Kickstarter

[Photo Credit: Zack Bowen]

A 'Behind the Scenes' look at our appearance on WCSH 6 with Jackie Ward.

[Note: While we've been so fortunate to have made our goal (thank you SO much), we're still accepting pledges! Here's why.]

FOOD COMA TV, based on Joe Ricchio's exceedingly popular blog Portland Food Coma, is a series of short films that will report on the oft-overlooked food culture of Maine that exists outside of Portland's city limits.

This is Joe Ricchio.

From his experience as Maine Magazine Food Editor to his prolific reportage on his blog, Joe—passionate, skilled, big-hearted and profane—is the personification of the Portland, Maine food scene.

This is why it's time to get the Hell out of Portland for a couple three. 

Notorious for his coverage of the food scene in Portland, Joe recently realized that he has spent more time reporting on France than Bangor or Fort Kent). He is excited and ready to get the Hell out for a little while and take a good, hard look at the rest of the state.

This is what we will do.

FOOD COMA TV will take Joe on the road and put him in 5 locations throughout Maine. Each location will be the focus of a 10 minute episode, available for free online. Edited with additional footage from the tour, the five episodes will be complied into an hour long film available on DVD and for download (and conveniently scheduled to be released around the holiday season). 

Each shoot will occur over the course of long weekends throughout September, October and the first part of November, and will kick off in the city of Bangor. We look forward to heading to Fort Kent and eating some Ployes; devouring our weight in fish and drinking a few gallons of beer somewhere Downeast; drowning in frialator grease at the Fryeburg Fair; doing whatever the Hell it is people do in Lewiston; shooting at some things somewhere in the middle of the state (we're still open for suggestions about where such an unlikely spectacle should take place). Upon completion, we look forward to taking the final product on a tour of screenings throughout the state.

This is where we're coming from.

The intention of FOOD COMA TV is not about telling viewers where to go or what's amazing at the moment, but about talking with everyone—dishwashers to owners, bloggers to journalists, hunters to farmers, fishermen to businessmen—and illustrating the character of Maine's food scene without making a bland, generalized statement about the character of the citizenry. And it's about doing so in Joe's voice which, while it might be occasionally NSFW, will prove exponentially more exciting and hilarious than anything you have yet seen on cable.

This is how you can help (beyond making a pledge).

We look forward to heading to these towns, and hearing from you about what we should see, where we should go, and who we should talk to. Further, in each location we will organize a night at a venue—a restaurant, a bookstore, a campus, the back of a food truck—at which Joe will read the best of his past writings and interview folks from the upper and lower echelons of the local food scene. These evenings will be for hosted for eating and drinking audiences and they will be a blast. If you would like to help to organize one of these events, or if you have a venue or a restaurant that would like to sponsor one, or if you are or know someone we should talk with about these shenanigans, please be in touch.

Finally, since funds raised here will be used exclusively for paying the base costs of making the series possible, if your business/brand is interested in underscoring its appreciation for Maine by way of sponsoring episodes or events, please do be in touch.

This is where your money will go.

Your donation will pay Maine artists, designers and print-makers working on the promotion the project, web designers to put together its home on the interwebs, camera people for shooting, gas (of course), DVDs, travel-related expenses, editing, the composition of a score, and supplementation of time spent not doing "real work" in order to make a web series about food.

This is where you can contact us and track our progress online.

• Email: foodcomatv@gmail.com
• Phone (Alex): (207) 939-6188
• FOOD COMA TV on Twitter
• FOOD COMA TV on Facebook

(And so many thanks to Kyle Durrie of Power & Light Press and her Movable Type Kickstarter campaign, which was very much an inspiration for this project.)