About

Los Angeles has more bands per capita than any other city in America. On any given night in Los Angeles, there are easily 200 musical acts taking the stage, from the flashy, iconic venues of Sunset Strip to the unmarked buildings in Silver Lake, Downtown, and Echo Park. You'll find musicians playing in coffee shops in Pasadena and in Santa Monica art galleries. Meanwhile, every major touring act makes a stop in L.A. to play historic venues like The Greek theater, The Wiltern, The Forum or the Hollywood Bowl. Some of these bands are at the top of their popularity, while others are finding that they can't sell out the large venues they once did, but there's always another band ready to take their place,waiting off stage, with that new song that just might turn out to be the next mega hit. There are no guarantees that any band will have what it takes to gain and hold the attention of Los Angeles' notoriously critical and fickle audiences, but you can't step onto that stage unless you're willing to fall down the stairs leading up to it. Falling Flat is about one of those bands trying to make it big; one of those small music venues trying to stay open, and the entire community of musicians, singers, artists, bloggers, booking agents, promoters, club owners, producers, managers, photographers, and fans in the, L.A. music scene. The personalities are eccentric, the pay is awful and the only thing that is guaranteed to stick with any musician until the end of time are the hundreds of unsold copies of their previous band's debut album.

About the Pilot

About the Creator

About the Series

About the pilot:

Synopsis: After two of the founding members of the band Therapy Session quit, Evan, the only remaining founding member, finds the future of the band to be uncertain. This, on top of his girlfriend dumping him, leads him to withdraw socially and wallow in his own self misery; which is actually an incredibly productive thing to do if you're a song writer. But the other remaining members of the band, Nicki and Jay, weren't invited to Evan's little pity party and want no part of it. If the band is going to have a future, it's time for them to dust themselves off and rebuild the band.

About the production: Falling Flat was created by Joel Michalak, an independent film-maker and musician in Los Angeles, who is heavily involved in both the L.A. comedy and music scenes. This project is tailored to display not only the talent of the people he's met in both communities,in his more than a decade in Los Angeles, but also to tell the story about a community of artists trying to create something meaningful, and discovering that failure is all part of the process.  The pilot features original music written by Joel Michalak as well as music by local indie bands from Los Angeles. It was all filmed at locations in Los Angeles, including at the popular, L.A. indie-rock club, The Bootleg Theater, which doubles as the show's fictional music venue, "The Minor Key". The project was written, produced and funded by Joel Michalak and features many talented comedy actors and improvisers from the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater community, as well as many performers who have had experience and even great professional success as both actors and musicians. The unique cast of hybrid musician/actors, allows for a story telling experience like no other TV show. The cast manages to come off as charmingly authentic while they're playing music and ridiculously funny when they're not.

About the Creator of the Show:

Joel Michalak is an actor, writer, director, singer/song-writer, producer and multi instrumentalist. He's produced, written and directed multiple short films and music videos for his production company Novelty Friend and has written, produced and released five EP's and an album under his band Therapy Session. Joel started acting in theater and sketch comedy at the age of ten, attended a performing arts middle and high school for television production, and went on to receive and associates degree in film production. He has been working professionally in Los Angeles in film and TV production for over a decade. During that time, he has been heavily involved in the L.A. music scene, not only with his own band, but also with music production and promotional photography for several local bands. His music has been played on Moheak Radio/Indie FM, and he's been a contributing photographer to one of Los Angele's most popular music blogs, Buzzbands. He has also been involved in the Los Angeles improv/sketch comedy scene at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre, is a graduate of both their sketch and improv programs, and recently had a joke featured on on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. This show was created to put all of his passions together into one project and tell a story only he could tell.

Falling Flat was created by Joel Michalak after he spent over a decade involved in the Los Angeles music scene. Not only did he have first hand experience with his band Therapy Session, he also became friends with many other bands, club owners, bookers, bloggers, photographers and fellow music fans. Watching how bands evolved and seeing which ones gained success and which fell apart, sometimes in the most heartbreaking ways possible, made it hard to not want to find a medium to tell all these interesting stories. However, it's not just the bands with stories to tell. The music venues in L.A. are filled with fascinating histories; changes in names, ownership, booking agents, and promoters have made all the difference between a venue staying open or closing it's doors for good. If you want to feel what Darwin must have felt in the Galapagos Islands, but with a much cooler soundtrack, spend a few years in the L.A. music scene to see evolution in action. The bands, music, venues, industry, technology and relationships, they're constantly struggling to adapt and figure out what works best. Failure is a must if anything else is to succeed. Falling Flat is not about obtaining success, it's about the ongoing effort to figure out what works best. It's centered around the struggles of a virtually unknown band trying to be heard through all the noise. It's charming because the characters are authentic and their struggles are extremely relatable to their generation. It's funny because the only way you can look at the politics of being in a band, and not laugh about it, is if you're in that band. At it's heart, the series is about community, not just a fictional one, but the actual, ever evolving, L.A. music scene. The series will feature music from many Los Angeles based artists, and even tie some of them into the plot. This show will be like nothing else on TV. Falling Flat will not just tell the story of the L.A. music scene, the L.A. music scene will help tell that story and provide a killer soundtrack; bringing featured artists' fans to the show and exposing them to new music they may have never heard of otherwise.

The Cast

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Kunal Dudheker as Lance

Kunal is an actor, improviser, comedian and musician from Orange County, CA. He studied at UCB and performs improv and sketch comedy around LA regularly. He has co-starred on Fox's New Girl and you can find him in the upcoming film "The Tiger Hunter" alongside Danny Pudi, and in numerous webseries, short films, sketches, and commercials where he's usually pretending to eat hamburgers, or fix IT issues in an office. Growing up Kunal played guitar with his friends for some years but soon found out that being funny was a more effective way to get people to like him than showing up to every party with an acoustic guitar, which turned out to usually have the exact opposite effect.

Jordy Altman as Miles

Jordy Altman is an actor, guitarist, and a proud Kansas City native. Altman has shot national spots for JDate, McDonalds, Mastercard, Gyft, and many more. He has guest stared on TruTV's "6 Degrees of Everything" and Lifetime's "My Crazy Ex" and stars in the Disney Planet origional movie Mère et Fille, California Dream. In addition to acting, Altman played rhythm guitar in Americana folk rock band The Highbinders before parting ways in 2010. Altman currently performs solo accompanied by his loop station under the stage name Cuppy Brown. When not performing on stage or on camera, you can find Altman writing children's songs on his acoustic guitar. His musical influences include Keller Williams, Kaki King, Ween, and Phish.

Wilder Smith as Starchild

Wilder Smith is an actress, writer, singer and comedian currently living in Los Angeles. Her TV credits include Sons of M'Anarchy, Gay of Thrones, and the indie pilot created by Radar Pictures/Coquette Productions/NAA that was directed by David Arquette and Gabe Cowan. She is half of the two-lady comedy duo, "Lilan and Wilder." They have collaborated with Funny or Die, Samsung, College Humor and are currently working on their own pilot. You can find their videos on youtube and FunnyOrDie under the channel, "lilanandwilder." You can also catch one of their high energy live shows at theaters such as Upright Citizen's Brigade, Comedy Central Stage, IO West and Acme Theatre just to mention a few. Wilder can also be seen around town performing with various improv groups and working her puppetry skills in Sock Puppet Sitcom Theatre. Her first concert was The Rolling Stones at age 11, which instantly made her addicted to live music. She went to a school of the arts when she was growing up where she learned to play music, and continues to dabble in singing and guitar.

Jayce Basques as Jay

Jayce is a musician, actor and model who grew up in the San Francisco Bay area. He was a member of the post-grunge band Aphasia which had modest success touring with bands like Trapt, and had a song featured in the 2005 Steven Spielberg directed movie, War of the Worlds. After his band's break up Jayce began acting and modeling, which led him further south to Los Angeles. Since his move to L.A. he has not only been in high demand as a model, but has also starred in several short films and web series, including Deader Days, Burnout, Inheritance, Anarkali Blossoms, Clean Slate, and Salt Water.

Kate Rodman as Nicki

Kate is an actress and musician, born in Manhattan, New York. Trained as a stage actress, she debuted at age ten in Cabaret. With George Griggs and Paul Perez, Kate created the role of Kit in the original stage production of MOD, which now tours worldwide. She relocated to Los Angeles in 2012 and is now a member of the sketch comedy troupes Burger Time and St. Luke's Roosevelt, and performs regularly at iOWest as well as UCB. She has been playing piano since the age of ten and was a band member of multiple bands during her days in New York City. Her recent projects include Ladies Like Us: The Rise of Neighborhood Watch, Upended, Break: The Musical, and the upcoming J. D. Salinger bio pic Rebel in the Rye, starring Zoey Deutch, Nicholas Hoult, and Kevin Spacey.

Paul Goetz as MC-Halfshell

Paul is a writer and actor from St. Louis, Missouri. He has appeared appeared alongside George Clooney in Jason Reitman's Oscar-nominated Up in the Air, as well as in Meet Bill, and numerous other independent films, web series and sketches. He has trained in improv at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre and is currently making his way through the Nerdist School Improv/Sketch program. He has written for the web series Dealership: www.dealershiptheseries.com, and created his own web series, Paul Goetz's Last Ditch Effort: www.youtube.com/PGLDE

Ameenah Kaplan as Zoe

Ameenah is an Actress and drummer from Atlanta Georgia. She has been a drummer since age 12 and was a member of the original American cast of STOMP. She is the west coast drum coach for Blue Man Group, and has played drums and/or percussion with Ty Taylor of Vintage Trouble, Adam Lambert, Alisan Porter, Macy Gray, Rihanna, Taylor Hicks, Lisa Haley and the Zydecats, Drake, Leslie Odom Jr., Scarlett Cherry, and the Twinz. She has performed on Oprah, Conan O’Brien, The Academy Awards, the AMA’s, the Grammy’s, and the Tonight Show.  Her acting resume, includes a reoccurring role on The Office, and guest staring roles on Veep, Grey's Anatomy, Law and Order, Heros, Medium, Cold Case, Veronica Mars and much more.

Joel Michalak as Evan

Joel is an actor, writer, director, singer/song-writer, producer and multi instrumentalist. He's produced, written and directed multiple short films and music videos for his production company Novelty Friend, and has released an album and five EP's with his Los Angeles based band Therapy Session. Joel started acting in theater and sketch comedy at the age of ten, attended a performing arts middle and high school for television production, and went on to receive and associates degree in film production. He has been professionally working in Los Angeles in film and TV production for over a decade. He has been heavily involved in the L.A. music scene, not only with his own band, but has also helped with music production and promotional photography for many local bands. His music has been played on Moheak Radio/Indie FM, and he's been a contributing photographer to one of Los Angele's most popular music blogs, Buzzbands. He has also been involved in the Los Angeles improv/sketch comedy scene at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre, is a graduate of both their sketch and improv programs, and recently had a joke featured on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

Pam Murphy as Shannon

Pam Murphy is a writer, actor and comedian who has been performing improv and sketch comedy at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in NY and LA since 2003. Pam has written two solo shows, Like Me and The C Word, which she performed for sold out audiences in NY and LA. The C Word was named The Best Solo Show of the Year by Time Out New York magazine and was nominated for an ECNY Award. Pam has voiced characters for the Pixar's Monsters University, appeared on Key & Peele, Hotwives, of Las Vegas, Hotwives of Orlando, Chasing Life, Welcome to Sweden, 30 Rock, Happy Endings, Comedy Bang! Bang, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, The Jeselnik Offensive, Adam Ruins Everything, Fatal Decision, and Angel from Hell. Pam and Sue, a pilot that she co-wrote and stars in with Sue Galloway, was an Official Selection in the New York Television Festival.

Lilan Bowden as Karen

Lilan is an actress, improviser and writer from the Bay Area. You can see her perform regularly at UCB Theatre, where she is a team member of both the Harold improv team Rococo, and the sketch comedy team Bonafide. She also performs regularly at UCB and other comedy theaters with her 2-lady sketch group "Lilan and Wilder" with her best friend Wilder Smith, and had a 6 week run of their show "Lilan and Wilder's Best Day Ever" at UCB. TV credits include Parks and Recreation, The Pete Holmes Show, Conan, Suburgatory, NTSF, Days Of Our Lives, Hart Of Dixie, Adam Ruins Everything, Filthy Preppy Teen$, and SyFy channel movies (most notable Zombie Apocalypse). She has also been cast in pilots produced by Sony Pictures Entertainment, Adult Swim, MTV, ABC, and the David Arquette and New Artists Alliances project, Truck’d Up. She is represented by Mavrick Artists Agency (commercial), Sovereign Talent Group (theatrical) and Hansen Management.

Mark Schroeder as Charlie

Mark is a house team performer at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in Los Angeles. In January 2016 he will appear in 'The UCB Show', a comedy variety half-hour for NBCUniversal. He has also appeared in episodes of Pretty Little Liars, The Last Ship, Ironside and Mob City. Past commercials include Jack in the Box, Honda, Marriott and Canon. He can currently be seen playing the alien film critic, Garyx Wormuloid in the web series 'Earthling Cinema' for Wisecrack, currently with over 500,000 subscribers on YouTube. With his comedy group, Private Street, he has completed the web series 'Gigs' and a half hour sketch pilot for Funny or Die's Test Tube channel.

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