The Breakdown finds funny side of news

Saturday Night Live’s infamous segment begins, “Weekend Update with Michael Che and Colin Jost. And here are tonight’s top stories.” This satirical segment touches upon the past week’s biggest news stories with laughs and sarcasm. USC’s TV channel, Trojan Vision, recently began broadcasting a similar parody news show, The Breakdown. The Breakdown’s introduction mirrors that of Saturday Night Live and begins with, “And this is The Breakdown,” with two co-anchors smirking at the camera.

The Breakdown is USC’s first satirical news show. It airs on Friday mornings at 10:30 a.m. and reruns at 6 p.m. later at night. The Breakdown was created by two sophomores, Rick Cisario and Carter Feuerhelm. Both are students in the School of Cinematic Arts; Cisario is a screenwriting major, and Feuerhelm is a film and television production major.

The show offers quick and controversial one-liners that reflect national headlines. Co-host Josie Andrews begins in the premiere, “Comedian Joan Rivers was not buried in her local cemetery because they require that anyone to be buried there have been at least 40 percent organic material at the time of death. The good news is that she passed away doing something that she loved: having surgery.” After which satire-induced laughter ensues.

In addition to SNL’s Weekend Update, the show was inspired by a variety of news sources within the same entertainment genre.

“We draw a lot of inspiration from the Weekend Update in our style and format,” Cisario said. “But The Daily Show, The Colbert Report and Jon Oliver also have a huge influence on us. I think The Onion has also made a big impact.”

The show’s very structure mirrors these late night shows.

“We tell jokes, have guests and air correspondent segments,” Feuerhelm said. “There’s definitely a good bit of oblivious, character-driven comedy present on The Breakdown, without being especially political.”

In addition to producing, writing, and filming Trojan Vision’s weekly show, Cisario and Feuerhelm are full time students at the School for Cinematic Arts.

“The biggest challenge is having enough material,” Cisario said. “It’s a half hour each week. You see it with every weekly or nightly comedy show, to come up with consistent stuff each week is hard.”

The creators are involved in every step of the show’s production, including the writing process.

“In the writer’s room we pretty much just riff back and forth and see what makes us laugh, then based off of that we pretty much decide what’s going to be written,” Feuerhelm said.

Working on The Breakdown is exactly what the co-creators have always dreamed of doing. Feuerhelm is part of a YouTube comedy channel, “The Origami Team,” and is passionate about filming and producing; comedy has been Rick Cisario’s lifelong aspiration.

“For me the most rewarding part is making people laugh,” Cisario said. “Even if it’s just the people in studio, my mom -— just knowing that we’re putting out stuff that makes people laugh is very rewarding.”

Not only are Rick Cisario and Carter Feuerhelm business partners, they are also close, goofy friends.

“It’s fun because Rick and I actually have quite different styles of comedy,” Feuerhelm said. “He grew up doing stand-up and watching a lot of late night TV, so he’s mastered the craft of these jokes … I think that difference in style gives us a good variety of material to draw upon.”

Cisario was especially appreciative of how Trojan Vision provides students with an opportunity to take a hands-on approach in the processes of acting and production. The pair wanted to create a forum where their fellow students could learn skills that would be used on an actual TV or movie set.

“I think Trojan Vision in general was great,” Cisario said. “That’s where Carter and I got to know each other, and they let us move up because we were passionate about TV … It is a fantastic place to be, and we would love it if The Breakdown became one of the places people came to improve and get their stuff out there.”