UPDATE: Dan Harmon Apologizes For Comments Slamming ‘Community’ Season 4 & Sony Bosses
UPDATE: Dan Harmon took to Twitter and his blog to apologize for the “very un-Community” comments in Sunday’s podcast rant. He offered a mea culpa to the show’s fans, its crew, and the writers on the fourth season that Harmon was absent for: “I’m sorry I pooped on your work.” Harmon also apologized for using language that “dehumanize[d] the developmentally disabled” and for “using the word ‘rape’ in a comedic context.” Harmon’s now back at work on Community Season 5.
PREVIOUS, MONDAY PM: At Sunday’s taping of his Harmontown podcast, returning Community creator and exec producer Dan Harmon unloaded on the show’s fourth season, which carried on under writers David Guarascio and Moses Port after NBC replaced Harmon as showrunner last year. “It’s very much like an impression and an unflattering one,” he said. “It’s 13 episodes of ‘I’m Dan Harmon!’ I’m going back to work tomorrow morning and I’m just like, do I talk like that?” Harmon, who is heading back for Season 5 with writer Chris McKenna, compared catching up on the Guarascio and Port-led fourth season to “flipping through Instagram watching your girlfriend blow a million [people].”
Related: Dan Harmon Reacts To His Dismissal As ‘Community’ Showrunner
He also didn’t mince words when it came to describing Sony TV’s decision to remove him from the show in the first place. (Sony TV produces Community with Universal.) “There’s a system in place that’s winning because I would have had too much leverage, too much power, too much salary as would have a lot of writers coming into Season 4. So they just flushed us, and replaced us with two guys who didn’t know what they were getting into… Writers fighting other writers is the American Dream in the eyes of Sony. That is what they want. They want creative people rewriting each other. They want creative people replacing each other. They want us interchangeable. They want to think about writing the way they think about the guy on assembly line 24 that puts the final screw in the fucking Playstation… I shouldn’t even say ‘they’ because it’s an ‘it,’ it’s a fucking machine. There isn’t a single person that works at that corporation that isn’t also thought of like that by the fucking SkyNet… The system just wants us all to not be human.”
Related: New ‘Community’ Showrunners Promise Not To Screw It Up
Harmon revealed he’d recently reached out to Bill Murray in hopes of bringing him on the show despite Season 4 introducing James Brolin as Jeff Winger’s father, the character Harmon had envisioned Murray to play. “I always wanted Jeff’s father to be Bill Murray,” he said. “I named him Jeff Winger after Bill Murray’s character in Stripes. There’s something awesome about being held down and watching your family get raped on a beach. It’s liberating.”
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