Will Forte: I grudgingly keep with the show.
Mitch Hurwitz: He designed these characters and we started to do this technique. And the early responses from bloggers and that kind of thing, there was a lot of concern – people said, boy, these guys don’t know what they’re doing – which is true, by the way, about animation – but you don’t want to have detail in the background; you want the background to be bland and to fall away.
But what I have discovered just seeing this is that you really stop noticing it. It really just becomes more interesting to see actual grass than just a field of green. And in a way, it has kind of come around to keeping the show in the real world, even though I was joking about that. I mean, it inadvertently has changed the scale of the show so that you don’t expect animals to talk or UFO’s to land. You somehow believe you’re in the world that we inhabit, and I think it lets us kind of reset the comedy bar a little bit that way.
Is one particular school used for the photographed backgrounds of Sit Down, Shut Up?
Mitch Hurwitz: Yes. We took all the pictures at a school that was right next door to Rough Draft, who does the animation. So you’ll see, it’s supposed to take place in Florida and you’ll see giant mountains and all sorts of things that – there are cars in the background with California license plates – so there are a few, whatever, anachronisms, but – that’s not the right word, but – it doesn’t quite work always, but it really does. The other thing that’s kind of funny about the background shots is they’re incredibly dull. I mean, they’re just these shots of lockers and that kind of thing. So it just reminds you of what a prison school was.
Will Forte: I took all the photos, too.
Mitch Hurwitz: Yes, and Will took the photos.
Will Forte: So thanks a lot for that criticism.
Is there a difference between writing for a live-action TV show and an animated TV show?
Mitch Hurwitz: It’s interesting, there actually is a difference. There’s a big difference. I mean, anything can be an art, but I have noticed that writing for animation is much more joke-intensive and much more about the comedy, and more specifically, much less about grounding a character’s drive. And that really – the hardest part I’ve always found of live-action writing, or what I like to call just writing, because I never considered it live-action writing until just this moment, is making a character plausible and believable in their journey, particularly if you’re going to try to get them to some big comic conclusion.
And that was never more the case with me than on Arrested Development, where I wanted the final scenes to be these kind of black comedy scenes where the character you’re following – usually Michael Bluth – gets to a place where he does something desperate and ridiculous. So each scene is about building that character’s drive and trying to get to the end where somebody doesn’t say, oh, I don’t buy it. Why would he do that? So he’s going to suddenly wear a chicken suit because he needs the money to come in and the other guy’s sick, and now he can’t get out of the chicken suit – this is obviously a bad example, but – in animation, you do that in scene one.
Okay, so the guy’s stuck in a chicken suit – you know what I mean? And it becomes a different kind of craft, and like, okay, now where do you go from there and how do you keep that joke alive and how do you keep it fresh. But I would say that is the biggest difference. And I’ve noticed like with actors that come from live action, like Jason Bateman who plays Larry in this thing – and he was very articulate about discovering this process with me. And one of the things he noticed was that a lot of the stuff he does is getting from A to B with a lot of facial expressions, with playing a lot of intention. So you say, “I really can’t support my son going to this football game, but – all right, I guess I have no choice.” In animation, you just do it line to line. You say, “I can’t support my son going to this, but okay, let’s give it a try.”
It’s a different kind of acting. You’re really playing everything through your voice. And it’s similarly kind of one-dimensional that way, and it becomes a new challenge – okay, now, what’s the funniest version of that twist? So it’s just much more heightened comedy without the burden of character motivation, in a way. And I think, by the way, that is why so many animated shows are about families: because there’s a shorthand there. You don’t need to see Homer [Simpson] feel remorseful about strangling his son and then decide he’s going to show up at the kid’s science fair. He just does it. He strangles him and then he shows up at the science fair. And people get it. People get that that’s his father, and of course he’s going to show up. So it kind of deals with archetypes in that way. That’s about as unfunny an answer as I can give you.
Do you think that the show will have a special appeal since it takes place in a small southern or Florida town?
Mitch Hurwitz: I think it will equally insulting to every part of the country, don’t you, Will?
Will Forte: Yes.
Mitch Hurwitz: There is something – like I said, it does sort of take place in a small town, except every time they go out driving, they’re clearly driving in Pasadena and Glendale. So that’s a little hard to understand. But I kind of feel like it’s – I mean, I personally believe that people are the same everywhere; people are as similarly motivated by self-interest everywhere, and –
Will Forte: I’ve been to Georgia. I know they have cars there.
Mitch Hurwitz: Yes, they do have cars now. They’re still made out of wood. No, I love Atlanta, actually.
This show started in Australia, and it’s just about oblivious people. In fact, the original show was – in a way, it kind of led to Arrested Development.
