Harmontown

Good morning, little fuzz ball.

We're, uh, we're back in, in Los Angeles.

Twenty days later, it's all over.

On January 9, 2013, I and my intrepid friends

loaded into a tour bus and went across the country.

In each city I got drunk and talked into a microphone

for anywhere from 50 to 350 people

who had all shown up because they liked

my podcast Harmontown.

I crowd surfed, I crowd surfed pants less,

and signed peoples clothes while they were wearing them,

drank moonshine, blacked out, I just remember collapsing

onto a table full of hot wings.

Seeing so much art drawn by people who are so good

at things that I'm not good at,

celebrating the things that I do.

I made my girlfriend cry, babbled incoherently,

performed topless, I've hugged people

whose bodies were shaking because they were

so excited to be hugged, um.

Um.

What did I learn?

Ah, were you here all night?

Er... er, that's great, 'cause you're making

a documentary about me, and now you have a shot

of me getting into my car as if there's no camera in it.

Is this gonna be the beginning of the movie or are you gonna

start it with, um, all of my friends saying

bad things about me?

Who's Dan Harmon, uh...

Dan Harmon is, uh...

Dan Harmon is a very complex individual, um...

I don't, I don't know, I-I... have other people been able

to describe Dan, have you gotten a concise, accurate description?

I definitely think you're gonna get a lot of different answers

to "Who is Dan Harmon?" depending on who you ask.

Dan Harmon is a, uh, creator.

A comedian.

Producer.

Kind of a genius.

Straight up nerd.

A gregarious, garrulous, gastronomical...

Dan...

I don't know, pass.

I think Dan Harmon would describe himself

as indescribable.

He's a little narcissistic, he got a bit of an ego.

He'd probably say, "Smelly."

Definitely a fat ass.

A troublemaker.

A podcaster.

An alcoholic.

He's probably the first person to say he's self-destructive.

I think Dan would describe himself as a human hand grenade

who has a predilection for pulling his own pin out.

I think he'd say he's a writer, I think he'd say that,

I think he'd be very simple about it.

Writing, writing, Dave, send the actors down

for their season one evaluations.

Hi, I'm Dan Harmon, I created NBC's Community.

Community is, uh, an exploration of people who are sort of

on the outskirts of society, uh, who have been given

a second chance.

So, you guys suddenly just wanted to play

Dungeons and Dragons?

Yeah, why wouldn't we?

There's a running theme in his work

that he reaches out to people that aren't used

to being reached out to.

And you kinda feel like you're in a secret club

if you watch Community because a lot of the world

doesn't even know it's a TV show.

Community's had its ups and downs this year.

It's ups were the nights we followed The Office

and people left their TVs on by accident.

Its downs were the rest of the season.

The show's his baby, you know, so like,

he wants the show to be perfect.

Dan wears his heart on his chest,

and he speaks his mind, and it has gotten him

into trouble.

He's always striving for perfection

and I think he's harder on himself than anybody else.

You could see that at the end of the third season,

that he was really worn down.

So, I just wanted to let you know,

uh, that Community is moving to eight.

What do you mean we're moving to eight.

- Seven central. - What the fuck is central?

It's the center of the country, you fuckin' idiot!

Oh, fuck you!

Didn't wanna go to therapy, and he needed an avenue

through which to vent, so he started doing

Harmontown the podcast at Meltdown Comics.

Ladies and gentlemen, Harmontown is once again in session.

Well, Harmontown is a podcast that they do every week

where Dan, Jeff, they kinda just... they'll talk for a while.

It's different, it's not just an interview thing.

Uh, this is it.

We don't, yeah, we don't prepare.

Dan spent the last three years writing for a big network show.

There are all these filters that his work has to go through,

like this is the polar opposite of that.

When you walked into my apartment,

you would be knee high in pizza boxes.

There was mannequin legs with pantyhose on them,

I wa... I was wiping my ass with tee-shirts

because I wouldn't go buy toilet paper

because I didn't want people at Albertsons to know

that Heat Vision and Jack hadn't been picked up for series.

He's got a lot on his mind.

And when he talks about it, it's like... you do kinda want

a front row seat for that.

Uh-oh.

Nah, I just do that to hope that I come up

with something else to say.

This show is very unique in that it's very interactive.

The audience is very much a part of the show.

All right, well, I guess let's have a hand for the...

for the Fellowship of Looking Forward to the Hobbit.

None of us were the cool kids in high school,

nobody's like, the prom king in that audience,

unless they went to like, an anime school or somethin'.

Let's introduce our Dungeon Master, Spencer, everyone.

I don't think a lot of people can sit through

a staged Dungeons and Dragons ep... tha-that's crazy.

There's really nothing that's embarrassing in here

'cause we're all, admittedly, fetishists and nerds

and weirdoes and lonely and...

I'm kind of hesitant to call this a kink,

it's not really a kink, it's not really a fetish.

'Cause I don't get off on it,

that's the thing, but, um...

But I may.

I can't believe you don't come here every week.

The only boss that Dan respects is the audience

because he just wants to entertain like, the people,

like, the 20, 30 people that are in front of him.

Well, turn... everybody be cool.

So, one night in the show, Dan played

a voicemail from Chevy Chase.

You're gonna live to be about 57 if you're lucky,

the way you eat.

And your writing is getting worse and worse,

so suck my (bleep).

You're not funny, you're okay.

After a fan fight to keep it on the air

and those now infamous Chevy Chase voicemails,

Community is in the headlines again.

It's long been reported that Harmon has clashed

with the network, crew, and even some of the actors,

but now he has been fired from the show he created.

Chevy, how you feelin' about the Dan Harmon stuff?

The what?

- Dan Harmon. - Who's that?

For three years I was told get higher ratings, you know,

and I figured out how.

I'm gonna go to the networks that have higher ratings

and, uh...

...uh...

On the sixth day, God created writers,

but on the seventh day the devil, uh,

filled the internet with porn, and blogs about blue whales,

and all kinds of other things to keep you from writing.

Takes a lot out of a guy.

Being a vessel for God.

You know what, my job isn't to write right now.

My job is to take a bubble bath.

My favorite thing in the world is my moment to feel

like a little baby.

It also has little jets in it that you can use to relax

and massage yourself.

Rumor has it, sometimes you can use to maybe tickle,

uh, your butt hole while you're jerkin' off in it, um,

but I... I... that's just something I heard from...

on a forum.

I wanna ask you a question, j... just while we have

the opportunity, we're going out on this big tour which is, uh,

very ambitious, it's a very long, grueling schedule,

what do you hope to accomplish by this, like, is there,

is there a goal for you?

Well, Jeff, the thing about writing is you can see online

or through Nielsen numbers that people are watching,

but what I'd like to do, now that I'm between jobs,

I thought we could go out there and look into their eyes,

and see if any of these people are real.

Did I have... was there an impact there?

I th... but this is a whole track of conversation I wanted to talk

to everybody about tonight, but I don't wanna delay

our-our next guest, I think we should bring him up,