Steven Tsapelas is Cooler than Lloyd Dobler

Are you possibly ready for the third exclusive Sofachip interview with the Ragtag Productions team? No, I mean it – are you really ready? If you aren’t prepared then you should drink some sort of caffeinated drink, run around the block, and come back. I’ll wait for you!

This installment features writer Steven Tsapelas. Steven talks about the future of We Need Girlfriends, guys with insecurities, the episode of WNG we never saw, Charlie Brown, and he even shares a priceless story about outsmarting Angel Acevedo on a game night.

Much like how Bob Barker reminded people, “Help control the pet population. Have your pets spay or neutered” on The Price is Right, I’m going to mention again that the first grouping of questions was asked to each member of the Ragtag team, and the second grouping were specific to each member. Also, please do have your pets spayed or neutered. (Shelters work hard to try and find homes for all animals but overpopulation is a problem you can help control!)

Key: J = Jessica (me), S = Steven

J: How are you preparing for bringing We Need Girlfriends to CBS? Does it involve doing daily push-ups and eating seaweed while meditating? (This question was asked before the strike ended.)
S: It involves being alone in my apartment for months, living off of spaghetti and Netflix, and waiting for the strike to end. While we were lucky enough to sell We Need Girlfriends to CBS, we unfortunately suffered the bad timing of selling it weeks before the first WGA strike in 20 years. Luckily, we got a lot of work done pre-strike, and I’m confident that the script that’s written both honors the webseries that came before it and successfully transitions it into a 22 minute situation comedy for primetime television. I’m quite proud of it, actually.

J: For the TV show, will you still be using some MySpace bands for music? (Steven’s answer below rightly seems to be pointing out my mistake of the term ‘MySpace bands’ when I should have said ‘up and coming bands’. If this was 1992 I would be using the phrase, “my bad”.)
S: We’d love to keep the show up to date by profiling up and coming bands. We were lucky enough to find bands like Plushgun that our viewers really latched on to. It helps our show when fans are active and it’s especially great when they hear music in our show then pass it around to their friends. We really appreciate getting to use this great music for free, so we really try to do the bands right by getting as many viewers as we can.

I’m sure Sony has their own music that they’d like us to use, but I really hope that we can continue to use new “MySpace bands.”

J: Since you guys love movies, and Valentine’s Day (was) here, can you tell us your idea of a romantic movie?
S: Every Valentine’s Day I watch Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown and kill a box of chocolates (with my mouth). It is the single most depressing holiday special of all time. Charlie Brown, Linus, Sally and Lucy attempt to woo the ones they love and they all fail miserably. In a way I think it’s inspired every episode of We Need Girlfriends. And the reason I think the special succeeds is because you need those romantic failures to make the romantic successes seem that much better. Beside that, my two favorite romantic movies are The Apartment and Midnight Cowboy. (Try watching it and tell me that Joe Buck and Ratso don’t care for each other.)

J: Bring It On was quoted on WNG, what other chick flick movies will you admit to having watched? Do you have rules or guidelines for watching these types of movies?
S: Bring it On was quoted on WNG because in real life Brian Amyot had referenced the “scamming on squirrel” dialogue years earlier and it became the defining quote of our dating years. I suppose the most “chick flicky” flick in my DVD collection is Say Anything. For years quirky guys have been trying to be Lloyd Dobler to please quirky females – and failing miserably. Hopefully quirky girls will now have to deal with quirky boys expecting them to be like Juno McGuff and there will be a balance in the universe.

J: How influential has Saved by the Bell been on your lives? What was your favorite couple? Do you agree that Zach dating Stacey Carosi (played by Leah Remini) at the beach resort was stupid?
S: Okay. Here goes. While I’ve seen every episode of Saved by the Bell many, many times, I never quite gave into it as much as some of my peers did. (i.e. Angel Acevedo) But since I, as a youth, had a strict “12 hours of television a day” regimen to stick to, I watched it every Saturday morning while waiting for WWF Superstars to start. I recall mocking the sheer cheesiness of it with my elementary school friends. That being said, I do have an appreciation for it, and I do own the Saved By the Bell boardgame (As referenced in Episode 6 of WNG)

My favorite couple? Belding and his wife. Why? Because I don’t remember seeing her in an episode until she had to give birth in an elevator. Isn’t that convenient?

And I actually didn’t mind Zach dating Stacey Carosi. Mostly because I was a big fan of Ernie Sabella, the actor that played Mr. Carosi.

( Now for the individually-tailored questions )

J: In terms of games, how does UNO compare to Jenga? I heard that you and Angel fight to be the champion of Jenga, who’s really better at it?
S: Big games of UNO are fun, and I tend to have bitter rivalries with whoever I’m sitting next to. Much like Rod in Game Night, I get incredibly competitive when playing games. Angel and I are equally good at Jenga and air hockey. But if we’re playing games that involve knowledge of trivia, I blow him away. This includes Trivial Pursuit and Scene It. He’s also legendarily bad at Taboo. He even froze during a game once (like Henry in Game Night).

Also, funny Angel board game story. One time in college we were playing Clue. There were five people involved. I noticed that Angel was kind of cheating. You see, any time someone would make a hypothesis, and get an answer, he would see where they marked their sheet then figure out what card they had just seen. For instance, if someone said, “Miss Scarlett with the Knife in the Conservatory,” and then marked their sheet up top, Angel would mark off Miss Scarlett on his sheet. I noticed this, and flipped my card upside down. Therefore, when I was marking off the bottom I was really marking off suspects, and when I was marking off the top I was really marking off rooms. Angel completely bought into this and towards the end of his game when he made his final deduction – He had the answers completely wrong. And I won soundly.

I love telling that story so much. He’s so Rod.

J: Can you tell us if there might be return appearances of characters like Lucy or Sarah on the CBS show?
S: Well, the TV pilot script takes the show from the beginning, meaning it starts before Sarah has dumped Tom. So Sarah will definitely be a part of the pilot. As far as Lucy, time will tell. If we get picked up for series I would really love to include Lucy (and Dennis) in the series. The three episode arc from the webseries was a shortened version of all the plans we had for that arc. Specifically, I really think the Rod/Dennis friendship could be milked for a few episodes, the Tom/Lucy breakup could take a little longer, and Henry can be legally blind for, oh, five episodes?

J: In the episode Future Henry, Henry (the character loosely based on you) doesn’t realize that Jenny is flirting with him. Is this a trait that you have? Do you think this might be common of many other guys?
S: Everything I really wanted to say in Future Henry is summed up in the scene between Henry and Jenny on the staircase where Henry just can’t kiss Jenny. And, sure, that comes from real life. There have been a handful of times in my life wherein I was in similar situations. I knew that I probably had a chance with a girl if I could just make the first move. But I couldn’t get over my own insecurities and so the moment was ruined. I think this happens to a lot of guys that feel a kinship with Henry. And I think that’s why Future Henry is one of our more popular episodes.

J: I heard through your commentary on episode Rod vs Henry that we were supposed to get a look at Rod’s ex-girlfriend, Emily. (It ended up giving us a great episode instead, I’m not complaining. But…) Since we’ve seen both Tom and Henry’s most recent ex-girlfriends from college, will we ever get to see Emily, or find out what happened between her and Rod?
S: The episode we shot was originally supposed to be Episode 4. It was titled Ex Sex. It co-starred Kristel Jelinek as Emily, Rod’s ex. In the episode, Tom and Henry are awoken in the middle of the night by the sounds of sex. They are shocked to hear those sounds in their apartment, and even more shocked when Rod’s ex comes out of Rod’s bedroom. It turns out that even though Rod and Emily hate each other they are engaged in a purely sexual relationship. Tom thinks this is unhealthy and advises Rod to end it. Rod, in an act of defiance, invites over all of his douchebag friends from college for a weeklong Mario Baseball tournament. They’re keeping Tom awake at night, and they’ve locked Henry in his room. So, now Tom is forced to decide what’s better for Rod’s well being – ex sex or douchebag friends.

We were so disappointed when we watched the video of the dailies and found that because of a bad microphone connection the sound was pretty much unusable. The episode was cut together anyway, in hopes that we could maybe fix it. We showed it to Evan and Patrick, and Patrick has said many times that it is his favorite episode. There are still a few choice shots from it in one of our trailers.

That being said, we always wanted to do not just more with Rod/Emily, but also more with Henry/Carol. But because we were doing episodes once a month we had to move past the ex-girlfriend stuff to meet new girls. If this does get picked up as a TV series I think we’d really like to explore their breakups in greater detail.

J: If you were scripting this season of LOST, what would you have happen?
S: I might be one of the few nerdy human beings on the planet that doesn’t watch Lost. I’ll get around to it one day, I swear. Brian and Angel are really into it though so maybe they have some suggestions.

J: In Goodbye Forever, Tom and Henry are eating what I believe are Pop-Ices, why not Otter Pops? Are you unaware of the sheer awesomeness (and superiority) they contain? (www.otterpops.com)
S: Right before I wrote the pilot for the webseries we threw a 4th of July BBQ. We bought a lot of food in bulk, including 200 icepops. They didn’t really move at the BBQ, so Brian & Angel ended up having a freezer full of colored icepops. We spent most of the summer eating them, mostly to make space in the fridge. Because they were such a presence in our lives, I actually wrote them into the script.

I have never heard of Otter Pops. Are they a regional thing? What makes them better? The only specific ice pop I remember from growing up (in New York) are Mr. Freeze Freezer Bars.

J: How much would someone have to pay to get you to jump into a lake on a winter morning?
S: The same price someone would have to pay me to take my shirt off in public: one billion dollars.

This concludes my interviews with the Ragtag team behind We Need Girlfriends. So – what have I learned, what insights have I gleaned, what have I taken away? Besides taking all of their DVDs (I joke, I joke) I’ve come to realize more and more that they’re all talented at what they do and passionate about it. Plus, they inspire me to want to bring out board games to play.

I would like to toast to their continued success with all future endeavors, including WNG. These three guys have a whole lot of heart and a whole lot of humor. And they’re willing to share.

But I seriously wouldn’t mess around with any of their DVD collections.

You can read my review of We Need Girlfriends here. You can also read my interview with Angel Acevedo here, and my interview with Brian Amyot here.

For more, see weneedgirlfriends.tv (Photo credit goes to that site.)

You can look on Sofachip for upcoming exclusive interview segment with actor Evan Bass who plays Rod on WNG.

Until later,

Jessica Rae