Adam Dunn as Warren Mann.
The filmmakers behind Tropfest 2013 crowd favourite Cash Cow are collaborating on a new comedic TV series Clean and Jerk.
Writer/actors Aaron Glenane (Drift) and Adam Dunn (Careless Love) are out to take on the bizarre world of Australian gym culture, and, as stated on their Pozible site, “royally rip the p-ss out of all of these douchers.”
The show follows the weedy Colin Ainsworth (Glenane) who, heartbroken after being dumped by his first and only girlfriend, joins a gym in a bid to buff up and get back on the dating scene. The problem is his personal trainer Warren Mann (Dunn) is delusional about his own training ability – Mann himself looks like he needs a trainer – and has decided to take Colin under his sweaty wing, with disastrously comical results.
The team blitzed their Pozible campaign, with the aim of raising $4000 to make their pilot falling just short of $10,000 on the closing day.
“It kind of just took off,” Glenane tells IF. “People just must have really liked the idea, because it was meant to be really small but grew out into something that ended up being quite big.”
Glenane and Dunn both feel there is a lot of comedy that arises from gym culture in Australia that has yet to be tapped into.
“We just thing it’s a topic that hasn’t been explored – gym culture – and our modern obsession with looking good,” he says. “Clean and Jerk explores vanity and how much emphasis we put on it. It’s a blowing out those modern characters, and so much of that is us just spending time in the gym and observing. A lot of it is taken from real life that is a bit crazy and a bit out there.
“Everyone has a relationship with the gym whether you go or strongly don’t go. It’s an untapped resource for comedy we feel.”
The pilot for the first season was launched last night at an event in Redfern, with members of the press, ABC and SBS in attendance.
“Last night went ridiculously well,” says Glenane. “We actually had round about 200 people turn up. People were calling up during the day and we ended up having to turn them away.”
“We’ve had a couple of nibbles of interest… We’re just really excited to see if one of them will land. It would be nice if we can share the rest of this story.”
Clean and Jerk is directed by Daniel Reisinger, who has previously been awarded five Cannes Lions for his work in advertising, and produced by Michelle Hardy (#7DaysLater.)