Newsgasm: Welcome Back, Epstein– to the “anti-O.C.”

If you were on the Venice Walk in sunny Los Angeles over the weekend, you might have noticed a Seventies TV idol and group of young actors shooting scenes for a new youth-oriented dramedy series that, against all odds, is not headed to television. The TV Land denizen is Robert Hegyes, still known after all these years as Juan Epstein, one of the John Travolta’s fellow Sweathogs on Welcome Back, Kotter. That was him, running and gunning along the beach with a new group of sweathogs. Only this gang of teenage misfits is a whole lot tougher, and their show, The Venice Walk, is going to be doled out five-minutes at a time.
Hegyes, who lives and teaches in Venice, cowrote, directed and stars in the series that centers on a probation officer and his caseload of Venetian juvenile delinquents. But even though he’s lined up a young and pretty ensemble to play the grafitti artists, shoplifters, druggies, hackers, killers and and skateboard pimps that make Venice Beach so entertaining– this one’s not headed for Prime Time– not yet, anyway.

“The Venice Walk plays out in webisodes,” Hegyes says. “This is a story told in five minute segments. It adds up to an entire season. But this is for the Internet. There’s no room on TV for this.”

“It’s the anti O.C., the flipside. This focuses on the real lives of kids in Venice,” Hegyes says. “I play Paco Santana, a probation officer who was a gang cop out of Brooklyn. He got shot up, retired, and his old girlfriend in L.A. said, ‘Why don’t you come out here, and instead of capping kids, try and fix em?’”

Expect to hear some noise about The Venice Walk later this week. The young cast will be a main attraction in Hollywood Thursday night at the 15th Anniversary party for the Beastie Boys-connected hip hop and skater clothing line, X-Large.

–Tabloid Baby