The Goon Line 051: The Jimmy Awards

I made it through fifty of these without screaming to you about showtunes. That ends today. 🚨NICHE CONTENT WARNING!🚨

Last summer we saw Theater Camp on a big screen, and my only complaint about the entire affair was that I needed this to be an eight-to-twelve-episode television series rather than a 90-minute movie. We all could have gone so much deeper into the AdirondACTS universe. I am holding out hope for no fewer than four full-length sequels.

A spiritual predecessor to this film is, obviously, the 2003 smash hit Camp, which gives us the joyful and hilarious gift of Anna Kendrick singing “Ladies Who Lunch,” the eleven-o-clock number from Company that drips with middle-aged ruefulness and regret. Kendrick was seventeen years old when the film was released.

Anyway, it is so funny to witness super earnest young people, barely over the threshold of puberty, absolutely leave it all on the stage performing songs often intended for much older people while wearing character shoes. That’s what The Jimmy Awards is. And it is perfect.

Now in their 15th year, The Jimmy Awards showcase America’s top teenage musical theater talent, and after a few days of intense IRL competition, crown two Theater Kids to Rule Them All. Past participants have included Andrew Barth Feldman, Eva Noblezada and chaotic Gen Z internet darling Renée Rapp.

I love the Jimmy Awards, and faithfully watch the recorded performances of the competition every year. And if there’s one thing on this earth I want — deserve, even — it is for a reality show about The Jimmy Awards behind the scenes.

Do you know how good this would be? HOW COULD ANYONE NOT WANT HUNDREDS OF HOURS OF THIS, getting to know these incredibly earnest, enthusiastic kids displaying so much vulnerability and talent, but also being so deeply, incurably teenaged, with their attendant drama layered in with the song-and-dance of it all?

For now, I will settle for an annual viewing of these plucky performers wearing old-person (30s) drag and jazz-handsing their big ol’ hearts out. There’s certainly plenty of content in the backlog to scratch my reality show itch in the meantime, but HOLLYWOOD, IF YOU’RE LISTENING, HIRE ME TO HELP BRING THIS MILLION-DOLLAR IDEA TO LIFE.