Nestflix is like Netflix, but for your favorite fake movies and shows within movies and shows
The Rural Juror. Satan's Alley. MoonQuake Lake. Pineapple Express 2: Blood Red. The Lucas Lee Collection. Jan Quadrant Vincent 16. The Crows Have Eyes III: The Crowening. Finally, there's an online platform for all your favorite fictional movies and shows within your favorite real movies and shows.
It's called Nestflix, and it's the latest passion project from Phoenix-based web developer and digital illustrator Lynn Fisher. Some of her previous works have taken on lives of their own as niche audiences of the internet embrace them. Dress David Rose became a Clueless-style dress-up game for the Schitt's Creek character David Rose (Dan Levy), featuring illustrations of his entire wardrobe on the show, while Top Chef fans have been using Top Chef Stats as a bible for fantasy leagues. Nestflix, which launched last week, could easily follow suit.
NBC; DreamWorks; PopTV Nestflix highlights fake movies and shows featured in real movies and shows.
"I had this [concept] in my backlog for a while," Fisher tells EW. "Years ago, finding out that Angels With Filthy Souls from Home Alone was a fake movie, I think that sparked something. From that moment, you notice it more. More recently, Dierdre and Margaret in The Good Place was one. The Crows Have Eyes from Schitt's Creek. They released a trailer for it! I feel like that was really meta and fun."
She continues, "Patrick Willems on YouTube made a video about films within films, and then I was like, 'Okay, people like this.' It's a neat trivia thing. It's a pattern across different types of media."
Over the course of two months, Fisher logged more than 400 of these fake movies and shows on a site inspired by streaming platforms like Netflix and Hulu. Each entry comes with a brief in-world plot description, cast and filmmaker information, a quote (where applicable), and an "as seen in" credit.
In the case of The Rural Juror, 30 Rock's fake film starring Jenna Maroney (Jane Krakowski), Nestflix reads: "The story of a lawyer in the American South named Constance Justice. Based on the popular novel by Kevin Grisham. Cast: Jenna Maroney, Tony Hawk. Director: Casey Affleck."
At one point, Fisher considered using footage from each of these fictional projects to make Nestflix feel more like an actual streaming platform, similar to how Netflix autoplays videos while users scroll for binge picks.
"There's technical challenges, because you'd either need to embed YouTube videos or embed video directly in the page. And then there's copyright issues," she explains. "I was actually kind of nervous that, as it is right now, I would maybe get a copyright complaint. Maybe if this [site] does well, I'll think about it. But now that I've seen how much effort it takes to do just the images, I think I probably won't do it. But that would be really, really cool."
On the copyright front, Netflix actually owns the domain name Nestflix.com, which Fisher assumes (and rightfully so) is because users accidentally search with typos for the streamer. But she liked the pun of "a nested story," so she played around with the URL until something fit.
Fisher has been working with various consultancies to create websites over the years. When she was full-time, she would make time on evenings and weekends to pursue these passion projects, which she sees as both items to bulk up her portfolio and elicit fun conversations with fandoms online.
Her first big foray was A.Single.Div.com, a collection of illustrations created through code. She also redesigns her professional portfolio every year, and in 2017 she really "dove into designing weird web experiences," as she calls them.
"Small little pockets of the internet who catch wind" of her pop culture sites become really engrossed in her work. "I love talking with people and having them see themselves in the site," she says. Lately, Fisher's been freelancing, and while it can be challenging balancing paid work with these projects, she's grateful to have more free time to pursue her own thing.
"I want to make the web a cool and weird place where people feel represented, where we can share weird interests," Fisher says. Some of the feedback she's already received suggests she's doing just that. "I love the kind of people who say this feels like the old days of the web where people just published fan sites. A lot of my sites are just big fan sites. To me, that is a goal."
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