By Iain Blair
The sharply written and beautifully acted HBO Max dark comedy series Hacks just racked up 15 Emmy noms, including for best comedy series, writing, picture editing and sound mixing.
Paul W. Downs also play Jimmy (right) on the show.
Created by Paul W. Downs, Lucia Aniello and Jen Statsky, all veterans of Broad City, it tells the story of Deborah Vance (Jean Smart), a Las Vegas take-no-prisoners, stand-up comedy diva (think Joan Rivers) who’s struggling to remain relevant. When she’s thrown together with a snarky young comedy writer, Ava (Hannah Einbinder) — whose career has been “canceled” thanks to an offensive online joke — the odd couple has to learn how to get along.
I talked to Downs, the show’s EP, writer, producer, director and actor (he plays Deborah’s manager) about making the show, post, the VFX and the Emmys.
This is a comedy, not a big action film, but there are quite a few VFX. Can you talk about that?
We don’t have tons of explosions, alien spacecrafts and so on, but it was an incredibly large and complex undertaking in terms of the VFX — I don’t think most people would even realize we had so many. We had a great VFX supervisor, David Niednagel, and I’ll give you an example of one really intricate sequence.
Image courtesy of HBO Max/Universal Television
One of the running storylines is that Ava is tasked with digitizing all of the old footage of this legendary stand-up, so she goes through a ton of it, and we had footage of a young Jean Smart. So Lucia, who directed the episode, and David came up with this really creative, brilliant solution to make it all work.
We had Jean perform the work, so we could get her delivery, cadence and her physicality, and captured all that. Then we had an actress come in and play the young Deborah, and she perfectly mimicked all the timing and gestures. Then we used her body, and David was able to mine hours and hours of old footage of Jean Smart and then map that in a real deep fake way onto the young actress’ body and face. Then that went through several layers of degrading and texturizing to make it look and feel like it was a late ’70s VHS tape.
Image courtesy of HBO Max/Universal Television
Then in Episode 3, we had a double-decker tour bus and Deborah sort of crashes it. That whole thing was a 360-degree fake, as we used plate shots and shot it all on the Paramount lot with huge bluescreens. It wasn’t easy to get right because it’s not like a car scene — the bus is open-air.
All in all, there were far more VFX shots than we ever imagined, and we had quite a few vendors. Chicken Bone FX did the tour bus bluescreen/window comps and other shots, the opening VFX shot of Deborah’s multiple shows and cleanup in Episode 5.
Image Asylum did split screens, monitor comps, sky replacement, cleanup work. NBCUniversal StudioPost did rental car VFX signage in Episode 1, mainly split screens and cleanup work in Episode 1. FuseFX did 110 shots to create the full theater audience at Deborah’s final show.
Image courtesy of HBO Max/Universal Television
Talk about shooting it with DP Adam Bricker. What look did you go for?
I directed Episodes 5 and 8, and we shot it on Red because we wanted a very cinematic look and scale. We especially wanted to set it apart from the usual look you get in comedies. The idea was to make it look more filmic and to feel like an hour-long show, not a 30-minute comedy.
Adam was such a great collaborator and has such a great sense of light and composition. He really made it look as beautiful as possible. Lucia and I both come from the YouTube world of making your own videos. Our first show, Broad City, was a web series, for which we did everything from holding the boom mic to cutting on Final Cut ourselves and all the way through to color correction. For better or worse, that’s made us very exacting in terms of framing and composition and all that, with Jan in particular setting the look in the pilot.
Where did you shoot?
Mostly here in LA. Our stages were on the Paramount lot, and we also did a lot of location work around LA, with a bit in Las Vegas for a lot of exterior work and in the desert.
There are three of you running this series. What are the big challenges of showrunning, and do you like being a showrunner?
There’s a lot going on, and it helps that Jen, Lucia and I have been working together so long now. This story is about two women who are creative collaborators, so it’s a very personal story. We’re very detailed about every decision, again, for better or worse, and we’re very particular.
It’s a story we’ve wanted to tell for six years, and we had a very clear vision for it. We’re constantly thinking about the show and alt jokes or lines, and that gives us the chance to keep doing rewrites, which might not happen with a 9-to-5-type showrunner. And not only do we rewrite a lot on set, but we do a lot in post in the edit. The whole post process is also a last draft for us.
Tell us about post. Where did you do it, and how much did the COVID crisis affect it?
A lot, as all post was remote. In fact, the entire show was done over Zoom. We had a virtual writers’ room. Obviously, we had to shoot in person, but it was very tightly controlled. Then our editors all worked from home using Millicast, which is a very fast and efficient platform. And doing it all remotely gave us more flexibility in terms of hours. When you sign off, there’s no long commute. You’re home. We actually all enjoyed the process.
Then we did some finishing at StudioPost on the Universal lot, and we had a great sound team — supervising sound editor Brett Hinton and mixers John Cook, Ben Wilkins and Jim Lakin. Our great colorist was Shane Reed, who had worked with Adam before over at Mom & Pop. Lucia and I are both hypersensitive to color, as is Adam, which is one of the things we all bonded over, so we spent a lot of time in the DI. Luckily, Shane is as detail-oriented as we are. He was so open and collaborative and so willing to put a window on something and do the tiniest of tweaks, something that might drive some people mad. But it was so satisfying for all of us, as we ended up with something we really loved.
How did they work together, and what were the main editing challenges?
We had three main editors: Jessica Brunetto, Susan Vaill and Ali Greer, and Jessica had an excellent assistant in Marissa Mueller, who got promoted to help. They collaborated on cutting the last episode.
Cutting comedy and finding the right rhythm and fine-tuning pacing is always very challenging, but we’d worked with Jessica on several shows, and she’s very in sync with our style, which is very performance-based. We really do choose most of the takes based on that, which means that we find it very funny. It might not necessarily be the funniest take, but we’re intent on finding what feels the most grounded and most realistic. That approach was the North Star for the entire show. The other challenge was that we’d lose some locations because of COVID. Or we’d have to quarantine during the shoot, so the editors weren’t getting a full episode to cut, and it was very out of order. We actually finished Episode 8 first, as even the pilot had a lot of Las Vegas exteriors we couldn’t get until the end.
What sort of show did you and Lucia and Jen set out to make?
It’s ultimately a redemption story about Deborah Vance and the young, entitled writer character Ava that she’s forced to hire. We wanted to tell a story that’s very grounded and real. We also wanted to showcase what’s it’s really like to be a woman in comedy — and in the arts at large — because for every one that succeeds, there are countless others who are discouraged in ways that men are not.
The show was already renewed for a second season by the network. What can fans expect next season?
Deborah has kind of hit rock bottom and she’s going back on the road, so you’ll see them both touring.
Congrats on the show’s 15 Emmy nods. Not bad for a new show! How important are the Emmys for a show like this?
Very. Obviously, it’s not on our minds as we’re making the show, but it makes an impact in broadening and expanding the audience, and it was wild that we got so many. And we felt that Jean Smart really deserved one.
Industry insider Iain Blair has been interviewing the biggest directors in Hollywood and around the world for years. He is a regular contributor to Variety and has written for such outlets as Reuters, The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times and the Boston Globe.
