If I said that there was a monologue which was co-written by the likes of actor Steve Martin, author Niel Gaiman, singer and comedian Tim Minchin, Yoda actor Frank Oz, Red dwarf co-creator Doug Naylor, Back to the Future actor Lea Thompson, Spider-Man into the Spiderverse co-writer Phil Lord, Doctor Who actor Mandip Gill, Sherlock co-creator Mark Gatiss, professional wrestlers Xavier Woods, Miro, Dolph Ziggler, Comedians and improvisers like Wayne Brady, Aisha Tyler, Al Murray, Ryan Stiles, Colin Mochrie and many more…you probably wouldn’t believe me.
But that is exactly what Sōlus: The Most Epic Monologue of All Time is…but most of the celebrities don’t know they’ve co-written it. Maybe if one of them reads this article they’ll be so good as to spread the word and get the short film below seen by more people!
But to understand the monologue you’re about to watch, you need to understand how it came into being, and how I can claim that all these personalities were involved in it’s writing, but most don’t know it.
The story behind the story is that my name is David Pustansky, and in 2020 I hosted an online improv festival. The Extreme Improv Xstreamed World Championship in which 64 performers from around the world took part in virtual improv comedy to be crowned the first ever Extreme Improv Xstreamed World Champion.
To make the online festival more exciting I decided to take to twitter and ask celebrities to suggest lines of dialogue that could be used to inspire scenes. Much to my surprise I managed to get a load of celebrities to suggest lines for me.
I’m not sure that any of the celebrities which included actors, writers, athletes and more ever checked out the shows to see how their lines were being used, but it certainly gave a thrill to some of the performers to know that they were being given suggestions from a range of well known personalities.
Having got enough lines suggested to use throughout the entire Extreme Improv World Championship I felt pleased with my efforts to get this small gesture of support from famous people for my festival, but then I started thinking…what if I combined all of the lines of dialogue I have been suggested together to see if I could make a single cohesive story?
And that is exactly what I did! If you watch the monologue you’ll see that I explain the nature of the monologue at the start of the film as I believe the context to why the lines are what they are are important to the understanding and enjoyment of the piece. I even display a screenshot of each suggested line from Twitter as each line is said. These act as both proof of their origin and as a funky stylised subtitles for the film.
The film was shot in front of a green screen during the pandemic and as such it’s a single person shoot with me taking on every role, and every crew member as well. I can see myself some of the ways it is rough around the edges for it’s sci-fi setting, but the setting is just a device to allow the flow of lines to have a slightly otherworldly feel to them.
So there you have it! The story of the greatest collaboration of writers for a single monologue ever..but most probably don’t know it exists. I did tweet a lot of the contributers after the film was made, but I think only one or two acknowledged it. I remember Lea Thompson said ‘cool!’ or something like that.
Maybe one day I’ll get it seen by a bigger audience. If you think it’s a cool film or like the concept feel free to share it out. To gather all the lines from famous people I think I started to get myself in trouble with Twitter so haven’t attempted to repeat the exercise for a second film as yet, but hope to revisit the idea for a sequel some day soon.
You can get loads more Movie and TV show articles in the Movies/TV section of the site, and don’t forget to check out the Geek Battle comedy panel show on the Extreme Improv XStreamed YouTube Channel and on the dedicated Geek Battle YouTube Channel
