Courtesy Upstream Flix, the brand-new trailer for CJ Wallis’s comprehensive new film on TV historian Stu Shostak.
The pic, premiering May 2 on digital, features screen-legends Tony Dow (“Leave it to Beaver”), Michael Cole (“The Mod Squad”), the late Ed Asner (“Lou Grant”), Butch Patrick (“The Munsters”), Academy Award Winner Margaret O’Brien, Geri Jewell and many, many more.
Shostak got his start handing out tickets to Norman Lear sitcom tapings to people in Hollywood and parlayed that into doing audience warm-ups prior to tapings for shows such as “All In The Family” and “One Day At A Time”.
The film also indirectly tells the story of television legend Lucille Ball who, contrast to popular belief, was an extremely kind and generous person who treated those around her like family. Ball is hired to hold Q&A’s at a Los Angeles based College which provides a window of opportunity that alters the course of Stu’s life. Shostak’s encyclopedic knowledge of Ball’s career earns his way into becoming an essential part of her small inner circle as her archivist and assistant to her husband Gary Morton.
After Ball passes away, Shostak pioneers what we know now as “podcasting”, hosting internet shows interviewing celebrity cast and crew of the golden age of television. He also co-produces the widely successful LOVING LUCY conventions which welcomed prior cast, crew and superfans from around the world to come together for a few days to celebrate their love of I Love Lucy.
At one of these Loving Lucy conventions Stu meets Jeanine Kasun, a music teacher and Lucy super-fan, who noticed Shostak hosting game shows, events and trivia contests. The two speak on the phone at length and eventually begin dating until Jeanine suffers a brain aneurysm and the two, alongside the legends of television, enter into a war with the medical industry to keep her alive.
