Hunting Season (web series)

Hunting Season is an American LGBT-themed comedy-drama web series created by Jon Marcus. Following the romantic and sexual exploits of Alex (Ben Baur) and his small group of friends in New York City, the story was inspired by and largely based on the 2005–08 blog The Great Cock Hunt and the 2008 novel of the same name published by Kensington Books.

Hunting Season
Season 1 logo
Created byJon Marcus
Written byJon Marcus
Adam Baran
Directed byJon Marcus
Starring
  • Ben Baur
  • Pressly Coker
  • Jack Ferver
  • Tyler French
  • Walker Hare
  • Jake Manabat
  • Marc Sinoway
Theme music composerJake Monaco
Country of originUnited States
Original language(s)English
No. of seasons2
No. of episodes12 (list of episodes)
Production
Executive producer(s)Jon Marcus
Rose Troche
Running time9–12 minutes (season 1)
21-30 minutes (season 2)
Release
Original networkHuntingSeason.tv
LOGOtv.com
Vimeo
Original releaseSeptember 12, 2012 (2012-09-12) –
May 5, 2015 (2015-05-05)
External links
Website

Season one premiered in September 2012 with eight short-format webisodes. Season two, funded by a 2013 Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign that raised $151,406, premiered in May 2015 and consisted of four longer episodes. The series's theme music was composed by Jake Monaco.

Premise

Hunting Season follows Alex, a single, gay, 20-something blogger for Gawker in Manhattan who begins writing anonymously about his wild social life.[1]

Characters
  • Ben Baur as Alex
  • Marc Sinoway as Tommy
  • Jake Manabat as TJ
  • Tyler French as Reese
  • Brit-Charde Sellers as Shania
  • Pressly Coker as Hot Sales Guy
  • Joshua Warr as Harris

Season 1
  • Walker Hare as Lenny
  • Jack Ferver as Nick
  • Kate Geller as Lizzie
  • David Lavine as Ben

Season 2
  • Quinn Jackson as Jamie
  • Yuval Boim as Will
  • Ken Barnett as Josh King
  • Hunter Hoffman as Reagan
  • Nic Cory as Aron
  • David Garelik as Nico
  • Ryan Barry as Luke

Episodes

Season 1 (2012)
No.
overall		No. in
season		TitleOriginal air dateLength
11"Episode 1"September 12, 2012 (2012-09-12)9:40
22"Episode 2"September 12, 2012 (2012-09-12)11:20
33"Episode 3"September 12, 2012 (2012-09-12)11:54
44"Episode 4"September 19, 2012 (2012-09-19)11:22
55"Episode 5"September 26, 2012 (2012-09-26)10:35
66"Episode 6"October 3, 2012 (2012-10-03)9:06
77"Episode 7"October 10, 2012 (2012-10-10)10:18
88"Episode 8"October 17, 2012 (2012-10-17)11:51

Season 2 (2015)
No.
overall		No. in
season		TitleOriginal air dateLength
91"Episode 201"May 5, 2015 (2015-05-05)21:05
102"Episode 202"May 5, 2015 (2015-05-05)27:56
113"Episode 203"May 5, 2015 (2015-05-05)24:28
124"Episode 204"May 5, 2015 (2015-05-05)29:30

Development and production

Creator Jon Marcus was inspired to produce his own web series after watching The Guild (2007–2013) and later Web Therapy (2008–2014).[2] He said in 2012:

Show after show in development at American networks is a remake of something that was on the air first in another country ... Has the industry completely lost confidence in its own ability to come up with new ideas? The world of the Web was exciting to me. It reminded me of the ‘90s, when I started my career in indie film; when you could see filmmakers like Todd Haynes, Eddie Burns, Spike Lee, and Ang Lee telling unique stories with characters who hadn’t been given screen time before; and when there was a reliable audience who would show up to financially support them. I think the time is right now for audiences to be able to do that through the Web, and to support an entertainment economy that takes risks and tells original stories.[2]

The story is inspired by and largely based on the 2005–08 blog The Great Cock Hunt and the 2008 novel of the same name published by Kensington Books.[3][4][5][6] A fan of the blog as it was being published, Marcus told Next Magazine in 2012, "My friends all passed it around. It was really hot, it was really fun and it reminded us all of being in New York, which I had been in my 20s and it was just addictive."[5] During the period of the blog's run, three cable TV networks directed at LGBT viewers had been launched: Q, Here! and Logo.[7] Noting the popularity of the racy gay drama series Queer as Folk (2000–05) on Showtime, Marcus thought one of these networks would be interested in a show about single gay men in New York.[5][7] He contacted the anonymous writer of the blog and optioned it for development as a series.[5][7] Marcus said in a 2012 AfterElton interview:

I loved the characters. I loved Alex’s voice. I thought he was as smutty, but he was also really funny and really smart. I thought that there was something about the way that he was so unabashed and shameless about his sex life. An unrepentant slut. A lot of people that I know are like that, and certainly I had a phase like this. We all went through this period in our twenties of, you know, being quite taken with the complete availability of hot single gay men in New York. But I think that there’s real shame that accompanies that period for a lot of people. People don’t like to talk about it, and here was Alex writing gleefully about all the sex he was having. A lot more sex than I had, certainly, but I really identified with him and sort of felt great about the fact that he could just reach out and celebrate it and make it okay. Alex just flings open a second closet door that I think a lot of gay men have about being sexually active.[7]

Marcus shelved the idea for a few years when he found that "no one in the business wanted to make the show I wanted to make".[5][7] He revisited the project in 2010 as he noticed the increased popularity and accessibility of online programming.[7] Marcus enlisted Adam Baran, and the two began adapting the blog into scripts, while also fleshing out certain characters and expanding the concept to both appeal to a wider audience and to avoid stereotypes.[7]

Hunting Season is set and filmed in New York City.[5] Marcus financed the first season himself with "very, very little money",[7] and a 2013 Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign to finance season 2 of the series raised $151,406.[8]

Broadcast

The first three episodes of Hunting Season were released online on Wednesday, September 12, 2012.[6] Five more episodes followed, one released every subsequent Wednesday until October 17, 2012.[4] An uncensored edition of the series, containing nudity, was available for paid download at HuntingSeason.tv, while a censored edition was freely available LOGOtv.com.[4][5][6] In August 2013, the uncensored version of season 1 became available for paid download from Vimeo On Demand,[9] with the censored version free for viewing at HuntingSeason.tv.

Season 2 premiered on Vimeo on May 5, 2015.[10][11][12]

Season 1 consists of eight short-format webisodes of between 9 and 12 minutes in duration,[9] and the four episodes of season 2 are between 21 and 30 minutes long.[12]

Reception

Emily Rome of Entertainment Weekly called the series a "gay Sex and the City", and noted its "full-frontal nudity".[4] Next Magazine called Hunting Season "sexy" and "racy",[5][11] noting that "the series has also gained attention for its large amount of nude scenes".[5] In January 2016, Out named Alex as one of its "30 Most Eligible Gay TV Characters",[13] after previously naming Baur to its Out100 list in 2015.[14]

Awards and nominations
Year Award Category Nominee(s) Result Ref.
2012 4th Indie Soap Awards Best Actor — Comedy Ben Baur as Alex Nominated [15]
Best Ensemble — Comedy Nominated [15]
Best Soundtrack Won [15][16]
LA Webfest Awards Outstanding Composer (Dramedy) Jake Monaco Won [17]
Outstanding Producer (Dramedy) Jon Marcus Won [17]
Outstanding Sound Design (Dramedy) Roman Chimienti Won [17]
2016 7th Indie Series Awards Best Web Series — Comedy Nominated [18]
Best Writing — Comedy Jon Marcus Nominated [18]
Best Lead Actor — Comedy Ben Baur as Alex Nominated [18]
Best Ensemble — Comedy Won [19]
Best Soundtrack Grant Pavolka Nominated [18]
Best Sound Design Roman Chimienti and Jay Pellizzi Nominated [18]
gollark: I guess.
gollark: No, I mean pick both options and see what it generates afterward.
gollark: I would try this if I had GPT-3 access still, which I do not, since *apparently* the free trial credits aren't valid forever.
gollark: You could prompt it with something like "Cats [should/shouldn't] be allowed to live outside because" and compare the answers.
gollark: I don't know, it just doesn't seem like a very natural way it'd be written in practice.

References
  1. Newcomb, Roger (September 27, 2012). "Catch Up On Hunting Season". We Love Soaps. Retrieved January 31, 2017.
  2. Marcus, Jon (October 2, 2012). "'Personalized TV': Why I Made a Gay Web Series". The Huffington Post. Retrieved March 23, 2016.
  3. Grant, Drew (August 30, 2012). "Hunting Season: Really Old Sex Blog Gets New Life as Web Series". New York Observer. Retrieved March 23, 2016.
  4. Rome, Emily (September 7, 2012). "A gay Sex and the City? New web series Hunting Season tackles sex lives of gay New Yorkers". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved March 23, 2016.
  5. Pulos, Will (September 19, 2012). "'Tis The Season: Hunting Season creator Jon Marcus and star Ben Bauer talk about the show's nudity, New York locales and what's coming up next". Next Magazine. Archived from the original on October 21, 2012. Retrieved March 23, 2016.
  6. "About: Hunting Season". HuntingSeason.tv. Archived from the original on October 1, 2015. Retrieved March 23, 2016.
  7. Kennedy, Ed (October 11, 2012). "Interview: Jon Marcus Declares Hunting Season". AfterElton. Archived from the original on November 4, 2012. Retrieved March 23, 2016.
  8. "SEASON 2 of Hunting Season: the Hit Gay Comedy Series". Kickstarter. December 6, 2013. Archived from the original on March 23, 2016. Retrieved March 23, 2016.
  9. "Hunting Season (Season 1)". Vimeo On Demand. August 28, 2013. Archived from the original on December 5, 2014. Retrieved March 23, 2016.
  10. Sauvalle, Julien (May 4, 2015). "#ManCrushMonday: Ben Baur". Out. Retrieved March 23, 2016.
  11. Voss, Brandon (April 30, 2015). "Preview the Gay Sexcapades of Hunting Season Season 2". Next Magazine. Archived from the original on April 6, 2016. Retrieved March 23, 2016.
  12. "Hunting Season (Season 2)". Vimeo On Demand. May 4, 2015. Archived from the original on March 12, 2016. Retrieved March 23, 2016.
  13. "30 Most Eligible Gay TV Characters". Out. January 22, 2016. Retrieved March 23, 2016.
  14. "Out100: Ben Baur". Out. November 9, 2015. Retrieved March 23, 2016.
  15. Mulcahy Jr., Kevin (December 17, 2012). "4th Annual Indie Soap Awards Nominations Announced". We Love Soaps. Retrieved December 24, 2012.
  16. Newcomb, Roger (February 20, 2013). "WINNERS: 4th Annual Indie Soap Awards". We Love Soaps. Retrieved November 13, 2013.
  17. "Complete List of LAWebfest 2013 Winners". Archived from the original on July 2, 2013. Retrieved March 22, 2016.
  18. "Nominations Announced For 7th Annual ISAs". Indie Series Awards. February 3, 2016. Retrieved March 22, 2016.
  19. Newcomb, Roger (April 7, 2016). "WINNERS: 7th Annual Indie Series Awards". We Love Soaps. Retrieved April 8, 2016.
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