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Hollywood's Brief Love Affair With Young Einstein Star Yahoo Serious

© Warner Bros. Hollywood's Brief Love Affair With Young Einstein Star Yahoo Serious

The theater owners and exhibitors attending the ShoWest convention in February 1989 had a lot to look forward to. In an attempt to stir their interest in upcoming studio releases, major distributors were showing off stars and footage: Paramount led with Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and Columbia had Ghostbusters II. But it was Warner Bros. that caused the biggest stir.

In addition to Lethal Weapon 2, the studio had Tim Burton’s Batman, a straight-faced adaptation of the comic, and Michael Keaton—who slipped into a screening of some early footage—was no longer being derided as a poor casting choice. Then, in the midst of all this star power, the studio brought out a 35-year-old actor-writer-director with a shock of orange hair and an Australian accent.

The man had never appeared in a feature film before, much less starred in one, but Warner was gambling that his forthcoming comedy about a Tasmanian Albert Einstein who invents rock music and runs into Thomas Edison would be a hit. It had already become the sixth highest-grossing film in Australia's history, besting both E.T. and Rambo: First Blood Part II.

The man’s real name was Greg Pead, but Warner Bros. introduced him as Yahoo Serious, Hollywood’s next big comedy attraction.

 

To understand Warner’s appetite for an unproven commodity like Yahoo Serious, it helps to recall the peculiar preoccupation American popular culture had with Australians in the 1980s. Energizer had created a hit ad campaign with Mark “Jacko” Jackson, a pro football player who aggressively promoted their batteries in a series of ads; meanwhile, Paul Hogan parlayed his fish-out-of-water comedy, Crocodile Dundee, into the second highest-grossing film of 1986. (Serious would later bristle at comparisons to Hogan, whom he referred to as a “marketing guy” who sold cigarettes on Australian television.)

Born in Cardiff, Australia on July 27, 1953, Serious grew up in rural bush country and mounted car tires at a garage in order to pay his way through the National Art School. When he was expelled for illustrating the school's facade with satirical jokes that the faculty didn’t find particularly funny, Serious moved on to direct Coaltown, a documentary about the coal mining industry, and pursued painting.

Serious would later recall that the desire for a larger audience led him away from art and into feature filmmaking. ''It hit me like a ton of bricks one day,” Serious told The New York Times in 1989. “I remember having a cup of coffee and I went, 'Well, look, there is a giant canvas in every little town everywhere around the world. And on this giant canvas there are 24 frames of image on that screen every second and it's the most wonderful living art form.'” It was around this same time, in 1980, that Serious changed his name.

To get a feel for the language of film, Serious sat through repeated viewings of Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove; he aspired to have the kind of total autonomy over his movies that directors like Woody Allen and Charlie Chaplin enjoyed.

In 1983, Serious was traveling along the Amazon River when he spotted someone wearing a T-shirt depicting Albert Einstein sticking his tongue out. The image is now pervasive, appearing on posters and other merchandise, but it seemed unique to the performer, who was struck by the idea that Einstein was once young and never took himself too seriously. And the concept for Young Einstein was born.

 

Serious's idea, which transplanted Einstein to Tasmania and imagined encounters with Sigmund Freud, Thomas Edison, and the atomic bomb, took years to assemble. He borrowed camera equipment and sold his car to help finance the film; he shot an eight-minute trailer that convinced investors he was capable of making a feature. His mother even cooked meals for the crew on set.

In order to maintain creative control, Serious gave up profit participation in Young Einstein, which he starred in, co-produced, co-wrote, and directed. When the film was released in Australia in 1988, it made an impressive $1.6 million at the box office and drew the attention of Warner Bros., which likely had visions of a Crocodile Dundee-esque hit. American press had a field day with Serious, who appeared on the cover of TIME and was given airtime on MTV.

Critics and audiences weren’t quite as enamored. The Orlando Sentinel suggested that "Tedious Oddball" would be a more appropriate name for the film's creator. In his one-star review, Roger Ebert wrote that, "Young Einstein is a one-joke movie, and I didn't laugh much the first time." In the U.S., Young Einstein grossed just over $11 million, a fairly weak showing for a summer comedy. It was bested in its opening weekend by both Ron Howard’s Parenthood and the Sylvester Stallone action-grunter Lock Up.

 

Although American distributors quickly cooled on Serious, Australia's enthusiasm for the filmmaker didn’t dampen. When Serious released 1993’s Reckless Kelly, a fictionalized account of outlaw Ned Kelly, it made $5.4 million in Australia—three times as much as Young Einstein. Serious took a seven-year sabbatical, then returned with 2000’s Mr. Accident, a slapstick comedy about an injury-prone man who tries to thwart a scheme to inject nicotine into eggs. Meeting a tepid critical and financial reception, it would be his third and (likely) final film.

At roughly the same time Mr. Accident was released, Serious took issue with upstart search engine Yahoo!, alleging the site was piggybacking on his popularity. He filed a lawsuit, which was quickly dropped when he failed to prove the URL had damaged him in any way.

The amused headlines stemming from that incident were the last examples of Serious capturing attention in America. Having completed just three films, no other projects have come to fruition; Serious launched a website detailing some of his background and to air some of his Yahoo!-related grievances.

Now 65, Serious currently serves as founding director of the Kokoda Track Foundation, an Australian aid organization dedicated to improving the living conditions of Papua New Guineans. The board’s website lists him as Yahoo Serious, which is the name he claims that all of his family and friends have called him since he changed it in 1980.

“You can choose every aspect of your life,” Serious once said. “Why not your name?”

Verizon Media’s New Yahoo Play App Is a Mobile Pop Culture Quiz Show With Rewards (EXCLUSIVE)

Verizon Media launched a new mobile quiz show app dubbed Yahoo Play Wednesday that tests players on their pop culture knowledge, and rewards them for getting it right: In-game points can be traded in for gift cards from brands like Apple, Amazon and Target. “We want to reward content consumption,” said Verizon Media’s head of entertainment and news Alex Wallace.

Yahoo Play’s main programming consists of 16 shows produced internally at Verizon Media units including Yahoo Entertainment, Yahoo Lifestyle, Build Series, Makers and Ryot. Each show invites viewers to play along and answer multiple-choice questions in just a few seconds.

Sounds like HQ Trivia? It does look a lot like it as well — with one key difference: Yahoo Play shows are pre-recorded, with the idea that you can play them any time you have a few minutes to spare. “We may do live for special events,” said Wallace. But the main goal was to make shows available 24/7, and not have players wait for pre-scheduled events to participate.

Any time a viewer gets a question right, she earns a few points of the app’s in-game currency. These can then be traded in against digital gift cards, with plans to add other shopping opportunities down the line. However, Wallace stressed that the main emphasis was on the game itself. “Commerce is a secondary part of it,” she said.

Some of the shows available at launch include “Beat the Street,” “2 Tumblrs and a Lie,” “Planet Date,” “Celeb News Now” and “Celeb Said What?!” In “Beat the Street,” hosts are quizzing people on the street on pop culture and other factoids, and users of the app have a chance to test their own knowledge at home.

In addition to these main shows, Yahoo Play also comes with a top row of Instagram-like stories called The Drop that features short clips with news and gossip around pop culture moments. Viewing these stories also earns you points, but not as many as one can earn with a quiz show.

Verizon Media head of product for news & entertainment Matt Edelman said that his group had worked on the app for over a year. Part of that work was dedicated to making sure that the lure of gift card rewards doesn’t prompt people to cheat, which required trying to find loopholes before the app went live. “We have gamed the system in every single way,” he said. “Abuse protection is a huge focus for us.”

And there is another way Yahoo Play wants to make sure that people care just as much about the game itself as the rewards, while also getting them to frequently come back for more: The number of earned points reset back to zero every Sunday afternoon. “Your point balance is ephemeral,” said Edelman.

At launch, Verizon Media is still producing all of Yahoo Play’s shows in-house, but Wallace said that  partnerships with third-party publishers, including outside brands, are on the roadmap. And while Yahoo Play is a mobile app-only experience, Verizon Media is also looking to promote it widely across its existing sites and platforms. Said Wallace: “The beauty of Yahoo is its massive reach.”

Yahoo reportedly following The Athletic into subscription business

The Athletic has been a gamechanger in the sports media industry. The online outlet has hired just about every living, breathing sportswriter to come be a part of its growing empire. The Athletic has built an impressive array of options for local teams and even expanding to general beats as well. Clearly they’ve found a niche in subscription-based regular sports coverage and received an impressive number of investments and subscriptions.

However, the rest of sports media now has to respond to the success of The Athletic. We’ve already seen some local papers try to enter into the subscription field to keep readers with high quality coverage. Now there could be an entry from an unexpected place.

Via the New York Post comes the details about Yahoo opening up subscription-based coverage of the New York Mets featuring a staff of multiple writers:

The burgeoning business will begin in Flushing with the Mets. The name of the product will be the Queens Baseball Club.

It will include three writers covering the team, while planning to give members a behind-the-scenes experience, such as access to batting practices, press conferences and front-office Q&As.

The team and Yahoo have a three-year agreement, according to sources. Yahoo declined to say how much it will pay the Mets. The Mets declined comment entirely.

Yahoo is working out deals with other teams. The Yankees are not involved right now.

The site will launch March 28 and the cost is expected to be $4.99 or $5.99 per month, according to Yahoo officials.

Yahoo plans on hiring a columnist, beat reporter and a backup beat person for each team. In New York, it has lured Wallace Matthews away from the Daily News to be its columnist, according to sources. Yahoo has not hired a beat reporter yet or a backup beat person.

This is fascinating on a number of levels. First, that someone besides The Athletic was actually able to hire a sportswriter away from a local outlet is a bit shocking. (Those “Here’s why I’m joining Yahoo” tweets won’t quite have the same cachet to them.) Second, the fact that the paid subscription beat looks like it’s becoming more crowded. While more options is a great thing for sports fans, one wonders where the tipping point comes in as far as paid coverage, and whether Yahoo is able to siphon any readers away from The Athletic or whether it further impacts the print industry.

Finally, there’s the reality that Yahoo, a pioneer in the sports blogging industry in terms of having sport-specific verticals, is now going local. It’s just not natural for Mets fans or fans of any local team to immediately think of Yahoo as a place to get hyper-local quality coverage. The Athletic built that brand straight out of the gate. Will Yahoo be able to do the same in reaching sports fans? In truth, that may be the biggest hurdle to overcome.