By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Timing is everything in comedy, and Bowling Green native Dylan Stretchbery and his fellow creators’ timing was good for the release of their web series “The Thick Blue Line.”
The release of the series was planned before people realized they’d be confined to their homes to try limit the spread of COVID-19. And as difficult the current situation is, the series hit YouTube just as viewers may be looking for some levity and diversion.
“The Thick Blue Line” is the brainchild of Stretchbery, a 2008 graduate of Bowling Green High School and 2013 graduate of Bowling Green State University where he studied theater and education, and his friends’ and comedy colleagues John Hume and Andre Radojcich.
The series is a loving send-up of the gritty detective genre, drawing on the film “L.A. Confidential” and the more recent HBO series “The Wire” and “True Detective.”
“The Thick Blue Line” features two detectives. Murph played by Hume and Rip played by Stretchbery, who modeled the character on Detective Exley in “L.A. Confidential.”
Stretchbery said he wanted some of Exley’s “boyish charm.” He’s the sharper of the pair. Hume’s Murph is corner-cutter, lax with the rules, and more than a bit dense.
Stretchbery, Radojcich and Hume have been working together for four years since meeting in an improv comedy class. They formed a practice group, and then started performing. They had been hosting a monthly show at a Los Angeles club.
Though they’d been working together for four years, it was just over a year ago that they sat down as a team to try to develop the series. It grew out of a sketch Hume wrote about two police partners who argue about the NCAA and how it treats athletes. The comedians are at once colleagues, co-workers and best friends. “We hang out all the time,” Stretchbery said. “In this career, you never know when the connections you make will come to fruition.”
For the trio that meant tossing around ideas about the hard-boiled detective stories they love. They kicked around multiple sketch ideas, then pared them to a dozen, and from those selected the four most promising. Radojcich and Hume wrote the scripts.
Those became: “We Can Call This a Suicide”; “I Can’t Stop Thinking About that Day”; “A Good Partner”; and “End of the Line.”
“We basically wanted to grab all our favorite moments,” Stretchbery said. “We wanted to create those scenes, so you are dropping into the most climatic moments.”
“End of the Line” finds our heroes on a rooftop confronting a corrupt commissioner, whose price is the comically precise $6,000. It’s full of tension, then false resolution and hope, then new danger – all within four minutes.
And “A Good Partner” finds Murph doing the final reveal of the conspiracy he’s uncovered in the office, which involves why people don’t like him.
Scripts in hand, they crowd-sourced most of the $11,000 they’d need to produce the four-minute long episodes.
The team they pulled together had a decidedly BGSU flavor to it.
Josh Russell, a 2010 BGSU graduate, served as director of photography with Brent Howard, a 2014 graduate as his first assistant cameraman.
Both came onto the project early, and Stretchbery said they deserved a lot of credit for its success.
Russell and Howard also edited the episodes.
Brandon Beining, a 2018 graduate, was recommended by a faculty member for the production assistant position. “He did all the odd jobs. He came through in a large way.”
Jeff Loehrke, a 2009 graduate, did the opening title sequence.
Eric Thompson, who did the lighting, is not affiliated with BGSU, but he dates Erin Blinn, another BGSU graduate, a makeup artist who has worked with Stretchbery on other projects.
Thompson, Russell, and Howard in “I Can’t Stop Thinking About That Day,” they captured the distinctive lighting of the third season of “True Detective.”
It was fortuitous, Stretchbery said, to meet all these BGSU guys in L.A. and “everyone having a willingness to work on this. We have a lot of friends that brought such a level of professionalism. With so low a budget, we weren’t able to pay them what they were worth.”
As director, Radojcich created look books that showed exactly what he wanted for each scene. These changed how Stretchbery approached the character of Rip.
He plays the character as more of a dramatic role. They didn’t want slapstick. “We really wanted something that was grounded and never winking at the fact that it’s comedy,” he said.
They shot the four episodes in three days. The finished product was shown last November at a screening at Grumpy Dave’s in downtown Bowling Green.
“Having my childhood friends, my college friends and my current L.A. friends together to watch something that’s my dream, something I’m so passionate about, was the coolest experience,” he said.
He got his start in theater at Bowling Green High School working with Jo Beth Gonzalez, who is “such an all-star.”
“I was really lucky because the drama department was where I found so many friends,” he said.
His first role was as Eliot in “Eric and Eliot,” a play about teen suicide. The high school experienced four suicides during the time Stretchbery was there, and the play was staged as a way to help students cope.
While he had a great theater experience in high school, he got a slow start in theater at BGSU. He went to one drama meeting and was intimidated because he didn’t have that comfort level he felt in high school.
He made himself return when he was a sophomore and ended up being president of the theater fraternity.
Stretchbery also was cast in a number of roles during the time the new venues in the Wolfe Center for the Arts were opening, including “Arabian Nights,” “Abundance,” “The Winter’s Tale,” and “The Seagull.”
Stretchbery also performed with the Black Swamp Players, in productions directed by Bob Hastings.
His website documents the range of work he’s done while in Los Angeles. That includes the dramatic role as a husband whose wife has been unfaithful and is trying to reconnect with him in the short film “Good People.”
That work now is on hold because of the coronavirus. He had two projects scheduled for April shut down.
His main “survival job” is with the health and nutrition company VEJO, and he’s recently been upgraded to full time. The job is deemed essential, so he continues to work. He’s also walked dogs and worked in an attorney’s office.
He, Hume and Radojcich envision “Thick Blue Line” as a feature length movie. They are now working to get views for the four episodes on YouTube, which will serve as a proof of concept. They’re struggling with YouTube’s analytics that control what gets presented for viewers to watch.
They plan to film it in the Midwest, likely in the Battlecreek, Michigan area.
Their aim is to find a producer and funding. They don’t want to do more crowd sourcing which was “worst part of the process. It felt slimy doing that,” Stretchbery said.
“We’re going to the professional route and shopping it round.”
The advice now in Hollywood is “ to create your own content,” Stretchbery said. “I just have to keep working, keep performing, keep creating.”
