Remembering WWF’s ‘The Blonde Bytch Project’

Posted on December 12, 2018 by bdamage1

Brian Damage

An idea cooked up to take an immature shot at a performer who had just left the WWE, you’d think that Vince McMahon would love it. Today we look at the ‘Blair Witch Project’ parody cooked up by Vince Russo and Ed Ferrara: ‘The Blonde Bytch Project’

Three nights ago, two sports entertainers disappeared near Ames, Iowa while filming a documentary. Yesterday afternoon, their footage was found….

The year was 1999 and the World Wrestling Federation was deep into its ‘Attitude Era.’ During this time, Rena Mero aka Sable had a huge falling out with WWF management. It led her to quit the company in June of that year. After her WWF departure, Rena filed a 110 million dollar sexual harassment lawsuit against the company.

She also appeared on the WWF’s biggest rival and competitor’s flagship show Monday Nitro run by World Championship Wrestling. Tensions were hot between the two sides and Sable used her freedom to badmouth the WWF and Vince McMahon at every interview and new opportunity thrown at her. WWF head creative writers Vince Russo and Ed Ferrara decided to fire a few of their own shots at the former Sable.

The movie ‘The Blair Witch Project’ had just been released into theaters and became an instant phenomenon. Russo and Ferrara saw the film and immediately thought it would be a great idea to use it in a spoof. Both Vince Russo and Ed Ferrara wrote a parody of the movie and went to work on beginning to film the vignettes for it. The idea would be known as ‘The Blonde Bytch Project.’

The filming would take place in the woods behind the home of Ed Ferrara in Stamford, Connecticut. The main purpose of these vignettes was to indirectly bash Rena Mero on WWF television. The other motive was to help elevate the Blue Meanie and have a strong introduction for newcomer Stevie Richards. Russo and Ferraro were big fans of both Blue Meanie and Stevie Richards and wanted a strong vehicle to debut them as a comedic team.

According to Ferrara, Meanie and Richards were very hands on with this project and gave a lot of their own creative input into it. When the vignettes were completely done, the first teaser was shown on Monday Night Raw. It caught the attention of the national newspaper USA Today and they ran an article about The Blonde Bytch Project and other parodies of the Blair Witch movie. Vince McMahon read the article and became more curious as to what Russo and Ferrara were cooking up.

They were summoned to Vince McMahon’s office and were ordered to give the CEO a sneak peek as to what the Blonde Bytch Project was really all about. After the entire segment was shown to McMahon, he simply said, “I don’t get it.” Russo and Ferrara began to explain that it was a spoof on the Blair Witch Project and explained to Vince what that movie was about. Still not sold on it, Vince said that ‘Nobody was going to see a movie like that…’ and just like that, Russo and Ferrara knew their project was dying.

Vince Russo tried to sell Vince McMahon that the movie was doing big business and the Blonde Bytch project was really a shot at Rena Mero. That still didn’t convince McMahon, as the WWF legal team stepped in and basically shot down the project. Rena Mero and the WWF were in the middle of a lawsuit and the WWF didn’t need the extra attention brought to it. The Blonde Bytch Project was officially scrapped.

Nobody has seen the actual footage of the Blonde Bytch Project and we may never get to see for ourselves what Russo and Ferrara had created. Apparently, the Blue Meanie was the camera man during the filming and Stevie was exploring the deep woods for the “mythical” Blonde Bytch. The ending was supposedly Meanie finding Stevie in the corner of a basement and totally possessed by the blonde bytch herself. Stevie would have on a blonde wig and dressed in a Sable outfit acting like, well, a bitch.

Well, no matter how it played out, The Blonde Bytch Project has somewhat developed a small cult following with fans clamoring to view the never before seen footage. Much like the actual Blair Witch movie, the tapes were lost only to be discovered later. In a way, it is art imitating art. Maybe one day, the WWE network would be so kind to unveil the so called Vince Russo/Ed Ferrara/Blue Meanie/Stevie Richards “masterpiece.”