The new episode of commodoreHUSTLE is live, click here to check it out: The Arms Race

Graham here this week, I thought I’d tell you a bit about this video.

It wasn’t supposed to be so hard. But for some reason it was an absolute slog to get this thing finished.

On the Escapist forums, user pigsnoutman noted the following:
“…this should’ve been the Commodore hustle to introduce to the escapist.”

And, interestingly, having been written 4 months ago, it was going to be.

The whole timeline is a little muddy for all of us, since everything blurs together anyway, but according to the creation date on the script I started writing it on March 13th, and I think we’d originally intended for it to go up early April, as a return to our “usual” monthly schedule for HUSTLE.

However, the last weekend of March was a little thing called PAX East, and prior to us leaving for that, Tim had suggested maybe shooting something HUSTLE-related on the trip. We did, and that of course became the “Hot Water at PAX” video, which we had to air right away, since it was timely.

But a week or so later we started shooting “The Arms Race”, originally called “Darkside of the Moonbase” but referred to by us while shooting simply as “cH – Nerf”.

Since “Hot Water” had gone up in early April, the plan was put “Nerf” up in early May. In fact, if you watch “Informational Presentation” and “Split Decision” you can see that it’s scheduled to go up on May 10th. Which obviously didn’t happen. Owing to weird shooting schedules, we got to a point where we’d shot way more of “Gay Chicken” than “Nerf”, so we just ran that one first.

It’s a little hard to pinpoint where exactly it all went wrong, but I remember we were all pretty happy with how much we had done after the first day of shooting. We’d shot the scene with Paul and I on the couch, and the entire Matt vs James is my kitchen sequence as well. But we couldn’t get ahold of James von Landord in good time, and we hadn’t finished the Dartageddon prop, so we had to put off those bits (and many others) for another day. And between scheduling the right people for certain scenes, and staying motivated enough to shoot them, it just sort of fell apart from there. Here’s a rundown of the five different shooting days:

• Paul & Graham on the couch; Matt vs James in Graham’s kitchen
• The “Graham is creeped out” cutaway (during Ways to Wake Someone Up shoot)
• Matt & James square off; Dartageddon launch (Paul would have to overdub a line here because of bad audio); Tim’s stinger
• Graham & James on the couch; Kathleen/Paul/Graham discuss new office (which would have to be reshot owing to bad audio and poor lighting)
• Scenes at the old Moonbase w/Landlord James; reshoot of Kathleen/Paul/Graham scene; Kathleen at the Creep Doll Emporium

Now, spread that out over 3 months and that’s why this video feels like it took us forever. It was even shot entirely with the old camera for consistency, because we started shooting before we’d gotten the new one.

Now for the fun stuff!

We’ve always said that cH videos are inspired by real life, or at least, that elements of given episodes are. For those who are curious, here’s a rundown of things in this episode that are based on fact.

We Had to Move
Partially true. The building is being taken back over by the owner (for rezoning, not a mini-mall), and our landlord (the man renting it from the owner) told us he’d have to leave in November. This was back in March and we just figured we’d just start looking for a place right away, in case something good came up, and it did. We do indeed have our own toilet now. Which is good because some of the other tenants really liked to wreck that place.
(References to the place not having heat or ceiling insulation are also true)

Sir James von Landlord
That was our real landlord at Moonbase MkII, and his name really is James. To eliminate James-related confusion we used to call him Landlord James (or LL Cool James, on occasion), but when I mentioned that to him once, he requested “Sir James von Landlord”. I was happy to oblige and that’s what it says in my phone now. When we originally signed our lease for Moonbase MkI he “I should be in one of your videos” and we’d never had the chance until now.

The Nerf Arms Race
Only kind of true, but inspired by true events. The small gun Matt has initially is one of 6 that our friend Digital Dolphin brought to Desert Bus 3, and that’s when the Nerf bug bit us. This was all to Tim’s amusement, who had been into Nerf for a long-as time. In fact the arsenal he’s wearing in the stinger belongs to him and his roommate, and it’s not all they have. Regardless, James bought a gun during DB3, and then I bought a couple, and he bought some more, and Matt bought the big Vulcan and it sort of escalated for a while.

The Creepy Dolls
Entirely fictitious, I’m afraid. Though Kathleen did make me that fuzzy doll based on her “Little Reaper” character from Korea. And I think he’s super cute.

And that is where all the inspiration came from!

We hope you liked it!