“You don’t throw a raptor at someone’s fucking face!”
Bill Whirity and Bill Palmer who directed the pretty good “Broke,” and the great short film “Zombie Island,” now takes another dip with his crew in the world of online series. The pitch? Whirity and his crew are attempting to create a dinosaur movie. They really want to make this movie. And yet have a zero budget. How do you make an epic dinosaur movie without any money? Most of all, how do you create a dinosaur film when you don’t even know what the plot is? Well, that’s the conundrum the crew of “Raptor Quest” are trying to explore.
The online series is very much in the vein of Christopher Guest films, except told in small video blogs where Whirity and his crew are not only attempting to make the film, but get through a shoot without arguing and fighting for attention on the camera. I mean, what type of movie will we be getting from a crew who can’t even film a “Making-Of”? It’s without a doubt that Whirity and crew are creating their own “Man of La Mancha” a film that’s filled with large ambitions, yet there’s obviously no hope of it ever being made. Whirity and crew have wonderful chemistry together, and Whirity is ridiculously funny to the point where I literally had to pause the videos to control my laughter. Whirity, and Bill and have a knack for dead pan improv, and they manage to deliver lines that could have been flat with the wrong host, and hits it out of the park.
I couldn’t believe I was in hysterics at the line: “This is not called Rafter Quest, for the last time, there are no Rafters in this movie. It’s Raptor Quest.” At one point, in the third episode, the camera man insists Bill turn his shirt that he was wearing in the previous episode inside out just to make it look like they were actually making progress. It’s clear they’re really going nowhere with this film, but you can’t help but watch and watch these dolts turn on one another. “Raptor Quest” is sure to form a cult following if promoted well enough, because the formula is mastered from episode one. These guys are hysterical, and there are so many lines audiences will be able to quote for months.
At one point when Bill confuses the liquid metal T-1000 from “T2,” with the cyborg, and the other Bill explains, “No that’s the cyborg man, you’re talking about the Capri Sun one.” There are some great celebrity cameos in the series from Conan O’Brien, Rainn Wilson from “The Office,” and many more, as well as some priceless scenes involving cheap flyers, ordering postcards, and an utterly embarrassing confrontation at Sundance. The guys just put themselves up for scrutiny and harassment, and you just have to appreciate their guts in actually filming these blogs among all these elitist pricks in episode six.
I’m personally excited to see where this is all heading, and I hope Whirity and crew see this till the end. “Raptor Quest” is a hilarious comedy worth your time, and by the end, you’ll wish there was an actual film being made.
Now… can we have a better website for the series?