Tag Archives: Dan Harmon

‘Community’s Dan Harmon poops on season 4, issues lengthy apology

News, Television, ,

Since Dan Harmon confirmed he was returning to Community to executive produce the NBC sitcom he created, he didn’t wait long to take a giant proverbial dump on the entirety of season 4, the one in which he had no involvement. Before he could start imagining the fifth season of the show, he forced himself to sift through the previous season to catch up on what happened during his off-season, a result of him being fired by Sony TV. In his unfiltered podcast called Harmontown he spat out the following:

“It’s very much like an impression and an unflattering one. It’s very much like an impression — an unflattering one. It’s 13 episodes of people doing, ‘Derpy, derpy, der, I’m Dan Harmon, der.’ I’m going back to work tomorrow morning and I’m just like, do I talk like that?”

He compared watching the fourth season to “flipping through Instagram watching your girlfriend blow a million [people].”

He went further: “There’s something awesome about having all of those preconceived notions kind of ripped away from you. It’s exciting. There’s something awesome about being held down and watching your family get raped on a beach. It’s liberating. It makes you focus on what’s important.”

Later: “There’s a system in place that’s winning because I would have had too much leverage, too much power, too much salary as would have a lot of writers coming into Season 4. So they just flushed us, and replaced us with two guys who didn’t know what they were getting into… Writers fighting other writers is the American Dream in the eyes of Sony. That is what they want. They want creative people rewriting each other. They want creative people replacing each other. They want us interchangeable. They want to think about writing the way they think about the guy on assembly line 24 that puts the final screw in the fucking Playstation… I shouldn’t even say ‘they’ because it’s an ‘it,’ it’s a fucking machine. There isn’t a single person that works at that corporation that isn’t also thought of like that by the fucking SkyNet… The system just wants us all to not be human.”

A day after the Harmontown rant, Harmon took to his Tumblr to share a formal apology to those involved with the show and its fans. He tweeted, “I feel bad if I made anyone feel bad with my comments in harmontown. It’s a dirty, personal comedy podcast, not charismatic for quoting. I like making stuff that pleases people, I like being honest about my feelings but I hate hurting other people, especially community fans.” You can read his lengthy apology post here.

With the firing, the rehiring, and the Harmontown rant behind him, hopefully the sorrowful showrunner can now return to making Community great again in its fifth and possibly final season.

Dan Harmon says he’s returning to ‘Community’ [Update: it’s official]

News, Television, , ,

This came out of nowhere. Following the debacle from last year involving Community creator Dan Harmon and star Chevy Chase publicly exiting the show, it looks like Harmon is making a comeback for the NBC sitcom’s fourth season. “RT @dpeanutbutter: @danharmon GIVE US A STRAIGHT ANSWER! ~ Yes yes yes! I’m back I’m back I’m back. You can thank @joelmchale.” Harmon tweeted this out to his nearly 200,000 followers on June 1. Network NBC and producer Sony TV have not confirmed nor denied Harmon’s out-of-the-blue exclamation, but nevertheless fans of the quirky comedy should be shaking in their boots with excitement. The show’s third season never quite felt like Community fans had come to know, love, and cherish; a friend described it to me as ‘the shell of Community missing its soul.’ Harmon’s replacements David Guarascio and Moses Port are apparently not coming back next season, so the showrunner position is open for the taking. Even with Chase out of the picture, it only seems fitting that the show’s inventor take his rightful seat on the throne back, especially if ratings remain low and season four becomes the final run of 13 episodes for the series.

At a certain point the network and/or the studio will have to make some sort of announcement and when they do I’ll amend this post accordingly.

Update (6/10): Sony TV confirms Dan Harmon’s return to his old showrunning post at Community. Woohoo! Joining him is reinstated executive producer Chris McKenna. Fellow Human Beings, season four will feel familiar again.

[Via Deadline]

‘Community’ creator Dan Harmon opens up about his ousting

Television, Video, , , ,

Dan Harmon was fired from his show Community this past spring just as the third season of the cult NBC sitcom came to a close. This week he sat down with G4’s Attack of the Show guest host Marc Maron and opened up about his recent ousting. Is he bitter? Maybe a little. But he was actually anticipating the show getting cancelled due to low ratings and so the firing didn’t make him sink into a deep depression after all. Watch the 11-minute interview to hear what Harmon has to say about the situation (his feud with Community star Chevy Chase is not discussed, however) and what he has planned for the future (a multicam comedy, perhaps).

‘Community’ creator Dan Harmon is forced out as showrunner

News, Television, , , ,

Sad times for Community fans. Creator/executive producer/writer Dan Harmon will no longer serve as the NBC’s sitcom showrunner when it returns for its shortened fourth season in the fall. David Guarascio and Moses Port (Just Shoot Me, Aliens in America) have been tapped to take over Harmon’s vacated positon.

So what happened? Recently Harmon was in the news because of a feud between him and Community star Chevy Chase went viral. To make what may be a long story short… It was reported that Chase stormed off the set during the filming of the final shot of the season. In retaliation Harmon shared a private voicemail from Chase at the show’s wrap party and in it Chase said some pretty nasty things about Harmon and Community itself. I won’t go into full detail here, but if you do some light digging you can find the recording and additional detail surrounding the feud floating on the ‘Net. In any case, the public feud concludes with Chase sending Harmon a second lewd voicemail after finding out that Harmon played his previous message at the wrap party, in front of the actor’s wife and children no less. Though he wouldn’t apoligize directly to Chase, Harmon took to his blog to apologize formally the fans. “That was a dumb, unclassy, inconsiderate move on my part. I’m very sorry it’s reflecting poorly on the show,” he posted.

Following the feud and the apology, things settled down as Community returned from its extended hiatus and wrapped up its third season. At the Upfronts NBC entertainment president Bob Greenblatt addressed the future of the show. Would Chase and/or Harmon be forced to quit the show so things can move forward smoothly in season four? Greenblatt said that he expected “Dan’s voice to be a part of this show somehow. I’m just not sure if that means him running it day to day or consulting on it.”

Flashforward to near present day. On May 18, one day after the season three finale, news broke that Harmon will not be returning as Community showrunner. Speculation ensued; did Harmon step down from his post or was he forced to quit. In a blog post he admitted that Sony Pictures Television (the studio that owns the show) kicked him out without even consulting him about it. “Why’d Sony want me gone? I can’t answer that because I’ve been in as much contact with them as you have.  They literally haven’t called me since the season four pickup, so their reasons for replacing me are clearly none of my business.  Community is their property, I only own ten percent of it, and I kind of don’t want to hear what their complaints are because I’m sure it would hurt my feelings even more now that I’d be listening for free.”

NBC says that Harmon will remain attached to Community as a “consulting producer” but the showrunner reveals that the network is technically obliged to holding onto him like this and that this new title ultimately still renders him powerless. He writes: “However, if I actually chose to go to the office, I wouldn’t have any power there.  Nobody would have to do anything I said, ever.  I would be “offering” thoughts on other people’s scripts, not allowed to rewrite them, not allowed to ask anyone else to rewrite them, not allowed to say whether a single joke was funny or go near the edit bay, etc.  It’s….not really the way the previous episodes got done.  I was what you might call a….hands on producer.  Are my….periods giving this enough….pointedness?  I’m not saying you can’t make a good version of Community without me, but I am definitely saying that you can’t make my version of it unless I have the option of saying “it has to be like this or I quit” roughly 8 times a day.” Consulting producer means nothing without creative control.

So Harmon was fired and that is that. Also not returning next season to focus on other projects are executive producers Neil Goldman and Garrett Donovan and writer/producer Chris McKenna. Will Community be different next year? Almost certainly. Without Harmon’s voice and knowledge of these characters he created the show will feel a tad off; or maybe it won’t, we’ll have to wait and see. However season four (and beyond) turns out, Community fans will always have Harmon’s hard work that makes up seasons 1-4 to look back on. In a way the season three finale felt very much like a series finale, the closing of a chapter with Dan Harmon’s signature scribbled directly on it.

[Via TV Guide]