Justin Bieber's Funny Or Die Takeover: The Inside Story
Times are tough in the entertainment biz.
ATM Parts Network TV viewership continues to fall, job cuts are a fact of life, and latte budgets are reportedly being slashed in executive suites all over Hollywood. Enter 16-year-old pop throb Justin Bieber, who swooped in to purchase the sketch comedy Web site Funny or Die on Thursday (April 1).
"The timing just seemed right for 'Bieber or Die,' " Bieber said in a statement about the newly renamed site. "No one really cares for 'funny' anymore anyway. I mean, try to define funny and then try to define Bieber, and you will understand completely."
Except not all. It was an inspired April Fools' Day prank that had FOD and Bieber conspiring to rebrand the site and produce a series of sketches in which he faced off against an O-faced kitty cat, took a nasty spill while singing "Baby" and proudly declared, "Sometimes I don't feel like walking, so I make enormous people carry me around. ... Let's go get a lollipop!"
Still sticking very much to the Bieber or Die script, Lauren Palmigiano, one of the site's writer/producers, called up MTV News to tell us about shooting the videos and what office life is like under the reign of the Biebs.
MTV: How did this whole thing come together?
Lauren Palmigiano: Justin just wanted to run the world. He came to us and wanted to buy a Web site, and we realized that comedy can only get us so far. And videos with Justin Bieber will take us to the level we're trying to get to.
MTV: How long did it take you guys to shoot all the videos?
Palmigiano: The production staff for Funny or Die spent the day with Justin on Tuesday, and we just followed him around. He's a really busy guy, and he had a ton of things going on and we shot the videos in a total of about an hour over the whole day. He squeezed us into a day where he had meetings,
ATM Partsinterviews; he did a surprise appearance with Ludacris. We just hung out and waited for whenever he had five or 10 minutes and pulled him aside and shot the videos as quickly as possible.
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