{"id":32411,"date":"2019-12-13T08:21:42","date_gmt":"2019-12-13T13:21:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=32411"},"modified":"2019-12-13T08:30:00","modified_gmt":"2019-12-13T13:30:00","slug":"the-bootleg-files-snack-boy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2019\/12\/13\/the-bootleg-files-snack-boy\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bootleg Files: Snack Boy"},"content":{"rendered":"

BOOTLEG FILES 711:<\/strong> \u201cSnack Boy\u201d (1998-2001 online video series starring Terry Crummitt).<\/p>\n

LAST SEEN:<\/strong> On YouTube.<\/p>\n

AMERICAN HOME VIDEO:<\/strong> None.<\/p>\n

REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS:<\/strong> Long-forgotten pioneering production of online-exclusive entertainment.<\/p>\n

CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: <\/strong>Not likely at all.<\/p>\n

Did you ever stop and ask yourself: where did the concept of an online video star begin? After all, we are currently overburdened with characters who have become rich and famous by making wacky videos for YouTube. But there had to be a time and place where this show business phenomenon actually took root, yes?
\n<\/p>\n

Well, as luck would have it, I was there at the beginning of the online video star concept \u2013 not on camera, but behind the scenes helping to publicize one of the first personalities who found an audience via the Internet.<\/p>\n

In 1998, I was running a public relations agency out of New York City and one of my clients was The Sync, a webcasting outfit founded by Carla Cole and Thomas Edwards and based in Laurel, Maryland. Among the programs presented on The Sync was \u201cSnack Boy,\u201d a five-minute offering shown weekdays at 3:15 p.m. Eastern Time. <\/p>\n

The star of \u201cSnack Boy\u201d was Terry Crummitt, a 25-year-old blonde actor, and the show\u2019s title came from Crummitt\u2019s one-time job as the beleaguered cashier of a snack bar. In each show, Crummitt would recall an outlandish anecdote from his life \u2013 usually involving catastrophic dilemmas from his various work experiences, and often involving a family that he described as comically dysfunctional. Much of the show had the camera capturing a reclining Crummitt in close-up, with cutaways to crudely-drawn cartoons by Crummitt that illustrated the zany tales he would relate.<\/p>\n

Yes, it sounds rather limited when compared to whatever Jake Paul is throwing online. But \u201cSnack Boy\u201d was the perfect show for the then-primitive Internet \u2013 remember, back in the late 90s many people were still on dial-up and accessing cyberspace via AOL and CompuServe. Due to the limits of the technology, The Sync had to make the program available at 28.8, 56 and 112 kilobytes per second so people with any of those three modems could watch. Unlike today\u2019s highly sophisticated YouTube videos with multiple cameras, intricate editing and ultra-high budgets \u2013 say, where does Mr. Beast get all of that money to give away? \u2013 \u201cSnack Boy\u201d was a shoestring effort that relied entirely on Crummitt\u2019s exuberant charm. And, boy, did he have charm to spare.<\/p>\n

Crummitt didn\u2019t just relate a story \u2013 he framed his tales as if the fate of the world depended on his raconteur skills. The people he recalled were never quotidian \u2013 they were always the loudest, strangest, scariest bipeds to storm the planet. And his encounters with these folks were always just one degree removed from cataclysm, with the astonished narrator usually getting the last laugh from the encounter.<\/p>\n

Crummitt had the most extraordinary command of the language, injecting acidic pop culture commentary into many of his tales. In the episode \u201cCrazy Duck Woman Laundromat,\u201d he recalled washing machine encounters with an eccentric lady described as \u201cmore interesting than the Grand Canyon\u201d who is \u201ckind of Stevie Nicksesque but crazier.\u201d In \u201cHomage to Cheers,\u201d his melodramatic tribute to the NBC sitcom is brushed with a tsk-tsk acknowledgment to \u201cthe blonde Shelley Long \u2013 she left \u2018Cheers\u2019 to be a huge star and ended up doing \u2018The Brady Bunch Movie\u2019\u2026for a song.\u201d In \u201cJudge Judy Dream,\u201d Crummitt recalls seeing a swimsuit photo of the television courtroom icon by recalling her \u201chaving a grandma\u2019s head plastered on this hot toddy body.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some of the best \u201cSnack Boy\u201d episodes found him barbecuing his relatives. He recalled his mother\u2019s sister in \u201cAunt Jane House Sits\u201d as someone who \u201casked me for cab fare to get out of her own daughter\u2019s wedding.\u201d \u201cDay Trading Grandma\u201d found Crummitt\u2019s mother and grandmother getting into an argument over online stock trading, with Crummitt exaggerating an ancient female voice to duplicate the granny\u2019s warning \u201cI think you should put your money on Intel.\u201d<\/p>\n

Back in 1998, when people were beginning to get hooked to the computer screen, \u201cSnack Boy\u201d caught the imagination of the first wave of Net surfers. As the publicist for The Sync, I had no problems getting media coverage for Crummitt \u2013 he did TV and newspaper interviews and was featured in Entertainment Weekly in its first-ever round-up of the new Internet stars. He also received fan mail from across the United States and overseas \u2013 one viewer in Australia airmailed him a box of cheese curls, which he ate on one of his episodes.<\/p>\n

So, why is \u201cSnack Boy\u201d barely remembered today? Well, the dot-com bubble burst at the start of the new millennium, and The Sync was among its victims. \u201cSnack Boy\u201d disappeared from the Internet in 2001 when The Sync ceased its webcasting, and Crummitt never found a similar vehicle to stay in front of the Internet audience. (YouTube didn\u2019t launch until 2005.) Crummitt would work in a few films and television commercials under the name Terry McCrea, but his full potential was never achieved. Crummitt was killed in an automobile accident in 2004 \u2013 he was only 31.<\/p>\n

There is a YouTube channel<\/a> where a \u201cSnack Boy\u201d fan gathered many of the episodes for unauthorized postings. The visual quality is mostly poor, betraying the pixelated nature of the early Internet webcasts, but the sound is great and Crummitt\u2019s vocal prowess can easily be appreciated. Some of the better episodes are not online, most notably \u201cColonel Klink\u201d that involved Crummitt and a pair of mischievous cousins who seek the aid of their bellicose Aunt Jane when a prank on a weightlifter goes terribly wrong.<\/p>\n

Although I did the publicity for The Sync and \u201cSnack Boy,\u201d I only got to meet Crummitt in person once. But that single encounter was memorable and I was greatly impressed with him as a person and a performer. And, hopefully, the angels and the dearly departed in Heaven are enjoying Crummitt\u2019s humor and playfulness \u2013 if there is someone that you\u2019d want to spend eternity with, it is the late great Snack Boy himself.<\/p>\n

IMPORTANT NOTICE: While this weekly column acknowledges the presence of rare film and television productions through the so-called collector-to-collector market, this should not be seen as encouraging or condoning the unauthorized duplication and distribution of copyright-protected material, either through DVDs or Blu-ray discs or through postings on Internet video sites.<\/em>
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\nListen to \u201cThe Online Movie Show with Phil Hall\u201d<\/a> on SoundCloud, now in its fourth season. <\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BOOTLEG FILES 711: \u201cSnack Boy\u201d (1998-2001 online video series starring Terry Crummitt). LAST SEEN: On YouTube. AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: None. REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: Long-forgotten pioneering production of online-exclusive entertainment. CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: Not likely at all. Did you ever stop and ask yourself: where did the concept of an online […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":32412,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1513],"tags":[219,2373,2371,2369,2370,2368,2372],"class_list":["post-32411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bootleg-files","tag-comedy","tag-mr-beast","tag-online-video","tag-snack-boy","tag-terry-crummitt","tag-the-sync","tag-webcasting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32411"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32411\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32413,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32411\/revisions\/32413"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}