from A Conversation While…:
A pantheistic Jew, an Atheist, and a recovering Christian Fundamentalist walk into a coffee shop. It may sound like the first act of an old vaudeville joke, but it’s actually a meeting between Jason McMahan, Kevin Joiner and Stephen Boatright. They are the guys behind St. Jake, a multimedia production company gearing up for the January 25 launch of A Conversation While…, an existential crime comedy web series, which they describe as “Tarantino meets the gravediggers from Hamlet.” The 10 episode season was shot entirely on location in Greenville, South Carolina.
“On paper, we shouldn’t even be friends, much less creative partners,” says series director Stephen Boatright. “But we love great ideas, no matter where they come from. The diversity of our perspectives leads to a wonderfully eclectic mix of ideas.”
A Conversation While… follows two criminals, brothers Horace and Jasper St. Jake, on their nefarious outings and listens in as they discuss topics as diverse as capital punishment, corporate greed, religion, Hitler, free will and finding one’s soulmate. “Humor uses the familiar as a launching point into the unfamiliar and unexpected,” says series co-writer and co-star, Kevin Joiner. “It can make you think more critically about what you take for granted. We don’t provide answers so much as a place to start your own conversations.”
Regarding the origin of the project, co-writer and co-star Jason McMahan says, “For me, this is an example of art from adversity. I’ve suffered with clinical depression for the past decade, and I did a lot of reading to figure out what was supposedly ‘wrong with me.’ The initial idea for the project came out of discovering the contradictions in our received wisdom during that process.”
“There’s an old adage in film production: ‘Cheap, fast, or good. Pick two,’” says Boatright. “But by starting with a great script, working hard and using a little creative problem solving, we were able to bust that production triangle.” He points out that the total production budget for the entire season was just under $500. “But the footage looks gorgeous. And in one episode, the characters even burn a car.”