Perhaps many of you have seen the video of the Christmas Tree falling on top of me. Others of you might remember that I blogged about it. This is the story of what happened next.
I was happy to see that people were reposting my video on Facebook. I was glad to give people a holiday laugh. I mean, it was pretty funny. I was even laughing as the tree was falling onto me. Funny video, nice story, and that was that. Then, somehow or other, I ended up on the front page of The Huffington Post. I have no idea if my video was just the most recent tree video they could find, or they really thought it was the funniest, but there I was, lying under a tree, all over the internet.
The HuffPost article was basically just a link to an asylum.com article that linked to videos of trees falling on people. Again, not sure why my picture was at the top, or why I was first, but it sure was funny. That’s when I started getting a lot of hits on the youtube video. Not “a lot” a lot. It’s no Bed Intruder Song, but I was getting thousands of hits a day, which was a lot for me.
After a day or two, the article rotated its way off of the front page, and I figured that would be it, but that wasn’t it! It kept getting hits, and other websites reposted it, like this random Danish website! That’s when youtube contacted me, asking if I would like to make money off of my popular video. I told them how much I hated money, but they were very persuasive. When I found out I could be making up to ones of dollars a day, I caved in, and let them put ads on that video page. So far I have made $10. Whoo-hoo!
Then I was contacted by TruTV, which is a cable network of some sort, and they wanted to buy the rights to the video for their show “It Only Hurts When I Laugh,” which I guess is a show about people getting hurt and then laughing. Of course I was wary. Would I lose the rights to the video? What if I wanted to show it as a clip the next time I was on Conan? Well, not to worry. I sold them the NON-exclusive rights to the video for $200, meaning they can put it in their show, and I can still sell it to whomever else I please.
So now I’m just waiting for Hollywood to come calling. They will probably want to extend the video into a feature film, about the hardships of chopping down Christmas Trees in a struggling community where one man, who everyone else gave up on, still finds the courage deep within himself, to incorrectly chop down a tree and be crushed underneath it. I can hear the Oscar buzz already. But even if that doesn’t happen, hey, the tree’s already paid for itself, so I’ve got that going for me.
Other Places to Find the Video:
Radio Station Website in Cleveland
Stuff I Stole From the Internet
Random Croatian Site
Random Italian Site
Random Macedonian Site
Awesome!