Dan Harmon says re-enrolling in Community is scarier than expected
Completing the “and a movie” to cap off Community’s six seasons is a bit trickier than expected
Aux News Dan Harmon
Open enrollment for Greendale Community College began some time ago, but amid a pandemic and two Hollywood strikes, scheduling classes has been tricky. One person feeling the tension is Dan Harmon, who says that getting the Community gang back together has been more “terrifying” than he expected. Those registrar portals can be tough.
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Harmon recounts the long road to “and a movie,” the prophesized conclusion that started as a joke about the well-remembered, not at all memory-holed NBC superhero show, The Cape. Despite Abed’s confidence, The Cape lasted a mere 10 episodes, but the “six seasons and a movie” promise lingered in the minds of Greendale’s loyal human beings. Conversations surrounding the movie began before the pandemic after the show found new life on streaming.
Striking three years after the iron was hot, Harmon and co-writer Andrew Guest still needed to write the script and coordinate with the cast. The pair can finally get to work on the former, but the latter is still a challenge because the SAG-AFTRA strike continues, which will inevitably create scheduling conflicts. The last thing Harmon wants is to shoot the cast separately, repeating the controversial choice made for Arrested Development’s fourth season.
“Because the thing that’s going to matter most to me as an audience member or to anybody who loved that show is seeing those people see each other,” Harmon says. “And they still love each other, and it’s not going to feel the same if you’re shooting them separately at different months in different locations.”
The work stoppages have placed the film on the edge of a knife, with Harmon worrying about gathering everyone back in Group Study Room F. “By the time we can recoordinate, what are the odds that everyone’s schedule is going to once again align?” he wonders, without even mentioning whether Luke Youngblood’s character Magnitude will be back for a “pop, pop.”
“I hate to say how terrified I am to do it wrong because there’s a part of me that knows that that fear cannot possibly result in a good thing. And you’re not going to get anywhere doing an impression of what you think you should do or what you think they want, but I really don’t want to do it wrong, and it is truly terrifying. But then I’m holding on to the hope that being honest with myself about how scared I am is at least a way to break the cycle.”
Harmon’s professional life is currently undergoing a massive seachange. Having recently (and finally) premiered his latest cartoon, Krapopolis, he is preparing for the return of Rick And Morty in October sans his longtime partner Justin Roiland, who was fired from the show following a string of sexual misconduct allegations. Harmon expressed regret over not taking a firmer hand on the show when Roiland’s behavior became most destructive. He told The Hollywood Reporter:
The easiest thing for me to say about Justin has been nothing. Easy because he isolated so well and easy because I’m nobody’s first choice as a judge of anything or anyone. This is where I’d love to change the subject to myself, to what a piece of crap I’ve been my whole public life. I would feel so safe and comfortable making this about me, but that trick is worthless here and dangerous to others. It’s other people’s safety and comfort that got damaged while I obsessed over a cartoon’s quality. Trust has now been violated between countless people and a show designed to please them. I’m frustrated, ashamed and heartbroken that a lot of hard work, joy and passion can be leveraged to exploit and harm strangers.
23 Comments
At this point it feels like there’s enough material to make a movie about the struggle to make the Community movie.
Adaptation style!!!
Greendale Hearts of Darkness
Like Abed’s doc about the making of the dean’s commercial.
JESUS WEPT!
That’s it, that’s the plot of the movie. Abed is a filmmaker after all.
I wonder if that’s the approach they’ll take. Abed casting most of his old chums in a movie about Greendale. So if Magnitude is played by someone else it’s because he is being played by someone else.
So if Magnitude is played by someone else it’s because he is being played by someone else.“Luke Youngblood (born 12 June 1986) is a British actor.”ASSUME NOTHING
You are streets ahead
Give him some rope…
The stakes have never been higher
I got a Community notification for this?Good. Glad to know it works.
I sincerely wanna be wrong here, but the entire time I read this article I kept picturing a particularly bad green screen pick-up of Portia De Rossi from that final painful season of Arrested Development.
Harmon didn’t say it, but I imagine something like that was on his mind. If you’re reviving an old show you used to work on, you have to at least consider the possibility.
“Striking three years after the iron was hot”
Wait, so the show ended in 2015, but the iron was still hot in 2020? And now it isn’t, a mere three years later?
I honestly didn’t realize The Cape was a real show until just now. The more you know…This movie better get made or I’ll start serving government-issued taco meat at parties.
The Cape was not a good show. Keith David and Summer Glau made it fun though
“Dan Harmon’s return to ‘Community’ unfolds with unexpected challenges, bringing an element of fear and excitement to this creative journey.”
https://simplified.com/ai-photo-enhancer
The one thing I want most from a Community movie is for it to be more of a straight comedy like the first half of the first season, rather than the madcap meta-fest from the series’ best years.
A proper “10 years out of college” depiction where people are truly different and have a hard time recapturing the magic. They leaned in this direction in season 6 but I want it to go further.
Like, Abed does YouTube video essays but only as a hobby (because his day job is as a mid-level studio executive). Britta works a low-level desk job at Amnesty International and has a husband and kid. Annie is quickly moving up the ladder at the State department, etc.
Jeff is the only person who hasn’t changed, but unlike season 6, he’s not trying to get everyone back. The movie can be about them all forming a new friendship based on who they are now, rather than revisiting the hits from the series. Whatever crazy adventure the movie is about can play off of that.
Okay scratch that: I just realized the one thing I really want most from a Community movie is for Frankie Dart to be in it.
I kind of agree with you. I think a big part of Community was prioritizing being clever (kind of like Arrested Development), and while it was often both clever and funny, after season one if it wasn’t clever, odds are it wasn’t funny, either, if that makes sense. This isn’t a bad thing – Community is one of my favorite shows ever. But it would be cool if they ditched meta narrative subversion and went with a more character-based approach.Of course, everyone expecting something high-concept and crazy and getting something more down-to-earth would probably be in spirit with Community at it’s best. I think Harmon and Guest probably are gonna find a happy medium between giving the characters a good send-off and recapturing that zany fun of the original show.
It’ll start with all of them at the movies. It’s the first film in the 4th phase of the Kickpuncher Cinematic Universe. But they’re sitting separately from each other—none of them sees the others before the movie starts because they’re all the type to show up during the previews when it’s already dark, but the timing is off. I mean, Annie was already there in a great seat because she’s anal, but she didn’t notice anyone because she was triple-checking her snack order according to the movie theme. She’s annoyed that she had to get Skittles because the theater’s shipment of Mike and Ikes was late, and it’s throwing her off a little bit. Abed was with her because they’re movie buddies and he’d hate to miss the previews. He saw everyone else but kept it to himself because he’s observant but also remembers his history of…episodes. He’s also imagined a similar scenario every month when he and Annie meet up to watch a movie together. Jeff’s late because he’s afraid he’ll give in and eat movie snacks if he has time to get them. Britta is too disorganized to get there on time. Shirley is late because she was arguing with her husband on the phone in her car. Troy is late because he was helping someone change a flat tire on the way there. Of course it’s raining—that’s way more dramatic and looks good on camera. They all get a text from the Dean at the same time, to the annoyance of everyone in the theater, and wonder if it’s possible anyone else from the old study group is in there. He’s publishing a book and wants them at a party. They’ve all avoided these get-togethers, but after seeing each other, they decide maybe it’s time to pay the old Dean a visit.
I still think Arrested Development would have worked well as a comeback if it had been shot with the cast united (I mean, anyone who watched Lady Dynamite [if you love AD and haven’t, you should] knows Hurwitz hadn’t lost his edge). At least Harmon understands just getting characters back on screen isn’t enough. They truly need to reunite for anything to work.
I don’t have many ‘wants’ for this movie, other than it to be good. I only ask that we get Troy and Abed interactions, as many of the original side characters as possible, and establish that Leonard died of a heart attack at an orgy.