The history of more or less all of America’s great Jewish comedians reads more or less the same: a weird-looking kid, one or two generations removed from the Old Country, has trouble fitting in, gets by on his wits and sense of humor, finds his way onto the radio or on television and becomes a huge star. That, with slight variation, was what happened to Milton Berle, Woody Allen and Lenny Bruce. And now, it’s happening to Yuri Baranovsky: his sitcom, “Break a Leg,” commands nearly 200,000 viewers per episode. Fans are popping up everywhere, setting up Web sites to celebrate his work and writing him adoring e-mails. And the media is inviting him to comment on the state of contemporary productions, seeing in him
a bona fide trendsetter.But look for “Break a Leg” in TV Guide, and nothing will come up. Baranovsky’s show is not on TV; it’s broadcast solely on the Internet, freely available for download through a variety of services, including Apple’s iTunes online store. Ever since it debuted last year, the show has received one accolade after another, frequently ending up as the most sought-after video on YouTube. In an age when TV sitcoms are struggling to reinvent themselves, Baranovsky and his brother and co-writer Vlad are putting out an immensely popular, professionally produced show for just over $200 per episode.“Even though we have no money,” said Baranovsky, “we have to do whatever we can to make it look like we do. We were also very lucky. A friend had one camera, we borrowed another from other friends, and we used sets and locations when we weren’t allowed to.” The actors, more than 10 of them, are all professionals who work voluntarily on Baranovsky’s show, attracted by the razor-sharp dialogue and rat-a-tat jokes.At the center of the show is Baranovsky himself. He plays David Penn, an aspiring screenwriter. Even before he opens his mouth, everything about Baranovsky calls for a comparison with Woody Allen: like the comedic icon, Baranovsky is short, scrawny and bespectacled, and yet awash with nebbish chic, at once anxious and hilarious. And unmistakably Jewish: repeatedly throughout the show, Baranovsky’s character either refers to being Jewish or is reminded of that fact by any number of offbeat characters, most likely a beret-wearing director, a mustachioed man named Jennifer John Bradley. “I think my brother and I have a very Jewish sense of humor,” said Baranovsky. “And the show has a very Jewish sense of humor, a lot of cynicism and a bit of poking fun at yourself.” Emphasizing the Jewish theme is the show’s soundtrack, composed by Vlad Baranovsky and consisting of furiously fast-paced klezmer riffs, suggesting something like shtetl music for the MTV age.The same could be said to describe Baranovsky’s life. Born in Kiev, he fled with his family when was 5, traveling through Austria and Italy before finally finding their way to San Francisco. “We didn’t come on a boat or anything,” he laughs, “but we definitely had very little money and had to start over.” Baranovsky’s father, a musician back in Ukraine, now had to fix elevators. His mother, an architect, was unable to find work. Alone in a strange land, not speaking the language or knowing a soul, Baranovsky and his brother, five years his senior, grew very close. To entertain each other, they would write stories, in Russian, mainly funny stuff, reading them to each other and laughing out loud. It was then, Baranovsky said, that he knew he wanted to be a writer.He wrote all through college, focusing at first on playwriting and having two plays published and performed by several international theater troupes. In the winter of 2004, Baranovsky learned of a contest sponsored by the FX cable channel, a subsidiary of Fox, awarding a monetary prize and a shot at a production deal to whomever submitted the most popular five-minute sitcom. Baranovsky and his brother were thrilled; plays were one thing, but this was TV, and big money and fame. They decided to submit an entry.It was based on an idea they’d had a few months before, the story of a young screenwriter named David Penn who gets his first break in the business when another screenwriter mysteriously dies and a shady, insane producer needs new material right away. “It just popped into my head,” he said of the idea that would eventually become the premise of his show. “I wanted to make a dark show, a dark sitcom. We wanted to create a whole world that was distinctively different than reality. As it got more ridiculous, it became a dark satire of how crazy Hollywood is in real life.”Never having been Hollywood insiders, however, the Baranovsky brothers created their own La La Land, silly and zany but eerily reminiscent of the real thing. It’s a world in which actors boast their hip-gyrating skills and deal with scale-related phobias, where producers speak solely via speakerphone, and where child actors live in the sewers and make their living kidnapping other child actors. It took the Baranovsky brothers one day to shoot the five-minute entry; hopeful, they sent it to FX, and dreamt of overnight glory.It never came: their entry didn’t win the grand prize. It was not even among the 10 highest-ranking runner-ups. But many viewers loved the Baranovskys’ gallows humor, and wrote to the brothers, comparing their creation to such cult shows like “The Office” and “Arrested Development” and encouraging them to keep the show alive.They did, using the aforementioned do-it-yourself approach to filmmaking and producing an entire episode. It was futile, they realized, to shop it around with real television networks; but with more and more people turning to online video for news and entertainment, they decided to put their content on the Web. Instrumental in their success was a Web site called Blip.tv, a self-described “next-generation television network” that allows anyone to upload their own original work. “We believe anyone with talent, an idea and a video camera can create the next ‘Seinfeld’ or ‘Lost,’” said Dina Kaplan, a former producer for MTV and the site’s chief operating officer. “It’s our job to host and promote this great original content being produced in garages and living rooms across the country.”Baranovsky, she said, was an instant hit. “’Break a Leg’ proves that Yuri Baranovsky is the Woody Allen of the Web 2.0,” Kaplan said. “The show is clever, witty and just neurotic enough to make you believe it could thrive on film, television or the Web, and have at least half of New York and Palm Beach relate to the characters.”But even after posting a few episodes on Blip.tv and elsewhere, and learning of their immense popularity, Baranovsky was nonetheless unprepared for the effects of Web stardom. “It’s very, very strange,” he said of the thousands of fans who send him mail, befriend him on social networking sites like MySpace and build Web sites in his honor. “People pop out of everywhere. People make their own ‘Break a Leg’ T-shirts, watch episodes again and again, quote lines back to us. They’re fans. It’s crazy.”One such fan is Sarah Gelt, 22, a Manhattan-based director of development for a nonprofit organization. She has seen all of the show’s episodes, she said, and eagerly awaits new ones.“It’s irreverent and clever,” she said, “with this wild spirit of anarchy. There’s something in it that reminds me of virtually every Jewish comedian I love: the craziness of Mel Brooks, the wittiness of Woody Allen, the silliness of Ben Stiller. And I can watch it on my iPod whenever I want. It’s much better than most of the stuff that’s on television today.” But is Baranovsky satisfied with the new medium, or does he see it only as a stepping- stone en route to a major network deal?“I would love to be on TV,” he said. “That would be great. But if we could actually make money, enough to build a set and pay our actors enough to work full time, I don’t mind doing it on the Internet. Whatever keeps the show going and keeps people watching. I feel like I would hate to lose any of my actors, and I can see that happening if we go to L.A., if we get on TV. I can see them censoring us. That’s a concern. If we can survive on the Internet and make as much money, I’d love that. That gives us control.” n“Break a Leg” is available online at http://breakaleg.blip.tv.
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