Synopsis: After learning his girlfriend has a helper-pet that’s been doing the chores, Bill suspects this “chebo” is up to something more devious than just a little housekeeping.
The Chebo is a darkly irreverent, sendup/sort-of-spoof of family creature features of yore (the 1980’s and 90’s). There’s Gremlins (one of my all-time favorite films) starring our famous furry buddy, Gizmo; but the ones I’m more referring to are ones that are more family-friendly:
As a kid of the generation who was the target audience for these movies, part of that experience was accepting them at face value. But what would the not-accepting-at-face-value version of these stories look like?
The Chebo has its leg in the same pool as these films, but stands alone as a modern-day re-contextualization of these styles.
Taking that a little farther, while there’s a genuine, idealistic and light-hearted innocence in these family films, The Chebo gets a little twisted. I think it’s fun, funny, and revealing to heighten and expose the more innocent elements by juxtaposing them with dark humor.
Though those now-dated, well-meaning family films can be enjoyed today as they were originally intended, I want to look at them from a 2016 vantage point. Rather than dropping a creature called a chebo into the backyard of a family in the suburbs (the setting deemed “normal” then by Hollywood, however appropriate for a lot of us growing up), I wanted to see what would happen if you dropped a similar creature into our new (however subjective) “normal” — in this case into the home of a “standard” young couple existing in a comically-heightened version of the Youtubing, Wikipedia-ing world of 2016.
So what’s a “chebo?”
Exactly.
Current Team
Mikie Beatty
Marisa Persson
Actor
Producer
About This Team
Born and bred in the San Francisco Bay Area,
Ryan has been passionate about films and filmmaking since spending most weekends as a child watching his favorite film,
Pee-wee’s Big Adventure. In 2011 he co-founded the production company Finite Films with his two close collaborators and friends he met during his film school days at UC Santa Cruz. Since graduating, he’s written and directed seven short films, including the much-acclaimed horror short
Forest Falls. He has also produced nine other short films, and the Streamy Awards-nominated, sci-fi web-series,
Anamnesis. In addition to currently transmogrifying
The Chebo into our reality, he is also developing multiple feature-length genre films.
Mikie comes from a small town at the base of the Sierra Nevadas in northern California. His acting career began when he spawned one afternoon in the land of Hyrule with nothing but a wooden shield and quickly entered a nearby cave. In the darkness, he was offered a wooden sword by an old man with the ominous forewarning “It’s dangerous to go alone! Take this.” He did so, bravely, and went on to study classical acting and Theatre at the University of California, Santa Cruz, before chasing Ganondorf on horseback into the southern lands of the Dark World, Los Angeles. He soon found the Moon Pearl atop Dante’s Peak in Griffith Park, thus enabling him to live in his true form while pursuing acting in LA. Mikie jump-started his career by winning the role of Mikey (the host) for Disney Channel’s recurring television show,
Disney 365. He continued his studies in acting at the Ivana Chubbuck Studio in Hollywood, then with Brad Greenquist, Killian Mchugh, Chris Game, Meg Morman and Sunny Boling before finding the Master Sword in the Lost Woods, pulling it magnificently from its resting place and holding it aloft his head. He is a proud member of SAG-AFTRA and descendent to the Knights of Hyrule. Notable performances are Howard in Finite Films’
Stealing Time and Corey in Cheer Channel’s
The Secret Diary of an American Cheerleader. He is currently seeking the Titan’s Mitt, which he’s convinced is locked in a dungeon beneath Bar Eighty-Two in downtown Los Angeles. Thank you for your rupees!
Marisa Persson is from Phoenix, AZ where she started her career as a child actress booking over 30 commercials, voice overs, and print ads. Recently, you have seen her in several commercials (AT& T U-verse &
Ask.com), festival renowned webseries (
We Are Angels, The Dark Knight Retires) a few indie films, specifically recurring in several Finite Films’ — Imperfect (United Film Festival Los Angeles) & Status Single (Funny or Die), as well as ION TV’s holiday movie “Defending Santa” starring Dean Cain & Jud Tylor. She has begun to produce and write some of her own work in theatre and film including webseries “The Ladies Restroom” starring Legends of Tomorrow’s Falk Hentschel with co-producer Jul Kohler. Marisa is committed to motivating others through her own artistic journey. Check out her weekly blogspot Marisa’s Monday Motivation. Motivation for today, “Pets are fluffy adorable creatures that relieve human stress. Except when animals are dressed like humans. Yeah, what does one do with that?”