Is National Banana Funny Or Die?

National Banana is in its beta birth stage, and you're invited to the delivery. It is being brought to life by no other than Hollywood’s Jerry Zucker, known for hilariously satirical movies such as “Airplane” and “Naked Gun.”

Like Funny or Die (see my posting) and Revision3, another video site, it cybercasts its comedy in episodes. Nothing original yet, just the usual adolescent fare to appeal to the masses (most of us who never really grow up...), like this spoof of "Girls Gone Wild."





As venture capital deals go, they are a poor man’s version of Funny or Die with Will Ferrell. He had a hit debut after receiving an undisclosed amount of backing from Sequoia Capital (the same firm that had backed Google and Yahoo among others.) Now, other venture firms are following. National Banana has received more than $1 million from US Venture Partners. That's what I call green banana!

The Funny or Die Landlord

What took YouTube to do in six months, Funny or Die did in six days. Its traffic exploded after the release of its first 2-minute clip,





The Landlord, starring Will Ferrell. The video drew almost 24 million views. This would be in YouTube’s top three of all time.

So what is Funny or Die you ask? (In beta, which seems to be another way of saying we are not responsible for either our success or worse....) Imagine a site just like YouTube, except that the people posting videos are successful comedians and actors. Specifically, Will Ferrell and writers Adam McKay (Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby), and Chris Henchy (Entourage) to start with.

Their take is that there are only so many stupid human tricks people will watch and the future of online video isn’t clips of TV shows or movies. It is talented writers and well known actors producing videos for the online environment. Audiences will flock to their content and sites versus the vast majority of what's endearingly known as "long tail plays" on YouTube. So far they are right on the money. Literally. Comments, anyone?

P.S. Their videos are NOT embeddable. A drag and stupid too, in my view.