Gorgeous Tiny Chicken Machine Show

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Gorgeous Tiny Chicken Machine Show

Genre	Comedy/Talk Show Parody
Created by	Kim Evey and Greg Benson
Presented by	Mediocre Films
Starring	Kim Evey, Payman Benz, Michele Gregory, & Julie Wittner
Theme music composer	Chris Jeffries
Opening theme	"Gorgeous Tiny Chicken Machine Show" performed by The Arigatones
Country of origin	USA
Language(s)	English/Engrish
No. of episodes	8 (as of May 2, 2008)
Production
Producer(s)	Pogo Saito
Running time	approx. 4 minutes per episode
Broadcast
Original channel	YouTube, Crackle
Original airing	February 25, 2007
External links
Official website

Gorgeous Tiny Chicken Machine Show is an internet comedy talk show parody starring a Japanese character called Kiko. The video series debuted on YouTube in 2007 and was created by husband-and-wife team Greg Benson and Kim Evey's production company, Mediocre Films. In spring 2008, a distribution deal with Sony Pictures resulted in 10 new episodes to premiere weekly on the company's C-Spot YouTube channel and its Crackle web video site.^[1]

1 History
- 1.1 Independent episodes
- 1.2 Sony episodes
2 Format
3 Recurring characters
4 References
5 External links

[edit] History

[edit] Independent episodes

Originally developed for a live improv venue,^[2], the show's first online episode was uploaded to YouTube on February 25, 2007. It was featured on the site, and quickly rose to viral video status. As of May 28, 2007, it had over 1.4 million views on YouTube and had been featured on a wide variety of other sites. The episode was screened at the FanTasia Festival on July 20, 2007, marking its Canadian premiere on screen.^[3]

David Spade took particular interest in the fledgling series,^[4] promoting it on his show, The Showbiz Show with David Spade. Pairing with Mediocre Films, they created an episode specifically for his show in which one of his co-workers is a guest on Kiko's show.^[5]^[6]

A second episode was uploaded on YouTube, but shortly taken off the site by the producers. A vlog by Benson was quickly posted stating that new episodes would be coming, and negotiations were being made about the fate of the show. This created speculation about the series possibly being picked up by a network.^{[citation needed]} On May 10, 2007, a Kiko music video excerpted from the original episode two and titled "JUICY!" was posted.

After considerable delays, a revised second episode was uploaded to YouTube on May 29, 2007. This episode was chosen as "YouTube Star of the Moment" by viewers of the Attack of the Show! program on G4 for the week ending June 10, 2007; host Kevin Pereira described the show as "a cross between Letterman, Pee-Wee Herman, Steve Irwin, Emeril, and a Japanese schoolgirl on meth."^[7]^[4]

[edit] Sony episodes

After a long hiatus, a third episode was finally uploaded to YouTube on March 28, 2008, in conjunction with the show's debut as part of C-Spot and Crackle. It was announced at that time that C-Spot would release 10 episodes, coming out on successive Fridays as part of an original-programming lineup of six programs. The fourth episode, featuring pornographic actor Ron Jeremy, drew increased media attention around its April 4, 2008, debut, with Los Angeles Times' Web Scout article titled "Sony's C-Spot: New Web comedy lineup surprisingly clean despite Ron Jeremy cameo."^[8]^[9]

Monsters and Critics reported that same week that the series would be available on C-Spot via several channels of distributions, including AOL Video, Hulu, YouTube and Crackle, as well as through Verizon's V Cast and directly to Sony's Bravia televisions. The same story indicated that additional episodes would have guest appearances by writer-actor Wil Wheaton, actor-director Adam Arkin, and actor-director Michael O’Keefe;^[10] Arkin's episode — in which he played a bewildered mycologist —^[4] was made available April 25, at which time C-Spot announced that Wheaton would appear in the May 16 episode. Wheaton actually appeared in the May 30th episode, however.

[edit] Format

Episodes follow a fairly standard format: The episode begins with the theme song followed by Kiko introducing herself as the host and introducing the guest ("please for you to clap hands and give cheering for..."), mispronouncing their name in an off-color fashion, and then bringing the guest star out from a side curtain. The guest attempts to correct Kiko's pronounciation, but Kiko continues mispronouncing the guest's name throughout the show (and subtitles reflect the mispronounciation, not the correct name).

Kiko usually leads the guests through a series of zany activities (which usually make the guest rather uncomfortable), which are usually interrupted by Kiko announcing, "Now it's time to spin the Wheel of Fun!" Kiko spins a wheel of a chicken, and when it lands on a space (containing unspecified Japanese characters) pointed to by the chicken's beak, she indicates yet another zany activity for the characters to participate in.

The show ends with the guest star appearing very uncomfortable and Kiko announcing the end of the show as the credits roll.

[edit] Recurring characters

Kiko is played by Evey, who also writes the series. While the character is Japanese, Evey was born in South Korea and grew up in the United States.^[11]

Additional regular characters include UniCow^[2] (Payman Benz) and ^[12] Cownicorn, two hybrid cow-unicorns; Panda^[2] (Michele Gregory),^[12] and Go-Go Dancer (Julie Wittner),^[13] who does not speak. Guest Rick Pope (Ryan Smith) —^[13] which Kiko mispronounces as "Lick Poop," a mispronunciation that is transcribed on-screen — appeared in episodes 1, 4, and 5; one follow-up video from Mediocre Films is titled "Lick Poop's Video Diary" and purports to be Rick Pope's private vlog, stolen, edited, and uploaded by UniCow.^[14]