North Newcastle dairy farmer Larry Russell and several of his friends will star in “Cowshit Corner,” a reality TV series currently filming its first episodes.
Newcastle resident Keith O’Leary, a veteran of the film and television industry, will direct and produce the series, which he plans to sell to a cable network.
The series will follow Russell and the other members of the “Cherch of the Holy Cow,” Rodney “Fuzzy” Crockett, Mark Fenderson, Eben Hunt, Tavio Luksic and “Marijuana Pete” Roscop.
The characters all live and work in Lincoln County. Crockett and Luksic live in Jefferson, Fenderson in Whitefield and Hunt, Roscop and Russell in Newcastle.
Fenderson labors alongside Russell on the farm, while Crockett, Hunt and Roscop all work for N.C. Hunt.
The crew tends to gather at the farm every Sunday, Russell said. The men have a few beers and “shoot the bull,” and one day someone began to call it church.
Russell credits Amy Preston of the nearby Alna Store with christening the weekly gatherings as the Church of the Holy Cow. The group altered the spelling to avoid giving offense, Russell said.
The show already has an enthusiastic following before airing a single episode or landing a deal with a network.
As of press time, a week-old trailer for the show has more than 13,500 views on YouTube and the corner’s Facebook page has more than 2000 likes.
The video has even spread outside the continent, Russell said. Luksic originally hails from eastern Europe, where his relatives now follow the show.
The trailer introduces the audience to the cast and depicts scenes from the farm to a soundtrack by Newcastle native Steve Jones. O’Leary expects the song, which shares the name of the show, to become its theme song.
The show and the song take their names from a a stretch of road in North Newcastle near the intersection of Jones Woods Road and North Newcastle Road.
Years ago, the dairy farm was on the corner.
The manure “had to come out from behind the barn and go onto the road to go somewhere, and we always spilled a little bit,” Russell said, until one night, more than 40 years ago, “a sign appeared” across the street at the old general store.
The sign said “Cowshit Corner, slippery when wet,” and the name stuck.
“Some people have liked it, some people found it a little offensive, but I think it’s come to grow on most people, and it’s kind of stuck now,” Russell said. “It’s a landmark.”
The family farm is still in operation today, although it is now on Holstein Lane, a short distance from the corner. “This is the only thing I’ve ever done my whole life, worked on this farm,” Russell said.
O’Leary, the creator of the show, came upon the locally famous sign for the first time after moving to Newcastle about 10 years ago. Later, he met some of the cow corner crowd and the idea for a show began to form.
He enjoys listening in on conversations among the longtime friends at the farm, especially at the Cherch of the Holy Cow. “I just find it fascinating and I think other people in the television world will find it interesting and fascinating,” O’Leary said.
O’Leary brings decades of experience in film, television and theater to the project.
A native of Aroostook County, he returned to Maine after many years in Los Angeles and Toronto, where he worked as a producer and screenwriter of TV movies and other programming.
He has high expectations for his new project.
“Looking at the fare on the airwaves these days, I think it has a really good chance of being sold and going national, so I am basically dedicating a year of my life to doing this thing and getting it sold,” O’Leary said.
O’Leary plans to produce a number of episodes and take the footage to a major trade association convention, what he describes as a “buyers and sellers market.”
The episodes will include a show about cow corner’s appearance in the Fourth of July parade in Round Pond and one about the recent theft of the cow corner sign and efforts to replace it.
“Every time we shoot, it gets a little better and a little better and you can see it taking shape,” O’Leary said.
He thinks the show will sell to a cable network, but if not, he plans to air it online and on Lincoln County Television.
For now, O’Leary’s only crew members are a couple of volunteers. If the show becomes a hit, O’Leary envisions opening a small studio in town, which would provide several full-time jobs for everyone from camera operators and editors to office workers.
O’Leary would like to call the show “Cowshit Corner,” although he acknowledges cable networks might object to the name.
“It might be ‘Cow Bleep Corner,'” he said. “I don’t know until we cross that bridge.”
Russell shares O’Leary’s preference. It would be difficult to censor the show and the title, especially because of the theme song, he said. Besides, he finds the word mild in comparison to the content of other modern television shows.
Russell and friends, after some initial hesitance, have placed their trust in O’Leary. “He’s definitely the man for the job,” Russell said. “He knows the business and he came to us and he seems to have faith that it has a shot.”
“We have a pretty good time around here,” Russell said. “Whether it’s anything that will make a show or not, I guess that’s up to the public to decide.”
“Maybe it’ll never amount to nothing, but we’re having a little bit of fun doing it,” Russell said. “If it takes off and it amounts to something, so be it.”
