Konk
The show lasted 13
weeks. We had no idea what we were doing. Ben Davis running the
switcher and providing visuals, Mark Capps with the smart ass remarks on
CG(character generator), Dan Heyman running around tweaking things and
laughing, and a few other people wandering in and out.
The first few weeks were a fun mess. I was sitting down... a boring camera shot... me with a turtleneck pulled up over my mouth... a mess.
The show had no name.
It was something about the turtleneck I think. The callers didn't know what to make of me, and I felt anonymously free to say what ever the hell I wanted. I was quick to hang up on people... there were always more people on the line... Hanging up on people was fun, and it made a wonderful noise. After a while I started to vocally emulate the sound when I hung up on particularly annoying callers. KONK! It caught on... We knew we were on to something when people started calling in and begging to be Konked... The show was then called Konk... Then slowly, the name of the show started to become my name... and I was Konk.
Sometime in those first few weeks, we decided that we wanted every episode of the show to look completely different. Every live talk show on access looked exactly the same(the only exception being Ask Livia Live) people sitting in front of a blue curtain with the studio lights up full. That's what our first few episodes looked like. The first thing I thought of was to change the camera angle, but the studio cameras were attached to pedestals and would only raise or lower about 18 inches. My solution was to check out an additional camera and tripod and mount it(sort of) to the top of a big studio ladder. It was definitely more interesting than the standard studio cam shot. Kinda like a bank robber decided to put on a show for the surveillance camera... and the security guard watching had dropped some acid. Kinda like that.There was no clear vision. Ben, Mark and I each were doing our own thing. And like a most jam bands, a lot of the time it's just self indulgent crap, but then everybody would sync up and something very cool would happen. The turtleneck and the surveillance cam stuck, but everything else changed from week to week. One week I'd be in a snorkel and flippers, the next I be wearing a Shriner's Fez. Ben would be mixing in freaky 3D demos off his commodore 128, and footage from old war documentaries. Mark would be alternately making fun of me, the callers, and the institution of television itself.
The show started the week we invaded Iraq for the first Gulf War. I thought after the first week that that was all we were going to talk about. But the caller's were bored with it pretty quick. The caller's were crazy. We didn't screen them. It was a kick after a few weeks when callers started saying that they keep missing their Tuesday morning class because our show was on till 3AM. People started writing us letters... How weird is that? I can't imagine writing a letter to any television show, ever.
Eventually,(about 10 weeks in) we were getting bored... the callers all started to sound the same, we were running out of things to do in the small studio, and I realized that an upcoming show would fall on an April 1st. I started thinking that it would be a good time to end the show and do something else.
A prank, a hoax... a homicide.
Konk was an ass, and his life had been threatened countless times in the short life of the show... it made sense. We could rig some squibs, and shoot some blanks, but there were problems. We didn't know anything about how to do it, and technically the ACTV studios were on government property and there was a law against having handguns in the building... Not a rule, but a law. If I did the bullet hit live, people would probably call the station, the security guard would come and check it out, and I could be suspended, or worse.
Where there's a will there's a way. I called the Texas Film Commission, and they referred me to a weapons expert out of Houston. He had done a lot of film work, including work on the first Robocop. He said he would do it for under $200(gun, condoms, and everything). I was only making about $160/week in my restaurant job, but it was worth it. The solution to the second problem was the turtleneck. The problem with pre-taping the show was it was a live call in talk show. With the turtleneck on though, no one could ever really see me mouth moving. So, I could pre-tape the video portion of the show, roll it in on Monday night, and take calls live on the audio portion of the show right up to the point where I get shot. So the plan was set, I would pre-tape the episode in the studio, but a few days before. I scheduled the studio late on a Saturday night, the studio was going to be mostly empty and I was hoping the insulation in the main studio would mask the sound of the gunfire. The taping went well, I set up the camera and lights and taped about twenty minutes of me pacing around like I was taking calls. The effects team showed up and wired me up with a squib in the front and back. I wanted to stand sideways to the camera and have my chest and back explode when the gun went off. My roommate Marc Savlov was the only one of my friends who hadn't appeared on the show so I got him to be the gunman. It all went very fast, we blocked it and rehearsed it a couple times and went straight into it... he walks up, I'm a little surprised that a stranger is in the studio, a few words are exchanged, he pulls out a gun.. I'm visibly nervous. He points it at me, I asked him to calm down, he shoots once and runs out of frame...
I'm on the cold cement floor gasping for each breath, no acting necessary thanks to the controlled explosives that I just paid someone to duct tape to my body. I had instructed the efx crew to leave me alone after the hit while I recorded my death scene. I had some of the control room staff run in to my aid and sit with me with until the end.
It all goes smoothly.
-------------------------------------------------------------
It was week 13 of an experiment in no-rules television, and it was about to come to an abrupt end. Konk's fate was sealed. I'd watched him die dozens of times, from several angles.
If I had the chance to do it over again, I would have done several things differently. The lighting was too dark, and I was too far from the camera. You couldn't really see the bullet hit very well. The squibs, which cost me more than a week's salary and left me with softball sized bruises on my chest and back, hardly register. The muzzle-flash of the gun did look cool though.
Oh well, the amateurish nature of the production probably helped to convince people of it's authenticity.
11:55 April 1st, 1990
I press play on a tape deck and fade in from black. The key to the whole operation was that I was not going to be in the studio on April 1st. I was going to be sitting comfortably in the control room with a hand held mic while we broadcast a video that was taped and edited two days earlier. The tape had no sound for the first 20 minutes or so, and then transitioned to the death scene which lasted about 8 minutes. For the first 20 minutes, I took calls live like a normal show, the viewer saw me wandering around the studio wearing a turtleneck pulled up over my mouth and nose. The angle of the shot and my distance from the camera made it impossible for the audience to tell that video was not live. The show is going smoothly, and I know it's getting close. I pick up the phone, and it's a voice I recognize. He's called before, and we have a brief conversation until I hear the taped audio fade in. I shut up and fade out the live mic. There is a clear difference in the audio quality and I'm worried that it's going to ruin it.
Marc walks into the frame and the scene starts to play out. The guy on the phone keeps talking. Marc pulls out the gun. The control room is completely silent. BLAM! Konk hits the ground hard.
The caller, annoyed and clearly not believing that it was real, says "Why did this have to happen during my phone call?" I hang up on him.
A girl runs in from off screen and frantically says "Keith, we've called 911, they'll be here soon... hold on, hold on." The guys in the control room are laughing and say, "OK Keith roll the other tape"... "No," I say, "Wait a minute..."
I cut the video to black, but leave the audio up. The phone lines are full and blinking. Now the audio is sounding more bleak, the girl is crying, I'm gasping for every last breath. It's painful to hear as the seconds tick by.
"Keith, roll the tape!" "No, not yet.." I start hanging up on people, clearing the lines, they fill right back up, I hang up on all of them again, and the phone line lights immediately come back on.
"KEITH! ROLL THE TAPE!" "ok... now." I push play.
The tape they wanted me to roll in was the acknowledgment of the April fool's joke. Two night's earlier when we did the death scene, we filmed the whole process and I cut it the night before into a little documentary of the preparations. It's hand held, black and white, and is the first time the audience is going to see me without the turtleneck.
About five minutes into the doc, the security guard comes and tells me that there are policeman at the front desk asking about a shooting. I walk down the hall and turn the corner to find 8 cops carrying shotguns and semiautomatic rifles. They approach and tell me that they had multiple 911 calls reporting that they saw someone on the TV get shot. I start to explain the situation, "I'm the one who was shot, but it's just a TV show." they're not getting it, they're not really listening. They just got the call that an armed gunman is shooting people at a local TV station, and their adrenaline levels are through the roof. I take them to the control room to show the documentary. They recall the two ambulances that have been dispatched.
It's starting to sink in. Now they're getting upset.
They want to speak to someone in charge, they want to see my license, they do not want to go back downtown empty handed. I try to explain to them that at a public access television station the producer(me) is entirely responsible for the content of the show. If I were to broadcast something obscene or illegal, I would have to face the consequences... but, I did not do anything of the sort. It's 1am, and they want to wake up someone. They get the security guard to call up the head of access, and she confirms what I'm saying. She's not happy, and given my recent history (suicide hotline), she probably would have liked them to arrest me, but they had nothing.
Actually, they had one more move. The biggest guy (I'm 6', so he was easily 6'5") pulls me aside, and the other 8 cops holding shotguns form a tight circle around me... Then they start with the yelling. I'm oddly calm. I hadn't planned on the cops showing up, but I expected to get yelled at. I thought this through, and I did nothing legally wrong.
A funny April fools joke turned into a little 'War of the Worlds'
They leave.
The next night one of the TV news stations picks up the story and runs it as the lead. This time they do not interview me, instead they go with 911 recordings and quotes from a viewer and the Mayor. The mayor called my action 'Sick". Wow. The local newspaper and other TV stations correctly identified it as non-news and didn't mention it, but this one station ran it several more time that week. The local free weekly decided to write a series of stories on access and featured my stunt on the cover. This decision probably had more to do with the fact that my housemates Ben, Mark, and Marc were all working for The Chronicle in some capacity at the time, but it's a cool addition to the scrapbook.
So... it's been 20 years since the events described here.
Were my actions irresponsible? Yeah... clearly... but I was 21 years old. It was a youthful indiscretion.
Sen. Robert Byrd was a member of the Ku Klux Klan, President George Bush was snorting coke and getting arrested for DWI, and I was making TV.
The first few weeks were a fun mess. I was sitting down... a boring camera shot... me with a turtleneck pulled up over my mouth... a mess.
The show had no name.
It was something about the turtleneck I think. The callers didn't know what to make of me, and I felt anonymously free to say what ever the hell I wanted. I was quick to hang up on people... there were always more people on the line... Hanging up on people was fun, and it made a wonderful noise. After a while I started to vocally emulate the sound when I hung up on particularly annoying callers. KONK! It caught on... We knew we were on to something when people started calling in and begging to be Konked... The show was then called Konk... Then slowly, the name of the show started to become my name... and I was Konk.
Sometime in those first few weeks, we decided that we wanted every episode of the show to look completely different. Every live talk show on access looked exactly the same(the only exception being Ask Livia Live) people sitting in front of a blue curtain with the studio lights up full. That's what our first few episodes looked like. The first thing I thought of was to change the camera angle, but the studio cameras were attached to pedestals and would only raise or lower about 18 inches. My solution was to check out an additional camera and tripod and mount it(sort of) to the top of a big studio ladder. It was definitely more interesting than the standard studio cam shot. Kinda like a bank robber decided to put on a show for the surveillance camera... and the security guard watching had dropped some acid. Kinda like that.There was no clear vision. Ben, Mark and I each were doing our own thing. And like a most jam bands, a lot of the time it's just self indulgent crap, but then everybody would sync up and something very cool would happen. The turtleneck and the surveillance cam stuck, but everything else changed from week to week. One week I'd be in a snorkel and flippers, the next I be wearing a Shriner's Fez. Ben would be mixing in freaky 3D demos off his commodore 128, and footage from old war documentaries. Mark would be alternately making fun of me, the callers, and the institution of television itself.
The show started the week we invaded Iraq for the first Gulf War. I thought after the first week that that was all we were going to talk about. But the caller's were bored with it pretty quick. The caller's were crazy. We didn't screen them. It was a kick after a few weeks when callers started saying that they keep missing their Tuesday morning class because our show was on till 3AM. People started writing us letters... How weird is that? I can't imagine writing a letter to any television show, ever.
Eventually,(about 10 weeks in) we were getting bored... the callers all started to sound the same, we were running out of things to do in the small studio, and I realized that an upcoming show would fall on an April 1st. I started thinking that it would be a good time to end the show and do something else.
A prank, a hoax... a homicide.
Konk was an ass, and his life had been threatened countless times in the short life of the show... it made sense. We could rig some squibs, and shoot some blanks, but there were problems. We didn't know anything about how to do it, and technically the ACTV studios were on government property and there was a law against having handguns in the building... Not a rule, but a law. If I did the bullet hit live, people would probably call the station, the security guard would come and check it out, and I could be suspended, or worse.
Where there's a will there's a way. I called the Texas Film Commission, and they referred me to a weapons expert out of Houston. He had done a lot of film work, including work on the first Robocop. He said he would do it for under $200(gun, condoms, and everything). I was only making about $160/week in my restaurant job, but it was worth it. The solution to the second problem was the turtleneck. The problem with pre-taping the show was it was a live call in talk show. With the turtleneck on though, no one could ever really see me mouth moving. So, I could pre-tape the video portion of the show, roll it in on Monday night, and take calls live on the audio portion of the show right up to the point where I get shot. So the plan was set, I would pre-tape the episode in the studio, but a few days before. I scheduled the studio late on a Saturday night, the studio was going to be mostly empty and I was hoping the insulation in the main studio would mask the sound of the gunfire. The taping went well, I set up the camera and lights and taped about twenty minutes of me pacing around like I was taking calls. The effects team showed up and wired me up with a squib in the front and back. I wanted to stand sideways to the camera and have my chest and back explode when the gun went off. My roommate Marc Savlov was the only one of my friends who hadn't appeared on the show so I got him to be the gunman. It all went very fast, we blocked it and rehearsed it a couple times and went straight into it... he walks up, I'm a little surprised that a stranger is in the studio, a few words are exchanged, he pulls out a gun.. I'm visibly nervous. He points it at me, I asked him to calm down, he shoots once and runs out of frame...
I'm on the cold cement floor gasping for each breath, no acting necessary thanks to the controlled explosives that I just paid someone to duct tape to my body. I had instructed the efx crew to leave me alone after the hit while I recorded my death scene. I had some of the control room staff run in to my aid and sit with me with until the end.
It all goes smoothly.
-------------------------------------------------------------
It was week 13 of an experiment in no-rules television, and it was about to come to an abrupt end. Konk's fate was sealed. I'd watched him die dozens of times, from several angles.
If I had the chance to do it over again, I would have done several things differently. The lighting was too dark, and I was too far from the camera. You couldn't really see the bullet hit very well. The squibs, which cost me more than a week's salary and left me with softball sized bruises on my chest and back, hardly register. The muzzle-flash of the gun did look cool though.
Oh well, the amateurish nature of the production probably helped to convince people of it's authenticity.
11:55 April 1st, 1990
I press play on a tape deck and fade in from black. The key to the whole operation was that I was not going to be in the studio on April 1st. I was going to be sitting comfortably in the control room with a hand held mic while we broadcast a video that was taped and edited two days earlier. The tape had no sound for the first 20 minutes or so, and then transitioned to the death scene which lasted about 8 minutes. For the first 20 minutes, I took calls live like a normal show, the viewer saw me wandering around the studio wearing a turtleneck pulled up over my mouth and nose. The angle of the shot and my distance from the camera made it impossible for the audience to tell that video was not live. The show is going smoothly, and I know it's getting close. I pick up the phone, and it's a voice I recognize. He's called before, and we have a brief conversation until I hear the taped audio fade in. I shut up and fade out the live mic. There is a clear difference in the audio quality and I'm worried that it's going to ruin it.
Marc walks into the frame and the scene starts to play out. The guy on the phone keeps talking. Marc pulls out the gun. The control room is completely silent. BLAM! Konk hits the ground hard.
The caller, annoyed and clearly not believing that it was real, says "Why did this have to happen during my phone call?" I hang up on him.
A girl runs in from off screen and frantically says "Keith, we've called 911, they'll be here soon... hold on, hold on." The guys in the control room are laughing and say, "OK Keith roll the other tape"... "No," I say, "Wait a minute..."
I cut the video to black, but leave the audio up. The phone lines are full and blinking. Now the audio is sounding more bleak, the girl is crying, I'm gasping for every last breath. It's painful to hear as the seconds tick by.
"Keith, roll the tape!" "No, not yet.." I start hanging up on people, clearing the lines, they fill right back up, I hang up on all of them again, and the phone line lights immediately come back on.
"KEITH! ROLL THE TAPE!" "ok... now." I push play.
The tape they wanted me to roll in was the acknowledgment of the April fool's joke. Two night's earlier when we did the death scene, we filmed the whole process and I cut it the night before into a little documentary of the preparations. It's hand held, black and white, and is the first time the audience is going to see me without the turtleneck.
About five minutes into the doc, the security guard comes and tells me that there are policeman at the front desk asking about a shooting. I walk down the hall and turn the corner to find 8 cops carrying shotguns and semiautomatic rifles. They approach and tell me that they had multiple 911 calls reporting that they saw someone on the TV get shot. I start to explain the situation, "I'm the one who was shot, but it's just a TV show." they're not getting it, they're not really listening. They just got the call that an armed gunman is shooting people at a local TV station, and their adrenaline levels are through the roof. I take them to the control room to show the documentary. They recall the two ambulances that have been dispatched.
It's starting to sink in. Now they're getting upset.
They want to speak to someone in charge, they want to see my license, they do not want to go back downtown empty handed. I try to explain to them that at a public access television station the producer(me) is entirely responsible for the content of the show. If I were to broadcast something obscene or illegal, I would have to face the consequences... but, I did not do anything of the sort. It's 1am, and they want to wake up someone. They get the security guard to call up the head of access, and she confirms what I'm saying. She's not happy, and given my recent history (suicide hotline), she probably would have liked them to arrest me, but they had nothing.
Actually, they had one more move. The biggest guy (I'm 6', so he was easily 6'5") pulls me aside, and the other 8 cops holding shotguns form a tight circle around me... Then they start with the yelling. I'm oddly calm. I hadn't planned on the cops showing up, but I expected to get yelled at. I thought this through, and I did nothing legally wrong.
A funny April fools joke turned into a little 'War of the Worlds'
They leave.
The next night one of the TV news stations picks up the story and runs it as the lead. This time they do not interview me, instead they go with 911 recordings and quotes from a viewer and the Mayor. The mayor called my action 'Sick". Wow. The local newspaper and other TV stations correctly identified it as non-news and didn't mention it, but this one station ran it several more time that week. The local free weekly decided to write a series of stories on access and featured my stunt on the cover. This decision probably had more to do with the fact that my housemates Ben, Mark, and Marc were all working for The Chronicle in some capacity at the time, but it's a cool addition to the scrapbook.
So... it's been 20 years since the events described here.
Were my actions irresponsible? Yeah... clearly... but I was 21 years old. It was a youthful indiscretion.
Sen. Robert Byrd was a member of the Ku Klux Klan, President George Bush was snorting coke and getting arrested for DWI, and I was making TV.