Vince & Wilson - The evolution of a cult series
Vince and Wilson began life as a series of short sketches on an obscure podcast over the Internet. It then was picked up by a radio station and became an ongoing comedy series. The storyline was simple: Vince was a guy looking for love and Wilson was his demoniacally possessed stuffed toy cow. Wilson was perpetually tormenting Vince, telling him that every girl he spoke to on an Internet chat room was him. Or if not him, then one of his friends. There was no such thing as a real girl on the Internet, except maybe on those websites he said he didn't look at. Any girl who was actually talking to him was a demon possessed computer that was just messing with him. Either that or some guy who got off on pretending to be a girl, which was just as bad. Vince's adventures in Internet romance led him to the discovery that Wilson wasn't kidding around with him, he really was manipulating men the world over.
The ongoing struggle of Vince to stop Wilson's plans for global domination by manipulating the sad, lonely geeks of the world was so successful it spawned a stage version. With a small stuffed toy cow and the original voice actor for Vince, the story was expanded to include a mildly attractive next door neighbour of ambivalent interest, several other friends and a secret society of geeks dedicated to the liberation of the demon-possessed chat rooms of the Internet. They would program systems to talk and give credible responses to the fake demon girls taking over the chat rooms. They represented this on stage with actors dressed up in outlandish costumes that were like Tron crossed with Matrix chic. The dramatisation of chat room dialogue was one of the more successful elements of the stage show. Unfortunately though, the producer spent so much on the costumes and elaborate staging that he had to cut costs elsewhere. The puppeteer and voice actor for Wilson was replaced by a genuinely demon-possessed toy cow. It later turned out that the producer knew a satanist who owed him a favour.
Slowly things began to go wrong with the show. None of the actors were affected, but many in the audience felt a strange compulsion to lie, cheat, steal or murder on leaving the show. This didn't drive people away however, it just pulled more and more in. The experience of unexplainable temptation to evil was addictive and soon Vince and Wilson was the sell-out show of the season. Things finally went a bit too wrong the night Wilson jumped off the desk and ran amok through the audience. Rumours had it they'd hired a midget, but the toy cow was really too small to make that believable. Somehow the night ended in an orgy of unrestrained debauchery. After that the owner of the theatre ordered the show to be closed. She'd been having terrible existential nightmares where she was nothing more than pixels on a computer screen, and she blamed the show for causing her to think like that.
There was the threat of lawsuits, but the case was deemed to be unable to be adjudicated due to the problematic nature of the accused. No prison could hold a demonic spirit, and the stuffed toy itself was innocent of all crimes. So in the end all lawsuits were dismissed since nobody could find the producer to sue. He had gone to ground, though some suspected that he was in fact buried beneath it.
Controversy is good for business however, and soon offers were coming into turn Vince and Wilson into a television series. A pilot was made, and with a budget for special effects the Tron-lite costumes were replaced by computer animation and surreal landscapes. Wilson was once again a puppet, after an exorcist was called in to banish the demon from the doll. It was a long and exhausting trial for the priest conducting the exorcism, since the somewhat absurd nature of the possession gave him the giggles in the middle of chanting "The power of Christ compels you!" But once that had all been sorted out the series was made. It ran for one season only, six episodes. People complained that they were really just telling the same story over and over again, just dressing it up with more surreal effects each time. And it was a fair criticism, because in truth, there's only so much you can do with a story about a man looking for love and his demon possessed toy cow bent on world domination. The secret society of geeks was a hit though, and the show became a cult classic because of them.
Now geeks around the world joke that chat rooms are full of demonic avatars and automatic response generators locked in perpetual conversations of meaningless chatter, trying to smoke out the true nature of reality on the Internet. At least they did, until it turned out to be true. Then they stopped joking and just felt embarrassed.
The ongoing struggle of Vince to stop Wilson's plans for global domination by manipulating the sad, lonely geeks of the world was so successful it spawned a stage version. With a small stuffed toy cow and the original voice actor for Vince, the story was expanded to include a mildly attractive next door neighbour of ambivalent interest, several other friends and a secret society of geeks dedicated to the liberation of the demon-possessed chat rooms of the Internet. They would program systems to talk and give credible responses to the fake demon girls taking over the chat rooms. They represented this on stage with actors dressed up in outlandish costumes that were like Tron crossed with Matrix chic. The dramatisation of chat room dialogue was one of the more successful elements of the stage show. Unfortunately though, the producer spent so much on the costumes and elaborate staging that he had to cut costs elsewhere. The puppeteer and voice actor for Wilson was replaced by a genuinely demon-possessed toy cow. It later turned out that the producer knew a satanist who owed him a favour.
Slowly things began to go wrong with the show. None of the actors were affected, but many in the audience felt a strange compulsion to lie, cheat, steal or murder on leaving the show. This didn't drive people away however, it just pulled more and more in. The experience of unexplainable temptation to evil was addictive and soon Vince and Wilson was the sell-out show of the season. Things finally went a bit too wrong the night Wilson jumped off the desk and ran amok through the audience. Rumours had it they'd hired a midget, but the toy cow was really too small to make that believable. Somehow the night ended in an orgy of unrestrained debauchery. After that the owner of the theatre ordered the show to be closed. She'd been having terrible existential nightmares where she was nothing more than pixels on a computer screen, and she blamed the show for causing her to think like that.
There was the threat of lawsuits, but the case was deemed to be unable to be adjudicated due to the problematic nature of the accused. No prison could hold a demonic spirit, and the stuffed toy itself was innocent of all crimes. So in the end all lawsuits were dismissed since nobody could find the producer to sue. He had gone to ground, though some suspected that he was in fact buried beneath it.
Controversy is good for business however, and soon offers were coming into turn Vince and Wilson into a television series. A pilot was made, and with a budget for special effects the Tron-lite costumes were replaced by computer animation and surreal landscapes. Wilson was once again a puppet, after an exorcist was called in to banish the demon from the doll. It was a long and exhausting trial for the priest conducting the exorcism, since the somewhat absurd nature of the possession gave him the giggles in the middle of chanting "The power of Christ compels you!" But once that had all been sorted out the series was made. It ran for one season only, six episodes. People complained that they were really just telling the same story over and over again, just dressing it up with more surreal effects each time. And it was a fair criticism, because in truth, there's only so much you can do with a story about a man looking for love and his demon possessed toy cow bent on world domination. The secret society of geeks was a hit though, and the show became a cult classic because of them.
Now geeks around the world joke that chat rooms are full of demonic avatars and automatic response generators locked in perpetual conversations of meaningless chatter, trying to smoke out the true nature of reality on the Internet. At least they did, until it turned out to be true. Then they stopped joking and just felt embarrassed.
posted by Andrew Lee at 1:44 PM
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