The second season of “Documentary Now!” started this week, with Bill Hader and Fred Armisen returning to parody famous documentaries. The series is very much a passion project for Hader, Armisen and fellow creator Seth Meyers, who all spoke to The Huffington Post about how they chose the films they would take on this season.
Below is a list of the documentaries the show parodies in Season 2. You should watch them now to get ready for the upcoming episodes ― and just because they’re worth watching.
1. “The War Room”: James Carville and George Stephanopoulos try to get Bill Clinton elected president.
Given this is an election year, Meyers said that “The War Room” was a natural choice to parody as it’s “the best campaign documentary that was ever made.” Further convincing the team they should go with “The War Room” was the fact that Hader could pull off a great impression of James Carville ― one of the featured political operators in the documentary ― and that 1992 fashion styles might be fun.
Hader stressed that this episode is not an attempt to comment about Donald Trump or the current election, though. “The key line of the episode is when the Carville character says, ‘We changed the way election narratives can be hijacked,’ and that is not about who they are running for or whatever. It’s just about winning,” said Hader. “It was never like, ‘Oh, Trump said this, we should do a [parody].’ It was never coming from that place.”
2. “Jiro Dreams of Sushi”: Jiro Ono is the first sushi chef to receive three Michelin stars. His son is unsure whether he can take over the restaurant.
The “Documentary Now!” parody balances having to simultaneously joke about the documentary cliché of presenting a touching narrative while still making the story legitimately touching. Hader talked about the struggle of trying to have it both ways. “We knew we wanted to be funny, but we also knew that it should be legitimately sweet. You don’t sell out the characters,” said Hader.
“We aim for actually having some genuine emotion in it, and, to Fred’s credit, he did a great job with it,” Meyers added.
3. “Swimming to Cambodia”: Spalding Gray gives a monologue about his role in “The Killing Fields.”
According to Meyers, both Hader and writer John Mulaney are “big fans” of Spalding Gray. They decided to do this episode because of all the fancy camerawork that would be needed, as it’s more or less just a person sitting at a table.
“It was so different than other documentaries because it’s really filming over performance,” said Meyers. “So it wouldn’t be like anything we’d ever done before.”
4. “Stop Making Sense”: The Talking Heads stage an elaborate concert in 1983.
Armisen is practically a musician as much as he is a comedian ― he fronted Meyer’s house band during “Late Night” and was once a professional drummer. Considering his love for The Talking Heads, parodying the group’s famous music documentary was an “easy pick,” as Armisen described it.
Trying to recreate elements of the film made Armisen appreciate it even more as he realized how technical even small moments in the film had been. “It was really crazy seeing like, the original David Byrne shoes. He’s walking towards the stage, but, to recreate it, I was like, ‘Oh yeah, someone had to film that,’” said Armisen. “As a viewer I forget that that’s something that had to be filmed, as dumb as that sounds, you take for granted that he’s walking on to the stage.”
Meyers further said that Armisen wrote an “album’s worth of songs” for this episode.
5. “Salesman”: Traveling Bible salesmen are often down on their luck.
Similar to the “Jiro” episode, Hader said that crafting a touching storyline for the “Salesman” parody was tricky. “Fred’s character is really going through a legitimately hard time,” said Hader. “Not only making it funny, but [so] you say, ‘How is this guy actually [reacting] to this’? He would be angry ... It doesn’t necessarily need to be funny.”
Meyers added that the group was interested in the challenge of filming something with an old-fashioned black-and-white aesthetic. “The black-and-white look for us was a fun challenge,” said Meyers. “Making sure it didn’t look like we shot it in color and then digitally switched it. So we wanted to have something that had a look unlike anything we’ve ever done before, and it’s really beautiful.”
6. “The Kid Stays in the Picture”: Robert Evans is a Hollywood producer who rose, fell, and then rose again.
This episode, Hader explained, doesn’t have much emotional depth ― it just tries to be as ridiculous as possible.
“We have an episode where we make fun of ‘Kid Stays in the Picture,’ which is a documentary that is already very insane and funny,” said Hader. “So, you have to go, ‘That one is just crazy.’ It’s an episode where my character basically starts dumb and ends a little dumber. There’s no giant emotional arch to it. It’s just funny.”
Bonus: “O.J.: Made In America”: An over-seven-hour look at O.J. Simpson and the American culture surrounding his life.
This film isn’t the subject of any “Documentary Now!” episode; Hader, Meyers and Armisen just really recommend watching it. “This year, the O.J. Simpson documentary was almost instantly one of the greatest of all time,” said Meyers.
“It’s going to go down as one of the best documentaries ever made,” said Hader. “It’s so good,” Armisen added.
Will they ever consider doing their own epic, seven-hour comedy parody documentary? Armisen and Hader immediately said “no” in unison. Hader added, “I don’t think comedy lasts that long. It’s hard to keep things funny. I’m learning that, too. Comedy, a lot of the times, is kind of like when you have a tennis ball on a racket and you’re just trying to keep it up for awhile. It’s kind of fun, but five hours of that would make you want to ― you’d just be like, ‘Can we please stop and do something else?’”
Before You Go
