by Joe Fielder
Members of LA's "punk rock Buddy Holly" act The Monolators are doing something a little different with their latest project, Mechanookie.
We like differences, both small and large, so spoke with Eli Monolator recently to find out more.
Exactly who or what is Mechanookie? And how can we be a part of it?
Mechanookie is the title of a radio play that I've been working on for about the past two years. It's an episodic science fiction show that takes place in 3000 AD and features new songs by The Monolators. It's about a a dumpy robot named Mechanor and his famous roommate, The Magician, who are both in love with the same girl, a beautiful cyborg crossing guard named Robot Girl. We've written and recorded six 15-minute episodes, with a full cast of actors (some of them being members of local Los Angeles bands) and each episode has a Monolators song at the end. The songs are played by us but sung by different members of the cast.
We'll broadcast a new episode every week for the six-week run starting March 8 on mechanookie.com and then we're having a live performance of the entire play with all the actors and music at the Hudson Theater in Hollywood on Saturday, April 14.
For those of you who're asking themselves "radio play, what are you talking about?": radio plays were a popular form of entertainment in the United States before television took over in the 1950's. People would tune in to hear The Lone Ranger or Little Orphan Annie (or whatever) every week on their radios instead of watching them on TV. Radio plays are pretty much dead here in the US now, but they're still produced regularly in the UK by the BBC. Some famous tv shows & movies actually started out as radio plays on the BBC, like The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy and The Mighty Boosh. I've always liked radio plays and have produced a couple myself through the years, so Mechanookie is the latest one.
How did the project first begin?
I used to work as a freelance animator, and in 2004 a client asked me to create a pair of 30-second "faux anime" cartoon clips that could be shown on television and pass for genuine Japanese animation. I'm not sure how accurate my version of anime actually is (probably: not very), but the project turned out well, and I called it "Mechanookie." This is where the characters of Robot Girl, School Girl, and Mechanor first appeared.
These clips were licensed as stock footage and, over the years, have appeared in all sorts of different network tv shows: The Bernie Mac Show, Weeds, and Jailbreak, among others. I still have friends write me now and then to say that they spotted Mechanookie clips on tv.
So--in 2009, Mary and I were talking about experimenting with new ways of releasing Monolators songs other than our usual LP/EP formats. Mary suggested that we try doing a release in the form of a radio play--I needed a theme for the script, and Mary suggested adapting and expanding Mechanookie, so that's what we've done.
What's the inspiration behind it?
I mentioned that it started off as an anime parody, but I abandoned that pretty quickly. When I started to write the various episodes, I realized that the action scenes you often have in sci-fi/fantasy adventure shows are difficult to pull off over the radio--it's not that easy to describe laser-gun battles and explosions without pictures.
I struggled with the direction of the script for a long time until Mary and I started watching melodrama romance movies and tv shows: we watched a lot of 1950's Douglas Sirk movies like "Magnificent Obsession" and "Imitation Of Life," and a whole bunch of Bette Davis movies (my favorite being "Now Voyager"). We also watched tv shows like "Dynasty" and "Return To Eden." Instead of explosions and gunfights (well--there's explosions and gunfights in Dynasty, granted) these movies were more about feelings and relationships and personal conflicts than things blowing up. I figured out that they were a better fit for Mechanookie than anime was--but it took me a long time to learn how to write dialogue that focused on character development instead of action. That's one reason why I've been working on this play for 2 years, but the basic inspiration ended up being romantic melodrama. And people crying--lots of crying.
When will you be performing the songs?
All of them will be performed by the cast at the live show at the Hudson Theater on April 14.
Sounds fun!
Thanks, Joe!
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