“Geez, if getting a million dollars for some half-assed sketches is this easy, I’m gonna take a drive down Sand Hill Road and find myself a VC,” wisecracked Nick Douglas over at ValleyWag. Douglas is referring to the recent $1 million in funding for NationalBanana.com from U.S. Venture Partners.
NationalBanana.com is a website that contains satire clips of current events. For example, there are clips such as Sands of Passion Episodes 1-9 which mocks Al Qaeda in the form of soap operas, The Politics of Stem Cell Research which satires George W. Bush’s take on stem cell research, and a satire of Paris Hilton getting sent to jail.
I watched some of these clips and none of what I watched was that funny. Passions of Sands seemed like a funny concept. But the clips actually seemed more dramatic than funny. What NationalBanana needs to do is produce quick and funny short clips.
While Jerry Zucker, the founder of the website has a credible background such as serving as the producer for the movie, Airplane!, directing 2001’s Rat Race, and writing the scripts for a couple of the movies in the Naked Gun series, I believe NationalBanana has been a disappointment thus far. Hopefully, with the new round of funding, some new talent will be hired and we can see NationalBanana’s potential to compete against Funny or Die.
NationalBanana should also take notes from the guys at TheLonelyIsland.com who have seen enormous success with Internet videos. And NationalLampoon.com has some good clips like Transformers in the Hood too.
