EASTBOUND AND DOWN SYNDROME by Ryan Ariano

I suffer from it, been suffering from it since before the brilliant Danny McBride/Jody Hill TV show EASTBOUND AND DOWN came into fruition. I think it first started with Fred Simmons’ (Danny McBride) soliloquy at the end of the cult masterpiece FOOT FIST WAY in which he tells his wife he hopes she wakes up in a ditch with grown men jumping on her and shitting on her, that her nose turns into a dick, that her hair turns into dog shit, and that she gets AIDS. That’s what comedy needed, a shot in the arm from somebody pushing funny to the edge.

Let’s face it, folks, comedy’s gotten stale in today’s disgustingly PC world. Most comedy today either stems from the played out paradigm of loveable losers fighting against successful assholes, sex jokes that are only funny for squares who’ve never ventured out of the lines of the conventional bedroom (or who never talked to any of my apparently comically crude friends), or flawless fun-poking  at the ironies of modern life (anybody noticed that neither Tom Hanks nor Larry David have ever played anybody without money railing against the comedies of everyday life? Because when you're broke, you don't have the time to worry about banal things like romance via email or how much Jason Alexander tips when he takes you to lunch). Then of course you have the unfunny “spoofs”, having ditched the golden subtlety of AIRPLANE or NAKED GUN in exchange for brainlessly taking actual movies, changing a few lines to silly names, and inserting poop jokes. Finally, we have the played out theme of White-man’s-fears/Bromance vs. Homosexuality (see Paul Rudd) – put that all together and you see the depressingly limited state of comedy.

But lo and behold, there is a savior and EB&D’s brilliance lies in its being the truest reflection of today’s society, a society in which all politicians are evil, in which people routinely stab each other in the back and douche bags and scumbags are at an all-time high. EB&D combines all of these brilliantly millenial traits into one antihero who, in spite of his massive flaws, his complete lack of self-awareness, and his general lack of any truly redeeming humanity, you find yourself cheering for. That man, my friends, is Kenny Powers.

Just last Wednesday I found myself among a select crew attending a screening of Season 2, episode 6 of EASTBOUND AND DOWN at the Los Angeles Film School in Hollywood, to be followed by a Q&A with its North Carolina-bred creators Danny McBride and Jody Hill.

The podcast is available for down load HERE but among the highlights were:

• ON SHITTY JOBS: McBride and Hill discussing the fact that they were struggling PA’s while writing FOOT FIST WAY, among other projects; talking about how you need to have some type of great, creative endeavor that fulfills you at home when you work a shitty job or you’ll go insane – for them (and for me) that’s writing; talking about how Ben Best had to leave the filming of FFW one day to be  a PA on TALLADEGA NIGHTS, ironic since Will Ferrell was the star who discovered the boys via a bootleg copy of FFW.

• ON DREAMS COMING TRUE: How they first landed PA jobs in LA and called mom saying they’d made it (but after the first PA job they realized how unglamorous it truly was); How Hill saved for 4 or 5 years and Danny even sold a shitty script to be able to fund FFW’s $60k budget; How they got a call from Will Ferrell and Adam McKay, completely out of the blue, and were invited out to dinner by the comic legend to discuss their next moves when they were still essentially nobodies; How Danny and Jody and Ben Best and David Gordon Green used to be just a couple film school kids, hanging out, smoking weed, drinking cheap beer, dreaming up ideas about loser gym teachers in North Carolina; how McBride, Hill, and Gordon Green now run their own company ROUGH HOUSE dedicated to finding and producing unique material as an answer to the kind of company they wish existed back when they were struggling.

• ON THEIR WRITING PROCESS: How they spent 13 weeks writing the season 2 pilot but then wrote the next 6 episodes in 35 days; How they write it like a movie, going back and forth between episodes to highlight in episode 1 something that they decide to make hit in episode 5; About who gathers all their brilliant ideas and writing (Hill: “Whoever was least stoned – and that man isn’t here right now”); About cut episodes dealing with rapist devil worshiping hillbillies getting curbed on an altar during Sunday mass; how Matthew McConaughey’s epic “sucking success’ dick” speech was completely ad-libbed.

• ON WHAT’S NEXT: Jody Hill is looking for a project; Danny McBride has a few underway and is looking to direct someday, as well as acting, and how they’re producing a few cool, weird new projects through Roughouse.

So that’s it. Theirs is the true Hollywood dream, the one we rarely hear anymore. Being up front and center, I've seen that this city is filled with visionaries who compromised to make it to the top and in the process not only lost what would have made them unique, longtime successes but also placed them squarely in the middle of a machine that churns out more forgettable crap every year, a moral failure that’s almost more punishing than the relative obsolescence of their compromised careers. But for men like these two, who had the gumption, balls, and patience to stick to their guns, create their own type of humor, their own type of loser story arc, and make a film and now a TV show that any studio would’ve dismissed as “too dark” to ever see the light of day, I can only say thank you. Keep the dream alive for those of us hoping to make it in this town without selling out to the corporate spider-monkeys.

In that auditorium I realized finally that they were the real deal, two magnificent bastards with minds like scientists, eyes like Amsterdam tricks and hearts like goddamn lions. In the end, they’re simply two geniuses, as funny, genuine, down-to-earth and humble as you’d hope. Almost brings a tear to the eyes.

As a reward for you having finished this blog, here’s a link to a little-seen skateboard skit Jody Hill, Danny McBride, and Ben Best did while FFW was at Sundance. Enjoy.

RA