It's not everyday you get the opportunity to talk to the hottest comedic minds on television, so when I had the opportunity to talk to "Broad City" creators/writers/stars Illana Glazer, Paul Downs, and Lucia Aniello, I did not hesitate to get on the red carpet and talk to them. They were promoting "Time Traveling Bong," their new cinematic mini-series about two cousins who discover a bong that, when smoked, can transport them back in time.
It sounds absolutely ludicrous, but upon seeing the entire thing shortly after talking to the comedy geniuses, I found that it was probably one of the more wholesomely original pieces in comedy today. It aired back in April on Comedy Central, but you can watch the entire series here.
Our conversation was brief, but it gives some great context about the show itself and their position on "Broad City" being the voice of the millennial generation.
John Flynn: Thanks so much for your time guys. How do you feel about "Broad City" being the voice of today's generation, as opposed to "Girls" because not every one is filthy rich and can live in trendy expensive neighborhoods.
Ilana Glazer: I really like "Girls." Personally, I connect to those characters and feel like Lena is doing something similar emotionally to what myself, Paul, Lucia and Abby on "Broad City" are doing. I guess the way that we capture it genuinely reflects our experiences, and I think we represent a demographic that’s younger than we actually are. Sometimes I’m like, am I millennial? I’m representing these people, but I think we are like both in it and of it, so we can write from a place that’s real but then also have perspective. I’m 29 and my character is 24. I guess I'm also just speaking to socioeconomic issues; you know we all grew up privileged, you could always go back home if something fell through you know if like if our lives in New York fell through. I guess their high dreams comes from more like the mundaneness of actually like having to make life work, it’s awesome that people relate and it’s such an honor that somebody feels represented by your work.
Paul W. Downs: I think, from at least from my perspective, we find the funniest stuff is stuff that we’ve, somewhere in the writer’s experience and because Abby, Illana, Lucia, and myself all lived in New York, all struggled in our 20s, all had zero dollars here. We find the funniest stories are the stories that we all have experienced, so we usually take something that one of us has gone through and then we kind of blow it out and then make it more absurd. I think that’s part of the reason people really relate to it: it’s because so many of these are true stories that we just heighten and expand and then change a little bit.
Lucia Aniello: For us it wasn’t so much a choice it was just an extension of our experiences. Sometimes you can’t choose man, the stories choose you.
Downs: We always aim to be funny first and if it’s relatable, that’s awesome. But I think for us we’re like, “What’s the funniest thing that we’ve experienced and how can we tailor that for Abby and Alana’s world.”
Flynn: "Time Traveling Bong" is told as a mini series, as opposed to a feature film or a regular serialized television show. With binge watching becoming the norm, why choose this format to tell your story?
Glazer: A lot of factors. One is like time; you know I don’t think that we could make two full TV shows in a year and have programming be very happy with us, it takes like 10 months to make "Broad City." I guess if we didn’t have "Broad City" we would go for something else, but we are kind of on the verge of a huge movie coming out. The show is very cinematic and though it's in three parts, it’s like a 70-minute short, tight movie.
Aniello: For us I think, because like you said it’s a side project. We’re all kind of pretty committed to other projects, "Broad City" and other things that we’re all working on. I don’t think we necessarily had the time to do a full series and also in terms of adapting it, we were really looking to find people who’d really let us kind of spread our wings and tell the story of how we wanted to, and for us Comedy Central have been very, very supportive of us in terms of things like, “OK, I hear that this is what you want to do, how can we help to support you?” For us, it’s just that kind of relationship has always helped us create the best versions of things. So for us it was just like these are people who really support our race, so having them help us shepherded into mini-series just felt like the best pathway.
Downs: And also making it a 4/20 special, kind of like event programming, it just seemed like the perfect outlet in the end because it became these mini-series. We kind of play with the format because these mini-series were typically like very high broad, so it’s such a ridiculous premises but we executed in a really cinematic way to make it kind of like Comedy Central's O.J.
[laughter from all]
Aniello: That’s the approach!
Flynn: Well thank you guys for taking the time to chat. Good luck with the show!
Even though you may not be into stoner humor, this one is the least obnoxious of the sub-genre. It's like "Bill & Ted" for the new generation. Again, you can watch "Time Traveling Bong" here and you can catch it on Comedy Central!
