It’s a dog eat dog world, especially when it comes to lemonade stands. At least, that’s what James, Eric, Mitchell, and Justin find out in the new web series, Sunday School. This six-episode series was just launched and is available for viewing in its entirety at www.201pictures.com/sunday-school.
It’s a co-production between 201 Pictures and St. Albert’s Guerrilla Motion Pictures, complete with a team of 20 people on screen and behind the camera. Justin Cauti, the man behind 201, explained that the idea hit him a few years ago. He just needed the help of a few good friends to put it onto digital celluloid.
“I had the idea back when I was still in school. I was 22,” he said. “From the beginning, this was a group venture where me and the four lead characters wrote it together, and then Sam (Reid) and Justin (Kueber) helped us shoot it.”
The concept is this: four friends in the prime of their lives open up a lemonade stand because nothing else seems to be working for them. Justin (Cauti) quits his job at a window factory and his Ä‚Ä˝ber-motivational friend Mitchell (Mitchell Bösecke) convinces him that his future is still in sales, just not in windows. They set up a lemonade stand along with good-hearted Eric (Eric Leonhardt) who has just let James (James Wilkinson) crash on his couch – indefinitely – after his girlfriend dumps him.
Together, they experience the pitfalls and pratfalls of being in your mid-20s and operating a business that usually remains the exclusive domain of eight-year-olds. Like so many passion projects, the inspiration for it all was spurred right out of the headlines of the creators’ own lives.
“A lot of it is based inside the reality of who we are but all the characters are taken to extreme versions of themselves,” Reid explained.
He and Kueber even take on bit parts as rival tomato juice stand salespeople, bringing the tale to another level of absurd surrealism.
Sunday School is entirely binge-able, even on work breaks, as all six episodes clock in at just around the one-hour mark.
Cauti praised his collaborators, even calling Reid out as a “wizard with editing.”
“It turned out better than I ever imagined it could be.”
The good news is that the show is as much fun to watch as it was for the team to make.
“Every day was fun on this! There’s been some [projects] that I’ve worked on in the past year, that have been like, ‘oh, I don’t want to go film’ but this one, every day, ‘I can’t wait!’ ” Kueber enthused.
The better news is that Cauti et al are already at work on season two with hopes to keep the good times rolling.
