The 3rd Golf Cart City Pilot fucking sucked. The pilot is 58 minutes long, and it could have been half of that. The story had no focus whatsoever, dragged on for forever, and just sucked. It looked more amateur than I even thought when making it. When I brought my dad in to have him watch the premiere, he got bored 5 minutes in and went on his phone, only looking up periodically. When I asked him about it afterwards, he said these exact same things. The pilot I had made, while only sort of realizing it at the time, was completely forgettable and failed in every small little thing it set out to. My magnum opus, something that I had a combined hundreds of hours into, something that brought me to the lowest places emotionally, had taken up all of my free time, something that I had never tried anything like before, had events that nearly stopped it dead in its tracks, the thing that I had (in my head) solely rested all of my hopes and dreams on was terrible. Terrible in a way I never foresaw even once while making the video. Sure while I had occasional bouts of self-doubt, I always brushed it off as my own head getting in the way.
And that what I was making was going to be just as great as I had originally envisioned. And now it was all gone, a year of my life down the tubes, all for this amateur, teenage slop that nobody in their right mind would ever take seriously. And all of this was present in my mind, ringing in the back of my head, but somehow I didn’t mind. This shit may seem completely illogical, but something about those 2 weeks I dedicated to doing nothing changed me. I had nothing to do for a change, and I
An early concept for the 4th Golf Cart City Pilot that never got past the development phase. As the interaction between Mr. Fitzsimmons would have originally gone a lot different.
thought it would make me the happiest I’ve been in a while. I mean with all the work I put in, it had to feel great. But after awhile, everything just got boring. Sure playing video games, watching TV, and jacking off were all fun. But after a certain point, none of it was. I had gotten a feeling I hadn’t felt in god knows how long, a feeling of purposelessness. By the end of it, I just wanted something to do, something worthwhile. It was with this in mind that when I heard all the criticism from my father, I took it as an opportunity. I had worked on Golf Cart City for so long that I didn’t even know what I could possibly do next. The newfound failure of the 3rd Pilot granted me the chance to fix everything I fucked up on previously, and finally finish my dream as the head of my very own TV show. This was an opportunity I could not waste. It was something that even in my head I knew, would be the final Golf Cart City Pilot. This one had to be great, it had to perform, it had everything it set out to be tenfold and have everything go its way just to have a chance of getting noticed, it would need to be unlike anything I’ve attempted before, unlike anything I’ve made before, it would have to be perfect.
Now when starting the story off, I was luckily able to get the outline for the story right off the bat. As I just chose to follow right after the events of the third pilot. From there it only took 2 weeks to map out everything. And with the added experience given from the previous pilot, it allowed me to get a lot more done faster. Most of the production really was the same as the first. My sister helping to film the live-action scenes at night, the same animation style, same Premiere Pro image CGI, hell even bringing in one of my friends to play a side charcter. Now that I think about it, there really weren’t that many interesting things happening during the production of GGC4. Sure there were absolutely points that completely drained me, parts that were absolute hell to make, parts that took forever to film, but I had been there before. I had experienced the same thing with the third Pilot, and it really didn’t seem to faze me all that much. And it all led to a final product that turned out to be everything it was supposed to be. A far tighter script, a far more focused story, and actual nuanced voice acting. Everything was coming together exactly as I had hoped, everything was working on time, in exactly the way I had planned. And with all of this I wasn’t going to let it go to waste. The day was December 23rd when I had finished it, and it was then that I made the choice to have my grand display of grandeur, the grand culmination of everything I had poured so many hours into premiere exactly on Christmas Day. There would lie everything I had poured my soul into, not just the pilot itself, but everything. Every little thing I had done for the brand of Golf Cart City would come down to this one night. All I had to do was wait.
The killing of Andy Finheister was from the very beginning planned as the big money scene. If any scene from this pilot was going to stick you in any way if would have absolutely been this one. In my head everything had to be perfect with this scene, and it was originally supposed to be very similar to Ompamampassou's Gustavo Fring Edit. With Andy all greyed out as he mentally puts the pieces together of what just happened in the background of the shot. However, due to the shit ass lighting and green screen effects we had at the time, that shit was just infeasible. So I had to adjust the scene to something different entirely. Instead, there would be the bright and colorful flashes of Andy's mental state bleeding out as he comes to the grim conclusion that Beeks and Penny sold him out to die as the screen abruptly jumps to back. And with the addition of schizo-like background music, it made the entire scene feel perfect. It accomplished exactly what it had set out to do. And thanks to our technical shortcomings, the scene turned out looking like nothing else I've seen. And it is the perfect closing shot of Beeks and Penny finally meeting the conclusion to their story.
Christmas Day has always been a day celebrated at my Grandparents house. We all head over there to celebrate Christmas in every way you already know. And I was planning for my pilot to be seen by everyone right at the end of the festivities. After we had opened all the gifts, played all the games, eaten dinner, my plan was to tell this to my mom and have the whole family view the premiere on the big living room TV. But she immediately shot this down. I suppose she just did not want to put the whole family through whatever teenage wildcard of a film I had put together. While it makes sense looking back now, in the moment I was completely distraught. This was a concept I dumped 22 months of my life to work towards, and the final piece, the final ending part to this entire chapter of my life is just given treated for shit. Nobody fucking cares, not even my own mom. Hundreds of hours of my life will be destined to forever collect dust as the useless speck of duct they are to the wider internet, with 30 views apiece gifted for my troubles. This was exactly what was going through my head when I angrily moped into my grandfather’s empty room. 105 minutes, my video was going to go live in 105 minutes. The entire premiere is going to happen, to absolutely no impact anywhere. I didn’t know how to deal with this, I had been working to make my animation TV dreams come true for almost 2 entire years. I couldn’t even remember who I was like that far back, my entire life and who I was had changed so much in that window. I felt like the show had become an inseparable part of my identity. Could I even be the person I am now without it?
These thoughts were all running through my head rapidly as the minutes were counting down. I had tried asking Leah to come and see the premiere with me, but she seemed preoccupied with something else. I kept trying to tell myself that Leah doesn’t have to be there, but in my soul she was the only one that could make what I’m feeling any better at all. She was the only person who got to see anything before it was finished, she was the only one who would hear about story ideas before they are put to paper, she was the closest person I had when making these pilots. But the countdown nevertheless ticked away, to an audience of one.
And as I started watching, taking these first few minutes, my spirit was lifted only so slightly. I felt the smallest bit of relief cross over me as these initial moments of the premiere passed by with a quality level I took pride in. 10 or so minutes of the rock in my soul had been emerging mildly, before Leah opened the door and realized she had been late. She had been planning to see it all this time, but simply lost track of time and missed the first quarter. She sat next to me as she planned to watch the rest of it. And we were both pleasantly impressed by the product we saw, even briefly exchanging on the scenes she was there to assist with. And a little after the first half, the youngest sister entered wanting to watch. I was flattered by her interest in wanting to see the pilot, and chose to let her stay. And only 2 or 3 minutes later Dad came in just as the pilot was close to the 25-minute mark. And now to an audience of 4, we watched the final minutes of the final Golf Cart City Pilot. We saw Beeks and Penny hop out of the train cars, the big money scene that showed Jared Banes murdering Andy Finheister, Ringo’s call to Beeks, the out-of-universe epilogue with my friend Cody, as it transitions into the credits rolling to the uplifting tune of Bodyjar, as Golf Cart City fades out for one final triumphant time.
The Hood Irony meme was really big at the time I was making this, so I chose to have it in the background of the Beeks and Penny walking scene as a short Easter Egg. It can be seen starting at 11:14
As Leah and Rachel left both satisfied in one way or another with what they had seen, my Dad talked with me afterwards on what he had just seen. He complimented me on the voices, noting how they actually felt distinct. In addition to him being far more positive on the story of the pilot, as it felt far more
cohesive and well-rounded. And all in all, he just seemed far more impressed with what he had seen in the pilot. He said I did a decent job, and I did. But then he left, and just stayed in the computer room all alone. With the thoughts in my head taking up all the oxygen in the room. I had felt a dissatisfied feeling emerging in my soul. What I made was not good enough, I had failed, like completely and utterly. What I chose to do with the past two years of my life were not worth it whatsoever. Like the fuck did I get out of this, I just threw away two years of the best time of my life for this. While I normally just push these feelings out of my head, dismissed as baseless self-doubt that will only harm me in the end. But at this moment they were here, without a single vow to do better in the future on the horizon. Because this was it, I was not going to be making a 5th Golf Cart City Pilot, I was done. And this was the best of merit I could bring to the concept. And that was the thing, this was the absolute best I could have made, only to stare back at the dead afterglow of the child of my own creation without a single warm feeling. And all of this erupted out of me in a way I’ve never quite felt before. I started bawling my eyes out, more than that I kept crying for minutes on end. It was that pressure that I had put on myself at the beginning of the project finally cracking through my skin, making itself known to everybody in the room. And Leah would see this and enter to wonder what the crying was for. She of course tried calming me down telling me I had made a quality product, that the 4th Golf Cart City Pilot was great. Eventually my Mom came in after hearing what was going on. She likewise tried to aid my emotional state. Telling me about how this wasn’t the end, I could still keep working on whatever I wanted. Golf Cart City didn’t have to end, nobody was telling me to stop. And these things made logical sense to me, but just could not register at all in my mind. I was still crying my eyes out in sadness despite all they had said. It was just the pressure and pain I had felt from everything. Working on all of these pilots one after the other, all of the residual external feelings were finally exploding out of me at this one moment. A moment that lasted for 40 minutes. And after everything was done, I could finally listen to my head again. With everything I had absorbed from my Mom and sister, it had me thinking about what I could actually do after this. Because I had felt like I had gravitated to Golf Cart City as a means of comfort. Whenever I had a little bit of free time or some new creative idea it would always be applied to Golf Cart City, whether the video itself or conceptually. And after almost 2 straight years of just that, it felt extremely hard to abandon. I almost hadn’t remembered the pre Golf Cart City days. It was a different me that had put out those videos, that content, that style of video making. Could I even go back to anything like that without sacrificing the person I had become? And after Leah and Rachel both left the room, I was left all to myself. My thoughts once again taking up all the oxygen in the room. It was a solid 20 minutes of thinking about my creative future. Many ideas took up precedent in my mind, but the one that slowly began to emerge in my mind was a simple return back to YouTube content. But nothing like I had done before. There would be no Pete Jones, Kris Bubbles, anything of that sort, gameplay content was done on my channel. I was going to make something entirely unique that I had never seen anybody doing in the way I had planned. It was to make video essays with a strong emphasis on my own brand of comedy brought in throughout. Something that I had never seen even attempted on in the way I was intending, and it gave me hope. Maybe it just might work, maybe this could be the thing I could make my name by. I then remembered an unfinished 3-page script I had mad back in the middle of May. That would be it. I couldn’t just sit around aimlessly, I had to get another lane to go down. And it was right then and there where I had found it, I was going to make video essays. And my very first one would be on one of my favorite game series of all time. My next great thing would be “MVP Baseball’s Long Forgotten Demake”, and it would be THE thing that would blow me up.
