For a good chunk of his Saturday morning, Park Gym owner David Park watched one of his students fall down – again and again. Unlike most days at the boxing and taekwondo gym, Park didn’t encourage her to shake it off and try again. Fall again, he said. Make a goofy face!
Most days he’s a coach. But on a recent Saturday, he became an actor and producer looking for drama and comedy as he transformed the converted warehouse space at 1960 Harrison Street near the corner of 16th Street from a gym into a sitcom set. With a professional camera and sound crew from L.A., a handful of local acting talent and numerous friends volunteering their time—and, in some cases, bodies—David Park was producing the first-ever San Francisco boxing gym workplace sitcom.
After three years of running the gym, “I sat back and thought: this is really funny,” Park said. “I felt like Liz Lemon from 30 Rock.”
At 5’8″, with a slight build and a tendency to wear thick-framed black-rimmed designer eyeglasses, Park doesn’t easily fit into a stereotype one might have of a boxing gym owner. It is also a persona that he thinks will make for a unique sitcom protagonist.
Along with friend and Park Gym member Alexis McMurry, Park started brainstorming episode ideas and scenarios inspired by his life as a boxing gym owner in the Mission, a neighborhood he described as historically Latino but filled with yuppies, hipsters and a large gay population. “It’s not a boxing gym in Ohio,” Park said.
A year and a half later, the two had the script for a 22-minute pilot episode.
Drawn from the diversity of his clientele, Park’s sitcom features a cast of Mission characters, some familiar, others unexpected.
There’s the aloof and disaffected hipster cashier, who is more concerned with updating his personal Tumblr than making sure gym members actually pay for class. There’s the police officer in the animal control unit who demands a celebrity discount because she once appeared on an Animal Planet reality TV show.
Park’s fictional universe, as well as his real one, is populated by professional young women with friendly smiles who may wear Lululemon yoga pants but can throw a killer left hook. In it also are tattooed brutes who do drag on the weekend.
At the center of this world is a fictionalized version of Park, a skilled Korean-American martial artist who can’t seem to land a girlfriend. He’s tough but also kind of awkward, warm but self-involved.
“He’s totally quirky, but kind of an asshole,” said Roger Melvin, the pilot’s director. “I think he’s perfect.”
Jokes and Jabs
After a draft of the script was done at the end of 2012, Park filmed a sizzle reel, or short episode sample. Using the sizzle to promote the project, Park created an Indiegogo campaign to raise funds to film a full-length pilot.
With a budget of $5000, just under half of which was raised through Indiegogo and the rest self-funded with a few other supporters, he hired L.A.-based director Melvin and a professional crew of two camera operators and one sound technician for a one-day shoot.
“We’re used to shooting at fairly quick speed, but this is certainly going to be a challenge,” said Melvin, who has worked on numerous shows including the documentary Agree To Disagree and the romantic comedy He’s Mine, Not Yours.
By 8 a.m. on Saturday, large fluorescent film lights towered over the gym’s central ring.
“I’m definitely a little nervous,” said Park prior to filming the first scene, his screen debut. “I’m pretty self conscious about over-acting.”
Once cameras and sound were rolling, Melvin’s 8-year-old son Jordan stepped out with clapperboard in hand and declared: “Scene one, take one.”
Shot in fake documentary style similar to The Office, Melvin’s crew moved around as the actors performed their scenes, sometimes directly addressing the camera.
In the first scene, Park attempts to welcome (and flirt with) an attractive female gym member, played by Kyla Gibboney, but gets sidetracked when the character Darryl needs help wrapping his knuckles. The somewhat inept heavy-weight played by Kwesi Graves, who describes his character as a “passive-aggressive, Southern, closeted boxer,” has a not-so secret crush on Park.
Once Melvin called “Cut,” the room erupted in laugher at Grave’s and Park’s performance. Park beamed.
Fashionable Fists
The sitcom is another item on Park’s already colorful resume.
Though originally from the Bay Area, Park worked for 12 years in L.A.’s fashion industry designing women’s clothes. Feeling exhausted by that and threatened by the oncoming recession, he left L.A. to return to the Bay Area in 2009.
“I have been into martial arts since I was a kid,” Park said. “Opening a boxing and taekwondo gym made sense.”
Over the three years it has been open, the gym has ended up reflecting the diverse interests of its owner. The sitcom shoot isn’t the first time Park’s gym has collaborated with artists.
The Park Gym has hosted art openings, dance parties and rock shows. In 2011, some of the gym’s members were even featured at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) when artist Jim Campbell used footage of Park Gym boxers sparring for a light installation in the museum’s atrium.
Personality and Perspiration
As the morning wore on, Melvin’s crew kept a swift pace setting up shots and rehearsing actors. At around 10, the cast and crew set up a shot featuring a big comic set piece, which involved an extremely sweaty gym member’s perspiration flying across the room.
“My character’s name is Sweaty Guy,” said actor Charles Wagner as he reapplied fake sweat to his already drenched green T-shirt.
The scene required numerous spray bottles, a window fan, extreme close-ups and a fair amount of coordination. It also touched on a theme that first attracted Melvin to Park’s script and ideas.
“There’s moments in a gym that are inherently funny,” said Melvin. “People go to the gym to make themselves look better, but it’s a place where people are vulnerable and let themselves be exposed in all kinds of ways.”
“Everybody comes in here with a certain persona because of how intimidating boxing is, they put up a facade,” said Park. “But when you’re fighting, it really goes down to this core confrontation with who you are. There’s a lot of personality that gets revealed…it’s kind of funny.”
By 11 p.m., a 15-hour day, filming on the Park Gym pilot was a wrap.
The plans for distributing and airing the pilot have yet to be finalized, though both Park and Melvin mentioned internet video sites like Funny or Die as potential venues.
Park hopes that the project will have a life outside of the internet. The well-connected gym owner explains that he is almost certain he can get a meeting with one of the producers of the blockbuster sitcom Two and Half Men. He also said that TV and film icon Penny Marshall is a personal contact from his days working in fashion.
As the long day approached its end, the multi-talented Park said the future of his newest project was uncertain, but “anything can happen.”
