchids. Dylan Sparrow, another Roboshithead actor, leads the band Zeehas;12 Wait (I later attended a show at Brownie's in the East Village featuring Time of Orchids and Zeehas;12 Wait. Both bands are humorous and bizarre and nicely compliment the anarchic, artistic animus of Roboshithead).
Chuck plans to keep pursuing music after graduation and will continue Roboshithead, regardless of its success. "I would love to be on Comedy Central some day, but also there's something pretty cool about remaining underground and accumulating the strange fan base that we have."
Because the show displays a phone number for interested viewers to call, it gets phone messages each week. Producers from the Howard Stern show once expressed interested in having them on, and Chuck and Ian once turned down a woman who was interested in making a pornographic movie with them.
"We get our weekly share of molesters, people who want to skin us alive, people who want to find us and kill us. We root through all those and we find the people who are seriously interested in the show," says Ian.
"We're always paranoid," Ian continues. "We thought you might pull a gun on us and kill us."
"You still may," adds Chuck. I assure them I am unarmed and ask about what they'll be filming this evening.
"At this point we have some imagery and a vague theme," Chuck says. "There isn't a title yet and there isn't too much of a plot and that's not too unusual for us. That's the way we operate a lot of the time."
Other Roboshithead cast and crew ("various lunatics we've accumulated over the years," according to Chuck) begin to arrive.
I accompany Ian on a trip to a nearby supermarket to buy beer and baby powder. Since the actors will all be playing old men, they need to whiten their hair. I get a six pack for myself and Ian buys a 12-pack and some baby powder for the actors' hair. "One time I put Bisquick in my hair to play an old man and I took a shower and my head became a pancake," Ian says.
The group walks a few blocks to the Jan Hus Presbyterian Church on East 74th Street. While they wait to get into the church, the cast selects patrician-sounding names for their characters, and come up with such gems as Buckingham, Farmington, Buckington and Chesterfield. A friend of Chuck's who works for the church lets everyone in. We file up a flight of stairs and into a conference room.
The well-furnished conference room is normally used for Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. The "12 Steps," "12 Traditions" and other AA slogans are posted on large banners along the wall. The irony of having a dozen people guzzling beer in this room is not lost on anyone.
A woman follows us in from the street, sits down in the meeting room amongst the cast and crew. It soon becomes evident that she's homeless and plans to spend the night. She ignores the gentle prodding from church employees to leave and even makes a grab for some of Ian's beer. Ian politely rebuffs her. "There have actually been weirder shoots than this," he says.
Chuck's friend finally manages to send the woman off with a list of shelters she can go to. Chuck borrows my tape recorder and a tape to make a soundtrack they will play as they film the movie. The other cast members go one at a time to a small bathroom to powder their hair with baby powder and apply makeup to look aged.
Chuck and Ian set up the first scene. Tim Byrnes, a trumpet player for a band called Doppelganger, plays opposite Nat Johnson. Tim plays a more ornery old man, ranting about boiling cabbage and their social standing. Nat Johnson lolls his tongue in his mouth and shakes as if stricken with Parkinson's disease.
The cast return to the first conference room where Rich Bennett, a Staten Island native who plays jazz guitar, plays opposite Adam Stachelek, bassist for the heavy metal band The Deuce and a Quarter. In the two scenes they have together alone, their characters end up screaming and strangling each other.
The next scene involves Chuck and Nat Rich, who film a scene in a small office. Nat Rich sits at an elevated position and hovers over Chuck, who is cramped next to him in a small office. Before shooting each scene, Chuck or Ian will tell the actors the gist of what they have to say. After each take, everyone breaks into laughter at what the actors have come up with on the spot.
Ian's character dies after being struck on the head by a volleyball in a scene filmed in the church's gymnasium. A friendly female bystander is recruited to play the part of Ian's wife.
The film is shaping up to be very funny, and a good part of its humor lies in its low-budget appeal. The actors have sometimes mangled other characters' names, have very obvious-looking makeup smeared on their faces for wrinkles, and baby powder sits on their ears and shoulders. I ask Chuck and Ian if this bothers them at all. "It keeps it punk, and that's fine," Ian says.
The movie wraps up in the large nave of the church at the funeral for Ian's character. Chuck's character is now the head of this social order of old men. The final scene depicts Chuck delivering a eulogy that is interrupted by one of his own farts (supplied by Tim). A hostile lesbian minister enters the nave and admonishes Chuck's friend for being too loud too late, but the cast and crew are well behaved (as quiet and respectful as possible when filming a fart scene in a church, that is).
When all the filming is done, the cast and crew retire to an all-night diner called the Green Kitchen. They discuss possible titles for the film and other upcoming projects.
A week later, Pleasures of Man: Men of Age premiers on Roboshithead. The finished product loses none of the comedic value of seeing it filmed live.
At the end of a later broadcast, after an advertisement for Time of Orchids' next performance and a brief clip of a giant tumor being removed, Ian appears in footage from a NASA zero-gravity simulator. He and other students float about in jumpsuits. Ian floats before the camera and unfolds a piece of paper. It reads "Watch ROBOSHITHEAD at Zero Gravity."
"We pledged to do the show until one of us dies," says Ian. "It's a lifelong thing. It's not to be taken lightly."