Denouement: Does Charlie Kaufman Have a Dan Harmon Problem?

This is not a television blog, but bear with me, I'm getting somewhere here: I think you can learn a lot about a show, and which creative direction it will ultimately go, from the personality of its showrunner. This was a point made on an episode of the fantastic Extra Hot Great podcast -- co-hosted by sibling blog The Set's Tara Ariano -- that we guested on last week. They were discussing Dan Harmon, the showrunner of "Community."

The Extra Hot Great crew isn't nearly as big a fan of "Community" as most people are -- I'm not either; the smart warmth of "Parks and Recreation" is far more my speed than the nihilistic navel-gazing of "Community" -- but that's not the point. The point of the discussion was that people whose work is most beloved by those on the Internet -- people like Harmon, whose show is essentially live-blogged by everyone I follow on Twitter every week -- are the ones who, across the board, are the ones who are most sensitive to online criticism. I don't follow Harmon on Twitter -- again, I'm more into reading Schur lament his imploded Red Sox -- but Harmon has made no qualms about how he feels about online critics.

He has a hard time with them:

(It's amusing to watch Schur there ticking off a mental checklist of things Harmon is saying that are hazardous to Harmon's emotional health. Yep, don't do that one ... oh, man, that's a mistake ... aw, c'mon, that's just self-mutilating. Don't you LIKE yourself?)

Harmon is obviously a smart guy, but there needs to be a certain aloofness in the creators of art (or whatever you want to call it): There's a reason directors are always saying they don't read their own reviews. Even if they do -- and I don't always subscribe to the theory that every one of them secretly does -- they shouldn't admit it. The creator of a work needs to keep his/her audience in mind when they're crafting, but the muse they must answer to is themselves. That's how art is created. Harmon seems willing to go down the rabbit hole and respond to everything. I suspect this is not good for the long-term well-being of Harmon, or his show, and I'm glad Schur doesn't do it.

But even worse: If you are obsessed with anonymous online critics of your work, and you can't stop calling them out/engaging them/responding to their critiques in a running meta-commentary on your show, the one thing you can't do is then start writing specific plots about them. The most egregious example of this is M. Night Shyamalan's "Lady in the Water," which actually featured a writer whose ideas would save the world and a bad guy critic played by Bob Balaban who, of course, is murdered. (Roger Ebert, predictably, had the best riff on this: "Mr. Farber represents ... nothing so much as the filmmaker's pre-emptive strike against the bad reviews he expects to receive for making this poorly written, stiffly directed, audience-insulting story-without-a-cause.") And Shyamalan had received (mostly) good reviews in his career up to that point. It is understandable that a writer/director/author/showrunner would be sensitive about criticism of his/her work; they pour their heart and soul into something and then have someone just go "Meh. First!" in response. It is frustrating. But I don't want to hear about it. This is not all that different than a rock band spending so much time being famous and adored that the only thing they have to write about anymore is how oppressive it is to be famous and adored. Just concentrate on the work. Everything else is noise.

This is all a long way of saying: I'm extremely concerned about Charlie Kaufman. I hope he knows what he's doing with "Frank Or Francis," which is about "the Internet and anger: cultural, societal and individual anger. And isolation in this particular age we live in. And competition: it's about the idea of people in this world wanting to be seen." (Hoo boy.) Because if all Kaufman -- perhaps one of the most important cinematic voices of the last two decades -- has to write about these days is how the Charlie Kaufman Character is being treated by online critics ... well, man, I'm sorry your band is so popular now. I'm sorry about the "haters." But you have work to do, Charlie (I'm calling you Charlie because I am an Internet commentator and therefore somehow believe I know you, like, know you, man and am thus deputized to destroy your beloved creations), and you need to put the blinders on and focus on what matters. Please don't complain about critics of your work for two hours. Critics love you, Charlie. You're the good guy. Please stay one. This business might not be beneath Dan Harmon, but it's beneath you.

Meh. First.

Charlie Kaufman's next movie is about angry people on the Internet [The A/V Club]