Watch “Puerto Rico, Romney Mas Rico” from Top Story! Weekly Episode 142: “Road to the Final Four!”

Mitt Romney’s troubles connecting with Southern voters, the Puerto Rico primary falling on the same day as our show, and the fact that two of our cast members of Latin descent were in the cast gave me the inspiration for this look at Mitt’s attempt to be kinda Puerto Rican!

PUERTO RICO, ROMNEY MAS RICO by Michael Hughes

Starring Phillip Wilburn (Mitt Romney), Tammie Smalls (Gail Gitcho), Neil Garguilo (Carlos) and Matt Moore (St. Patrick) and

Directed by Michael Hughes

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Watch “Grill the Candidates: Newt Gingrich” from Top Story! Weekly Episode 136: “Three Amigos”

As I mentioned in my last post, our special Super Bowl Sunday episode of Top Story! Weekly had just three actors, so we did a “Grill the Candidates” format, where Mike McLendon and Kipleigh Brown questioned each of the four remaining Republican candidates, all played by Phillip Wilburn. We took question ideas from our writers, then assigned each of the four candidates to a specific writer to write a segment. I did the Gingrich one (although the rules were written by Matt Blitz).

GRILL THE CANDIDATES: NEWT GINGRICH by Michael Hughes

Starring Kipleigh Brown (Kipleigh), Mike McLendon (Mike) and Phillip Wilburn (Newt Gingrich)

Directed by Phillip Wilburn

Watch “Soul Campaign” from Top Story! Weekly Episode 134: “Not-So-Good Vibrations!”

As we finished up our readthrough Thursday night for Top Story! Weekly, we realized we didn’t have a particularly strong political sketch for that week’s show. Then we saw the video from that night of President Obama singing at the Apollo Theater:

And from there, writing the Republican candidates singing their own versions of 70’s soul hits became pretty easy. All the actors really nailed this one.

SOUL CAMPAIGN by Michael Hughes

Starring Matthew Harris (Barack Obama), Brian Vestal (Mitt Romney), Brent Pope (Newt Gingrich), Phillip Wilburn (Rick Perry) and Sean Cowhig (Announcer)

Directed by Michael Hughes

Watch “The (Mostly) White Album” from Top Story! Weekly Episode 124: “Another One Bites the Dust”

That video with Herman Cain singing a parody of John Lennon’s “Imagine” with the lyrics changed to be about pizza(!) got us thinking: how would parodies of Beatles songs by the other Republican candidates sound?

THE (MOSTLY) WHITE ALBUM by Michael Hughes, Matt Manser, Phillip Wilburn and Jacob Harper

Starring Amy Paffrath (Amy), Hartley Sawyer (Hartley), Gregg Lopez (Mitt Romeny), Phillip Wilburn (Rick Perry), Kipleigh Brown (Michele Bachmann), , Tommy Bechtold (Newt Gingrich), Colin Contreary (Rick Santorum) and Derek Reid (Herman Cain)

Directed by Kristina Adelmeyer