Community's Dan Harmon Is Just a Guy That Makes a Show - Speakeasy

oh hello welcome once again to speakeasy with Paul F Hopkins I am still Paul F Tompkins and my guest this time he is the creator of such things as community on NBC and a million billion other things that we're going to talk about uh you know it's true I did a little thing in my pants don't know you're no one could see you yet okay can you see like my shoulder is it cool if I just talk directly to the camera while I interview you I'm used to this because uh my wife has Asperger's please say hello on that note please say hello to Dan Harmon dad thank you so much for being here hello oh yeah we get to drink too how long did you attend college uh about a semester and a half me too I stayed just long enough that my mom had to pay for another semester I remember telling her when I dropped out got a pay phone in a bar and her being just about really bummed out about that justifiably it was like you couldn't have known you were gonna drop out after one semester you just needed what you have semester did and you probably did know right I had a sneaking suspicion yeah yeah I was getting like DS in English and I wanted to be a writer so but did you feel like there was nothing there for you you felt like the things that you wanted to learn where you were not learning in college or the same old story I spent you know it's do a judge reinhold in fast times to monologue with about you know I spent all of those years being told the goal was to get into college that was the big goal and then once you get into college here immediately dropped from the kindergarten plus world of high school where everyone's telling you what to do and there's a security guard asking you where you're going all of a sudden you're sort of an adult if you no one's getting you out of bed and dragging you to class no one's telling you where were you yesterday so if you want to fail you can absolutely fail and so I immediately left into failure which was never caption i was stirred as i was becoming really interested in comedy i just started there was a stand-up club right down the street and i started hanging out with those unsavory types you when you go to college you start hanging out at comedy clubs what comedy club were you hanging out it was a place ed are you from Chicago are you know Philadelphia okay um-hmm Chicago no no okay suit yourself um it was Milwaukee and I did there was a tourist bar it was called the safe house there was a secret door that you would go and it was a James Bond spy themed like drinking place real isn't still there yeah I'm sure it is we're doing comedy there hey well they why not write karaoke machines were still kind of new was this was this like around the 80s like late 80s late well it would have been very early 90s okay so we're still well we're still those are like 10 10 numbers in a decade very early as opposed to earlier I don't know what so 91 no but here's what here's why it does make a difference because that comedy boom that happened in the late eighties um the the early night the very early 90s is when it all fizzled out all crap but there was still like the idea of it was the end of you can just do comedy anywhere yeah well just stick a microphone anyplace what was right before a karaoke karaoke yeah just spread if you looked at a petri dish it was like stand up when Shh and then like at the rim was that punchline movie with Sally Fields and Tom Hanks and then that's when karaoke started growing from the center of that growing on the stand-up clubs cuz any place that had an open mic it's like karaoke guy could come in and go look right there I guess I oh okay and all of a sudden everybody's way more interested in the karaoke at an open mic because when you do karaoke it's the same people getting up there but now they have an act um did you start up so when you started um performing um did you see that as a never stopped baby when you first began performing did you see it as an entree into writing I don't know where I got this yeah because my dad wasn't a writer or an actor so I don't know where I got this weird dichotomy in my head but I always thought of acting as something that I really loved doing that wasn't allowed to do or say that I wanted to do for a living I think you know that's a reasonable if you're growing up in Wisconsin it's like that's just that's just nonsense lately you know uh whereas writing was it felt like a worthwhile reasonable thing when I told people as a kid that I wanted to be a writer when I grew up I didn't feel like I was saying I want to be a princess or or an astronaut you know I felt like I was saying a real job cuz I could see it on TV I was a I was a much less charismatic person before I started getting on stage and kind of like just trying to get people to laugh at me that actually taught me how to talk to people and make occasional eye contact whereas before that I was truly like like beyond Ally Sheedy and Breakfast Club just just a cocoon of dandruff and long sweater sleeves kind of like those GoBot rock Lords just transformed into a pile of laundry so that no one would pick on me were you aware of a change of it getting easier to talk to people of it getting easier to just relate to people and make occasional eye contact for me it was night and day it was I just didn't do basic improv training it was it was that I got through this franchise called comedy Sportz today I think they have one in LA still yeah absolutely and it was started in Milwaukee dick Judd now started in at Milwaukee and then they had a high school league so I was 15 years old I went from not understanding anything about how to art you know just open my mouth when I talked and I understand that that every time I feel like I have to put a big asterisk on this guy I understand that I'm not a I'm not Paul Reiser lately like I think by comparison but saying you have to picture like a person that's just like like a like a like a monster really and now you can understand some of what I'm saying but a benign months great uh I don't know about that uh kind of I've probably hated myself and everybody like a Phantom of the Opera yeah yeah that's keeps to himself but really contingent contemptuous yeah don't poke him Yeah right and also like takes his work very seriously for someone who doesn't talk to anybody um well you gotta have something yeah right this this this dungeon I'm designing is more important than English class um deal wait till they all go through it and I tell them that they fell into a pit then they'll learn is this the Phantom Parker yeah he did some friend of mine as a phantom dungeon so anyways the it was the basic improv training because you just had a twenty five year old guy teaching you for the first time to hold your feet still like like grab you know a good get up on stage and you have to try to thinking of it like a writing exercise is what allowed me to get up on stage and say like okay this exercise is called two lines this person interest from the left this prison interest for the right you have to in two lines establish your identities your location your circumstances whatever theater exercise it is like okay this is writing but I'm writing on the spot and then I have to somehow communicate this to an audience so that was the excuse I was able to give myself to get up on stage which was a pornographic pretentious presumptuous activity it was beyond your experience you didn't know anybody yeah who was a performer yeah nobody ever said this is what you do when you write talk to people it was not mentioned as a job that a person could have write or even an activity that a person could do my family didn't even play charades we just sort of we played board games maybe but we were you know we weren't we weren't we weren't cut from the cloth we not demonstrative people yeah we were but you that yeah that's what we called life looking back on it that was just acting to throw a plate because no one loves you you know want to clean your room that all the doors had hope fist holes and at different sites here my gray Daniel the six birthday always first little fist hole on the door we did have shitty doors ever I mean we there was so many putt door punching in my house by everyone or just you everyone really except mom that's not lately like yeah maybe never punches you gotta kick my brother while he's punching the door that's what a lady does are you still a door puncher 'yes no no no I haven't I haven't punched a wall or a door since I was in my 20s mmm it hurts your knuckles it really does and that's the thing people don't want you to know about door punching a big plaster and the military balsa wood complex that's right they all profit from from these tantrums that we throw in our 20s they tell you keep doing it in your 30s he's like those little doctors and cigarette commercials it's all [ __ ] before community you were involved in a number of really um unsuccessful well robberies yeah that's right that's right at a terrible really unsuccessful I just liked the feeling of pantyhose on my face I was just getting like a boner from it first of all feels great I was always jealous of bank robbers I didn't need money before community you had a lot of really interesting stuff that you had done one of my favorite things was acceptable TV which ran on vh1 which I and correct me if I'm wrong but I feel like it came out of the idea of channel 101 which was a thing that you and Rob schrab started you guys were a little frustrated that you weren't getting stuff on the air you guys had created a heat vision and Jack that crazy pilot with Owen Wilson and Jack Black with the talking motorcycle okay and like really inventive creative stuff and not getting anywhere at the time within the industry and so channel 101 was this answer to the technology being very accessible right and you guys wanting to do stuff for and so you would make your own shorts and then when did it turn into this thing where you invited other people to to do it and sort of compete against each other everyone else invited themselves brought Rob and I had to make stuff for each other with these little cameras and we would have parties where we would make up excuses to well when you come to this party you have to bring a a movie about Batman that you made thank you yeah it doesn't matter what it is or when you come to this party you have to bring your best guess at what jaws 4 is about that that's how that was the actual origin of all of it that's a actual one which we were sitting at lunch and we said we realized that no one at the table had seen jaws for uh-huh and so we said well we're watching it today could meet meet at my place at 3:00 it's 11 a.m. now everybody bring your best guess in video form of what jaws for is and we'll the winner is the guy who guesses most accurately so we all made little movies about what what's jaws for going to be so we're having these parties like that and then for people doing that became 8 people doing that very quickly because if there was a fifth person at that four-person party they weren't coming empty-handed next time and so people became 16 became 32 the living room became the biggest living room we could find my girlfriend at the time had a rich mom so she was a big living room on Mount Olympus and in LA like okay and that that living room was full three hours of content at that point because everybody was everybody wanted to do something if you weren't an actor you were a director if you weren't a director you were doing VFX and no there was too much labor and not enough work I compared it at the time to the dumpster behind McDonald's which has to have a padlock on it and the reason McDonald's dumped a stiff a padlock on it is because the FDA demands that mcdonald's throw away all of its food every three five minutes and the fact is that mcdonalds business peeing in fast food demands them creating this overabundance of food well so if the padlock wasn't on the dumpster then everybody gets free food you just stand behind a mcdonald's if you were having a bad day you didn't have change um just wait for the filet-o-fish to go from their hands before it hits the dumpster hmm good enough for me maybe not good enough for the FDA not good enough for a litigious minded a corporation we're gonna for me I want to flesh that out way too much but the more you know I was referring time to what will became channel 101 as Rob and I were cutting the padlock on the McDonald's dumpster of actors and writers and stunt coordinators and you know people that like people with locations people who just sit around and wait for Albert Brooks to want to make a movie in a library that's not a real library but they own a library that you can't have as a real library so their job is to wait like did someone want to make a movie in a library yet okay all right they wait they wait wait meantime that location is just it's there la is just this sort of that's it's there's a lot of absurdity there so all of those people just you know we started making all this stuff and then it wasn't I never said hey everybody let's do it it was everybody saying can we please do this too and then it became it moved on to you know screening rooms you would go to a theater and you would you would show all of these and then there was a competition aspect where the audience could vote on which the idea was that they were all pilots for potential TV shows the audience would vote on which ones they wanted to proceed so you did the show acceptable TV which was to me a really fascinating and new iteration of sketch where it's like hey this is a funny sketch what if it were to continue and it has an ongoing storyline well when you watch Saturday Night Live and the cheerleaders come out a little feral and Cheri Oteri come out and they go you you want it yeah yeah you want it and everybody goes holy [ __ ] this is really funny that was great as a great sketch and then it's just sitting there and so the next week you're like well we still have the outfits we still have little feral like like people loved it we can have them do different stuff this time and they come out again and everybody loves it again and that's how Coneheads and you know these franchises happen in sketch comedy people want more of the stuff that they liked the first time and yet that has that also for the comedy snob is the bad part of comedy um but in TV there's that's all TV is you like Knight Rider here's a hundred episodes of it David Hasselhoff's not gonna take off that jacket the car's not gonna stop talking so it was really Schwab's idea to take what was essentially just another digital video festival in LA which was just it was exploding everybody had a digital video festival overnight because these cameras every everywhere there was a flyer or web posts of inviting you to a Valentine Film Festival in Stacy's backyard or at in the back room of ImprovOlympic there was just DV festivals everywhere so Schwab's idea was okay we're no longer we may have felt like we were the first to do this all these people feel like they're the first to do it if we're gonna keep doing this we should at least distinguish ourselves so all these people are thinking cinematically let's think televizzle not a word sure did look it up you can't I did it look it up in the dark cherry uh-oh that is a word that dark Shannara yeah it's a it's an evil dictionary with words like television in it eventually you're doing community and the the whole strange history with that show this was your first series to actually get picked up right yeah this is uh unless you count my little opus with you uh the Sarah Silverman program on comedy so that's I'm sorry I well I mean it was at this but but community with you yeah this was your like it was very easy yeah yes yeah Sarah Rob and I created the Sarah's program but it was Sarah's show which is why she let me go yes I was not thinking of it as her show as thinking of it like my chance to be awesome uh and yeah community was my first as a writer it was my first successful attempt to to get something I wrote shot and on the air after the Sarah Silverman program being being let go from that which I'm sure was very difficult everyone was friends you know yeah and it's it's I get the sense though from what you just said that do you have a different perspective on it now than you did absolutely yeah DM I won't say ashamed because what else was I gonna do but be who I wasn't learned that that was a bad way to it I but I that's the closest word I can use deeply ashamed deeply regretful of how I interacted with the person whose name was on the show you know her name was the title of the show Sara's not a poster child for mental balance or anything but she's a celebrity and she's funny she it's her show she had paid her dues it was time for her to have the show and she had brought Rob and I on to help her create this thing in my head what I was thinking was you know it was all out of deference to her I was thinking my job is to make Sarah Silverman like the star she's supposed to be like like like in my twisted balloon-animal brain by not taking her notes like arguing with her like like pushing back on stuff I was actually helping her like it's a dumb thing like like so many years later I'm like man if a writer acted like that that was working for me that like like gone in an instant because it doesn't even matter if you're talented there's no time for that whoo it's just it and also that's just there's more TV to make so the job is to just churn it out and if you're right you're right and if you're wrong you're wrong you know sit there and argue about whether or not your TV show is perfect you know frame by frame so yeah I learned a million lessons all summed up in one big lesson which is don't push back if they're if someone is above you especially if they're creative if they ask you do you think this joke is funny and you don't think it is then say yes or no be honest but don't don't slow things down don't don't don't try to like use someone else's project as your big opportunity to to be a mad scientist that doesn't doesn't pay off for anybody well now when you got the opportunity to be the mad scientist with that community did you feel that you were better prepared then to do that and what what were the things that surprised you when you started that job you know what surprised me was the accent on diplomacy over posturing like there's a lot more as ug all of a sudden you're on here at you're at King's Landing you're not uh you're not here you're not north of the wall anymore we're basic cable was like a little more like Glengarry Glen Ross kind of like lately so it says from Comedy Central's on the phone and like you got a you got a dance for your dinner and and and and argue about a joke and all this stuff is none of that really going on from my experience in network TV it's like these big kingdoms with these big layers of diplomats and they're all they all have so much more political [ __ ] to worry about in this very much larger stakes world that your show either succeeds or fails and they'll give you like edicts and decrees but they don't want to sit on the phone with you and go over every joke and an outline the way a basic-cable suit might that I was I was shocked by that I was shocked by the fact that they encouraged holiday episodes the things that things that made me love TV that network TV was like no please do a Christmas episode like what comedy central wouldn't want anyone to do a Christmas episode because they they can't air it around the clock right um and I was like wow is that there was a was shocked by the amount of things in network TV that were actually more compatible with the way I thought it makes sense looking back as I grew up on that medium when you were let go from the show was that something that you saw coming digit was it a gradual thing was it a shock to you I had said so many times over the first three years you guys can just fire me if you want if people would come to the table reads and we would finish the table read and then someone would say well you all know who I am and you know why I'm here my name is Barry Barbara I died you the finances its own so now this show we got a situation here it's like like all the sudden I feel like I'm like when so we have a situation but your third season in a show is supposed to have a ten plate and I don't understand how you can make a show like this like you know you're right you're the show's over budget you're not running it right and all this stuff no no footnote the show is never over budget the show is constantly over budget but it's never over budget at the end of every season because I care about these things because I'm from Wisconsin I always check and go so how what's the damage huh how much bad did I do nothing you were under you have a good line producer he shuffled the money around you're fine under budget they gave you a budget they always reduce the budget you're always under budget during the season always over budget always a crisis always this terrible thing so I always in those moments when people would say you know these guys would come in like jingle their key chains and they they wear their wallets on their head and they don't really do that but so so I would always say to those guys well in those moments be God of shame and Midwestern integrity I would go listen I I think we're doing all right I I know that the show doesn't have the ratings that you would like it to but we are in our third year of not having the ratings you'd like it to we're in a very tough time slot I don't know if at this point there's a course correction to do if you feel that way uh I'm just a guy that makes a show for you that's my job if the show isn't being made to your liking then what you have to do is let me go um so I think what they're used to is more of a negotiation like like okay no we can absolutely do that and I think with all due humility I think that's the reason why TV has the flavor that it does or traditionally it does you see it less on basic cable now in our new golden age of TV but mainstream television has that weird crazy we wanted to be this you can kind of tell we wanted to be this but we can also kind of tell that someone got nervous about it pulled it back a little bit Jamie fires gonna wear a dress but he's not gonna wear a dress that likely get it you can feel the course correction happening when you watch mainstream television and because the people at the very very top of mainstream television they're no they didn't grow up watching mainstream television they don't look at it like going to the Opera that's how I look at it I look at the images on that magical box as being the only as possible escape from a dirty living room and an inconsistent friends and parents you know laying is it supine when you're on your tummy you know in front of the cathode-ray hug you know and just just letting this formulaic consistent beautiful well-crafted mythology wash over you I came to LA baptized in that in that energy and wanting to contribute to it and honor it but you're talking to people frankly and this is the big problem that I have what always gets me in trouble it's because I don't mind saying it you're talking to people who grew up grooming horses if not watching TV they didn't watch Knight Rider in order to make themselves feel better they went out to a [ __ ] like I don't even know how these people grew up I can't even imagine it um I just I just know that their mom didn't throw their birthday cake at their dad on their 10th birthday when you are approached to come back to community was that weird it was it was it was it was unbelievable and yet it was somehow I knew it was gonna happen did you really I don't know I mean I'm not psychic and obviously who could predict that but I just I don't know it just you could I don't know what it is did you watch any of that fourth season I watched it right before I went to work on the fifth season right so you can get up to speed on I had to know if there were these characters been up to if I thought that there had been a way to not watch it because I knew no good could come of me watching it yeah if I but also in service of my job as fifth season showrunner I had to know if all to somebody in episode 3 say like from now on I'm putting a skunk on my head I have to at least have that person come into the first scene and go like that's enough at take it off so I had to watch it and uh it was a really really strange experience I was pretty drunk when I watched it um and the whole thing yeah be watching all in one it was a Sunday afternoon and I just I got liquored up cuz it was like I you know you knew it was gonna be difficult yeah I didn't want to just be angry in front of my fiancee and friends I I probably should have just watched it by myself but I would have so many people did you have over to walked by me a McKenna was over Chris McKenna who ran season 5 with me um and you know there were a couple other people you pick up people when you when you start drinking during the day sure if you're gonna watch season of your television show you're you're either gonna be rude to those people or they're gonna be sitting there there was lefty and Karl ha ha whoever drove my uber that day the whole game from the drawing room I mean that's that's literally what it was the nice thing about it was they did 13 episodes and it was like season 5 it was off schedule it was thirteen episodes kind of floating in space they couldn't do a Christmas episode really actually they did didn't they they were it was it was sort of timeless and amorphous and there were only a couple things that really had to be addressed narrative lis which were that old Mikhail's character had actually graduated which I thought was a cool thing because that had to be done fourth season otherwise you're what are you doing you're doing welcome back kotter the and who wants to do a hit show like that um the end Pierce left Chevy Chase's character so and that actually coincided magically with the actor leaving so that detects hey it was also the right thing for them to do narrative Lee yeah I think the character leaves you should probably ask the actor Lee was one yeah yeah and it was gracious of him to go you know what it's uh script like character left I should go I don't want to be taking craft service away from other people they call him continuity chase he won't cotton to doing things that don't make sense right than the reality of the script Dan Harmon thank you so much uh any also Rick and Morty on Adult Swim yeah animated show check it out um and your you voice one characters do not avoid ancillary characters Justin roiland who created the show with me does the two titular characters he's amazing a pair of tickler characters that does it for this edition who's Big Easy please join me again next time when my guest will be a different person uh how's Justin doing is he okay hmm it's fine like I give him a half a tablet drug offender school I hate change more than just about anything which is why this is a terrible profession for me because there's almost no stability it's always very unnerving to me any kind of change I remember when mom got new living room furniture when I was little and I burst into tears and told her she was trying to ruin my life

Channel: Made Man

Views: 247,888

Keywords: Dan Harmon (TV Writer), Community (TV Program), Channel 101 (Film), harmontown, Writer (Profession), Film Producer (Profession), The Sarah Silverman Program (TV Program), Celebrity (Media Genre), Paul F. Tompkins (TV Writer), Interview (TV Genre), Speakeasy, men, men's lifestyle, lifestyle, style, fashion, health, fitness, dating, sports, women, mademan, made man, mademan.com, mademandotcom, defy media, break, break.com, comedy, funny, Television (Invention)

Id: NRxaYlDxdKI

Length: 29min 35sec (1775 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 21 2014