It's Jerry Time! Hits the "Big Time"

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Written by Anthony Kaufman September 06, 2006

Jerry Zucker, the star of ItsJerryTime.com, estimates he's received 400,000 visitors since the website he and his brother Orrin launched last November. While that quantity might not compete with the eight million viewers who've seen Funtwo's guitar-playing or the hundreds of thousands who follow lonelygirl15, it's the quality that counts.

"We really like the grassroots people who have been with us since the very beginning," says Jerry. "We have the woman from China giving us recipes for squid; then there's the father of three who has encouraged us to work clean because he loves watching it with his kids." Then there were the members of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, who nominated "It's Jerry Time!" for its first ever award for shows made for a medium other than television.

While they lost to AOL's coverage of Live8, the Zuckers continue to churn out delightfully low-key darkly hilarious episodes based on Jerry's sad-sack existence, as he contends with unruly cops, nasty landlords, and girlfriends trained in Aikido. They've just posted their ninth episode "The Big Time" today, about Jerry's exploits trying to break into show business.

Their unique collage-based animation has been compared to everything from Terry Gilliam to JibJab. But Orrin, a 15-year veteran of the broadcast design business (he's produced graphics for Sci Fi, USA, HGTV and Court TV) says his main influence beyond animation greats like Max Fleischer and Chuck Jones and pulp artist Norm Saunders, is his own father's portrait photographs.

"When we were kids, Jerry and I would spend hours in the retouching room cutting up rejected photos. The results weren't too far off from what turned into 'It's JerryTime,'" explains Orrin, who makes the films using a digital camera and Adobe software. "Orrin's animation gives the episodes the visual punch to emphasize the humorous and creepy aspects of the stories," explains Jerry, who writes and scores the webisodes.

While "It's Jerry Time!" has received critical plaudits the web over, with comparisons to another Jerry (Seinfeld, that is), and "appeals to people who love the bizarre," Jerry admits that his web fame hasn't extended beyond a small circle of devotees. "It's not like we're being mobbed at London's Heathrow Airport or anything," says Jerry. "Things are happening, though," he says, with a surprising whiff of optimism, "and are 'in development.'"