‘The Exquisite Corpse Project’ and an Interview With Splitsider’s Adam Frucci

Edith Zimmerman: Adam! You run Splitsider, which is also in the Awl network, and you’re doing a cool thing where you’re launching your own distribution label (!), Splitsider Presents. Your first output is a movie called The Exquisite Corpse Project, which is available on your site as of today. First things first: Please rank all the Awl sites in order???

Adam Frucci: That’s a pretty mean first question, Edith, since you’re asking me to actively insult my friends and co-workers. So instead I’m going to list them alphabetically, since you didn’t specify by what rubric I’m supposed to order them: The Awl, The Billfold, The Hairpin, Splitsider, The Wirecutter. Nailed it.

[Ugh.] Also did you ever consider Charming, Scruffy Brooklyn-ish Guys in Plaid Shirts as a subtitle?

You know how some people claim to not see race? I don’t see plaid scruffiness. I see it so much (oftentimes in the mirror, for better or worse), it just doesn’t register with me anymore. They’re all just People, Edith. Why do you feel the need to put them in boxes?

Boxes are a great way of being in control!! Anyway, how good is this movie on a scale of 1 to 100?

101. I know I’m selling the thing, so I’m super biased, but I really, really love it. When I first heard about the conceit — these guys wrote a movie in pieces without seeing each other’s sections — I thought it would be too gimmicky, but the way the documentary footage of the creative process is woven in is actually really powerful. I think it’s one of the most interesting looks at working with friends and creating something as a group that I’ve seen. And the insane movie they ended up writing is actually really funny and manages to (somewhat) come together in the end!

How many hot guys are in it?

Every single dude in it is very hot in addition to being smart and funny, which I believe ups their hotness quotients. And you get to see all the actors in very different costumes/styling, because each section of the movie is pretty different than the one before it, so if you think lead actor Caleb Bark is hot in a suit, wait til you see him in a weird bicycling outfit.

Hot girls?

Both main actresses are both very pretty, yes. Same goes for them and costumes; everybody wins.

It would be fun to come up with a way of Exquisite Corpse-ing an interview, you know?

Yes! I’m not sure what that would consist of. Maybe you write the questions but don’t show them to me, and I write answers to what I think the questions might be, and you run them together? Let’s say that that’s how we did this one, it’ll look really impressive.

What else should people know? One or two sentences explaining it to people who have no idea about any of this?

In a nutshell: We’re selling a hilarious and unique movie that’s a cross between a documentary and a comedy. We’re selling it for $5 for DRM-free downloads and in-browser streams, and we’re taking a small cut — 20%. After bandwidth/transaction/legal fees, the artists will be keeping about 70% of every sale, which is the equivalent to them just releasing it on iTunes themselves. We’re aiming to be a sweet spot between self-releasing, which is very difficult to do without the huge fanbase and resources of someone like Louis CK or Aziz Ansari, and going a more traditional route like signing with a record label, in which case you will probably not see all that much from the sale of what you worked so hard on. Not to mention the loss of creative control that comes with working with big media companies.

Are you scared about this being a failure?

Oh, of course. I have put so much time and effort into this that I’m really emotionally tied to how it does, so if we sell like 50 copies I will probably cry. But really, even if this movie doesn’t sell that well, it’s not the end of the world. It’s been so fun to work on this project and I’ve learned so much doing something I had literally no idea how to do beforehand. And we have this platform now and can keep experimenting and playing with it and figuring out what works. So the worst-case scenario ain’t that bad. But I sure as hell hope it sells a bajillion copies.

Are you scared that people who run other Awl network sites might admire your creativity so much that they’d do crazy things to try to copy you / steal your ideas / take your voice in exchange for an opportunity for you to meet the prince?

No! I love crazy projects. I hope all other Awl sites try fun things and that they let me help (if they want me to). Working on this weird idea over the past year has been insanely and surprisingly gratifying and I want to share that feeling with yooooouuuuuuu. But don’t take my voice, I need it and the prince is overrated.

The Exquisite Corpse Project is available on Splitsider now.