We talk to creator Ben Nemtin about his show “Greatest Party Story Ever”

John Blabber: How did you come to work in television and create Four Peaks?

Ben Nemtin: Friends and I grew up together in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. We started a bucket list and started filming everything on it. After we filmed something on our list, we would cross that off and then we’d help a stranger film something, this eventually became the basis for The Buried Life. We were going to do a movie-documentary, but we ended up doing a TV show for MTV instead. We jumped into the television business with no experience, but loved so much every step of the process that’s why we started Four Peaks.

John Blabber: Where did the idea of Greatest Party Story Ever come about?

Ben Nemtin: After we started Four Peaks, we started coming up with different ideas and Greatest Party Story Ever became our first project. The idea for the series came when a friend of mine from told us an epic story in college where he and seven of his friends drank copious amounts of malt beer and passed out. Turns out, my friend got pissed on by all seven of his pals while sleeping. Over the course of the next several months, he returned the favor by pissing on each one of his friends with at least one other person helping him out against someone else.  We thought it was so funny that we wanted to bring this story to life. We thought other people must have stories like this and so started developing this as a show with the premise revolving around real kids telling real stories.

John Blabber: How did Shadowmachine came to be the production studio behind the series?

Ben Nemtin: I hooked up with Shadowmachine by way of a friend. We met with all of the studios in town and Shadowmachine we thought had such a deep love for alternative animation and I was a huge fan of a lot of their work like BoJack Horseman, Robot Chicken, and TripTank. These guys are one of the best studios in town and Corey (Campodonico) and Alex (Bulkley) are such good guys and we really vibed with their sensibilities. Plus, this studio specializes in alternative forms of animation. For this show, we dabbled with stop motion, puppets, etc. because we wanted the show to feel very creative. The format has been done before, so we wanted to make sure the animation was a premium.

John Blabber: My favorite part of the show is the variety in animation types, can you tease some more for the rest of the season?

Ben Nemtin: We’ve got over 60 animation styles during the course of the 10-episode season.

We’ve got an episode coming up done in a 80s style super hero animation. We’ve got another animation with a painted background. We’ve got an Oscar-nominated produced claymation episode. The next episode will feature a story told with Popsicle sticks. An episode done in Japanese anime-style is on the way and we’ve got another one with people animated as animals. We have a really cool one inspired by a doodle done by a Shadowmachine animator featuring highlighter on notebook paper with a markered background. We’ve got puppets, sock puppets, and marionettes coming plus dolls and action figures done like Robot Chicken. We have this one story featuring a bunch of stills of this guy and his friends where we used still photographs to animate the characters but with an animated background i.e like Adventure Time.

John Blabber: Can you tease a few more of the ‘Greatest Party Stories Ever’?

Ben Nemtin: We have a kid that drops acid and meets God. God tells him to go home,  so he flies that night to NYC and reconnects with his family. This other dude walks into his dad jerking off to gay porn and his mom’s a clown. We have another guy wakes up naked in a hostel in Australia. Turns out he was kicked out of bar while naked and they had to kind of corral him out of the bar. We have this girl who ends up at Rihanna’s birthday party and then this other girl becomes Kim Kardashian’s number one fan and they still DM to this day.

John Blabber: Were there any rules put in place for the show when it came to the stories? i.e. length, gross, etc

Ben Nemtin: We wanted the stories to be real with preference given to stories that have photos and videos. We don’t just have party stories, and less than half of the stories mention liquor. Rather, it’s about the funniest and true stories we could fine because truth is stranger than fiction. We want this to be our version of America’s Funniest Videos. What’s also great is that anyone can be on the show.

John Blabber: What has the response been like for those looking to get THEIR story on the show?
Ben Nemtin: Since the first two episodes , we’ve had 100s of submissions. What we look for is an awesome story that has a great beginning, middle, and end with a great story teller that holds on to the story with gusto. It also comes down to the outrageousness of the story. Go to MTV.com and submit your story and it becomes immortalized in animation forever.

 

The Greatest Party Story Ever airs Thursday Nights on MTV @ 10:30 pm ET/PT, check your local listings. Watch a clip for Thursday Night’s episode entitled “The Greatest MILF Story”. In it, hooking up with someone’s girlfriend and their mom in the same day; and crashing Rihanna’s birthday party. Also: why not to get high in a theme park.