Coney Island’s name origins are somewhat contested, but the most popular theory holds that the Dutch named the neighborhood – which really was an island, at the time – for its massive population of wild “konijin” – rabbit. A better story though, is that a group of anthropomorphized traffic cones live on Coney Island and get up to lots of wild adventures within the urban area they share almost the same name with.
Matt Hutchinson and Zach White of Adult Swim’s Atlanta-based live stream “Williams Street Swap Shop” have made this concept an animated reality with a teaser trailer for a fake movie called “Coney Island”. The two-minute trailer delves into the lives of a crew of eccentric, sentient cones who embrace sink holes, date, hang out on the beach, and make inspirational cone puns. The idea was inspired by a “swap” on the show involving construction cones which live on an alternate universe Coney Island which is entirely separate from the one we know and love in Brooklyn.
Today, we got a chance to chat with Zach about his feelings on the different colors for safety cones and pretending that his intern was the spawn of Owen Wilson for professional reasons. (Owen Wilson is not involved in this project – yet – although he is credited as being “Coney Island’s” star in the trailer.) All of the cone’s voices are, “just people we work with in our office,” Zach told us. While he also said that he thinks the project is, “just a standalone,” but with enough encouragement it seems plausible he’d be encouraged to make the piece a full-length film.
The trailer originally aired on the Swap Shop’s January 29th show (the cone-related shenanigans start at 46:36).
________
Have you been to Coney Island?
Zach: I have, but just for a little bit. We’ve gone to New York a couple times. We did another segment, it was a little pre-recorded segment, where we went to the oldest manhole in Manhattan and stood next to it and said facts about it.
Do you think the orange cone community would reject the yellow cone community?
No, I think the cones, they’ve moved on. They see everybody as equal. I think they accept all cones of all sizes and shapes. I think that’s the beauty of the cone: they serve to protect people from crashing into sink holes, and that’s it. I think they would never discriminate.
What about blue cones? I feel like they’d be pretty snotty.
The blue cones…I’ve never seen one, actually. That’s a little more rare. I can see them being a little full of themselves.
Do you think Owen Wilson would actually be interested in being involved in this project?
Maybe we should pitch him. I feel like sometimes he would wanna change it up a little bit and do something different, but probably not
At the end of the short, you have a brief interview with “The Wilson Twins”. These are not actually Owen Wilson’s children. Who are they?
That was just a uh…they are two people that work for us, one was an intern and since both are kinda blonde I thought I’d make them the Wilson twins at the end.
I love that you embrace the sink hole.
We love sinkholes. I guess. It is fun. It was like, what would make this cone kind of crazy? Cones protect, but this one’s jumping into them.