What's Inside Topher Grace's Cool 'Cereal Prize'?
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Most celebs these days post semi-naked selfies on Instagram or wax poetic in 140 characters or less on Twitter, but Topher Grace has taken his personal musings to the next level with his brand-new Web site that launched today, Cereal Prize, and the content he's sharing – personal stuff and stuff he simply thinks is really cool – lures you down into a veritable pop culture rabbit hole…
"My favorite time ever was when I was a kid," the former That '70s Show star explains to ETonline. "I got up early, you go downstairs and you turn on that TV in the kitchen -- you know, the black-and-white TV, not the good TV -- and you get out this crazy sugary cereal that they don't make as much of anymore, and then on top of all that goodness -- you're watching cartoons, and that cereal -- the cereal prize spills out of the box. That's what I wanted this to be. Every post, kind of a fun nugget like that."
A discovery site for anyone who loves movies, music, TV, comedy and pop culture novelties, Topher is now posting fresh material every weekday, Monday through Friday, on Cereal Prize. The homepage artwork, designed exclusively by cartoonist/designer Ramon Perez, pretty much says it all. You could lose track of time simply sifting through the little in-jokes and arcane references buried in the illustration.
"Someone told me that, in making this site, on TV the dream is to have a show like Friends that kind of appeals to everybody, whereas on the Internet, you can do something like this that appeals to me, and hopefully the community just finds it," says the 35-year-old star and child of the '80s. "I wanted to have that connection with the audience that people have with Twitter. I just wanted the content to be juicier, you know?"
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Of course, Topher is in high demand, having just worked on such big-screen projects as Don Peyote with Anne Hathaway and Christopher Nolan's Interstellar. So how will he be able to keep up the cool posts? "Once a day I can handle, and then we'll see how that grows," he confides. "It's not work. It's my favorite stuff, so if anything, it's a great, fun hobby."
As for the Cereal Prize content, Topher promises a combination of newly created material mixed with stuff that's already out there: "I actually love to steal stuff from everyone [on the Internet]. To me, [this is] just a blog on steroids. … I have a day job, but there is crossover with that. I'm about to start a movie, so I'm going to bring a video camera on it and probably document the whole thing, and I like editing, so I'm going to edit some of that stuff together and then throw it up there. I've done some Funny or Die sketches, and I thought, 'Why can't I have my own website where I do this kind of stuff, 'you know'?"
Two recommendations off the top of his head to check out on the site are the Indiana Jones Story Conference ("You just see, wow, these are three geniuses") and the trailer for the Ben Stiller/Jack Black TV series Heat Vision and Jack ("My favorite episode of television that was never on the air").
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Reflecting on how the idea for Cereal Prize was sparked, Topher recalls seeing the fun, re-edited version of the Star Wars prequels that he made go viral. Wishing he could share that directly with an audience, he relates how good friends said, "'If you do something, just make it very you, and people will understand that you're speaking from your heart.'" He adds with a laugh, "This thing couldn't be more me, love it or hate it."
In addition to www.cerealprize.com, you can follow Topher on Twitter @TopherGrace and www.facebook.com/TopherGrace.