A Hollywood Ending: Scarsdale Grads Introduced by their Moms Actually Get Together and Collaborate on a Web Series

"Would you be willing to talk to this Scarsdale boy, please? His mom is really nice."

Charlie Alderman (SHS '07) recently graduated from the University of Southern California with an M.F.A. in Film Producing from the Peter Stark Program. He is currently "exploring opportunities" in Los Angeles. His mother, Nancy, emails him regularly.

One such email included a request from her friend Emily Kirschenbaum. Emily's older son, Josh (SHS '09), had just moved to LA after graduating from Carleton College as an English major. Emily hoped that Nancy's son might have some inside knowledge on how Josh could crash the gates of Hollywood. Charlie was a good boy and responded to his mother promptly. Josh was thrilled. But upon actually meeting Charlie, Josh quickly discovered he had no such knowledge and vowed not to take his mother up on any more networking opportunities.

In the end, their mothers were right. Josh discovered a hole in his resume: while he had labored over scripts, he had never actually worked on a set. Charlie had an opportunity – not a glamorous one, but an opportunity nonetheless -- to help Josh get his hands dirty. Josh will co-produce Charlie's latest comedic web series, "New Partner."

The project includes some of the major players from Charlie's last project, "Chloe and Zoë," which has 100,000 views and was listed on IndieWire as Best of 2012. "New Partner" is a spoof of crime TV with a simple premise: at the beginning of each episode, Officer Ron Robinson is assigned a new partner; by the end, that partner will be murdered. The show will star Josh Margolin (The New Girl), Quinn Beswick (Boychicks), and Nick Searcy (Castaway, Fried Green Tomatoes).

Charlie explained that making a web series has become the most eye-catching way to demonstrate talent in Hollywood. If anything great were to come of their new collaboration, Charlie vows to bring his new pal Josh along for the ride.
Charlie and Josh are raising money to help finance production of the first three episodes. Their goal is to then pitch those videos to production companies as samples for a larger scale production. They'd be honored if you'd take a look at the campaign.