And thus ends the Fronnie Does China series. 5 days of filming, 14 episodes. Not to Steve Bannon myself but that’s pretty impressive. Obviously some episodes hit harder than others, but that’s to be expected when the only “pre-production” done was a 2 hour meeting I had with our filmer about which places we should bring Francis to maximize content. Shout out our film guy by the way. Alessio Avezzano is the dude behind a bunch of the fancy shots in my previous videos including “The Shark Knight” and definitely helped us up our production game for this series. Don’t worry tho, you haven’t seen the last of my shaky cam Go-Pro videos.

Shout out Francis as well. When most people come to visit me my main focus is how can I ensure they have the most fun. With him my priority was how to put him in the most awkward situations and he still managed to avoid having a panic attack. We hit the club his first night but the rest of the week he was all-business Francis and in bed by 9. That was probably due to jet lag but it made for a productive week.

The funny thing is that during the 5 years I’ve lived in China I’ve met with a few different reality TV show producers who were eager to create a series out here. Apparently China is “hot” these days in Hollywood and everyone wants a piece. They’ll wine ya, dine ya, and talk a big game but when it comes to actually making a series they realize there is way too much red tape that comes with filming in China and give up on the idea. With this series, Francis pitched it to Erika and Dave, they OK’d it, he flew out, we filmed for a week. BOOM. DONE. Zero filming permits, zero scripts(despite what some ppl thought), and zero crew besides one camera guy. Thats the benefit of producing content on the Wild Wild Web with a company like Barstool Sports. Would China approve of this series being made? Absolutely not. Do we care? Absolutely not.

Francis’s Final Thoughts:

That’s a wrap, folks. I wonder if our series left people wanting to visit China, or vowing to stay as far from China as possible. In my life, I never thought I would get there. It just seemed too far away, too different, too inconvenient maybe. But of course, your purview changes when you work at Barstool–a company that thrives on thrusting its personalities into uncomfortable situations and recording the madness. I had no idea what to expect when I went over there, or what sort of content we’d get. Looking back on all these videos, I’m proud of what we accomplished in just 5 days. It’s probably the hardest I’ve ever worked on something in my life, but I still found the process enjoyable thanks to our incredible film guy Alessio and Donnie’s constant hilarity. It’s easy to burrow into the work and forget to look up and realize you’re on the other side of the world, surrounded by a culture so unique from ours that it can seem like you left the planet. Luckily, in the rare moments when we weren’t shooting, I was able to remind myself to take stock of where I was. This was especially true when we finally stepped out onto the Great Wall–by far the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen in traveling.

Sadly for you guys, some of my favorite moments came when Donnie and Alessio would furnish me with stories from their years in China off-camera. These guys have seen it ALL over there. I learned a great deal from them. They clearly have an immense respect for Chinese people, despite the fact that we highlighted the eccentricities of their culture for the sake of comedy.

My favorite videos were the comedy show, dinner with Donnie’s Chinese family, fake China, and the Chinese water town. To me, these were the most honest depictions of China and felt like something that could work as a travel show. Who knows if we’ll do it again, but hypothetically, where would you like to see us next?

Thanks for following our journey.