Bonafide TV genius and Lord of the Geeks Dan Harmon is a man of many talents. Namely, being a whip smart cheeky bugger who’s got a lot of opinions and ain’t afraid to voice them.



The showrunner was famously fired in 2012 from ‘Community‘, the cult show he created, after rumoured tensions between himself and NBC over his management style and failure to attract bulk ratings.



After a tepid fourth season, he was rehired for the fifth, and later guided the show into its final and (imo) triumphant sixth season over at the show’s new home Yahoo!.



While fans degenerated the Harmon-less fourth season, it gave birth to something that’ll perhaps better stand the test of time: Harmontown.



If you’re not familiar with it, Harmontown is an insanely popular podcast starring Dan and ‘Whose Line is it Anyway‘ veteran Jeff Davis. Beyond that, it gets hard to define. Mostly they just talk a lot of shit. It’s like an unscripted live comedy show, where a collection of nerds gather to hear Harmon mouth off about stuff and play Dungeons & Dragons with Spencer Crittenden, a former audience member who was plucked out of the crowd one night and is now a bonafide celebrity, albeit a cult one.



“I think it’s a cricket lighthouse for people who didn’t excel at gym,” Harmon tells PEDESTRIAN.TV over the phone from LA. “Do they call it gym in Australia?”



I reply we call it P.E. – physical education.



“Well, it’s people more of the P.U. than the P.E. demographic,” he says. “Honestly though, that puts too fine a point on it. There’s probably people out there that are like, ‘I’m so clean and athletic that I always feel out of place’, and I would never want that person to feel bad about being there. Harmontown is a church for the alienated.”



Harmon and Davis performing at a Harmontown show.

In 2013, Harmontown hit the road across America with a tour that was later the subject of a 2014 documentary of the same name. Three years later and the show is still going strong, coming to Australia later this year as part of the Sydney Opera Houses‘ hot content festival, BINGEFEST.



Over those years the podcast evolved from a platform for Harmon to vent his anger at being fired by NBC, to creating a space where people from all walks of life are accepted, for exactly who they are.



“I think it began as some very, very narcissistic kind of therapy session,” Harmon says. “All of the providing was my anxiety, and I was very angry and selling how I didn’t really like the world. And the world didn’t deserve me and that kind of stuff.



“It definitely progressed into having a lot of guests and talking to other people, because for one thing, even if I had stayed that angry and that alienated I would have gotten bored with that. But also, I think doing the show was therapeutic in that sense, because once you have enough people come up on that stage and say ‘I feel the same way you do’, you start to take on this different role where you go, ‘Okay, we’re going to use this time while I’m on stage not just defending myself but reaching out’. So over time it definitely evolved from defending to reaching out.”



He tells the story of one particularly memorable guest who came on the show to talk about her roommate Adam Erkelberg – who confusingly played a sometimes villain, sometimes hero character on the Harmontown called Adam Goldberg – but ended up talking about her encasement fetish.



“She just came there to talk about being his roommate, but then we started to get to know her, and then all of a sudden she was revealing that she belonged to this really specific category of fetish that had to do with total encasement in nylon or spandex, that kind of stuff.

“I just loved the fact that she was totally unassuming and wasn’t trying to prove anything or defend anything. It spoke to that religion that we all like to worship, which is that I think every single one of us is worthwhile. And the more she talked about it, the more supported she got from the audience. And I thought, I’m very proud of this, because I don’t know how often this is possible for everybody.”



The running theme in everything Harmon’s done – from ‘Community’ to Harmontown to acclaimed cartoon series ‘Rick & Morty‘ – is the creation of an unlikely family of misfits.

Rick & Morty.

That remains true to his upcoming and yet-to-be-named show about eSports for YouTube. All I can find out about it online is that it’s a half-hour comedy series following a newly formed team of eSports players trying to make it in the cutthroat world of competitive gaming.



I ask Harmon if it’s going to be a second ‘Community’, in that you’ve got a bunch of misfits in a situation that can lend itself to outlandish experiences.



“Oh yeah,” he replies. “If I have it my way, [with] the stuff I bring to the table. Definitely when we’re talking about the characters I find myself saying, ‘Oh, she’s sort of an Annie in this regard, but then she also presents herself as more of a Britta when she’s interacting with this person’, and I do find myself getting really excited by assembling another unlikely family. But at the same time, I’m aware that I’m part of an unlikely family.”



He’s referring to the team that’s putting this show together, which includes “the girls” from Rick & Morty “who’re huge eSports enthusiasts” and eSportscaster (yes, those exist) Michele Morrow.



“[Morrow is] the one who actually pitched the show with her friend [and uber popular gamer] Jesse [Cox], and they’ve had all this inside information and insights into that world,” says Harmon.

He thinks. “Yes, between you and me, I would love for it to be new ‘Community’ on YouTube. But I feel that way about everything.”



Troy (Donald Glover) and Abed (Danny Pudi) in ‘Community’.

It wouldn’t be an interview with Dan Harmon without asking about a potential ‘Community’ movie, which would complete the show’s warrior cry of “six seasons and a movie” and satisfy the fans who’ve invested so much energy into keeping this show going.

The will it / won’t it happen has been consuming conversations for years. If my memory is correct, the last we heard about the Community movie was Joel McHale (Jeff) saying in August 2015 that Harmon just needs to write a script and *most* of the cast would be on board (more of that below).

I ask Harmon to give it to me in percentage terms. How likely is it a movie will actually happen?



“I live in a world where it’s 100% likely, because why wouldn’t that movie eventually happen,” he says. “It’s just a question if by the time it happens, will it be the right time. But I feel like, all other things being equal, it will definitely happen. But absolutely not, I do not have a concept about what the movie would be, because I don’t know if it would end up getting written in the year 2040, in which case it probably shouldn’t be about them studying for finals.”



Two days after this interview, Harmon does a Reddit AMA which paints a slightly different picture.



So once again, who the bloody hell knows. McHale made it sound like *if* the notoriously deadline-phobic Dan were to write a script worthy of the movie, then everyone else would jump to it, but that doesn’t take into account the former cast members’ substantially larger fees and busier schedules.

“I couldn’t imagine doing a proper version of the movie without Donald Glover, he’s one of many pieces that’d have to come together,” says Harmon.

“It would only be worth doing if the family could get back together and just really knock it out of the park.”



But Glover – who’s spoken frequently about being done with his character, Troy – is pretty tied up these days with his new show ‘Atlanta‘, not to mention being cast as young Lando in the new Star Wars film.

Then you’ve got John Oliver (Dr Ian Duncan), who’s busier these days skewering American politics and policy on HBO‘s ‘Last Week Tonight‘; Allison Brie (Annie) lending her voice to Netflix‘s darkly comic ‘BoJack Horseman‘; and Ken Jeong (Chang) starring in a sitcom about himself that’s literally called ‘Dr. Ken‘.

On the other hand, when I asked Oliver last year if he’d be down to do a ‘Community’ movie, he said absolutely and then accused me of being his agent.

As a final question, to please my giant inner ‘Community’ geek, I ask Harmon is Donald Trump winning the US election will mean America is officially operating in the darkest timeline.

He laughs. “I won’t know, because I’ll be down there with you. We’re just gonna go into the bush and never look back.”



Tbh with you, that’s the bloody dream.

Photo: Supplied.



Dan Harmon is bringing Harmontown to Australia in December for live recordings in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, as well as taking part in Sydney’s BINGEFEST. Jeff Davis and Spencer Crittenden are coming, too. Obviously.