What do you get when you cross “The Office” with “All My Children“?
“Steamboat: The Series.” It’s one of the most popular comedy offerings on YouTube — and a smash hit for Westporter Scott Bryce.
Scott Bryce
“Steamboat” is a soap satire. Scott — a veteran actor who directed all 5 episodes — calls it “a behind-the-scenes look at the last desperate, dying days of a daytime soap opera.”
He shot “Steamboat” in just 1 day, at Norwalk’s Palace Digital Studios and the SoNo Academy.
Scott’s soap bones are strong. He played Craig Montgomery on 113 episodes of “As The World Turns“; he’s been on other soaps, and his father — Ed Bryce — starred (off and on) as Bill Bauer on “Guiding Light,” from 1959 to 1983.
It was Ed’s TV “grandson” — Dr. Rick Bauer, played by actor Michael O’Leary — who called Scott last year, when “Guiding Light” was canceled after a 57-year (!) run.
Scott put together a cast of soap actors — many from “Guiding Light,” some from “As the World Turns” and other shows — and put them in roles that were the antithesis of what they were known for.
The response to the 5 webisodes has been great. Sound and Fury, for example, called it “a loving look at the unseemly backside (and darkside) of producing a daytime soap.”
Scott is pitching the “Steamboat” series to anyone he can think of: Comedy Central, the Soap Network, ABC, Ben Silverman.
Scott is hopeful it will get picked up by a distributor even bigger than YouTube.
“‘Steamboat’ is a metaphor for our entire world,” he says. “It’s about the downsizing of all of us. As budgets get sliced, egos get sliced too.”
But there’s hope. “Even non-soap fans get it,” he adds. “And they laugh.”
