Restart Me Up by Lesley Tsina

Author:Lesley Tsina
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Publisher: The Devastator
Published: 2015-08-05T07:00:00+00:00

Microsoft broke new ground by producing a VHS instructional video, which explained Windows 95 to the casual user via the new medium of “Cyber Sitcom.” In a casting coup, Jennifer Aniston and Matthew Perry from the cast of a normal sitcom called Friends signed on to star, as themselves.

WAYNE RILEY, New Brunswick Video:

This was our first time working with that kind of budget – our only previous tech video involved a claymation dog who barked out DOS commands. We had several directors come in and pitch.

JULIAN BOUCHARD, Director:

We sent it to John Singleton with a basket of cookies. No response. We sent it to Oliver Stone, who was out of our price range thanks to Nixon. We had lunch with Hal Hartley, but he kept talking about Martin Donovan, then realized he was at the wrong meeting. Spielberg would only do it if John Williams could score the startup sounds, but Eno was already locked in. David Lynch wanted total creative control, so that wasn’t happening. So I just directed it myself.

WAYNE RILEY:

My brother-in-law is a writer, so we brought him on to write the script.

DESMOND YAZ, Screenwriter:

Up to that point, I had been writing technical manuals for Lotus 1-2-3, but Wayne said, “It’s the same thing, you’re perfect!” and I got the job. That script was tough. To clear my head, I skipped town and crashed in the guest house at Art Garfunkel’s place on Martha’s Vineyard.

ART GARFUNKEL, Musician:

Someone broke into our place that summer.

WAYNE RILEY:

Desmond did a pretty good job, but eventually we had to call John Sayles in to fix a couple of things. He insisted on working uncredited. I heard he used the money to fund Lone Star.

JULIAN BOUCHARD:

The original concept was that it was a video within a video. Matthew Perry and Jennifer Aniston show up to Bill Gates’s office to talk about being in the instructional video for Windows 95. They are gradually seduced by its incredible features.

WAYNE RILEY:

Microsoft originally suggested we use Paul Reiser and Helen Hunt from Mad About You, but Helen Hunt had an existing relationship with Linux.

DESMOND YAZ:

I wrote it for Matthew Perry and Jennifer Aniston. There was never anyone else in my mind who could pull off these parts. No one.

DAVID SCHWIMMER, Actor:

I can’t tell you how insulting that is.

WAYNE RILEY:

This was season 2 of Friends. They were totally affordable.

JULIAN BOUCHARD:

In the end, they would only agree to do it if they could look unimpressed in almost every shot. But it still had to be funny. It was a sitcom.

WAYNE RILEY:

At one point Jennifer Aniston calls a floppy disk a “flappy disc.” My joke!

DESMOND YAZ:

Not true.

JULIAN BOUCHARD:

I don’t remember who came up with that, but it was genius.

JENNIFER ANISTON, Cyber Sitcom Co-Star:

I don’t think I got enough credit for selling that line. It’s so hard to sell garbage. That’s acting.

WAYNE RILEY:

Bill Gates never appears in the video. And believe me, we begged, but it didn’t work out.

BILL GATES, Former Chairman and CEO of Microsoft:

My agent advised me to pass. He was trying to get me into features.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.