The Court TV Prank: How We Got a Totally Fake Case on Court TV A comedy article
by Bayan Rabbani 2,826 14 10/01/2009 10:02 AM 8282 views
You've all seen Court TV shows. This is how my friend and I pranked one of them into airing a completely fake court case between the two of us.
A few years ago, a childhood friend and I owned a website called FarsiTube.com (similar to YouTube but for Persians -- if you go to the site today, a hollow shell of its former self still exists). My friend created the site, I bought in at 30% and we worked as partners operating and managing it.
Each month, we would generate revenue from advertisements, and after about six months, someone made an offer to purchase the site from us. We decided to sell, split the money, pat ourselves on the back, and move on to our next venture (unemployment).
About a year or so later, a mutual friend of ours found a listing on Craigslist for a new Court TV show called "Family Court with Judge Penny." They were looking for families that have unresolved issues that want to get their case settled in court. Our mutual friend told my friend about it, who then told me.
Now, since childhood, my friend and I were the unofficial pranksters of all of our friends and family. So we decided we could probably come up a good story based off of our experience with FarsiTube and fool the show into thinking we had a legit case.
We came up with a plan and pitched our fake story to the producers: he and I were cousins; we had a falling out over an Internet business (FarsiTube.com), and since that time (a year) we haven't spoken. As a result, we'd lost the closeness we developed since childhood, being cousins and best friends.
Well, the producers bought our story, flew us out to LA for 2 days (all expenses paid), and he and I did a pretty good job of keeping straight faces throughout the taping. Throughout the episode we talked about stories from our childhood, various experiences we had growing up, how the site came to be, etc. - most, if not all, of these stories were made up on the spot.
In fact, our episode was so good that they saved it for their May Sweeps week (about nine months after taping in August), and not only that ... it was the season finale. I imagine the production company cared more about the ratings from the episode (which were great) rather than the validity of our story.
Here's a link to the episode ... hope you enjoy watching it as much as we did making it.
You told him he looks like a pudgy, pasty, shapeless, dough faced celebrity who was dumped by Sarah Silverman and is gay for Ben Affleck. How could anyone possibly take offense to that?
How you got on the show... you made up a story. Was that really funny? I mean, you guys definitely tricked the show and the viewers. Good job on that. But it wasn't funny to me.
I kept waiting for something crazy to happen, like you suddenly explode with rage and slam your fists down or something. Bring up something about how he killed your dog or sucked on your toes when you were sleeping. Come on!
Wait, you didn't see the part where a friend of ours drove the monster truck through the back wall? Go back and watch the episode again, you can't miss it.
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