Letter From LA

Houston's Internet comedy trio lampoons TMZ & Lost: Meet Team Tiger Awesome(you'll laugh)

The Houston-area raised comedy trio of Nick Mundy, Clint Gage, Michael Truly aremaking plenty of web waves.
The guys in cartoon form. From left to right, Michael Truly, Clint Gage, andNick Mundy.
Team Tiger Awesome has lampooned everything from TMZ ...
the Lost finale.

Editor's Note: Former Houstonian and High School for the Performing and Visual Arts grad Ellie Knaus is now an actress and writer in Los Angeles. She will file periodic reports about the entertainment industry and life in LA for CultureMap.

Were you one of the millions of people who caught: “L*O*S*T — The Last 10 Seconds of Lost”? I’m not talking about the season finale on ABC.

I’m referring to Team Tiger Awesome’s series of online comedy sketches that created fever pitch buzz in the weeks leading up to the primetime finale. It garnered the attention of The Huffington Post, Entertainment Weekly, Deadline Hollywood, and TV Guide. It has drawn more than THREE MILLION hits thus far.

Who are the men behind the new media magic?

Team Tiger Awesome is a three-guy comedy group that writes, produces, shoots, performs in, and edits its own material. And yes, moms and dads, they are actually making a living doing it.

Meet Clint Gage, the level-headed dude next door: Michael Truly, the artistic swashbuckler (No, seriously. He lives on a boat); and Nick Mundy, the wrecking ball of fun. They have hundreds of followers on Facebook, Twitter, and the blogging site Tumblr. They tackle all formats: Web series, comedy shorts, television, and film. I’ve even seen them perform a radio play.

How did this Los Angeles based comedy team form? They met by way of Texas.

Let’s flashback to 1992. Nick Mundy, age 11, and Clint Gage, age 10, live on the same block in Spring. They aren’t friends. Mundy invites Gage to participate in a neighborhood game of football. Gage, sensible even at the age of 10, politely declines; tackle football on cement doesn’t interest him. Eventually, after weeks of Mundy’s badgering, Gage caves in and agrees to play.

The game ends when a kid gets tackled into a mailbox and breaks his collarbone. As a result, Gage spends his wonder years terrified of Mundy. In the summer of 2001, Gage walks into CompUSA as a printer representative and reconnects with Mundy, who happens to work there. The guys bond over a common interest: Filmmaking. Mundy graduates from University of St. Thomas. Gage studies at Texas Christian University where he collaborates with Michael Truly on his senior film project. Mundy parties with the guys at TCU on the weekends.

The Texas stars align and you have Team Tiger Awesome.

Well, not exactly. Mundy moved to New York for a year, and when the three finally reconfigured in Los Angeles, they hung out and drank a lot of beer. It wasn’t until the winter of 2006 that their collaborative juices started flowing and they shot a trailer for an upcoming party. They posted it online, and by lunch the next day, the trailer had more than 500 hits.

“So, that got us thinking,” says Mundy, “maybe we should do something, you know, actually worthwhile.”

It’s been a very big year for Team Tiger Awesome. In addition to the success of “L*O*S*T,” they were invited to host an episode of AtomTV on Comedy Central. Their latest comedy sketch "Lil' TMZ" premieres this week on Cracked.com.

I’ve worked with the guys a half dozen times and I’m always impressed by their laser beam focus. They are 100 percent invested in their work 100 percent of the time. Plus, they have the imagination and skill to stretch their budget. We shot the James Cameron spoof “Avatar’d” in their living room. It has racked up over 225,000 hits on Comedy Central’s Internet portal Atom.com. I’m excited to see what they’ll do with a feature film budget.

And while TeamTigerAwesome is based in Los Angeles, Gage and Mundy are Houston boys at heart. Clint daydreams about the original Ninfa’s Restaurant on Navigation, just south of downtown.

“Get the fajitas with chicken a la Berry,” he insists. “It’s floating in butter and every kind of hot ass pepper you can imagine. Spectacular.” And don’t get them started on their beloved Astros. They spend the baseball season cursing their TV set, Miller Lite cans strewn at their feet.

Watch Clint Gage as a contestant on Wipeout Tuesday at 7 p.m. on ABC 13. Follow Ellie Knaus' blog at myprincipality.com and twitter @EllieInLa. Check out her work with TeamTigerAwesome at ellieknaus.com.

See Team Tiger Awesome's latest comedy sketch "Lil TMZ':

It's the Lil' TMZ Playset! -- powered by Cracked.com

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Holidays Are Here

Ben Stiller delivers lighthearted fun in new Hulu movie Nutcrackers

Photo courtesy of Nutcracker Productions LLC/Hulu

Ben Stiller, Atlas Janson, Homer Janson, and Ulysses Janson in Nutcrackers.

A holiday-themed comedy seems like just what the doctor ordered right now, and the new Hulu film Nutcrackers steps up with a little mayhem, heartfelt sentiment, and a nod to traditions. But it doesn't add up to a memorable experience.

The film stars Ben Stiller as Mike, a high-powered Chicago architect with little time for anybody but himself whose sister and brother-in-law are recently deceased. He is supposedly there to place his four nephews — Justice (Homer Janson), Simon (Arlo Janson), Steve (Ulysses Janson), and Samuel (Atlas Janson) — into foster care. But social worker Gretchen (Linda Cardellini) informs Mike that the foster family has fallen through, and he needs to act as guardian until she can find someone else.

Whether they’re still reeling from their parents’ deaths or are just wild in general, the kids prove to be more than a handful for Mike, who always has one eye on the door, hoping to get back to his own life as soon as possible. But the longer he’s forced to stay, the more the kids grow on him, especially when he learns that at least two of them were students at their mom’s dance studio, giving him an idea to stage a version of a certain holiday classic.

Directed by David Gordon Green and written by Leland Douglas, the film would seem to have all the elements that make a holiday film memorable, but the vibe is off right from the start. First of all, the audience is thrown right into the mix along with Mike, with barely any introduction to the main characters. As their backstories are mostly missing, it’s difficult to feel anything — good or bad — about Mike or the kids, and so they just kind of co-exist for the first act of the film.

Green and Douglas can also never decide what kind of people they want the kids to be. The film starts with a scene of them sneaking into an amusement park and causing havoc, and subsequent scenes make it seem like they’re supposed to be hellions. But when the filmmakers start going back-and-forth between them wrecking things and being responsible, down-to-earth kids, the plot thread gets confusing and less interesting.

It’s also perplexing why they would cast Stiller, who’s been known to play straight-laced characters who go off the rails on many occasions, and then not let him do what he does best. Even when confronted with some of the kids’ worst behavior, Mike keeps his reactions in check, which may be good for a real-life uncle, but makes for a less-than-entertaining holiday family film.

Stiller still lives up to his star-billing at times, but the arc of his character is not that inspiring, even when a slight romance starts to bloom between Mike and Gretchen. The Janson brothers, who are making their collective film debut, are fun at times, but their lack of experience shows in their unpolished performances. Cardellini is a nice presence, but she’s not given enough to do to make a big impact.

Nutcrackers is an inoffensive movie in that it’s not so terrible that there’s no way to actually finish it. But there’s little in its story, characters, or attempt to be a holiday movie that can be recommended as a fun family watch, so it’s likely to fade away into streamer oblivion.

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Nutcrackers is now streaming on Hulu.

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