New York — Peering down from an airplane last spring, Ze Frank decided to turn the Earth into a sandwich.
After he landed, the comedian, who was making Internet videos years before YouTube existed, challenged his audience to place two pieces of bread at exactly opposite ends of the globe. They did, and he posted videos and photos of their exploits on his website, www.zefrank.com.
"The Show With Ze Frank" was a yearlong online experiment in interactive entertainment that was to end Saturday. And it's an example of how one guy with a camera in his living room can take viewer participation made popular through television shows such as "American Idol" to absurd levels.
Frank, a wide-eyed 34-year-old New Yorker with a drawn face, isn't afraid to hand control to his fans, who include movie stars such as Jack Black and Ben Stiller.
He played chess with viewers, performed scripts they wrote and told them a bedtime story about a four-legged duck when he was asked for one.
"We have this incredible ability to communicate with each other," Frank said. "I want to play around with it, see what this mass audience is really capable of."
Fans say his give and take with them harked back to the days of vaudeville, when performers improvised and fed off the energy of an audience. That type of interaction can make entertaining online very different from TV and movies.
"He understands that this is a social medium," said Terrell Russell, a graduate student studying online culture at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. "He engages with his audience and invites them in for a conversation."
Frank hatches much of his own material, such as this line from a show dedicated to wasting time: "A good procrastination should feel like you're inserting lots and lots of commas into the sentence of your life."
Although the show generally ran only about three minutes long, it could be hard to digest. It used foul language. Frank posted it at different times each day. It was full of inside jokes that discouraged new viewers from jumping in midway through the year; for those who wanted to try to catch up, his website offered an archive, which will stay available.
Still, he hooked some of the biggest names in comedy.
"Ze Frank is a rare gem, a brilliant comedian with an artistic undertaste," Black said. "He might be my hero."
Frank didn't set out to be anybody's hero. He just wanted some friends to come to his birthday party.
