Community creator Dan Harmon’s first notion about filming his live podcast-turned-national-tour Harmontown was to make a funny road trip movie. “Jeff and I both have an improv background,” Harmon said, referring to his podcast sidekick, Jeff Bryan Davis. “We would do funny stuff on the road. Let’s just make a funny movie and I thought that’s what we would do,” he said after a screening of Harmontown during the 2014 Los Angeles Film Festival.

Director Neil Berkeley (Beauty is Embarrassing) had a different idea after he attended a Harmontown podcast session in Hollywood. “I met these people after the show and they were so diverse, but they share something,” Berkeley said. He compared the fans of Community and Harmontown and discovered the seed of the movie—one that made it more than an extended comedy sketch or mockumentary. “They’ve got a history and texture to them,” Berkely said of  the Harmontown podcast fans. “They’ve seen some shit. They’ve gone through something and they’re also hiding something,” Berkeley said. “Something Dan does makes them feel that it’s okay to talk about it.”

Harmon, notorious for being controlling and dictatorial on creative projects, also had to come to terms with Berkeley’s vision and style. “He said ‘I’m not sure I can do this just for yucks or be your employee,’” Harmon said. “It made me really mad. I don’t like people that aren’t in my control. So the only way to get him under my control was to guarantee him total freedom.”

Harmontown became more than a documentary of a tour, but the story of who the fans are and why they show up to see the show. “It’s not a movie about Dan or us,” said Davis. “It’s a movie about creative people who wonder they have relevance or whether or not it’s okay to be strange and unusual.”

Glen Golightly / Festival Blogger