The internet is a powerful tool. It began as a way of linking two computers in different places so they could share information. At some point, it went public. This public access allowed people to connect through their computers in different parts of the world. Email became a thing. Message boards and instant messaging became a thing. Information providers, search engines, social media, streaming… All sorts of things could happen through the internet. People could share things they knew, questions they had, and things they found funny.
Social media and streaming are what I really want to discuss. A couple weeks ago, I wrote about how I thought the Nicolas Cage persona elevation was thanks to The Wicker Man coming out at exactly the right time when Facebook and YouTube were taking off. It allowed people to find those crazy Nicolas Cage acting moments, repeatedly watch those moments out of context, and make the connection to other moments from his career that were also crazy. This specific movie at this specific time helped people see something in Nicolas Cage and hold him up as this sort of wacky personality. It was all because of streaming and social media.
He wasn’t the only person to benefit from these two sections of the internet. Both social media and streaming produced personalities that could be considered celebrities. There were celebrities of pictures and celebrities of motion pictures. People, pets, and characters found their own popularity through these channels. Television and movie studios did what they normally do. They did what they thought could earn them the most money. They took some of these newfound internet stars and tried to bring them into the movie and television world.
The most obvious place to find stars was through the streaming platforms. It started with YouTube, but later video platforms like Vine and TikTok would also create stars. Studios and networks thought the transition from one video platform to movies or television would be easy. They found people who blew up on the platforms and tried to use their popularity to make a quick buck. Those performers were brought on to star in a vehicle, using much of what made them famous to provide the story or tone of the project. Sometimes it worked. Usually it didn’t.
One movie I discovered while writing this post was Ryan and Sean’s Not So Excellent Adventure, a movie starring Ryan Higa and Sean Fujiyoshi. They were two of the most famous YouTube stars of the platform’s early years. Ryan Higa had the number one most subscribed YouTube channel for 677 days in from 2009 until 2011, so that shows just how big he was. A producer approached the two guys to star in a movie about them trying to create a television show from their YouTube work. I don’t have anything else to say about it, as I haven’t seen it.
That movie could kind of be seen as the starting point for YouTube celebrities making the jump into film and television. Grace Helbig, Hannah Hart, and Mamrie Heart eventually jumped from YouTube to the movie Camp Takota. Bo Burnham started out on YouTube in 2006, which propelled him to comedy fame, appearances in movies, and even a directing gig with Eighth Grade. Lucas Cruikshank created the character Fred Figglehorn, which became so popular that he got three movies made with that character. That’s only scratching the surface.
One other major YouTube to movie jump I need to quickly mention is one that I previously covered in Sunday “Bad” Movies. Shane Dawson is a YouTuber that people have a strange relationship with. Some people love him. Most don’t. He has done and said some pretty bad things, yet he still has 19 million subscribers. In 2014, there was a television show called The Chair. It took two directors, gave them the same script, and chronicled how their visions differed as they put a movie together. One of the directors was Shane Dawson, and what came out of his direction was a little movie called Not Cool. It has gone down as one of the most tasteless, unfunny comedies ever. It was basically an extended version of his sketch comedy. Producer Zachary Quinto took his name off the movie, calling it “a vapid waste of time.” That’s not a great endorsement.
Anyway, we can now see that a bunch of YouTube personalities made the jump. Vine didn’t lead to as many starring roles in movies and television shows as YouTube. In fact, I can’t think of any off the top of my head. There were some people who became hugely recognizable and used their Vine fame to transition into acting roles or other ventures, however. People like Logan Paul, Jake Paul, Lele Pons, and Andrew Bachelor all rose to prominence thanks to the six second video platform. They’re people whose faces you might still see around, even if you want to punch them.
TikTok seems to be more of the same. People like Bella Poarch have found fame through the short videos, but there’s not much more to that. Okay, maybe there’s Addison Rae who became popular on TikTok before starring in He’s All That, the remake of She’s All That from last year. I think that’s the most prominent example. I don’t know if TikTok is really the right platform for finding stars, since so much of the content is copying exactly what other people do and saying it’s just part of jumping on the trend. Meh.
Moving away from the video platforms, we get into the more social side of social media. It’s time to get into the outlets that aren’t quite as much about just throwing content out there and are instead about sharing thoughts and images. There’s more interaction with the people who follow these, as they say, influencers. Outlets like Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook have been platforms that helped people raise awareness for their own personal brand. Some of the users became bigger than others, and that’s where the studios and networks came into play.
The strangest part of studios and networks tapping social media was when they started adapting Twitter feeds into television shows. Specifically, CBS created a television show based on the Twitter feed Shit My Dad Says. It turned into a single season sitcom starring William Shatner and Jonathan Sadowski. People don’t remember it fondly, but they do remember it as a strange footnote in television history. Social media moving to bigger outlets wouldn’t stop there.
Grumpy Cat was a celebrity cat that people knew from Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, and pretty much any social media outlet there was. She rose to fame in 2012 thanks to a permanent grumpy look she had. Feline dwarfism caused the expression. With over 1.5 million followers in Twitter and 2.5 million followers on Instagram, it was only a matter of time before that fame was monetized. Merchandizing, public appearances, paid sponsorships, and eventually a movie.
Grumpy Cat’s Worst Christmas Ever was released on Lifetime in 2014. Crystal (Megan Charpentier) was a lonely girl with no friends. She befriended a cat at the pet store in the mall. The cat, Grumpy Cat (Aubrey Plaza), could never find an owner because of how grumpy it looked. Together, the unlikely pair would fend off a robbery attempt. Two bumbling rock musicians tried to steal a valuable dog that was meant to help the pet store stay in business. Could they save the pet store, or would it truly be the worst Christmas ever?
The idea behind Grumpy Cat’s Worst Christmas Ever was to capitalize on the viral popularity of Grumpy Cat. She was one of the most popular cats on the internet. The only other cat that might have come close to that popularity at the time was Lil Bub. There was money to be had by putting Grumpy Cat in a movie. It wasn’t theatrical, so there wasn’t that big box office number to go by. It was a television movie, though, so there was a bunch of advertising money to be made. The more that people wanted to watch the movie, the more that Lifetime could make from the ads playing during commercial breaks. For Grumpy Cat, the movie would hopefully catch the attention of people who might want to buy some merchandise. It was a win-win for both.
Sadly, for Lifetime and the owners of Grumpy Cat, the movie didn’t become quite the cultural phenomena that they wanted. It came, it trended for about an hour, then it faded into obscurity. People barely even know it existed now. It wasn’t a successful jump from social media to movie stardom. It was a falter that was never really recovered from. Grumpy Cat would see her popularity continue until her death in 2019, but she wouldn’t star in another movie. There would be no sequel, no spin-off, to this Christmas tale.
Social media and the internet haven’t necessarily been the best places to find content. When a studio or filmmaker finds some internet content and decides to bring that exact idea to the big screen, it rarely works. Having Ryan Higa play himself in a movie didn’t do the big numbers that had been hoped. Same with Grumpy Cat or Shane Dawson. I lumped him in here because Not Cool was essentially just a longer version of his sketch comedy. These cases felt like when Saturday Night Live made a bunch of movies in the 1990s. Maybe the magic of those sketches came from the short form storytelling. Maybe the magic of these internet personalities was the way people saw them on the internet. The narrative, long-form storytelling wasn’t it.
This isn’t to say that people haven’t jumped from internet fame to a budding movie or television career. I already mentioned that Bo Burnham and the Paul Brothers found success in other avenues than their YouTube and Vine origins. Justin Bieber was found and given a music career because of YouTube singing videos he made. Jimmy Tatro went from YouTube to a series of supporting roles in comedy flicks, as well as a starring role in the first season of American Vandal. And then there was Rachel Zegler who essentially went from singing on YouTube to starring in the remake of West Side Story and winning awards for her performance. Success from these avenues can happen.
The success comes when the investment is in the creator and their growth, though. It doesn’t come from taking their idea and simply giving it more time and money. Pictures of a cat that always looks grumpy doesn’t translate to a major motion picture when the idea hinges on the punchline of a cat looking grumpy. A Twitter feed about a dad saying insensitive things can’t sustain a 22-episode half-hour sitcom season. Fred… Well, Fred got three movies. I’ll see them eventually and give my thoughts then. Right now, I don’t think that character could necessarily sustain three feature length movies. But that’s an assumption.
Studios and filmmakers are always trying to find new ideas, while sticking with something familiar. If there’s a new social media outlet of some sort, or a new breeding ground for content, they’ll find a way to capitalize on that. They’ll want to use it to line their own pockets with money. That’s how the film business works. New ideas are great, but they need to come with a built-in audience. Viral internet personalities have that audience. If only that audience would translate to box office receipts. Or good content. More often.
Now let’s get some notes in here:
- I mentioned a couple movies in this post that I’ve covered previously. They were The Wicker Man (week 522) and Not Cool (week 439).
- The director of Grumpy Cat’s Worst Christmas Ever was Tim Hill. He also directed Alvin and the Chipmunks (week 470).
- Reese Alexander made an appearance in Grumpy Cat’s Worst Christmas Ever. It was his sixth Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance after The Marine 3: Homefront (week 30), In the Name of the King: Two Worlds (week 220), Cop and a Half: New Recruit (week 340), Far Cry (week 364), and The Search for Santa Paws (week 420).
- Another sixth appearance in Grumpy Cat’s Worst Christmas Ever came from Jay Brazeau. He had previously shown up in House of the Dead (week 59), Warriors of Virtue (week 88), Snow Dogs (week 322), Far Cry (week 364), and Santa Paws 2: The Santa Pups (week 420).
- Stephen Stanton was in Playing for Keeps (week 21), Foodfight! (week 143), and Grumpy Cat’s Worst Christmas Ever.
- Russell Peters played Santa in Grumpy Cat’s Worst Christmas Ever. It wasn’t his first Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance. He was also in New Year’s Eve (week 57) and Fifty Shades of Black (week 219).
- Tasya Teles returned from Skin Trade (week 146) for Grumpy Cat’s Worst Christmas Ever.
- Rebecca Georgelin was in both Grumpy Cat’s Worst Christmas Ever and Russell Madness (week 382).
- Grumpy Cat’s Worst Christmas Ever featured Veronica Alicino from Alvin and the Chipmunks (week 470).
- Finally, Keith Dallas was in Say It Isn’t So (week 481) before popping up in Grumpy Cat’s Worst Christmas Ever.
- Have you seen Grumpy Cat’s Worst Christmas Ever? What did you think? What are some other internet celebrities who made bad movies that I missed? Let me know in the comments.
- You can share any suggestions for movies I should be watching in the comments. I’m open to all suggestions.
- Check out Sunday “Bad” Movies on Instagram for some more bad movie fun.
- This post went up a little bit late. As such, the look forward is to a movie I already released a post for. The post after this one was supposed to be for A Christmas Story 2. That came out over a week ago, though. Check it out anyway. Okay? I’ll see you again for another post soon.
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