In The '30s and '40s on Saturday morning, the local movie theater would play ten or fifteen minute serials, movies which were for kids mostly and which usually ended with some dire circumstance the hero (ine) was in. Lots of times they were hanging off a cliff just about to fall. Hence the name 'cliffhangers'. This was to keep you interested so you'd come back the next Saturday to see what happened. When I was making Elephant Parts I stumbled across one of these serials in thirteen parts called "The Phantom Empire". It starred Gene Autry (and in my estimation Betsy King Ross, the worlds youngest trick rider) and it was set in a place named Radio Ranch. The story was seriously wacko and more fun than you could imagine. I took inspiration from it and thus was born in my mind Video Ranch, or Videoranch as it has become. Radio Ranch was wonderful, with an underground "Scientific city of Murania", an evil Queen, a stack of bad guys, and of course Autry's band singing songs about barnyard animals. Wow. Never more cosmically gone than this. The kids club in the serial was called the Thunderiders (you'd have to see it to understand) and from time to time Betsy King Ross and her brother would turn to the camera in the middle of a chase and say "and that's why we ... bla bla bla ... exposition, exposition,exposition." As time went on I wrote a screenplay with some other folks and called it Videoranch and I wrote a bunch of songs for it. I say a bunch and I know how that bothers the English since they think of "bunch" as having only to do with flowers, but I MEAN a bunch. Those songs and that musical never happened, at least not yet. I put the songs on the "Newer Stuff" and stashed the screenplay until better times. Still Videoranch keeps creeping back up and now I find the whole spirit of the thing to be perfect for this brave new world. From Gene and Betsy King(there's a song title if I ever heard one) and Radio Ranch years ago to Videoranch today and its unlimited world of fancy, the same spirit has guided us all. Let it guide you as well as you explore the whimsical, fanciful, musical, and periodically bizarre, world of Videoranch.com
Nez
