‘Firefly’ Fans, Rejoice! Vimeo’s New Series ‘Con Man’ Is A Reunion (Of Sorts)

In 2002, FOX cancelled its promising, Joss Whedon-helmed sci-fi series Firefly after airing only 11 of its 14 episodes. The show’s small (at least by network TV standards at that time) but loyal audience never lost interest, though, and the series eventually became a hit on DVD. Its success on that format spawned a spin-off movie (Serenity), fan sites, fan fiction and elaborate cosplay. A 2014 cast reunion at a Dallas sci-fi convention was a major cause for celebration. Today, more than a decade after airing its last original episode, Firefly is still kind of a big deal.

Inspired by their personal experiences attending sci-fi conventions over the last decade, Firefly co-stars Alan Tudyk and Nathan Fillion crowdsourced a production budget for a short fictional series about sci-fi conventions called Con Man. The duo turned to Indiegogo earlier this year with their pitch, and the response was staggering: 47,000 individual contributors raised a robust $3.1 million. With an original funding goal of $425,000, Tudyk and Fillion raised $1 million the first day and expanded their original plan for a three-episode miniseries to 13 episodes.

Con Man premiered last week on Vimeo for $15.

Tudyk, who wrote and directed the series, stars as a washed-up actor who has lived out his career attending sci-fi conventions as the former co-star of a long-ago-cancelled Firefly-like series called Spectrum. Fillion, best-known for starring in ABC’s long-running Castle, plays a former co-star of Tudyk’s on Spectrum who has since become a major celebrity. Decider caught up with Alan Tudyk and Nathan Fillion to talk about their years attending sci-fi conventions, their crowdfunding success, and the streaming premiere of Con Man.

DECIDER: How often will new episodes come out? Weekly? 

ALAN TUDYK: There were four episodes the first week, and then three the next week, three the next week, and three the last week. The first four episodes tell one story, and then the next three will be a story, and the next three will be a story, etc.

Alan, the first episode of Con Man opens with you on the toilet. Why start there?

ALAN TUDYK: That was actually taken from a real-life experience — like a lot of stuff in that episode and in the whole series — except in real life it took place at a urinal. Someone next to me at a urinal recognized me from Firefly and started talking to me, and the guy on the other said said, “Wait a second, who are you?” And I said, “Guys, this is not a great time for this conversation.”

I thought it was a good opportunity to get at the ridiculousness of Wray’s world. There’s one guy who doesn’t know about Wray, another guy explaining to him what Spectrum is, you’ve got Nathan’s character on the cover of the magazine. It was a way to introduce everything all at once. As a bathroom-sitting-on-the-toilet-scene, there was no poop humor, which I was proud of!

I wondered if the toilet was metaphorical of Wray’s career — that you wanted to start the story with him at the bottom?

ALAN TUDYK: That sounds better! [Laughs.]

NATHAN FILLION: Everything in this series that Alan wrote has a kernel of truth. It started somewhere in Alan’s life experience. That’s where he’s coming from. At one point in his writing [the script], it says, “I’m going to take off and go to a couple of cons. I need ideas for fresh episodes.” He came back and wrote three more episodes. It’s all born in truth.

Is this something you have been talking about for a long time since Firefly or something you started talking about more recently?

ALAN TUDYK: It’s born out of experience as Nathan was saying. Most shows finish — they have their run and then fade from the public’s memory. Firefly has gained fans over time. In my experience going to these conventions, I meet the first generation of fans, and then their kids are fans. It has grown and grown over time. Also, the sci-fi convention world has really erupted in the last few years, and it’s a really good time to tell that story.

It’s told from our perspective as people who go to conventions and have a connection with fans. We can tell the story without an outside point of view that insults it or takes a stab at it without understanding it. People who don’t know the sci-fi convention world have a stereotypical idea of it, and any comedy that might be born out of that would be stereotypical and boring.

Is your connection to the sci-fi convention world mostly from Firefly?

NATHAN FILLION: Certainly Firefly has a very strong presence. You’ll find that people who go to conventions as fans are fanatical. They’re passionate about your work. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done, someone will come up to you and say “I’m a big fan of…” and tell you about a project you’ve forgotten about. Firefly is a large part of it. When people come up dressed as a character I’ve played, it’s usually Firefly.

ALAN TUDYK: And for Nathan, Captain Hammer.

NATHAN FILLION: Yeah, I see some of those.

[Fillion played a character named Captain Hammer in Joss Wheedon’s popular 2008 web series Dr. Horrible’s Sing-a-Long Blog.]

ALAN TUDYK: We have some Captain Hammer fans in the show. A lot of the fans are actually played by our fans. People who supported our Indiegogo campaign came and played fans. The overall appeal of this community is what we meant to celebrate.

Early in Con Man, there’s a tense scene with a fan on the airplane who wants a lot of things autographed, and Wray tries to take advantage of that.

NATHAN FILLION: I think what you see in that scene is the dichotomy between how Sean Astin [who was in the Lord of the Rings trilogy and plays a version of himself in Con Man] and some celebrities who embrace what they have, embrace what they have done and then others like Wray Nerely [Tudyk’s character] who can’t appreciate what’s right in front of them, who can’t appreciate and enjoy the position they’re in.

ALAN TUDYK: Wray is trying to play on the fandom, on the guy’s love of Spectrum. He’s trying to get something [a first-class seat] from this fan, and then the fan turns around on him. Whenever Wray is insulting or taking the fans for granted, he needs to fail. When he mistreats a fan by playing on his love for Spectrum to try and get his first-class seat out of him, he winds up signing all the guy’s stuff and still gets sent to the back of the plane.

Did the money you raised on Indiegogo wind up being the entire production budget, or did you have to raise additional private investment?

ALAN TUDYK: The budget was fully raised on Indiegogo. We made our budget early on in the campaign, and then we continued putting goals out there. There’s a comic book. There’s a book — the first chapter of the book that [science fiction author] P.J. Haarsma and I had written. There’s a game in production now. These were all ideas that we had prior to crowdfunding. Since the fans were so responsive right away, we thought that maybe we could do it all right now. We’re in production on all of those things. It’s a very busy time.

Do you think crowdfunding is a transitional model for funding projects until the studios catch up, or do you think there is a real future in funding projects this way?

NATHAN FILLION: This is an entirely new business model. I have had mentors in the industry tell me that what I’m doing right now with Castle is the end of an era. There aren’t going to be a lot of shows to have the same kind of journey that I’m having right now. This is the new business model.

[You can rent all the episodes of Con Man on Vimeo for $14.99]

Scott Porch writes about the streaming-media industry for Decider. He is also a contributing writer for Biographile and The Daily Beast. You can follow him on Twitter @ScottPorch.

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