Ten years ago, Dame Helen Mirren appeared on the IFC channel to introduce the landmark 50th season of “Documentary Now!” With nary a wink, she threw to a “classic” documentary film called “Sandy Passage,” which begins with the shaky title cards you’d expect from a 1970s documentary touting tiny production shingles that made the film possible. For all intents and purposes, an unaware viewer may have thought they had stumbled upon an esteemed, long-running TV show that highlights old documentaries.
Then Bill Hader and Fred Armisen showed up.
“What a glorious time Peak TV was,” co-creator and writer Seth Meyers told TheWrap ahead of the show’s 10th anniversary this August and on the eve of a new Blu-ray release that packages all four seasons in a complete collection.
The brainchild of creators Hader, Armisen, Meyers and Rhys Thomas, the central conceit of “Documentary Now!” was that each episode would riff on a real documentary with Hader and Armisen playing various characters. The first episode pulled from “Grey Gardens” as Hader and Armisen played two aging socialites living in a dilapidated estate, but the show’s first season tackled everything from Errol Morris’ seminal “The Thin Blue Line” to “edgy” VICE documentaries that were prevalent at the time.
The idea was hatched in 2013 as Hader and Armisen were departing “Saturday Night Live.” They had just collaborated with Meyers on a pre-taped sketch called “History of Punk” starring Armisen as Ian Rubbish, a punk rocker who was really into Margaret Thatcher. The sketch was inspired by the Sex Pistols documentary “The Filth and the Fury” and Rhys Thomas and Alex Buono, who directed many of the “SNL” pre-tapes, were tasked with bringing this particular idea to life. Hader was struck by how faithfully they captured the vibe of the existing documentary and pitched the notion of doing this as a longform series.
“I came into [Seth’s] office on Monday and I said, ‘We should do that as a TV show,’ and he kind of was thinking the same thing. I think Fred also was like, ‘That’s a cool idea,’” Hader recalled.
IFC was interested in an Ian Rubbish show, but Meyers remembers he, Hader and Armisen didn’t think the premise could sustain a full season, so instead they pitched tackling different documentaries with each episode.
“We went in to pitch at IFC and I was like, ‘I think we’re gonna be OK,’ because there were so many pictures from ‘Portlandia’ on the wall,” Hader remembered, noting the popularity of Armisen’s other comedy series at the network.
While many assumed that first “Grey Gardens”-inspired episode was improvised when it aired, Hader made a point in our interview to note that every word was written by Meyers, who wrote or co-wrote 11 of the show’s 27 episodes. Hader and Armisen wrote multiple episodes as well, and “SNL” cohort John Mulaney wrote a number of episodes too, including the Season 3 musical “Co-Op.”
“The whole thing was like a dream,” Armisen told TheWrap of making the show, a sentiment echoed by Meyers and Hader, both of whom used the exact same word: “dream.” Meyers, who wrote episodes while also hosting “Late Night,” delighted in seeing how Hader, Armisen, Thomas and Buono (the latter two directed nearly every episode) would bring the scripts to fruition.
“I was tied to New York when they were in LA and I remember the first thing they sent me was Bill falling through the floor,” Meyers recalled of seeing footage from that first episode. “I just had this feeling of, ‘Oh, my God, it’s gonna work,’ like this is gonna be something to be proud of.”
Hader praised Thomas and Buono’s approach to directing the show as one of the reasons “Documentary Now!” has a timeless quality. “I like seeing something where you can do incredible filmmaking, and it’s still funny. Comedy doesn’t have to look blown out and bright and bad, you know? It can just work on that level.”
After the first two seasons, Hader got tied up with his HBO series “Barry” and could no longer appear onscreen (although he co-wrote the Season 3 episode “Dear Mr. Larson” with Duffy Boudreau). The gang considered calling it after two seasons, in the vein of popular British series that only had a short run, but Meyers said it was producer Andrew Singer who had the idea of continuing on with different actors in each episode.
“When he said, ‘Why don’t we send it to Cate Blanchett?’ it was a real ‘Haha, OK’ moment,” he recalled. But then she said yes. And so did Michael Keaton and Owen Wilson and Alexander Skarsgard and Jonathan Pryce and plenty more.
The show had a small but devoted fanbase throughout its run, something its creators held dear.
“That’s the stuff I always like — when you meet the people who are obsessed with it, it was a quintessential show where it felt like the people who liked it, it was like they owned it,” Hader said. “Like, ‘This was made for me.’”
While the show concluded its four-season run in 2022, Hader, Armisen and Meyers all said they’d love to make more episodes if the timing is right.
“The way I would really, really, really want to do it again is if there was a situation where Bill and Fred were both free to do it,” Meyers said. “You would want to have something special to get back in the game and that would be the most special of the outcomes.”
Ever-optimistic, Armisen said he’s “sure of it” that there will be more “Documentary Now!” down the line.
Now, as all four seasons of the show hit Blu-ray in a complete collection, Hader, Armisen and Meyers reveal their favorite “Documentary Now!” episodes.
Bill Hader: “The Eye Doesn’t Lie”
“I love all the actors in that episode, especially Fred. I just think all the actors who are playing the cops and the friends and everything are just so unbelievably funny. I mean, Gary Kraus, clearly I love because we cast him in ‘Barry.’ I’m co-credited as writing that, but it’s really all John Mulaney. I think he was nice enough to give me a co-credit on it because I said, ‘What if we did Thin Blue Line?’ That was the most I gave to that one and then John wrote the whole thing. That’s the one that I think about a lot, and that makes me laugh really hard. And then I really like ‘Sandy Passage’ and the ‘Nanook of the North’ one, Fred’s very funny in that.”
Fred Armisen: “Gentle & Soft: The Story of the Blue Jean Committee”
“It’s hard because I’m in it, and different ones are my favorites for different reasons. As time has gone on, I’m so grateful that we got to shoot in Iceland. So anything Iceland-related just feels like a gift. But then I think, over time, the ‘Blue Jean Committee’ one had a sort of bigger life than just the episode. It became my favorite to have as an experience.”
Seth Meyers: “Juan Likes Rice and Chicken”
“The audacity of where they went to shoot it, and how good it looks and Fred is so genuinely heartbreakingly good as an actor in it. I never get tired of the payoff. So much credit to Bill and Fred who, the same way as at ‘SNL,’ anything you wrote that they were in they made twice as good, not just as the way they performed, but also with observations as writers themselves. Because the original end of ‘Globesman’ was they were going to get T-boned by a car, so it was going to be this really gruesome ending where the Atlas salesman was actually chasing them. But Bill called me was like, ‘Hey, man, Fred’s really good and I think you’re going to be rooting for him. I think it’d be a better episode if it ends with Fred feeling like he won, and I think the audience would be really bummed out if it ends sad.’ And he couldn’t have been more right.”
Seth’s Bonus Pick: “A Town, A Gangster, A Festival”
“An episode that has a special place in my heart is the Al Capone festival, because it is the most Fred idea, and the audacity of just going to Iceland to shoot it. But I remember working with Fred on the script, and I just remember Fred’s take was, ‘You know, I really want to make sure there’s no conflicts.’ It’s so counterintuitive. But again, one of the most lovely things about that episode is like, Fred’s right. There’s enough conflict in the world, let’s just watch something that’s just enjoyable and everybody gets along, and at the end, everybody’s happy.”
