Last Monday night, Jamie Kennedy, the comedian and star of films like “Scream” and “Malibu’s Most Wanted,” hosted “First Night,” a live special broadcast by KDOC, an independent Southern California television station. Advertisements for the show promised celebrity cameos, musical guests and other surprises, and viewers who tuned in surely had their share of unexpected laughs.
Presiding over the shaky-looking and decidedly seat-of-the-pants event Mr. Kennedy mixed it up with exuberant revelers outside the Chinese Theater in Hollywood, occasionally being caught off guard by his own live cameras and open microphones. Innuendos were made; obscene words were broadcast unbleeped; and Macy Gray gave a performance that had some viewers wondering if she’d started celebrating the arrival of 2013 well before midnight.
The show concluded with Mr. Kennedy leaping from a crowded stage where bodies jostled uncomfortably, as he declared, “There’s a fight! It’s ending with a fight!”
Taking stock of his haphazard show in a subsequent phone interview, Mr. Kennedy said: “It was totally supposed to be like that. We wanted to make almost an anti-New Year’s Eve show, and the recipe calls for unexpected.”
But since an edited video made its way onto the Internet, transforming it from a little-seen local broadcast to a viral phenomenon, viewers can’t seem to agree which parts were intentional or accidental.
The online gossip columnist Perez Hilton declared in a post citing an unnamed insider “that this gloriousness was all a hoax.” The A.V. Club decreed the show to be “the world’s worst New Year’s broadcast” and “a train wreck of ridiculous proportions.”
Shaun Broyls, an actor and comedian in Burbank, Calif., who watched the live “First Night” broadcast and then posted parts of it on YouTube, said the show was “100 percent a fail.”
“There was no way that this broadcast was meant to turn out the way it turned out,” said Mr. Broyls, who has also worked as a television news reporter. “The numerous swears, the terrible edits, the audio glitches, the video glitches.”
Mr. Kennedy has previously walked the line between awkward comedy and audience provocation in a hidden-camera television series, “The Jamie Kennedy Experiment,” and a documentary, “Heckler.” Nonetheless he was surprised that some viewers were put off by the spirit of spontaneity he strove for in the New Year’s Eve special.
“Back in the day Jerry Lewis used to do it with his telethons for 24 hours straight, and things would happen, and that’s what made it interesting,” Mr. Kennedy said. “We wanted people to go, ‘What’s going to happen next?’ ”
Mr. Kennedy said he was used to polarized reactions to his work. “Sometimes I’m like the Kardashian of comedy,” he said. “People seem to hate me, but they can’t stop watching. I’m fine.”
But when asked about some of the vituperative online responses to his show, his voice began to rise.
“With the Internet you can’t fail anymore,” he said. “Everything has to be perfect. How come you can’t fail anymore, or try something? O.K., so maybe it didn’t work. But I tried, and you’re talking about it.”
Representatives of KDOC did not respond to requests for comment. But in an e-mail sent after his interview Mr. Kennedy offered an apology “for any obscenities that may have slipped out due to technical difficulties from filming live.” The e-mail added: “That was never planned or intended to be a part of the show. We just wanted it to be different and a parody of all the other N.Y.E. shows.”
Adam Pearce, a professional wrestler who attended Mr. Kennedy’s show, said he “didn’t notice anything chaotic or out of the ordinary from a broadcast perspective” during it, despite his getting caught up in the unruly crowd onstage at the end of the night.
Though he has not seen the broadcast in its entirety, Mr. Pearce said he was not surprised by the online reaction. Asked if some elements might have been orchestrated to maximize disorder, he said he could not rule out the possibility.
“If you’re trying to get people to pay attention to you, you want to put things in place that will do that,” Mr. Pearce said. “You open up an open bar for everybody, you’ve got the bubbly going, and who knows what else was being passed around. You throw all these things in a caldron and stir it up and see what happens.”
Despite his criticism of the show, Mr. Broyls said he was glad to have helped it reach a wider audience (and for the YouTube views and Twitter followers it had brought him). He said that YouTube had made him take down the version he originally posted because of a copyright claim from KDOC. But others made copies of his video, so it lives on.
After some discussion he acknowledged that it had a “rough charm,” like the cheesy movies shown on “Mystery Science Theater 3000” or “The Star Wars Holiday Special,” which became a cult classic after being broadcast only once in 1978.
“This is honestly something that everyone should see,” Mr. Broyls said.
Mr. Kennedy may have the last laugh. “I got a text from Marilyn Manson that says he wants to do next year,” he said.
He might be back on the airwaves even sooner than that.
“If you can believe it, I want do an Oscars special,” he said. “We have to wait and see how this blows over.”
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/07/arts/television/jamie-kennedys-first-night-on-new-years-eve.html?partner=rss&emc=rss