There are documentaries, there are documentary spoofs, and then there’s ‘Documentary Now!’—and the latter happens to take everything you know about the first two and melds them together for a unique, and smartly hilarious experience.
Co-created by Fred Armisen, Bill Hader, Seth Meyers and Rhys Thomas, and hosted by Dame Helen Mirren, the series is executive produced by Lorne Michaels and produced by Broadway Video. Frequent collaborator Alex Buono also sits in with Rhys on directing, including for the fourth season (though they are calling it Season 53) of the IFC hit, which recently just premiered.
With an ever-evolving cast of talented actors taking their skill set to the screen to recreate famous and interesting documentaries, the series changes with each and every episode. And it seems to be a tall order for it’s cast and crew—but they’ve trained for this.
To delve a little deeper into the process of making ‘Documentary Now!’ directors Rhys Thomas and Alex Buono, writer Seth Meyers and star Fred Armisen all sat down to say how they’re able to balance the constant challenge of blending different comedy and documentary filmmaking styles so well.
Back at the beginning, I’d love to hear how the idea for ‘Documentary Now!’ came up in the first place?
Seth Meyers: Fred and I wrote a sketch called ‘History of Punk’, it was an SNL sketch and Rhys and Alex directed it—and we just loved how it looked. I think it was a piece that we were all super proud of, and we also realized, oh this is going to age really well because it’s about the past and it looks archival. And then I think Bill [Hader] was the one who said, “I would love to do a show where it was a different documentary every week.” We were really lucky because at the time, Fred had this great relationship with IFC via ‘Portlandia.’ So, I think it would’ve been a weird show to take out and pitch a bunch of places… But we knew [we could to them] based on the fact that they’d embraced a show like ‘Portlandia,’ which also seemed like a crazy idea. But it was working really well for them. They jumped in and we were off and running.
Fred Armisen: It just ended up being all the people from that sketch, that video piece, that got together to do ‘Documentary Now!’
Rhys Thomas: It’s funny, the idea of taking on specific documentaries that we sort of ended up doing—that wasn’t an immediate thing. I remember it took a while for us to figure out what the show would actually be. We did a writer’s room and we kept referencing documentaries, but I don’t think we were totally zeroed in. And then it was the ‘Grey Gardens’ [episode], I remember Seth, he had a specific sort of pitch along those lines. That was what I felt kickstarted us in that direction of starting to look at things that way.
And how do you choose what documentaries to cover?
Rhys: We tend to find documentaries that are more character-based… great documentaries that are also great vehicles for Bill and Fred. Documentaries with really great, very focused, fun characters and documentaries that were almost a little more dramatic that you could then have fun with.
As directors, what techniques do you use to keep the documentary format, but also get in all of that comedic timing?
Rhys: Everyone is different, and so we’re always kind of dealing with a different framework. There are two layers: There’s obviously the layer of trying to pay homage to whatever we’re doing—and so there’s a sort of top level of figuring out the stylistic choices and the framework. It’s something I feel like we honed at ‘SNL’…Our process a little bit is that you watch it and then you don’t watch it for a while and you see what floated to the top in terms of what were the significant things that you remembered? But then in terms of shooting it, once we get on set, it’s actually a very tightly scripted show in a lot of ways. [We don’t] go in with this plan to improv a lot. It does inevitably happen, but I think a lot of the process sometimes is we have the scripted scene and the crew reads it, everybody’s prepared for it, and so it has the formality of a normal film set.
A lot of the process is doing it over and over again, and trying to figure out what’s not making you feel documentary? What are the false dramatic things that are going on? Trying to figure out those little deconstructive components adds that sense of spontaneity. So it falls on the actors as much as us. But it’s fine. I mean, again, each one’s always so different, so it varies.
Alex Buono: We worked together for so long at ‘SNL’ doing so many different types of things and types of looks. Even the first couple seasons of this show, it was an experiment of how are we going to authentically recreate something that’s in 16 millimeters and really dated or different video styles? I feel like this season was one where we just become comfortable with, no, we know how to do that…. We’ve done this, so we know how to do that. We know how to do a mid-eighties standard video and we know what all the signifiers of that are and what it would sound like.
This season more than others—I remember the first week we trying to warn people [that] this is a show that moves pretty quickly. We may pivot a lot. Just start to have stuff ready because it’s probably going to move faster than you think it is, and we’re probably going to move on to the next scene quicker. And everyone’s like, “Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard that before.” And then I remember the first couple of days the producers in the UK were just like, “Holy sh*t. I mean, you guys warned us, but we had no idea.”
And Fred, what about from the actor’s point of view? How do you balance trying to make it seem like a documentary, but also keeping the comedic undertone?
Fred: Well, there’s this goal of not trying to be funny—and it’s tempting. It’s tempting if there’s a crew around or if Alex and Rhys are around, you want to make them laugh and you’ve got to actively fight against it. It could be really subtle things, but it’s almost like its own little fight. Just play it straight, just get through it. And there’s also just getting through the day also, you don’t want to wallow in, “Oh let’s make this a really funny moment.” There’s so much stuff that we do have to cover that we just want to get through the scene and trust that it’s going to work for the episode.
And the writing process, Seth?
Seth: I think that’s the way you write it too…You sort of have to trust. It’s almost like each episode has a natural gravity to it. If you know that you’re going to have these actors who understand the game and understand what Fred was saying, playing it straight—and then you have Rhys and Alex who are basically the guardians of, and I realize how pretentious this sounds, the guardians of the integrity of the show. And just little things about the era we live in, there’s so much fake documentary. You don’t want to get caught where you’re Jim Halpert to the camera, which would definitely work. But now that has kind of moved on to a trope as opposed to a thing that feels natural. So you just have to trust that as you write it, there’s all these other pieces, the different filming styles and the different acting styles—and as a whole, it’ll work better if you don’t sort of reach too hard for the funny.
Catch new episodes of Season 53 of ‘Documentary Now!’ on IFC and AMC+
