So I’m keeping an eye on the rising number of total views for our latest video, “Harry Potter And The Mid-Life Crisis.” That makes me happy. Unfortunately, every time I visit Iklipz.com this week, I have to look at my own mug staring back at me from the front page. That makes me cringe.

Success, even a little bit, makes you reflect. We started The Monkey Box nearly a year ago as an audio podcast. We drew from the tradition of the classic radio comedies, threw in some Firesign Theater and Monty Python albums, added a lot of swearing and fart noises, and before you knew it, we were one of the top comedy podcasts. But video was an inevitability (even if it did take us a while to get it together -- wrangling the schedules of ten working actors and writers in Los Angeles is much akin to herding gophers... retarded gophers with nervous dispositions).

We’ve now filmed seventeen short films over the course of about three shooting days. I’m told this is somewhat bat-crap insane and possibly suicidal. We didn’t notice. Sure, the hours were long and the pace was tough, but we love the work and have fun doing it. But what really kept us going was the confidence that our work would get seen.

Inside of the first 72 hours of this week alone, thousands of people have seen a short movie we made on a budget that wouldn’t have covered breakfast for the ten of us. It wasn’t too long ago that an indie film maker would have had to shoot on expensive film stock and bring it to a pricey post house and get bank-busting prints made in the hopes that somehow, some way, somebody other than his friends and family would look at it. The largest expense for the Harry Potter video was the rental of the robes and the stuffed owl (who gave us the biggest hassle about earning SAG points, but that’s another story).

The nature of filmmaking is evolving so fast that Darwin himself would assume some kind of divine intervention. But more important than the changes in production or post-production is the changing nature of distribution. Your computer is merging with your TV, which is rapidly becoming your home theater. And if I’ve got a theater in my house, I’m gonna want to see some good movies. Thanks to the internet, there’s a world of independent film available to the average person now that not too long ago would have required a trip to that weird video store in town that only had movies by people who’s names had umlauts and hardly any vowels.

And that’s where people like the fine folks at iKlipz come in. They’re like those weird kids who worked at those weird video stores who can point you in the direction of some great independent filmmaking. Stuff that will make you believe in the promise of independent creativity and art.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to to get back to writing fart jokes and turning beloved children’s characters into bloated alcoholic adulterers.

John T. Mickevich

Head Chef and Bottle Washer

The Monkey Box

www.TheMonkeyBox.com