Greenscreen might have been invented solely for Jack Plotnick’s Instagram.
The Girls Will Be Girls star has quietly established himself as the go-to comedian for a certain corner of Instagram, expertly lip-syncing to Bobbie Wygant interviews and inserting himself as minor characters in everything from The Exorcist to The Shining.
But recently, his IG work has taken on an even more surreal turn, beginning with an instant Christmas classic in his crimson-lipped, martini-swilling, reindeer-whipping version of Steve and Eydie’s “Sleigh Ride.”
Now, he’s adapted his YouTube series into verticals on IG, giving new life to his interpretations of Disney Imagineers who appeared in “The Disneyland Tenth Anniversary Show” episode of Wonderful World of Color. In his wonderful world, Mary Blair finds herself surprised at a sketch she finished during a booze-induced blackout. A woman named Carol saunters through the workshop, clenching a cigarette and making sardonic comments about every ride. And Harriet… well, why ruin the plethora of pleasures in the series?
“Disney World was a really big deal in my family,” Plotnick says. “And one of the very first gifts that meant a lot to me was a book about Imagineering, The Art of Walt Disney. It just meant the world to me, and I guess probably I wanted to be an Imagineer when I grew up.”
Now, the series has him bringing to life multiple Imagineers, creating complex, oddball characters out of men and women briefly glimpsed in the background as Disney gave a tour to Disneyland Ambassador Julie Reihm.
The IG cuts are 10 episodes deep so far, with each one getting progressively longer and weirder until the 10th episode ends in the kind of twist that usually comes in a season finale. (The whole thing is available in the internet version of widescreen on YouTube if you can’t wait.) And the production is a one-man band, with Plotnick sourcing the clothes based on what the Imagineers wore in the specials, filming himself playing all of them, and then editing the whole thing in iMovie.
The results are both the offbeat humor that Plotnick is known for and the kind of homemade analog content that feels increasingly special in a world of AI. The costumes alone are a feat of trickery, with the backs of thrift store dresses serving as the fronts and things turned upside down to maintain the illusion.
“Making this series is how I can just get my creativity, my storytelling on film,” he says. “I don’t have to get a yes from anyone. I don’t have to find the investors. I shoot it all right here against this wall in my dining room.”
Plotnick had help from “lovely guardian angels” who swooped in with specific costume pieces or necessary laser special effects. Each character is memorable in their own way (oh, Blaine!), but Plotnick singles out Carol, Agnes (the aged smoker who sounds like Sylvia Sidney in Beetlejuice smoked three packs instead of two a day), and Mary Blair. “ Mary Blair is really fun to be, because it feels good to be somebody who is over everything, knows it all, but doesn’t have to prove anything,” he says. “ In my video series, she knows better than anyone and has given up telling people. She’s at that point where you just go, ‘I can’t keep up and plug all of these leaks.’”
What role Blair plays in the mysterious turn the series takes at the end of Episode 10 remains to be seen, but Plotnick says that all will be answered—and that there were little clues all along about what’s been going on.
As for the long-gestating Girls Will Be Girls sequel, Plotnick says director Richard Day is still working on it. “We shot the whole movie,” he says. “It’s on film. It’s just a matter of it getting to a place where Richard feels that it’s working the way he wants it to work and that it looks presentable.”
In the meantime, we have the Designing Disneyland series to enjoy, in all its twisted glory.