LA LA LAND - MISHA MANSON-SMITH - DIRECTOR
6 x 30’ COMEDY SERIES
WORK
High Spirits with Shirley Ghostman
Links
US agent:
Jon Huddle at UTA
UK agent:
Charlotte at Casarotto
UK commercials:
Charlie at Rogue
6 Minute Sizzle Reel. Click the four arrows button to watch full screen...
Looking back at this cut, I realise I may have prioritised violence over comedy, but it’s still a pretty good watch.
A groundbreaking new comedy series for Showtime from the team behind the multi-award-winning My New Best Friend (Channel 4) and the BAFTA nominated High Spirits with Shirley Ghostman (BBC). In La La Land, Marc Wootton stars as three hapless wannabes struggling to find fame, fortune and happiness in Los Angeles. I executive produced and directed these first six episodes.
La La Land isn't mock documentary but a completely new hybrid of comedy and real life - the stories unfold much like in a traditionally scripted comedy and Marc's characters are fictitious, however everybody else in the show is completely real and utterly unaware they are talking to an actor.
Marc's characters include; Brendan Allen, a talentless documentary-maker on a bumbling quest to become the next Michael Moore, desperate to win an award that will impress his son and make his ex-wife jealous; Shirley Ghostman, a psychic medium on the run from the authorities in the UK and determined to reinvent himself as America's next psychic superstar by any means necessary; Gary Garner, an East-London taxi driver using the inheritance from his late porn-star mother to forge a new career as an action hardman in the mould of his hero Jason Statham.
Whether it’s Brendan spending his son’s school fees on an half-baked idea for a climbing documentary, Gary in an unlikely collaboration with a cult film director, or Shirley courting fame by teaming up with a private investigator to solve an adultery case, La La Land is always intense, provocative and painfully funny.