a quote from comedy writer justin michael

Meet Justin Michael, Write In Color’s latest Creatrepreneur. Usually, I interview our Creprepreneurs and write a post based on our conversation, but in this case, Justin’s answers are too good to paraphrase. A born comedy writer, Justin’s latest show, Friendship All-Stars of Friendship, is a stop motion animated web series he co-created with Dan Lippert and Harry Chaskin. Each episode centers around different pairs of offbeat celebrities who live with each other in the same apartment building. You can watch the first, supremely charming episode here. If you’re CGI’d out, this silly (in the best way) show is for you.

When did you start writing?

The first thing I remember writing was a book in 1st grade about a mean ghost called “The Mean Ghost.” I spent most of 2nd grade in the library writing a Jaws rip-off called “Jaws 5.” Then I made a bunch of homemade comics about a can of Diet Coke with superpowers named “Super-Can.” I guess what I’m trying to say is I was really good at titling things right off the bat.

When did you quit your day job (and what was it)?

I quit my day job (it was more of a day internship) in 2010 to write for Matt Besser’s Comedy Central pilot “This Show Will Get You High.” It ended up airing as a special in 2011.

What’s your favorite thing about writing?

I love getting the opportunity to create a world. That fun sandbox phase of writing where anything can happen and you just get to build from the ground up and connect the dots is my favorite. I did most of my comedy training at UCB, and they teach this improv concept “If this, then what?” It basically boils down to taking the funny / specific thing or pattern and exploring what it means about the rest of that world. Blowing out that idea out in a series or sketch or any sort of writing and exploring the details of how a character or circumstance affects everything else is immensely satisfying to generate.

What’s the biggest challenge when writing?

Everything? Rewrites are tough. Either you’re losing the jokes you love to make way for a tighter script or you’re restructuring the entire thing because one of the scenes you removed was the lynchpin for the story’s structural integrity. I’m also pretty anal retentive, so I think it’s easy for me to judge what I write too harshly and meticulously reword dialogue before half a script’s even finished. I’ve learned that trusting my gut and barreling forward with a healthy amount of reckless abandon usually yields a draft I’m happier with than the writing I agonize over line by line.

What fuels your inspiration?

I grew up watching superhero cartoons and giant monster movies, so that’s always kicking around in the back of my head. Getting out of my house and doing things in the real world helps. I like walking around my neighborhood and taking in the people around me. Everybody’s weird and idiosyncratic if you stare at ’em long enough. Also, hanging around a comedy theater full of extremely funny people helps when every bit could potentially be a new idea for a sketch.

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Tell me about your new project: Friendship All-Stars of Friendship. When did you start working on it and what inspired it?

We originally came up with the idea for the series a couple years ago based on the real-life friendship of Ron Perlman and Guillermo del Toro. All three of us were already fans of their respective acting and directing work. The spark really came from finding out they weren’t just colleagues, but actual buddies who hung out in our neighborhood. We heard from a friend that Ron and Guillermo saw a sketch show at UCB together. Then another friend spotted them walking around the Silver Lake dog park. Dan and I loved the idea of these celebrity-ish guys who make movies together being regular best friends who do normal, mundane things. Their public personas were already larger than life personalities, so there was a baseline for characters. We started doing our (terrible) impressions for each other and just sort of played around with the idea of doing a live sketch. We approached Harry very early on, who was equally enthusiastic about the idea and the three of us made a short that would eventually become the pilot episode of our series.

What was the process like after its inception – How did it go from words on a page to getting distribution?

Well, once the script was written by the three of us we recorded voice over with Pat, our friend who also happens to be a great sound designer / engineer. A lot of our favorite parts actually came from Dan and I improvising in the voice over session, including the vaudevillian back and forth about how to pronounce Camarillo in the first episode. That ended up setting the standard for future episodes, which also include a lot of improvised moments woven into the original scripts. After that, we edited the audio together and Harry storyboarded and turned it into an animatic.

Since he was animating on Robot Chicken at the time, he was able to show the animatic to the studio heads and they were nice enough to let us use their equipment and stages. Harry did all the animating after hours with puppets built by Sarah Brown. After finishing it, the studio helped us pitch it around and we ended up with L Studio about a year later.

How did you decide to go with stop motion?

Harry’s been animating stop motion since the 5th grade, so it was the natural choice. Aesthetically speaking, I love stop mo. Right now animation is a field pretty much dominated by CGI, so I think it’s a breath of fresh air to see something tactile and real. I think that complements what we’re going for thematically with Friendship All-Stars: the idea of celebrity immediately creates a sense of distance, so anything we can do to humanize these untouchable personalities and make them feel down to earth helps. We’ve made a deliberate choice to include a little chatter in the animation and attempt to make every effect as practical as we can. I think it reminds the audience that everything they’re seeing exists in a real space. I love great 2D and CG, but there’s something infinitely cooler to me about watching a show and realizing these characters aren’t trapped in a computer somewhere. You can pick them up and feel the texture of their coat or actually bend their arms and furrow their brows. I’m constantly in awe of all the amazing and talented people who work to make our show look so good.

What’s your creative process like with your co-creators?

All three of us have equal say in pretty much everything and take an active part in every part of the process, from writing to acting to editing the radio plays to directing the animation. That said, Harry has WAY more experience in the animation department – so he generally takes lead when giving direction after the three of us discuss what we want out of the shot. There’s a lot more to consider beyond the puppet’s acting – there are rigs to suspend floating characters, tie downs for puppet feet, and a host of other technical things that Dan and I have started to pick up on just by having to discuss the minutiae of each shot.

Sunglasses-episode-friendship-all-starsWhy should people watch and where can people watch?

You can watch the show at www.friendshipallstars.com or www.LStudio.com. There are 10 episodes, with a new one showing up every two weeks starting July 24th. Watch it because I don’t want Dan to have gotten a bowl cut (by Seth Green) for nothing. Also, I’m really proud of how the show came out. It looks beautiful and is simultaneously strange and silly yet pretty accessible even if you don’t know who the celebrities are. We didn’t want this to just be another parody show. There’s inherently some of that in the premise, but we really strove to create characters you could enjoy and care about without necessarily “getting” the esoteric references. Above all, we wanted to portray these guys from a place of kindness – it’s not about celebrity potshots, it’s about our silly (and sometimes very stupid) take on celebrities we like and respect.

Do you have any other projects you want to mention?

I host a podcast (and live show) with Jacob Reed called Before You Were Funny where top comedians and writers bring in their old, crappy material and do a blind table read while stopping along the way to interrupt and call out how terrible everything is. It’s a lot of fun. I’m also part of the sketch group Tremendosaur and the UCB Harold Team Winslow, which performs on Monday nights over at UCB in Los Angeles.