Back on July 19th Milwaukee area native Charlie Berens uploaded a comedy video to Facebook, and the phenomenon known as the Manitowoc Minute was born. We recently had the opportunity to talk to Charlie, and he told us about how he got his start. He told us that he has a background in news, and got his start with MTV. “I started working for MTV in 2008, working for the Choose or Lose campaign.” he stated. “That really got me covering news in a different way.” After getting his foot in the door, he started doing some different things. He told us, “I got into doing some YouTube news channels, some local news channels, then I started focusing more on comedy. I moved to Los Angeles and have been doing that for a little while now.” He went on to tell us about how the show came about, saying, “I had a scripted show picked up but development takes a long time, so in between all that, that’s when I started doing the Manitowoc Minute.” The show was originally going to be a single episode to kill some time, but it really took off. The first episode has surpassed 541,000 views, while the second episode, his most viewed episode, has surpassed 1.1 MILLION VIEWS.
Charlie has put out several one off videos, including a couple of him dubbing his voice over scenes from Titanic, showing how Jack Dawson would really talk if he was from Wisconsin. (Click here for Part 1 and here for Part 2) We asked him how he came up with the character he uses in both series. He told us, “The character is very much so based upon myself…and it’s part of a comedy routine that I do.” He said that when he moved to LA to get into the news industry, a vocal coach informed him if he wanted to make it he needed to have a more neutral accent. So for the character, he just took his original accent and exaggerated it. One question that most people would ask is why he chose Manitowoc as the setting for his show. He told us a story about a show he was doing, where one of the people in the crowd was from Manitowoc. He also grew up in the area a new of Manitowoc. He also stated, “Obviously you have your national recognition. People know about Manitowoc because of Making a Murderer. It’s not like this town deserves to be defined by Making a Murderer.”
In the show, he has a se segment entitled the Craigslist Kicker, where he shines a light on funny posts from Wisconsin to Craigslist. A fan of the show was wondering how he finds all those silly posts. He told us that, “A lot of people will send them to me over Facebook which is very helpful.” Things were more difficult in the beginning though. He told us he “spent so many hours scrolling through Craigslist.”
Charlie is currently touring throughout Wisconsin doing live shows, and will be performing at the Capitol Civic Center on December 27th and 28th. You can click here to check out his Facebook page, and watch the entire series. Keep er’ movin’!