“The Cutting Room Floor” was a cable access sketch comedy show that was produced in Bridgewater, Massachusetts. Four episodes were created and aired on BTV Local Cable Channel 8 between 1989 and 1993. The show was the brainchild of Bob Caron, who was an intern and later an employee at BTV-8. Bob and his childhood friend David Almeida had made super-8mm films when they were kids; doing a TV show seemed a natural progression. The episodes were produced with no real deadlines or set air-dates, it was mostly a spare-time project that they did during their college summer vacations and/or weekends. “The Cutting Room Floor” was not a low budget production; it was a NO budget production. Sets and costuming weren’t always available or emphasized… and sometimes it shows. But Bob and David still think they're a lot of fun, if you will please forgive the uneven conversion-dub, shoddy production values, and dated references! (Thanks to Bob for his GeorgeLucasesque Restoration Project on these!)
Episode 3, "Changed At The Last Minute", actually won a local ‘Cablevision Award’ for Best Comedy Program. It was the only episode on which Bob and David collaborated with actor/writer Christian Roman. David met Christian at a youth summer theatre camp, and Christian approached David about working on the show. When all three met, Bob and David loved his writing, and felt they had found a perfect match for the show. Unfortunately, scheduling prevented them from being able to work together again before they stopped doing the show when David relocated to Florida. They feel this was the stronger of their 2 sketch-format shows (Episode 2 and Episode 3) because the material was better, thanks to Christian.
Trivia:
· The opening montage is edited from Super 8mm footage taken mostly during the filming of Episode 2.
· The Cutting Room Floor Theme Song was written by Chip Neault/Cheap Shot Music, based out of California. Chip’s brother Dave worked with Bob at BTV8.
· Bob Caron’s Hitchcockian cameo in this episode is in the role of the conductor for the choir sketch.
· The show was shot over 3 days in the later summer of 1991. The production schedule was so ridiculously short because David we had to get the taping done because David was relocating to Ithaca, NY. Bob and Christian ended up editing the shows with Christian doing all the the voice overs in post-production. David was mailed a VHS dub, and he sent back notes for minor changes and improvements.
· Locations included BTV’s studio in Bridgewater, Christian’s parents’ house in Pembroke, David’s parents’ house in Brockton, and David’s father’s office in Brockton. At one point they split into two units, shooting "Clarabell Clinic" and "Michael O’Sullivan" in one location while David, Christian, and Synneve were simultaneously taping "Indifference Society" elsewhere.
· Actors Catherine, Synneve, Steven, Seth, and Karl were friends of Christian’s from school. Alex and Bob Garrard were friends of Bob’s from high school.
· Christian had taken a sketch-writing class in college and much of that material was performed in this episode. "McSorely Today" was originally written with another character as a host. Bob and David thought it would be fun to reprise a talk-show character David had done in Episode 2 called Todd McSorely. (This sketch was later replaced with "Sleeping Through The Movies".) "The Indifference Society" and "Clarabell Clinic" were also sketches Christian had already written.
· Bob and David had been wanting to do a filmstrip/slide-tape sketch for some time, but could never find a subject. Christian had already written the "Your Money And You" sketch, intending it to be live-action, and all three immediately knew it was a perfect idea for a filmstrip.
· "The Pillow Heads" was conceived and written by Christian. No script existed, they just shot footage, and he wrote the voice overs afterwards.
· "Attorney Michael O’Sullivan" was written and performed by Karl.
· The original "Tangeer" speech was written in normal English. David asked Christian, "Wouldn’t he speak broken English with an accent?", at which point Christian grabbed the script, quickly crossed out every third word on the page, and handed it back saying, "Done!"
· In the "The McSorely Family", the kids Sean and Dennis were named after two high school kids who were also producing a sketch comedy show on BTV-8 called "The Elephant Auction".
· Bob and David were so pleased with the collaboration with Christian, they felt he deserved sole writing credit, opting to take only "additional material by" credit for their script contributions. David had written only "Femynex" and the "McSorely Family" sketch (ideas by him and Bob); everything else was either written by Christian or scripted by him from David’s and/or Bob’s ideas (specifically "Hot Babes In Heat", "Tangeer", and "Painting With Bill X").
· One of the "Hot Babes" bits that was edited for time was a shot of the bed, boxed out, with the actors reading "Ooh, Ah, Yes Baby More" in unison with David and Christian visible in a mirror holding a cue card that read "Ooh, Ah, Yes Baby More".
· In "Hot Babes", David wanted to do a gay scene with Christian but Christian nixed the idea very quickly. David subsequently learned that very few people fall for the old "let's do a cable access show with a fake porn movie in it" routine.
· Episode 3 is the only episode that didn't have all of its music composed by Chip Neault. Because so much music was needed and Christian and Bob were under a time crunch to edit the show, they opted to pull from BTV-8's collection of pre-purchased industrial music.
