Vinny Imperati, also known by his social handle Skinny Vinny, is a media personality, camera operator, content creator, and podcast co-host and after meeting Vinny in Manchester and my home town of Stoke a few years ago on a Steve-O UK Tour it’s been great to see his journey so far.
Originally working as a cameraman for a stunts and pranks show including Zach Holmes Vinny has since expanded into on-camera work and co-hosting Steve-O’s Wild Ride podcast.
Vinny stars alongside Steve-O, Scott Randolph, and Paul Brisske and throughout his appearances he shares personal stories regarding his own past struggles of addiction and paints a picture of turning adversity into growth and look at him now, it’s been quite the journey.
8=D is a sketch-show coupled with a stunt show that feels a little disjointed to include the two but in some weird twisted universe it kind of works.
From gross-out stunts including the infamous ‘Prison Pocket’ where Vinny smuggled narcotics up his behind to the usual stunts you’d see on shows like Jackass (think wax strips and gnarly fail-hard back flips) there’s a strange balance here between Saturday Night Live skits and random stunts.
I think 8=D has a title fitting for the show, it’s just a group of friends dicking around and that’s all it needs to be but I think a stronger focus on the stunts would have been a much better angle as the skits were certainly hit and miss but did have a goofy charm to them all the same.
What I will say about the skits are that they’re wonderfully shot, whoever was behind the camera filming those did a wonderful job, they look great and then coupled with the more home video style stunts there’s a strange contrast between footage here that makes it quite interesting to watch.
I’m not sure what the future of 8=D is but it’s currently in the middle of a festival run and scooped a win very recently so hats off to everyone involved with that.
If future episodes are planned I’d love to see more of a balance between stunts and skits or have the show lean more into the stunts side of things. Vinny has been doing stunts for quite some time now so there’s a lot of footage to dive into that could really spawn his own stunt series without constantly being compared to other shows out there that built their name on silly stunts.
I love the idea that this whole concept of not building a life aimed towards the 9-5, it’s exactly how all of this crazy journey started for myself too and whilst I won’t be shoving things up my ass anytime soon, I respect the hustle for giving this daring and risky journey of self-employment a good crack.
Best of luck Vinny, it’s your time to shine now buddy!
