History Series / TheChair2014

** Anna gets in a fight with her husband because she really, really wants to put in a shot during her movie's opening sex scene of Scott putting on a condom in full view of the camera, only to be told there's no way to show an erect penis onscreen without getting an automatic [[UsefulNotes/AdultsOnlyFilmRating NC-17]] rating (which isn't allowed by the rules of the contest). She protests, tongue-in-cheek, that this is sexism and that she wants to normalize male nudity as a blow for gender equality (which gets [[TrailersAlwaysLie quoted out of context]] in later episode recaps).

In the end, neither Dawson's film ''Not Cool'' nor Martemucci's film ''Film/{{Hollidaysburg}}'' was a financial success, and ratings for ''The Chair'' itself were low enough that the concept was not renewed for a second season. Shane's fans believed he'd been backstabbed by Quinto (and by Martemucci when she spoke up about her negative opinion of Shane online a year later) and saw this series as Hollywood industry snobs being cruel and dismissive toward a scrappy [=YouTuber=]. Meanwhile, the consensus among critics and industry professionals was almost universally that ''Hollidaysburg'' was robbed, Shane's fans were immature children with no critical judgment, and ''Not Cool'' winning the prize was a sign of [[NewMediaAreEvil how broken online culture was]].

June 2020 saw a sudden resurgence of interest in ''The Chair'' thanks to a massive backlash towards Shane's old content, leading to his reputation taking a massive hit. Subsequently, many, many of Shane's former fans came around to the opinion that Quinto had Shane's number as a toxic narcissist all along, with videos covering the series such as [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcZ0PXabwt0 Nick DiRamio]]'s postmortem going viral.

* CriticalDissonance[[invoked]]: The outcome of the contest is one of the most blatant examples in history, with Shane overwhelmingly winning in both box office and audience voting despite critics giving Anna's movie mixed-to-glowing reviews while unanimously calling Shane's movie the worst insult to filmmaking they've ever seen. That said, unlike most examples of this trope, the dissonance has mostly been resolved as of 2020, with the ''critics'' the ones VindicatedByHistory -- ''The Chair'' and ''Not Cool'' resurfaced online as a result of an endless parade of Shane's former fans commenting that in hindsight they don't know what the hell they were thinking giving him this much support.
* CultOfPersonality: The Vidcon sequence makes it pretty clear, if you hadn't suspected it by now, that Shane's online fanbase is one.

* DownerEnding: Shane wins the contest and the $250,000, despite Zachary Quinto, his co-producer Neal, and every critic who's seen both movies pulling hard for Anna. Anna congratulates him in a blurry farewell video, trying but failing to hide her disappointment. Chris Moore tries to put a positive spin on the whole experiment in his ending speech, but reveals that even if you were pulling for both creators to succeed, the results are disappointing -- neither movie actually breaks out into mainstream success and Shane's movie was only really popular among his existing fanbase (which is exactly what he said he wanted to avoid at the beginning of the show). In RealLife, Shane's movie was still a massive financial loss for his backers (making $30k on a $600k budget), and contrary to Chris' expressed hopes for his future, Shane never made another feature film, and this series only reemerged into the public eye in 2020 after his Website/YouTube career was heavily marked by scandal.

* FlyoverCountry: Both films have their production HQ and shooting locations in UsefulNotes/{{Pittsburgh}}, thanks to this series being partially funded by a grant from a Pittsburgh arts organization (and Zachary Quinto himself being a Pittsburgh native). Dan Schoffer's original script is revised from taking place in UsefulNotes/{{Philadelphia}} to Pittsburgh, and both teams are asked to keep Pittsburgh as the setting in their revisions. (Anna ends up bending this rule, setting her film in the [[ThePlace titular location]] of Hollidaysburg, PA -- which in RealLife is [[ArtisticLicenseGeography almost 100 miles from Pittsburgh]] -- because the DoubleMeaningTitle is too good to pass up.) This ends up becoming an issue between Quinto and Shane Dawson, with Quinto repeatedly asking Dawson to stay away from referring to Pittsburgh as a "shithole" or otherwise disparaging the city since [[BitingTheHandHumor they're the ones funding the project]]. Shane's finished movie does mostly stay away from directly attacking the city in its jokes, but honestly is so fundamentally offensive it comes off as an attack anyway, including [[CanonDefilement defiling]][[invoked]] well-known city landmarks like the [[http://duquesneincline.org/ Duquesne Incline]] by making it the setting of a full-frontal nudity sight gag.

* GenreDeconstruction: And in a really crushing way, too. Both Shane and Anna are hoping to beat the odds, both seeing themselves as underdogs but in different ways, and both hoping for their own kind of Hollywood ending -- Anna hoping she can somehow win the contest thanks to word getting out about how heartfelt and sincere her movie is, despite completely lacking Shane's fanbase, and Shane hoping that despite his many setbacks and the disdain everyone seems to have for him as a schlocky [=YouTube=] star they'll give his movie a chance and realize he has real filmmaking talent after all. Chris Moore explicitly encourages this narrative for both of them, telling them not to give up and to have faith their talent will outweigh the disadvantages they both face... \\
\\
And he's ''wrong''. The results of the competition are ''exactly'' what anyone would've predicted -- Shane's existing fanbase lets him win in a blowout, nobody actually cares enough about the rave reviews of Anna's quirky artistic indie film to actually pay to see it, and yet at the same time Shane's movie is ''exactly'' the amateurish schlocky mess everyone who had no faith in him predicted it would be. Anna fails to get the money or the career boost she was desperately hoping for, and Shane, who didn't really need the money, fails to earn anyone's respect or grow outside of his niche and, in fact, his already fragile self-esteem gets pounded into the dirt. [[DownerEnding Everyone loses.]]\\
\\
What's worse, Chris Moore tries to put a positive spin on the outcome of the contest by saying they'll learn from this experience and do a better job nurturing their contestants' talent in Season 2, and that he really does believe that the honor of winning this contest will help Shane grow into a mature filmmaking career. He's obviously wrong on both counts -- the scandal of Shane's victory kills any chance of Season 2 of ''The Chair'' happening at all, and the humiliation Shane endures from this experience means he never even tries to make a traditional Hollywood feature film again (and would probably have every door shut in his face if he did).

* HopelessAuditionees: Shane treats his actual, real-life audition process like this one of these montages, getting visibly frustrated with what he sees as the poor quality of actors coming in to read for him with them in the room, and is seemingly totally unrepentant about the unprofessionalism of letting this show. (Many aspiring actors found this to be the moment they fully turned against Shane while watching this, especially since none of the actors we see onscreen do anything all that bad.)

** The {{Irony}} here is, of course, that while Anna backs down on this issue without much drama, Shane is insistent on putting a (non-erect) penis in his film as a random sight gag (with possibly racist implications), where a [[CrazyHomelessPeople crazy homeless black man]] is flashing bystanders through a window. Since no actor they can find in Pittsburgh is willing to do this for real, this sets off a quest to find a "black stunt penis" to finish this scene in post, which they aren't able to do until they get back to LA.
* ManChild: Many people who hate Shane in this show point out how much he comes off as one of these, constantly making crude jokes, throwing temper tantrums, and seemingly relying on his producer Lauren to be his mom both professionally and personally.
* MeanCharacterNiceActor: Back in 2014 Shane Dawson's image on his channel was very much a crude asshole prankster, and you can tell that he very much tries to give the impression that this is all an act and to give the first impression of a charming sweetheart to everyone he meets. The problem is that, with the cameras continuing to roll as he gets stressed out over time, it's revealed that he really is not that different from the "character" he plays after all. ([[WebVideo/DrHorriblesSingAlongBlog Like with pie.]])

* ValuesDissonance[[invoked]]: Shane ''constantly'' insists that everyone criticizing his movie's content is old and out of touch and doesn't understand that his sense of humor is completely normal for the younger generation these days. In hindsight, to the extent that he was right about this, it doesn't speak well for his own considerable influence on that youth culture.

* NamesTheSame[[invoked]]: Intentionally enforced for the main characters' names on the scripts of ''Not Cool'' and ''Hollidaysburg'', in order to make it easier in theory for audiences to directly compare the two movies and what they changed from the original script. Given how different these two movies became, the effect is often surreal when going from one to the other (''especially'' the different ways both movies treat Heather).

** The {{Reveal}} that Janie is a lesbian in ''How Soon Is Now'' is also completely dropped from ''Not Cool'', with Janie instead deciding she and Joel are BetterAsFriends. (This is the one case where ''Not Cool'' actually ''removed'' UnfortunateImplications[[invoked]] from the original script, which has Janie decide to sleep with Joel anyway as an IfItsYouItsOkay situation PlayedForLaughs.)