Category Archives: TV

DAN ON THE MOON

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A single Q&A with Dan Harmon from a Reddit AMA

bc: Hi Dan!
Amongst everything else I really enjoy your story structure ideas, and am curious if you’ve ever read Joseph Campbell’s “Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake”?
(If not, it’s the first iteration of JC extracting the monomyth idea from James Joyce’s FW, a modernist version of the story circle, eternal return, etc.)
Similarly, do you like James Joyce at all?
Joyce influenced Campbell as much as Campbell seems to have influenced you, so in a sort of transitive property telephone game, you seem to me like one of the most Joycean writers around. (Intended as high praise!)
Sincere thanks for all the great work!
Also, here’s a drawing of you on the moon: http://i.imgur.com/7GUCwFo.jpg
bc

Dan Harmon: Ha, thank you for that art. I love it. And no, I haven’t read a single word of James Joyce and you’re right, I should, because you’re right, Campbell was obsessed with him. But unlike Campbell and probably James Joyce, I’m a lazy, shitty, self-satisfied blob of rapidly fading pop cultural influences and video game addictions.

SIGNAL/STATIC

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Though the VCR and accompanying VHS library were excellent tools for exploring ideaspace, live TV was my constant companion.

10 or so channels of broadcast signals, permeating the skies, dialed in through the static of a temperamental TV antennae.

It was definitely an imperfect connection to the global village, but there was a certain charm in trying to adjust the rabbit ears to catch just enough of the transmission to see the show. Unwound wire coat hangers adorned with tin foil, bent this way and that, until some random and arbitrary arrangement magically tuned in the desperately sought signal.

For bonus points this was often done on black & white TV sets, because though color TVs had been around for 2 decades already, those more expensive sets were usually reserved for adult spaces, and most other TVs I’d encounter as a kid were ancient, tiny, and lacking in color.

Then came one day the cable!