The Return of Sham Fiction

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That’s right, gang! Your favorite sham host and Eric and Marcus are returning! Yes, ‘tis I, Andrew! After a year in the wilderness, sustaining ourselves on a diet of pine needles and tree bark, befriending local hill people and wildlife, the Two Jackets guys are back in civilization and ready to bring you a new season of Sham Fiction! (Hot dang! It’s two words now!)

You remember Sham Fiction, right? It’s our podcast in which we write stories based on films, TV shows, books, and other pop culture sundries that we don’t know much about! Last season—which is still available in your favorite podcatcher—we wrote about such properties as Deadpool, Stranger Things, and The West Wing. This season, we’re bringing you more fun stories on all new stuff!

But hark! A new game is afoot! In this new season, we’re shaking up the show’s format and raising the stakes! Each episode will now feature a head-to-head, no-holds-barred, eat-or-be-eaten DUEL! “But, Andrew,” you say, “that can’t possibly mean…” Mean what? That every new episode of Sham Fiction will have two stories rather than one? Full well it does!

Here’s how it’ll work: The host has only eight minutes to pitch a property of their choosing, after which the two sham-writers each get two minutes to ask questions. After a brief, informative commercial break, the writers return to read their stories, and the host makes their determination as to who loses less! (As you’ll learn, there are no winners in the Sham Fiction arena. It’s pretty brutal.) The trio then takes the remainder of the show to discuss what worked about the stories, what didn’t, and how they compared to the source material.

We’re eager to begin sharing the new season with you, and thankfully there isn’t much time left to wait! The first full episode will drop on Monday, February 5th. From there, we’ll release a new episode every two weeks for the rest of the year.

But hark again! You won’t even have to wait that long! On Monday, January 22nd, we’ll be dropping Episode Zero, in which we discuss the new season and format in detail, as well as three—once again for effect: THREE—demo episodes. These are test ‘casts we recorded last summer to try out the dueling format. The stories in these demos are too good to be stashed away in the sham vault, so we thought we’d share them to give you a preview of what’s to come!

If you haven’t already, go—right cussin’ now!—to your favorite podcatcher and subscribe to the show. That way, you’ll receive the new episodes as they’re released. Get ready to rumble, baby! More Sham Fiction is on the way!

To keep up with Sham Fiction, follow us on these things:

• Email newsletter
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Instagram

OKAY BYEEEEE!!!

The ShamCom Trilogy

Hey folks! Andrew here...

Eric, Marcus, and I hope you’ve been enjoying our podcast, ShamFiction. We’ve had a hell of a lot of fun making it, all while learning a lot about writing and storytelling.

If you haven’t started listening, now is a great time to subscribe and start. We just finished a special run of episodes called the ShamCom trilogy, in which we each wrote for popular sitcoms that we hadn’t ever seen. Eric wrote The Big Bang Theory, Marcus wrote Friends, and I wrote Frasier!

For these episodes, we wrote in screenplay format rather than prose and then invited four actors from previous Two Jackets film productions - Rachel Palashewski, Joe Rapp, Katie Vannelli, and Allen Voigt - to perform the scripts on air!

We Jackets are used to performing the fics ourselves, so handing those duties over to the cast was both a relief and an absolute pleasure! As anticipated, they rocked it.

Speaking of rocking, I haven’t mentioned another treat of the ShamCom trilogy: the theme songs! You can’t have a sitcom without a theme song! (Well, you can, but-- why?) As an added challenge for these ShamCom assignments, each Jacket had to write an original theme song for their show. To ensure choice quality, we brought in our good friend and composer extraordinaire, Reed Reimer, to create the music.

The results are, well… How about you just listen to them? You can hear them on the podcast, or you can check them out in these wonderful music videos that Eric cut together with footage from the shows:

Pretty great, right? The “Bazinga” bit in the Big Bang video makes me laugh out loud every single time.

So check out ShamFiction! You can find it here on TwoJackets.com or in the podcatcher of your choice. If you like the show, be sure to subscribe to get a new episode in your feed every Sunday. And if you want to lend a hand, leave a rating and review. Those things do legitimately help us reach a larger audience, and we appreciate your feedback.

This upcoming weekend (June 3-5), Two Jackets Productions is diving back into the filmmaking game with the 2016 Minneapolis 48 Hour Film Project. We’ll be back soon with a recap of how that all goes down. We’re pumped!

Until next time, enjoy ShamFiction!

A Shamming Good Surprise!

Hey there, readers! 

We have good news: The first four episodes of Two Jackets' new podcast, ShamFiction, are now live on iTunes! We were planning to launch on Valentine’s Day, but our love for you just couldn’t be contained that long—or the iTunes approval went a little faster than expected.

So follow this link, give us a search on your iPhone, or look for us on other podcatchers! ShamFiction is out there, folks!

If you don't feel like wandering too far, you can check out Episode Zero here for a taste of what the show’s about, or jump into any of our first three ShamFictions: “Lost”, “Star Trek: The Next Generation”, and “The Big Lebowski”!

For our non-iFriends, we’ve submitted to Google Play, Stitcher, TuneIn, and a couple of other podcast aggregators. We should begin showing up on those services in the next few days. If you aren’t into listening on your phone, or you’d rather download the episodes as MP3s, you can find them directly on our site. If you’re the technical type, you can subscribe manually to our RSS feed.

If you can, be sure to subscribe to get new episodes in your feed automatically as they're released! If you enjoy the show and want to show your support, please rate and review us. These lil' kindnesses go a long way in helping us reach more listeners like you! 

Thanks for joining us on this new audio adventure! Enjoy the show!

Andrew, Marcus, and Eric

PS: Because we launched early, we will be moving up our release schedule with a brand new episode on Sunday! We think you’ll find it appropriate to Valentine’s Day with its heavy use of arrows…

A Two Jackets Podcast

Hey folks! Andrew here…

Two Jackets spent the month of January wrapping up some business from the past. We published a retrospective article about our 2015 Minneapolis 48 Hour Film Project, “Cosmic Questers ‘97”; we posted our short superhero film “Meanwhile, at the Citadel of Superheroes…” online; and we released our first feature film, Limpwings, for purchase and rental on DVD and VOD via Amazon! All the while, we’ve also been preparing and getting really excited for the release of a new project!

On Sunday, February 14th, Two Jackets Productions will launch ShamFiction, our first-ever podcast!

In ShamFiction, we break the first rule of fan fiction: that you have to be a fan to write it! Each episode begins with two of us summarizing the plot, characters, and tropes of a film, television series, book, etc. that the third guy hasn’t seen or read. Then that odd-man-out takes the information provided, writes a short piece of prose inspired by it, and returns to read it on air. After the reading, we discuss what the writer got right about the property, what he got wrong, what worked about the piece, and what didn’t.

On the 14th, the first four episodes of ShamFiction will be available via all the popular podcatchers (including iTunes), and right here on TwoJackets.com. Consider it our Valentine to you! From there, we’ll be releasing a new episode every Sunday for the rest of the year. In the meantime, follow ShamFiction on Twitter and Facebook. We’ll be posting on both those feeds when the podcast goes live!

Also, in case you’re wondering, Two Jackets isn’t leaving filmmaking behind. Once we get the podcast going and it becomes routine, we’re going to be devoting a lot of 2016 to planning our next big filmmaking endeavor. There’s also the 2016 Minneapolis 48 Hour Film Project in June, which we don’t plan on missing! Keep an eye here on TwoJackets.com and follow our page on Facebook for all the latest news on our film projects.