Interview with Jimmy Ludwig & Mark Aldrich of The Happy Hour Guys

Posted on 30 July 2009 at 14:46

Mark Aldrich and Jimmy Ludwig at Victory Brewing “It’s a really exciting time around the world for creative people with great stories, making really great booze.” – Jimmy Ludwig “Sometimes people need a third place they can go to, which doesn’t have the expectations and the pressures of the their home or work,” says Mark Aldrich, who makes one-half of ‘The Happy Hour Guys’ duo. The other half is Jimmy Ludwig. Jimmy Ludwig and Mark Aldrich are doing something that makes you say, “Why didn’t I think of this?” And the best thing about what they’re doing is how much they love doing it. Two actors who have a major zest for craft beverages go from place to place to discover new breweries, bars, and pubs around the country. With a camera in their hands, they document their visit to each place and introduce their audience to the most interesting, authentic, delicious, and local bars that most of us fail to notice. When I speak to Jimmy and Mark on the phone, I can hear the constant enthusiasm in their voices even through the fuzzy connection. Yes, they both enjoy drinking, but what they really care about is the sense of community they come to discover during their shoots. Most importantly, they listen to the stories of the people they meet and learn something about the places they spend hours, sometimes the entire day at. In a sense, they open the doors of these tasty, local beauties to everyone out there and let them know that our world will not be taken over by chains. They are drinkers, but better storytellers. They “laugh, learn, and drink.” F.A. You’re both Broadway actors. When did you become the Happy Hour Guys? What made you start a project like this? Jimmy: Mark and I have both been in New York for quite a while. I’ve been a professional actor for 16 years, and we worked all over the country in film and television, on and off Broadway. After doing a show in Washington DC, Mark and I discovered that we both had a great love for craft beverages, and we started going out and drinking. As actors, we’re always traveling, and every community has a cool place that you hear about. The best bars are always the ones that your friends tell you of. When you go to a bar and hang out with someone, sometimes they say to you, “You have to go to this place!” And they tell you some story about it. So we thought, “There’s a show… We’ve got to go and experience these places and tell these stories.” Mark: Our acting careers definitely allow us to be better storytellers. We look for small details and personalities. Also, I hate to say this and it sounds sketchy, but we have a lot of famous friends, who all like to hang out and drink. We’ve actually had a few really good guest stars and have a few more coming up. So it’s never a hard sell as far as recruiting these awesome special guests. We just say, “Hey we’re going to this really cool bar. We’re going to shoot a tape, and it’s going to be a really fun night. Do you want to come?” And they say yes. F.A. There is definitely more interest in craft beer now than there ever used to be. People have been going to wine tastings for a long time, but trying different kinds of local, homemade beers and discovering new places is so exciting. Jimmy: The taste is reflective in the people and the places they come from. It ties in with the economy too. When times are hard, people usually drink more. All the states are hurting for money right now, and they start to realize that if they allow these small businesses to happen, things might start to look up for everyone. Craft breweries are growing at a rate between 20 and 50 percent a year. That’s crazy growth compared to the big guys like Miller and Coors. And the big guys spend millions of dollars on advertising just to maintain their place in the industry. So it’s a really exciting time around the world for creative people with great stories, making really great booze. And for us, every time we turn around, there is something new around the corner. F.A. So did you start off by shooting your episodes in New York City and then moved onto different cities? Jimmy: Yes, we shot our pilot back in 2006 at McSorley’s, the oldest and longest serving bar in the United States. After doing some episodes in New York, we moved onto different cities, because like all actors do, we had to travel. So when you’re out there in a different community, you say “Wait a minute, there is a cool place I can go and check out. I can bring a camera with me…” That’s how it started, and we got better equipment every time we made a little money. Finally, a year ago, we decided that we had to start feeding the beast. In other words, get our content out there. We committed to a one-episode-per-week schedule, and we’ve followed that up to this day. That’s when our numbers really boomed. We put our content on social networks. We have a Facebook fan page and a very active Twitter following now. So once we had our content together and upgraded it to HD, it was a huge step forward. F.A. Do you edit your content yourself or do you have a team that does it for you? Jimmy: – We are the team! You know some really good neighborhood places with a lot of history started to close and got replaced with shiny condominiums and chain restaurants, and we thought well… we might not be able save them, but we can at least get people to hear their stories and appreciate what they have in their neighborhood now before they lose it. We can memorialize these places. Mark: A concept that really inspires us is the idea of a Third Place. Everybody has a first and a second place: their home and their work. But sometimes people need a third place they can go to, which doesn’t have the expectations and the pressures of the first two. And it usually involves a group of different friends. Lawyers can be friends with bricklayers who can be friends with surgeons. It doesn’t have to be a bar; it can be a café or a beer garden. When you see a place that is a Third Place, it’s obvious right away. F.A. When you talk about this idea of a third place that introduces you to a different group of people, I get the feeling that the show can appeal to a lot of travelers, people who love discovery and meeting new people… Jimmy: There are in fact a lot of people who plan their trips around an interesting brewery. Look at Napa Valley. Tourism is huge for them. And there are so many other wineries around the world. Travel channels are very popular on TV right now, and we think there is definitely a place there for what we do. As we move forward, one of things we really want to do is to put together an application for smartphones. So if you’re in New York City and you watch one of our episodes on your phone, the application will tell you, “You’re here now, and this is how you get to the bar you just learned about.” That would close the circle for us, because people can really make use of this. F.A. Was ‘The Happy Hour Guys’ created for TV distribution, or did you want to distribute it online since the beginning? Jimmy: When we shot the pilot in 2006, people had to have a pretty hardcore broadband connection to watch videos online. So at first, we visualized the show as a half-hour television series. But since online streaming has become so robust in the past three years, you can watch online video anywhere. And since we have started producing on a weekly basis, online distribution has become our main focus. F.A. So when you look at the direction the Internet and online video platforms are moving toward right now, where do you see yourselves? Jimmy: I think what we’re really hoping for is some kind of convergence. Everybody wants all of this to come together so that the last ten steps between a computer, a television, and a cell phone can be eliminated. I think the big cable companies are afraid of this convergence, but it’s going to happen. And since we’ve made ourselves so flexible and have quality content, I want us to be reaching out to as many platforms as we can find. A good example is Twitter. When we first started, we were both like, “Do we really need to do this?” But now we have thousands of followers, and it’s been a huge boon for us. Mark: At first we didn’t really understand it, but since everybody was doing it, we thought we’d figure it out as we went along. In a few years, I see us doing what we’re doing now on a much larger scale. I think our idea is a good one, and the possibilities are endless, because there is a place for us to feature in every neighborhood across the world. Jimmy: Our slogan is “LAUGH, LEARN, DRINK.” It’s very important to us that every time we go to a new place, we learn something. F.A. What kind of research goes into your episodes? How do you find all these places? Do you walk by them? Hear of them? Read about them? Jimmy: I’d say all of the above. It does involve a lot of preparation although sometimes it’s as simple as a friend recommending it or walking by the place. We listen to people; that’s the most important part. Sometimes we go to a bar and while we’re talking to the bartender, he asks, “Have you been to such and such place?” And almost without fail, those places turn out to be absolute goldmines. The most important thing for us is the idea of a third place and a sense of community. A lot of breweries we deal with are incredibly active in their community. There’s a brewery in Colorado, where they only use wind-power. When we find an interesting place with interesting people, it almost always turns out that they’re doing something to give back to their community, whether it’s through solar power or sponsoring a 10 K race every year. And they don’t get a lot of credit for that, so we want to give them that attention. Yes, they make really good beer, but they’re also really good neighbors. To learn more about the Happy Hour Guys and watch their show, visit their Film Annex page at www.filmannex.com/TheHappyHourGuys. Interview by Eren Gulfidan

Interview with Jimmy Ludwig & Mark Aldrich of The Happy Hour Guys

About the author

bitLanders

bitLanders is a new kind of social, start and claim your rewards!