VIFF Industry Conference: ALL KINDS OF FUNNY from VIFF on Vimeo.
Sterling Archer in Season 6 Premiere.
Archer creator Adam Reed was VIFF Industry’s big get last month and brought with him the season six premiere of his raunchy, animated spy spoof, three months ahead of its January 2015 air date in America. As funny as his FX show, Reed oozes southern charm with an infectious laugh, plus a self-confessed man-crush on Burt Reynolds.
Cyril Figgis (Chris Parnell), Sterling Archer (H. Jon Benjamin), Malory Archer (Jessica Walter), Lana Kane (Aisha Tyler).
Genesis of Archer: Our last show on Adult Swim had been cancelled….I sorta freaked out a little bit… rented out my house…was gonna walk the Earth like Cain for the rest of my life…just gotten these agents…that was not their plan for me…doesn’t pay them much…I was in .. Spain….dodging their emails for 8 months….walking all over Europe and North Africa and jotting down notes and thinking about the spy fiction genre and James Bond in particular…somebody had given me a matched set of all the James Bond paperbacks…from 60s and 70s… those books are super dark…the James Bond in those books is not really a nice human being…trying to think of way to make that funny in a character that was basically a total bastard but that you would still root for…and that was the genesis of it….came back to America and watched first reboot of James Bond with Judi Dench as M and stole that but made her the Mom [Malory Archer]..went out in October to pitch…by January 1st we were making the pilot….90% of it went to air [on FX].
Writing of Archer: Write 98% of the stuff …me at my kitchen table…pacing back and forth…drinking coffee in daytime…some point later whisky…not one of those writers that has it all plotted out on index cards before hand…I’m the kind of writer that goes ‘Oh my God I have a script due tomorrow…put on the coffee and whisky’…..never written anything character-driven [before]…hard to know the balance between the feels and the funny..somebody told me early on comedy has to have drama in it or it’s not funny.
Look of Archer: “Mad Men had just come out….this looks amazing…let’s rip that off straight away…make [Archer] look like Don Draper… we’ll just give them cell phones and we’re done….cell phones…a laziness thing so they don’t have to go find a phone booth…makes it easier as a writer.”
Big gets despite paying only $300 per episode for voiceover.
Burt Reynolds: we do everything over the phone..because people don’t fly to Atlanta to do voice over cause it’s like $300…wouldn’t even cover their plane ticket…[but] we flew to Jupiter, Florida, where [Burt Reynolds] lives to meet him and do the whole thing…he walked in…he was in all black..hair perfect, super handsome…big kickass black truck outside with little Bandit logo on the door …the Bandit walks into the room…I was just awestruck…he was super nice…signed my script…I totally fanboyed him…[Burt Reynolds had a lot of notes]…he called me on the telephone…his notes were like the original script was all about how amazing Burt Reynolds was….makes me seem like kind of a dick…what if we made fun of me…his notes all about taking the wind out of the Burt Reynolds mythos…he’s 80 years old and handsomer than anybody probably in this whole building…he’s super handsome…I can’t stress that enough….no way we’re going to top Burt Reynolds.
Kenny Loggins: let’s write a whole episode where he’s a terrible human being…and he was OK with that..we’ve just been very very lucky…he did have some notes that we had not initially drawn him handsome enough …so we went back and handsome-ed him up 10%….he’s actually very handsome…he’s no Burt Reynolds…but he’s pretty good-looking.
We’ve had Bryan Cranston.
We’ve had Jon Hamm.
Why Archer Vice in Season 5?: …personally worried that people were bored..I thought let’s do some cocaine..let’s give these people cocaine…[Archer Vice had characters cash in as drug dealers] . . .once they started becoming drug dealers…from that moment on… Archer gang never killed anybody…now they’re on the good side of the law again [in season 6] they’re killing people left and right again.
Season 6 Spoilers: Barry [Dillan] comes back…Conway Stern comes back…[wee] baby Seamus will be in this season…he’s a toddler…not to ruin the joke but he looks like two-foot tall Cyril…he’s got little horn-rimmed glasses..going to grey his temples a little..wearing a little sweater and shorts.
Archer drops ISIS: that was a thing that coincided with end of season 5 and during a break while writing season 6….we rarely talk about super scary real world things on Archer…this cut you all saw there used to be ISIS logos everywhere and we’ve actually gone back and taken the ISIS logos out..it coincided with well now we’re going to start doing work for the CIA.
Animation: we do that…in Atlanta…there’s about a 100 of us….45 people work on Archer full time.