Episode #393
Dan Perlman started out as an intern on SiriusXM’s “Ron and Fez Show” and continued working with and for Ron Bennington while he was hitting the stand-up open mic scene in New York City. After winning the Just for Laughs-New York TV Festival’s “Set to Screen” Comedy Pitch Competition in 2015, Perlman earned himself a pilot presentation from FOX for his animated project, That’s My Bus. But it was his web videos with fellow comedian Kevin Iso, which started out as “Moderately Funny,” and eventually evolved into what we know as Flatbush Misdemeanors, the Showtime series Perlman co-created, executive produces, writes and stars in — Perlman sat down with me before the second-season premiere to talk about making videos without worrying if they go viral, making sure everyone from the web series had a role in making the TV show, and more.
Here’s the trailer for season 2 of Flatbush Misdemeanors, which premiered over the weekend!
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Last things first: Congratulations on season two of Flatbush Misdemeanors.
Thanks Sean!
Does it feel different both making a season two and then doing the promotion for it, knowing, ‘oh I’ve already been through this’ already?
Yeah, every part of it feels a little more comfortable. When you’re in the writers room the first season, and you’re up against deadlines and stuff, you’re like, I don’t know if we’re going to get this done. I don’t know how this is going to happen. And then you go through it, and once you go through anything, you’re like OK, we’ve been through this before. You know it’s stressful. It’s a lot, but then you know it gets done. I have friends at SNL and I talked to them and they said the first season, where it was like every week we’re like there’s no way this gets done, and then it gets done. As far as the making of it, that’s something that, it’s helpful because you just learn what you’re looking for. You learn how to work with everybody. You learn what stuff is going to be much easier, what stuff you’re going to need to focus on, so it’s all, it’s all good experience you know.
Now, Dan I don’t know that I knew this about you before preparing for this podcast but you started out interning for Ron Bennington?
Yeah! I started out, I was maybe 21, 22 or something, and I interned at — it was still Ron and Fez at the time — and I interned for them, as I was, like finishing college and starting to go bomb it open mics. I did that for a couple years, and then I went back and worked for Bennington — once Ron and Fez ended, Fez retired and then Ron started doing a show with Gail, his daughter. They started doing Bennington on SiriusXM, so I went back and worked for them for, it wasn’t even a year, but as the show first started. And then I sold the animated pilot to FOX and so, then I left to do that and but yeah I love those guys. I’m come back on regularly, and they’re family.
How did you decide that that was the first move? Did you have aspirations to do a radio show yourself? Or was it just that you were a big fan of Ron and Fez? Or did you think that somehow, this would teach you whatever skills you needed?
I just loved comedy in all forms and I always wanted to be a stand-up comedian who makes things, who is able to write and make a show, and I just wanted to learn all these different aspects. I think working there out of college, I just kind of wanted to be around comedy in some way. Whether it was working for a TV show or radio show, I just wanted to be kind of adjacent to it. An environment that was different than just the open mics where I was would just go and you know get stared at from people, which I did four times a night every night, for years. I think that’s what drew me there and I learned a lot, and you know you see somebody like Ron, who’s so good at what he does and and how he sets up the comedians to have them succeed when they come on and so, yeah I love those guys.
Part of that secret sauce of Bennington is that he he wears multiple hats. He started out as a comedian, then he had his own comedy club, and then he became a broadcaster, and now he’s sort of kind of all three in one.
Yeah. He’s incredibly quick, incredibly good at rolling with anything. That was super helpful to see. And just learn like, yeah, you might start on something and he’s just very able to flow anywhere in the conversation. And you know he listens and engages with what people are saying in a real way, and always keeps it funny and manages the sort of tone of it. Yeah, so he’s you know you can learn a lot from listening and watching him.
The one thing I don’t know him for, though, is making short films or web series. Where did that impulse come from? Did you study film in school?
I studied education actually. I went to Northwestern. So I studied education. I wanted to do comedy but I didn’t know if i’d have the courage for it, so I thought, maybe i’ll teach or something.
Right. It’s performing for kids.
Exactly. You have a captive audience that the city requires to not walk out. And so yeah, so I thought, maybe i’ll do that. But then I started writing for a filmed sketch comedy group in college, it was an on-campus group. We’d film like two or three sketches a weekend and so we’d have have to bring in like two to four sketches a week, like every week, so you write a million sketches. They’re mostly horrible, but you kind of learn the discipline of just like writing a lot and churning stuff out, and that was really fun to be a part of that. After college, I still had this desire to keep making stuff, so I started making a lot of sketches with friends. Like a couple of close friends, my friend Daniel Johnson, who’s an editor on the show now, and my friend Lawrence Dai who wrote for (James) Corden for years. And then I started working with Kevin Iso, and we started making these sketches, and a lot of them were bad, but we just wanted to make stuff you know, and just not care about whether or not it’s good or worked out or anything. Just get in the rhythm of making shit and getting better that way. The same way with stand-up, you just get up and get better.
So when you met Kevin, then, you didn’t already have a premise in mind or a strategy?
No.
Just, I want to make content, for lack of a better word. I want to make videos. I want to make sketches. And you see Kevin at the open mics and you’re like, you seem like a guy would be good making these with me?
Yeah. I think when you’re starting, you’re at open mics and you’re looking around and you’re seeing other people that seem funny or they just seem not completely insane or whatever, but you talk with a lot of people about like, oh, we should make something together and then you send them a thing and then they don’t answer, whatever you know. Some people more talk about doing shit than doing it. But Kevin was the first person I met in stand-up who I felt, like, had the same drive to just make a thing, regardless. And not let the barriers or hurdles of, we don’t have a permit, we don’t have this or that, or we need to build a crew, you know. Let’s just try to make a thing. That was the sort of foundation of it and then over time, we found like oh this stuff works, so that thing works, and so, then we did that for a little bit and then stopped for a while. I started writing some stuff myself and I did a pilot for FOX, and then I wrote a couple other shorts, and then we started working together again. We zeroed in on the world of the sketches that we liked more, which was what became Flatbush and then started working on that.
Right, you mentioned needing to know about permits, and I imagine if you’re not in New York or L.A., you might not even think about that when you’re making a web series, but in New York City, especially it’s kind of hard not to — like I walk around my neighborhood and I always see the permit signs up that they’re filming something so.
Until Showtime, I never made anything with a permit. It was all wildly illegal. I pretended I was a Greek student from City College to film in a Greek Orthodox school once. We snuck onto the subway on the first stop at South Ferry to choose the seats we wanted to film on when I made this short film, Cramming. Whatever you have to do to get the thing made. We went into a bakery for Flatbush, the web series, and we’re like, can we just stand over here? A customer would come in and we got to stop shooting. Like you just do whatever you gotta do to get the get the thing done.
When was the first time you learned about the New York TV Festival? That seems like it’s been a vital part of your career arc, with the pitch contests and independent pilot competitions.
I didn’t know anything about it, and then I wrote this pilot. It was called That’s My Bus, and it was an animated show about a bus driver. And I’d never written a pilot before. I just thought, I had that idea and I thought that would be fun because it’s like on a city bus but it’s grounded and you can have like the cast of regulars on the bus, but then still use animation to get into different worlds, you know? Anyway, so I wrote that. And it was the first pilot I wrote, and then I was invited up to Montreal Just For Laughs. This is in 2015 and they were doing, it’s called JFLComedyPro — I don’t even know if they’re still doing it — but they were doing a pitch fest. They invited five projects to pitch, and it was a very weird setup, because you’re onstage in front of an audience, pitching to five execs from different outlets or networks. My thing was the only animated project there. And you’re pitching it, and I never pitched something before, and so we pitched it and I felt like, alright, that went OK. They said we won that, and so the prize for that was a spot in the New York TV festival. But as luck would have it, one of the execs on the panel there was from FOX. And he loved it and then I talked to another exec from Fox and she she liked it, and then they’re like, ‘Call us when you get back to New York. We want to order a pilot script for it.’ And then I met up with them in person, and I think I was dressed now. Like, I was wearing a hoodie and they’re like oh you don’t believe me. I’m like no that’s true. But anyway, that competition that was like a feeder for the New York TV festival that helped. All that stuff the New York TV Festival, like any independent stuff is super helpful for like someone like me. I have no like, online following, and I think for anybody who doesn’t have like a million followers, you’re just looking for other ways, avenues for people to sort of get that rare external validation of like, this thing is cool, this thing is good. Any avenue where you can kind of find that I think is really helpful to getting other people to see your shit.
Right, because the the FOX deal, the pilot presentation for That’s My Bus, that happened plus you started to make the initial videos for Flatbush Misdemeanors all of that came before you officially got New Faces.
Yes
So you had been to Montreal for the festival
Twice!
So after having gone to JFL twice with short films before getting New Faces. When you go to Montreal that subsequent time, do you go there with any kind of illusions and delusions about what’s going to happen?
No, I went up with no delusions. I figured, I was like nothing, in particular, is going to happen here. But also you know it’s the accumulation of cool stuff. I’ve been there three times and every time has led to something. 2015, that was the bus thing, and then 2017, that was the first time we premiered Flatbush the Web series, because Kevin Hart was doing a short film screening there.
He had his platform, Laugh Out Loud (LOL)
Yeah that was the year they were trying to do that thing and so they chose five comedy shorts and our was one of them. That was the first time we ever saw it like, in front of people. I was so uncomfortable watching it. But it was great. I mean it’s Kevin Hart! There was 1200 people there. It did super well, so then we started sending it to other film festivals and that’s what gave that credibility. And then New Faces, I did that the next year, 2018. Truly, the only thing that concretely came from that, was Maria Bamford came up to me after my set and was incredibly sweet and kind. With her husband and just super complimentary and then she sent me an email saying her favorite jokes that I did in the set and that meant so much because I think she’s one of the best. I just love her so much. When we were writing Flatbush I always had her in my mind of like, I want her to play my mom because she’s weird enough to be drawn to Kareem Green, who plays my step dad, but like mentally ill enough to be my mom and so I sent her an email, I was like, I wrote this for you. It’s in New York. It’s no money. Please say yes, like you’re just the best, please do it, and she was like of course, yeah.
Of course she would! She was already giving you that motherly support and love.
Yes, yes exactly.
Did you have, because when you and Kevin started making Misdemeanors you had those those couple years of experience, you know getting through all of the kinks of Moderately Funny and learning just how to make videos and how to do them with good production value, but no budgets. Did you have any inspiration or did you look to some of the other web series that have gone to TV? Whether it’s, especially the New York ones, Broad City or High Maintenance, and go, OK, they’ve put down a blueprint for how to do this?
I would be lying if I said I did. I think to Kevin’s credit, I think he may have had more of a sense that it could really go somewhere than I did. I think for me, where I was at the time, because I did that pilot. It didn’t go to series, and then you know when you do a pilot you go through all the steps and you clear these hurdles and you work with all the different people and it’s super helpful, fun learning experience, but then, if it doesn’t go, nobody gets to see the thing. It doesn’t exist. So, for me, when we started making the videos, I was like, oh great, we’re just going to make something that people can see. So even if 40 people see it, we’ve made it. It’s out there, it exists, and that’s fun. It’s fun for me to be on set. It’s fun for me to write stuff and then you sort of massage it and make it better and then put it out there, like that’s really fun. Some of the shit I’m the most proud of is like one short I made maybe 1,000 people will ever see, but it’s fun to make that stuff. And so that’s kind of where I was looking at it, but I think the other side of is what you said, like the proof that there is a path. I think especially helped other people see like, Oh, this is valid what they’re doing because High Maintenance was able to do it and Broad City was able to do it, and so I think that that was definitely huge for seeing that it was possible.
OK, so from what I gather, then. Although your character on the show suffers greatly from anxiety, which leads to addiction issues — in your real life, you didn’t have as much anxiety over how your career path was going? It was just more about making things than about trying to hit these certain goals at these certain moments?
It’s always a balance, right. And it’s always kind of like this struggle of like tuning out the noise and there’s so much noise going on, especially in stand-up and especially with social media and stuff and you go on and you see this person doing this and this person is doing that. And you’re like what the fuck? I’m just sitting here! You know what? You feel awful, but then you realize, like I don’t even know if that’s the thing that I want to do. I don’t even know if that’s something that I want to put 1000 hours into working on, and getting good at, so you know, it alternates. So I’ve been stressed plenty times because you know you question that a lot. Because it’s so hard to get that external validation, and it comes so like fleetingly so, it’s sometimes you wonder like I don’t know, should I not be trying to make this stuff that I like? Should I just be like just jumping around and making noise? And just trying to go viral any which way that I can, no matter how, whatever stupid horseshit it is, even if it’s stuff I don’t find funny? Like I don’t know. Like you wonder that stuff but then, on the moments when I’m feeling good and feeling most productive and feeling most like alive, it’s when I like this thing or, this is a bit that I am having fun working on, or this is an idea I have that I want to see flushed out into a show or movie or whatever. That’s what you can control, and I think that’s what comics like is the control of it, so the more you can focus on that little micro project, the better you’ll feel. For me, at least.
How much of that sentiment were you able to foster as a result of going through that earlier experience with FOX?
That was hugely helpful, because you learn. I mean every step you learn something, so when I was going through it again I knew like that much more. I know the stuff that I was like OK that was I was right to do that and that stuff I could have fought more for this or this one doesn’t matter as much or I didn’t do enough for that, like you just you learn it, and so, and you learn what to expect. You learn to be grateful for it and how hard you have to work because it can all go away in a minute, and that nothing is guaranteed, you know. The moment, and then it can go to zero, and then nobody cares and so it’s just about continuing to to work and to put stuff out there and to continue to try things so that yeah that was hugely helpful.
How wild was it then that things started to come together in 2020? That year where everything slows down and everything shuts down, and we have the great pause and we’re all wondering, what’s comedy going to be like? And that’s the year that you put out an album and then a few months later, you get the word from the nice folks at Showtime.
Yeah, it was wild. You know you go through obviously a million different emotions, as we all did during that time when everything’s shut down and you’re like all right, is this temporary? Or is this just forever now? Are there are no things anymore? Like what’s going on, like should I even? Why am I caring about this? What is anything? So I don’t know it was obviously weird as hell, but it was also super fun, because it was just like, you work on this thing for so long and then, when they say go it’s just like alright, GO! I think it was maybe October 2020, when we started and we premiered May 23, and so we had to write 8 more scripts and shoot it and just get the thing done, and so. I think not having gone through before helps you not even question like wait, this is crazy like you know you know that’s what we’re doing you know.
Right. You get the series order in May and the show’s on in May. That’s a fast turnaround.
Yeah, but you pull it off. I always liked when you give they give you in-class essays. Instead of, because when I would take it home, I would dick around for a month and not do it until the night before, but when they just give you a thing and they’re like, write 10 pages, you’re like OK. You don’t have a choice. You just do it. I think it was also just, also sitting around for a little bit, and so the prospect of doing all that work wasn’t like daunting as much as it was like cool, thank you, let’s do it! It’s something to do and on a great scale.
How important has it been to be able to cast so many comedians? You mentioned Maria, but there’s also Kerry Coddett, Yamaneika Saunders, Roy Wood Jr., Jackie Fabulous, Sam Jay.
I mean that’s huge. The show wouldn’t work the way it does without them. All those comedians, I mean, they know who they are. If we make them comfortable, they’ll make every scene better, every line better and they all do that and they all infuse their own energy to it, and then even just on set, it’s just a nice like comfort for us because so much of it is just you just want to have — for me, I just want to have like a good vibe on set. You want to have good energy on set, and you know there’s few people with better energy than like Roy or Maria, and and nothing makes me laugh more than Yamaneika yelling at me. You want to feel comfortable.
She has a way of yelling at you. And by you, I mean me.
And they’re the funniest people in the world. Also it meant a lot, too, and Kerry also is amazing, and she wrote on the show also on both seasons, in addition to playing Jasmine in the first season. It meant a lot to bring over almost everyone from the Web series, we were able to get on camera on the show and that meant a lot. Because they showed up on Saturdays early when no comedian wants to wake up. We’re like, we’ll try to buy you lunch or whatever, and they showed up and did it, because they were doing us favors and had faith in us, and so that meant a lot to be able to get them on the show.
Right and now you can pay someone $300 to say three nice things about you.
(laughs) Exactly.
No spoilers, no spoilers. Have your career goals changed now that you have had some success in TV?
Maybe? I dreamed of doing this kind of stuff, and so I would love to just if I’m fortunate enough to be able to keep doing it. And keep improving. I love making this show and flushing out a world and characters in like a super specific environment and finding the comedy in it and tracking the story and I got to direct an episode this season, which I loved doing and want to do that more, so I would love to keep working in that space and developing more and making more shows, more stories, you know. And then stand-up, I’ve also been easing back into since since we wrapped season two, and that’s also fun to do and to figure out what the hell I want to say up there now.
So much has changed in the eight-plus years since 2014 when you started making sketches for video. The technology is different, the way show business works is different, our politics feels a lot different, our world feels different. If you were to start now, instead of 2014, would you do it the same way, or would you have a different game plan?
Yeah I don’t know. I guess, the answer is probably like, if we did it the same way, it probably would not have worked. I don’t know? Somebody who’s just starting was just asking me for advice the other day. You don’t want it to sound like you’re blowing them off, but it’s one of those things where it’s like I can tell you what I did. I can also tell you I don’t think this is the thing to do anymore, you know what I mean? But I don’t think you go to a million mics and do that now. I think there’s so many outlets now, in a good way, to get your stuff seen and to get your stuff out there, but then also, on the other side, it’s like there’s such a plethora of shit that sometimes it’s hard for the quality to sift through. But I still think it, it does, but I don’t know man. I guess I’m glad I haven’t had to learn TikTok yet, but I know I’m gonna have to. And I know I’ll be talking to you in a year and you’ll be like, oh you’ve started doing these dances and I’ll be like yeah I’ve always kind of wanted to do a little dance on TikTok.
Yeah TikTok wasn’t a thing in 2014. It was still about YouTube videos but now it’s TikTok or you know, you could do a podcast and become super rich and famous like Tim Dillon or Andrew Schulz. Or be like me and not be super rich and have a podcast. So thank you for being on it. I really appreciate it.
Thank you Sean I really appreciate it.
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