Spike's Factory: The Rocktern Report

This week, Gonzalo and I, Reggie, your loyal guide through this blog post, attended Spike's premiere screening of Factory.
Initially expecting the story of a courageous female textile worker
struggling to make ends meet in a man's world, we were pleasantly
surprised to learn that Factory is actually a very funny sitcom from the mind of Strangers With Candy co-creator Mitch Rouse.

When we first arrived, we were greeted with some admission trouble.
Because we didn't know the secret password, we were confronted by a
man, who we assumed was a wizard of some sort, repeatedly yelling, "You
shall NOT PASS!" After we told him we were from Comedy Central, the man
let us in, politely exclaiming, "You shall NOT NOT PASS!"

Once we arrived, we saw past all the beautiful women cluttering the
room, and went straight for the teeny tiny hamburgers, beautiful in
their own delicious way. Gonzalo said that stuffing all the mini-burger
made him feel like Wimpy, but I had no clue who the hell Wimpy was. I
assumed since Gonzalo is Hispanic, Wimpy must be a character from some
Telemundo soap opera.

We had a chance to sit down with the executive producer and star of Factory,
Mitch Rouse. Mitch got his start in comedy at Chicago’s famous Second
City comedy troupe, which he called "a school for comedy." After
graduating with a master’s in "hilarity," (for the uninitiated,
"hilarity" is the technical term for funny) Mitch worked on Comedy
Central‚Äôs Exit 57 and Strangers with Candy.  Currently, Mitch has put his all into Spike TV‚Äôs first original sitcom, Factory.

Factory is about four men working at a local factory in Illinois. Amazingly, 95% of it is improvised in the vein of Curb Your Enthusiasm. I don’t even improvise that much in my regular conversations. The most unique part about Factory
is its realistic portrayal of men. You get a real sense of what it’s
like when four men get together. They talk about women, they fight,
they talk about women some more. They do everything guys do, including
talking about women. Did I mention they talk about women? As men,
Gonzalo and I could really relate. I recommend checking out Factory when it premieres Sunday, June 29th at 10:00 pm on Spike TV. Or, you can watch the pilot online right now.

-Reggie Williams and Gonzalo Cordova