Caveh Zahedi
BRIC TV's New Show is About Making That Show
By: Richard Burroughs
Brooklyn Reader, November 4th 2015
The fall season has a lot of tradition in New York City– some of it dubious, like consumers getting trampled on Black Friday; and some of it beautiful, like taking photos of the foliage that dots lovely Brooklyn streets and parks in autumn.
Good or bad, all traditions have a beginning. So if the tradition of BRIC TV introducing its Fall TV lineup of original, scripted series begins this year, with “The Show About The Show”, from director Caveh Zahedi, then that tradition is off to a great start.
The Show About The Show is Caveh Zahedi’s, self-referential scripted metaseries about a Brooklyn filmmaker trying to make a TV show. He tosses in clips of various movies or TV shows that he’s done in the past to illustrate points in the story and though the premise can sound a bit insular and filled with inside jokes about the TV industry, the narration of Mr. Zahedi brings it home.
Caveh Zahedi feels like a man that has had a long string of outrageous experiences in different cities and in various countries, many of them quasi-legal and on a slippery moral slope, yet all of them extremely fun. It’s two episodes deep on the revamped BRIC TV, with each ep clocking in around fifteen minutes in length.
It co-stars Alex Karpovsky, the actor from Girls, the HBO series written by Lena Dunham. It also stars Eleonore Hendricks and Dustin Defa, both of whom I’ve never seen before, but who live in their characters to the extent that they feel familiar.
Mr. Defa plays Aziz Isham, who is the executive producer of BRIC TV, and someone that I interact with quite frequently (I’m also an on-air personality on BK Live, the daily talk show on BRIC TV), and I can’t say that Mr. Defa reminds me of Aziz, but kinda reminds of a Aziz from a parallel universe. Since the public has increasingly consumed original scripted series, from sources that aren’t the usual suspects, such as Netflix, Vimeo, with even Tidal Music Streaming getting into the mix, it makes a lot of sense that BRIC TV would air something with a distinct, Brooklyn personality.
Apparently it’s a who’s-who of Brooklyn’s independent filmmaking community in the show, which tells the story of everything that can and does go wrong, as Caveh tries to get a television series funded, produced and distributed. The making of a television show is an interesting process and one that’s always ripe with great possibilities for story lines and content.
The next episode airs on Monday, November 9th, and you should check it out. It’s funny and edgy, with a Brooklyn sensibility.