The nominees are already known for the upcoming 69th Primetime Emmy awards for this coming September. Some of the best shows on both broadcast television and on-demand streaming will be vying for the many ‘Outstanding’ awards across multiple categories. But they are not the only programming in contention. A few days ahead of the main ceremony is the Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards, given for technical achievements, guest appearances, and online short shows. For the ‘Outstanding Short Form Variety’ category, nominee “Honest Trailers” from YouTube looks to celebrate their chance for an Emmy by recreating retro-styled theme songs for the main TV show nominees, and they have a group of pro singers to do it for them, led by Michael Bolton.
‘Honest Trailers’ by Screen Junkies
“Honest Trailers” is but one of the many short show formats produced and uploaded by online movie magazine and YouTube channel Screen Junkies. It has achieved online popularity with its witty satires of film trailers by replacing the original voiceovers with snarky narration that is all too frank about the target movie’s qualities and shortcomings. Such is the following of the show – thanks to its occasional real celebrity guests – that they have been getting Creative Arts Emmy nominations for two straight years now.
This year, to celebrate their repeat nomination, Screen Junkies decided to go with a special video segment for “Honest Trailers.” Their idea is to cook up theme songs for some of the nominated for “Outstanding Drama Series” in the main Emmys, sung in retro 90s-2000s show intro style.
This is where power balladeer extraordinaire Michael Bolton comes in, offering to have his music artist friends interpret the retro theme song re-imaginings of the Screen Junkies crew. The result is an absolute riot as four Emmy nominee shows get new songs that are re-imagined from older shows with memorable themes.
Theme songs reimagined
The first lampooning to be done by “Honest Trailers” is the Emmy nominee “Stranger Things” (Netflix), courtesy of Natasha Bedingfield who sang a theme in the style of “Full House” or “Perfect Strangers.” Next up was Brian Cole for “This is Us” (NBC), and his rendering was the “Cheers” theme with repurposed lyrics.
After him is Paula Cole, who rewrote her own hit “I Don’t Want to Wait” (used in “Dawson’s Creek”) to evoke the elements of “The Handmaid’s Tale” from Hulu.
For a grand finale, Michael Bolton himself offers to sing a theme for “Game of Thrones,” despite “Honest Trailers” pointing out that it was not nominated for an Emmy this year. To that the singer channels the sinister House Bolton from the show, before delivering a power ballad with the opening titles making fun of the loads and loads of characters in “Thrones.” All in all, it was a fun time and really makes the viewer wish “Honest Trailers” and Screen Junkies as a whole good luck to win the ‘Outstanding Short-form Variety Show,’ at the Creative Emmys happening on September 9-10.
