Seasons 1 & 2
Series Editor
One of the most enjoyable jobs I’ve ever had was helping create “Funny or Die Presents” for HBO. My supervisor was Andrew Steele, the creative director of the FOD website, producer, screenwriter, and former Head Writer for Saturday Night Live. He attracted incredible talent and made the show a comedy nerd’s dream.
The show was unique, and if you weren’t laughing at one sketch or mini-movie, there was another coming right up. Thus, the show was at once edgy, kitschy, rowdy, subdued, subtle and outrageous. HBO was amazing and let us get away with a lot. Some of the content literally couldn’t air on many other networks.
As an editor for television, this show was the most influence I’ve never had. What I mean to say is, the comedy sketches were kind of like the FOD website: made by a variety of comedians and bizarre and funny people. Some were professionals. Others, not as much. But how do you make a television show out of that? What material works best together? How do you balance a season worth of episodes with all of these moving parts? It’s a jigsaw puzzle with a million pieces.
Funny or Die Presents was a leviathan. My job was to sort all of it out. I lived in my own edit bay at “Keep Me Posted,” a premiere Hollywood post house, for many months. There was a ton of material given to us by dozens of people with varying sources and edit systems. Thank the lord of Comedy, they were all required to give us hard drives containing the original projects and media. I had to dig in and make a litany of fixes and changes. There were some segments I re-worked or cut down in post-post. There were many segments that never made it to air, and a few I really wish could have.
The show was hosted by Ed Halligan, the fictitious day-drinking businessman who runs the Funny or Die internet & television experiment. As we all collectively blaze foolheartedly into our future world of nightmares, Ed looks to the bygone days of 60s and 70s television as a model for his HBO show. The “Funny or Die Network” broadcasts a hodge podge of comedy television and late night movies, much like a low budget independent TV station would on some average Sunday in 1963. Halligan, because he can, will get on camera from time to time and tell you what he really thinks of you… in between drinks and women, of course.
As well as constructing the format of the series, I also edited the Ed Halligan segments, and created a ton of original graphics, sound design, interstitials, teases, etc. This job definitely played to both the technical and creative aspects of my personality. I feel like I went to college and wrote a dissertation on comedy television.
Funny or Die Presents was nominated for “The Comedy Award” in the category of Sketch Comedy/Alternative Comedy Series. This prized statue used to be called a “Commie,” but even Hollywood liberals don’t like being called commies. Hence they changed the name of the award to the half-baked “The Comedy Award.” Technically, we were nominated for a “The Comedy Awards” award.
At least they had good taste in television.