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MTV Networks will debut a new hidden-camera comedy show today in which hopeless romantics are set up on blind dates by friends and family members. Their dates, however, are improv actors posing as wacky and awkward characters.
Disaster Date takes a cue from MTV's other popular hidden-camera shows, Punk'd and Boiling Point, and includes St. Petersburg native Justin Hires.
Hires, one of nine cast members, isn't new to the TV game or even the big screen. At 23 he has been in a Sprite commercial and two feature films, Stomp the Yard and The Gospel. But the thing that really makes him stand out in a crowd and the reason he's sure to shine on Disaster Date is simple: Justin Hires is funny.
Hires graduated from the Pinellas County Center for the Arts at Gibbs High School in 2003. Keven Renken, head of the school's theater department, remembers him well. Renken has been at Gibbs for 20 years.
"By the time he was a sophomore I could tell comedy was his thing," Renken said. "Whatever chance you gave him he found the way to make the best of it, so I'm really excited he's acting. He seems to blossom whenever he has an audience."
Hires counts supportive parents, determination and a positive attitude as the keys to his success. He valued his time at Gibbs PCCA and hopes that his success can serve as an example to black teens.
"I had been hearing so many negative things about Gibbs lately, I just really want to show the kids that there are positive people coming out of Gibbs and St. Pete," Hires said. "You can be positive and still be cool."
Some might say Hires has a magnetic personality, but in Disaster Date his job is to flip that magnet over to the side with the negative charge and send his dates running. He leers, dances compulsively and uses feminine hygiene products as props.
And he must try hard to keep from laughing at himself throughout the date.
"I was definitely the one who was giggling and had to turn my head so I didn't blow the whole skit," Hires said.
After high school, he left St. Petersburg for Georgia to attend Clark Atlanta University. Comedy helped him stand out there, too. When MtvU, the 24-hour college network, came to his campus radio station, he cracked so many jokes that he was hired to work as an on-air personality.
His work on MtvU led to a job offer when he graduated from college, but he chose to move to California to pursue acting and comedy. He performs standup at the Comedy Store in Los Angeles and is working on a screenplay.
In Atlanta, Hires reconnected with fellow St. Petersburg native William Packer, co-founder of Rainforest Films, the production company responsible for the two feature films that he appeared in, The Gospel and Stomp the Yard.
Packer said it was Hires' dedication and persistence that led to his first feature role in The Gospel. More specifically, he showed up on the set repeatedly until a stroke of luck led to opportunity.
"I was dealing with this actor who hadn't shown up and here comes Justin," Packer said, recalling that he let Hires audition on the spot in his trailer. "He knocked it out, and I said, 'Can you shoot tomorrow?' and he said, 'I can shoot today.' "
For those who know Hires best, his recent success comes as no surprise. Making it as an actor or comedian has been his plan since fifth grade, when he came home from school one day and told his mother, Barbara, to quit her job with the Pinellas County School Board and take him to California.
"Anything he sets his mind to do, he accomplished the goal. He's never one to quit," Barbara Hires said.
So what's next? He said he plans to have his screenplay, which he compares to an urban Superbad, produced in Hollywood or independently in St. Petersburg.
Then he wants his own sketch comedy show.
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