Sony Dumped Community’s Creator Without So Much As A Phone Call
Some of us know what it feels like to come into work on a Friday morning (those bitches ALWAYS do it on a Friday), sit in our cubicles and log into our computers only to get the dreaded “incorrect password” pop-up. You roll out of your cubicle, turn to your co-worker and say some shit like, “My password doesn’t work.” They throw you a look that clearly says, “Gurrrrrl, you better clear out the office supply closet while your ass still has time.” The “incorrect password” pop-up is your boss’ way of letting your computer to do the dirty work so their ass doesn’t have to. That’s basically sort of what happened to Community’s creator and one-time show runner Dan Harmon. Yesterday, news broke that NBC chose not to pick up Dan Harmon’s contract and replaced him with David Guarascio and Moses Port from Happy Endings. Dan said on his Tumblr page last night that he found out when everybody else did. NBC and Sony didn’t give him an awkward goodbye party in the conference room and didn’t give him a chance to have a dramatic cunt meltdown in the middle of the office before getting dragged away by security. Sony and NBC quit his ass through a press release.
Dan also said that the head of NBC Bob Greenblatt was telling lies when he said that Dan would still be a part of Community. That isn’t so. Dan writes that he hasn’t had one conversation with NBC since he found out he was dumped and he really has no clue as to why they gave him a one-way ticket to the unemployment line. Vulture says that NBC felt Dan had a million great ideas in his head, but sucked at managing the writers. Here’s a piece of Dan Harmon’s firing according to Dan Harmon:
A few hours ago, I landed in Los Angeles, turned on my phone, and confirmed what you already know. Sony Pictures Television is replacing me as showrunner on Community, with two seasoned fellows that I’m sure are quite nice – actually, I have it on good authority they’re quite nice, because they once created a show and cast my good friend Jeff Davis on it, so how bad can they be.
Why’d Sony want me gone? I can’t answer that because I’ve been in as much contact with them as you have. They literally haven’t called me since the season four pickup, so their reasons for replacing me are clearly none of my business. Community is their property, I only own ten percent of it, and I kind of don’t want to hear what their complaints are because I’m sure it would hurt my feelings even more now that I’d be listening for free.
And he goes on…
You may have read that I am technically “signed on,” by default, to be an executive consulting something or other – which is a relatively standard protective clause for a creator in my position. Guys like me can’t actually just be shot and left in a ditch by Skynet, we’re still allowed to have a title on the things we create and “help out,” like, I guess sharpening pencils and stuff.
However, if I actually chose to go to the office, I wouldn’t have any power there. Nobody would have to do anything I said, ever. I would be “offering” thoughts on other people’s scripts, not allowed to rewrite them, not allowed to ask anyone else to rewrite them, not allowed to say whether a single joke was funny or go near the edit bay, etc. It’s….not really the way the previous episodes got done. I was what you might call a….hands on producer. Are my….periods giving this enough….pointedness? I’m not saying you can’t make a good version of Community without me, but I am definitely saying that you can’t make my version of it unless I have the option of saying “it has to be like this or I quit” roughly 8 times a day.
Well, at least they didn’t make Dan go into the office to tell him. It’s the worst when they make your ass drive all the way in instead of telling you over the phone. Getting told your shit is fired is a little bit easier to take when you’re in your panties and sitting on your bed with a bowl of coffee (you’re out of clean mugs) in your lap. If I was Dan, I’d still go in, though. But only to eat all the food and to have office chair races with myself in the hallways.
And I can’t wait to hear what kind of “leaked” voicemails come out of this mess.