‘WEST 40s’ LGBT Comedy Receives WGA Nod

West 40s, Mark Sam Rosenthal and Brian Sloan‘s breakout online comedy about five gay friends stumbling through their 40s in Hell’s Kitchen NYC, has been nominated for a 2019 Writers Guild Award in the category of Short Form New Media – Original Show. Both writers are first-time WGA nominees, and West 40s is their first comedy collaboration. It is also the first foray for both into the realm of online content. “I feel like we tapped into something so funny and so real with this show,” said Rosenthal. “This is a story that wasn’t being told – at least not for laughs. But we wanted to write a gay midlife comedy instead of a midlife crisis.”

Counting West 40s and fellow nominee After Forever, the Short Form New Media category harbors fully half of this year’s nominated gay content: the only other gay-themed shows nominated are two Ryan Murphy projects. The WGA award winners will be announced in a bicoastal ceremony in New York and Los Angeles on February 17th. Sloan, who attended last year’s ceremony with Rosenthal as a spectator, could hardly hide his excitement: “I can’t believe we’re going back as nominees.”

The nomination follows on the heels of the announcement that actor and celebrity chef David Burtka will join the cast of West 40s. He will play a major guest-starring role in Episode 3, slated for production in January 2019. Burtka, who is married to Neil Patrick Harris, has been acting in film, TV, and theatre since moving to New York City in the 1990s. He has appeared on The West Wing, American Horror Story and as a celebrity judge on RuPaul’s Drag Race. He is also a professional chef, having studied at Le Cordon Bleu in Pasadena with appearances on Food Network’s Beat Bobby Flay and as a judge on Worst Cooks in America. He has a book coming out in 2019, Life is a Party. His role on West 40s will be his first major scripted role in a few years, after focusing mainly on his culinary career.

“I love this series and I’m honored to be a part of it. I have always been a fan of Brian Sloan’s work and I am so happy I finally get to work with him,” said Burtka, 43, who is not only a cast member but also part of the show’s target audience!

West 40s has been a breakout success since its online debut on YouTube in July. In four months, it’s amassed 14K subscribers and its pilot episode has surpassed 200K views on YouTube. This  Midtown, midlife comedy has struck a chord for LGBTQ audiences of all ages starved for true-to-life, relatable content online. With no advertising or promotional budget, West 40s‘ great critical notices and even greater word-of-mouth have propelled its success, and it has been viewed in over 200 countries around the world. It has also screened at several festivals – first among them NewFest in New York, in October of this year. The show’s pilot episode was included in NewFest’s Episodic Showcase, and both screening dates were sellouts. Earlier in the fall West 40s also screened at Cinema Diverse: the Palm Springs LGBTQ Film Festival and at the Hudson Boulevard Park Film Festival in New York.

The show’s unprecedented success out of the gate has led its thousands of fans to ask one question repeatedly in hundreds of comments online: when is the next episode? Currently, Sloan and Rosenthal are assembling an investor group to finance the remaining episodes of Season One after a wildly successful Kickstarter campaign crowd-funded the DIY pilot episode. They have scripted a total of six episodes for the first season, all of which explore the challenges and the comic situations that this diverse group of characters encounters living and aging into midlife in Hell’s Kitchen. They hope to get the rest of Season One produced and to roll out the episodes in clusters before the show’s one-year anniversary next July.

“After this beyond-my-dreams WGA nomination, we can’t wait to get the rest of the first season into production,” said Rosenthal. “All we need now is the cash. I mean, we’re ‘daddies’ but we’re not ‘sugar daddies’!

“We’ve been amazed at the reaction so far with thousands of people both in the US and all over the world following us and enjoying the show,” added Sloan. “It’s clear there is a huge audience out there that is eager to see funny middle-aged gay men in their very own show.”

The series was co-created and co-written by Mark Sam Rosenthal and Brian Sloan. Rosenthal, a Comedy Central writer/producer, is also an accomplished performer and playwright known for off-Broadway solo shows like Blanche Survives Katrina in a FEMA Trailer Named Desire and I Light Up My Life: The Mark Sam Celebrity Autobiography, which explored his father’s 1996 death from AIDS. He is also a veteran of the Upright Citizens Brigade improv theater. Sloan is an indie filmmaker and writer whose work over the last 20 years has included the Boys Life series (including his short Pool Days) and the feature films I Think I Do (with Tuc Watkins and Guillermo Diaz), WTC View (with Michael Urie) and August (with Murray Bartlett). He is also the author of multiple Young Adult novels that examine the gay teenage experience through a comic lens.

West 40s’ talented New York-based core cast will all be returning for the rest of Season One: Upright Citizens Brigade regular Jeff Hiller (Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, PopTV’s Nightcap),  Dan Domingues (Royal Pains, Rattlestick’s The Enclave), Matthew Montelongo (Sneaky Pete, Bear City 3), John-Andrew Morrison and Mark Sam Rosenthal.  Two of the cast are currently onstage in NYC this fall/winter in notable off-Broadway shows: Domingues is featured in the Public Theater’s production of Wild Goose Dreams  and Montelongo is starring in Daniel’s Husband at the Westside Theatre.