Once the whole school got around to watching “Stripped“, I decided that in my senior year I would recreate it. Not only did I have more friends, but they were all a thousand times funnier. I also had the advantage of people telling me what they wanted to see from future episodes. So, I created “Into The Arts”, my “Stripped” spin off.
After uploading this video, I remember showing my father. He is the funniest person I know so I was really anticipating his opinion. His viewing was full of laughter, but I’ll never forget what he said to me after; “you sure you want to post this?”
I was like, “What do you mean ‘do I want to post this’?”
He expressed to me the canceling that could ensue because of my actions. I thought to myself, “well he’s probably right, I should’ve at least censored the N-Word,” But something about that felt disingenuous. It would be a different story if I showed a bunch of crackers saying the word, but my two friends I filmed were actually having a legitimate conversation. This is how people in high school spoke.
There was only one successful finished episode of “Into The Arts” due to tensions between me and another cast member. That sounds ridiculous since I was only seventeen at the time, but it was a legitimate fight that had most people at each others throats.
It wasn’t until the summer of 2021 that I uploaded the unfinished episode 2, which had the potential of being the best one by far. I uploaded it by popular demand, and it ended up making a lot of the people from the show very nostalgic.
Click here as well if you want to see the teaser I created for the series as well.
altman on film 