The Smart Show

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The Smart Show is a daily web series driven by Holiday Inn Express and hosted by America Online and HBO's "This just In" comedy site. The premise of the show is to send two comedic documentarians on a cross-country road trip exploring what's so smart about America. The traveling program kicks off in October, 2007 from Boston, Massachusetts and wends its way towards Los Angeles, California over the course of two months, stopping along the route to showcase clever, witty and unexpected ideas, places and faces across America. The creators seek to reach beyond the obvious, traditional book smarts to uncover a full spectrum of extraordinary ideas across the country.

While traveling through big cities and backroad towns, storylines include innovative businesses, extraordinary folk customs, quirky individual talents and even down-to-earth things like great regional food and local activities that are not obvious to the town's outsiders. Some examples are: a high-tech self-cleaning public toilet, an alarm clock that physically runs away at the touch of a snooze button, a band that makes music with typewriters. Think about topics that are original, hysterical and have the "ah-ha!" factor. In addition, the show hosts solicit story ideas and road trip stops from their online audience adding a level of spontaneity and room for humorous mishaps along the way. Visitors on the site can also shape the direction of the show by uploading videos of their own smart ideas in their home towns as well as offering responses to other smart postings.

Though the Holiday Inn Express tagline "Stay Smart" was an inspiration for the web program, the show itself was developed to be an open conversation about America's "smart" diversity.

The Hosts

Two hosts, Henry Dittman and Joan Lauckner road trip cross-country to shoot smart stories. Dittman was privately cast and Lauckner was chosen with the help of the Internet voting public. An open casting call for The Smart Show began online at www.hiexpress.com/thesmartshow [1]on July 20th @ 5.p.m. Auditioners submitted two-minute videos showcasing smart places, faces or ideas across America that are also funny, unique and creative. From there, 5 finalists were chosen and required to submit new videos for public voting.

The Route

Major stops along the route are listed in order below, however the show makes additional stops in smaller towns along the way, haphazardly and at the request of The Smart Show's online community.