Thursday, October 23, 2014

Who (or what) is Dan Harmon?

Pew Pew! Take that, mediocrity! 

There's a good chance that unless you don't know who Dan Harmon is. It's far more likely that you've heard of, watched, pirated the show he created and writes for, Community.

 I'm going to try something different than my Louis C.K. here. If you want to know about all the great, amazing things Harmon has done, check out his Wikipedia page.

I'm going to try to take a run at explaining who Dan is. 

Granted, I don't know him personally, but I do listen to his weekly podcast, Harmontownand recently watched the spectacular documentary of the same name.


When I explain Harmon to someone who isn't familiar with him I generally use a formula.
I say, "He is part Woody Allen, part Bill Hicks, and part Stanley Kubrick."




OK, allow me to explain in detail:

-Woody Allen is a anomaly in the film industry. Allen has written, starred in, or directed (often filling 2 or 3 of those roles) 61 films in his career. He is universally adored by critics but has entirely shunned the Hollywood industry, having gained essential autonomy.
His actors receive the script for any particular day's shooting the morning of, and in doing so, Allen is able to coax incredibly genuine (and often award-winning) comedic performances from his talent.


If Mr. Rodgers and Michael Cera had some horrible DNA accident

-Bill Hicks was a groundbreaking comedian known for his in-the-audience's-face style of comedy as seen in this famous clip (NSFW). He was anti-anything and could eloquently and hilariously destroy just about any argument you could think of. The penultimate devil's advocate.


Coloured captions are neato!

-Stanley Kubrick is one of the most well-regarded filmmakers in American history. You've undoubtedly heard of such films as 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, and The Shining. Kubrick was known for his absolute control over every frame of his work, wanting every single element in every single shot to be intentional. The definition of an auteur.


This is definitely not my floor...

What this ungodly mixture creates is a writer who is entirely self-aware (and self-hating), incredibly vocal about his opinions on artistic credibility, and in possession of entirely original ideas and creative vision about which he is astonishingly protective.


In the special feature of the Harmontown movie, there is an hour-long scene at a surprise party for Harmon. His fiancee, Erin McGathy, published a book, in secret, containing dozens of Harmon's blog posts from the last decade. His friends took turns reading passages from the book giving intimate insight into the brain-shaped pile of vodka, Dungeons and Dragons trivia, and razor wire sitting under Harmon's skull cap.



Listen to the link below to an excerpt from the book, You'll Be Perfect When You're Dead, as read by Duncan Trussell.





Harmon created the show Community which he was fired from after season 3, rehired to after season 4, and riding like a hellish mechanical bull to Yahoo video for season 6. 
It is through the characters of this show that we really get to know Dan Harmon.

The main cast of the first three seasons (as seen in the below picture) are a window into Harmon's personality.

From left to right:

Abed is his outsider perspective. Abed is hyper-aware of his surroundings, deconstructing everything in his life and examining it. Abed is Harmon's childhood, the outsider looking in on "regular" people.

Chang is his absurdity. Chang starts off as a weird teacher and evolves into a character that couldn't exist in a real human. Harmon has said that he hates being told what to do. Ever. If you tell him his shoelaces are untied, he'll walk with them untied on the principle of defying you. Chang is that chaos.


Shirley is his morality. Harmon is not a religious person, but doesn't claim to be atheistic either. He wants everyone to be good to each other, even if "good" needs to remain somewhat loosely defined to do so. Shirley represents the well-meaning nature of people who desire to do "good".

Troy is his wish fulfillment. Troy starts off as the every-jock. He was a high school big-shot and doesn't need to be smart if he's cool. Over time, his friendship with Abed becomes on of the central pillars of the show. Harmon wants to believe that the kinds of people who made his childhood life miserable are worth redeeming.

Britta is the worst. Britta is Harmon expressing what he doesn't like about people. Britta is a well-meaning person who wishes she actually doing something with her life. Harmon often uses her to make fun of things he catches himself doing. Like this clip about bagels (Harmon says it the way Britta does and got so much flak for it from the writers, they wrote it in to an episode.)

Jeff is who he wants to be. Sort of. Jeff is smooth, slick, and always knows what to say. I don't think Harmon wants to be Jeff so much as he sees him as the full expression of his own sociopathic tendencies.

Pierce is how he feels. Harmon isn't a young guy. Pierce is Harmon's way of making fun of a world he doesn't understand anymore. He's in his 40s, from an era of tape decks and political incorrectness and Pierce is his conduit into that train of thought.

Annie is his obsessive compulsiveness. Harmon has talked on his podcast about his belief that he has some form of attention deficit disorder. He's also been open about the fact that during the writing of [specifically] season three of Community he was taking drugs like Adderall in potentially unsafe amounts to keep focused enough to write the way he felt he needed to.




The movie, Harmontown,  follows the podcast crew as they embark on a multi-city tour shortly after Harmon was fired by NBC. It is a wonderfully evocative look at the cult of Harmon; the kinds of people who are drawn to him and why. If you're at all interested in Dan Harmon, you must watch it.



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