{"id":232360,"date":"2024-01-24T04:08:04","date_gmt":"2024-01-24T09:08:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/?p=232360"},"modified":"2024-01-23T18:12:58","modified_gmt":"2024-01-23T23:12:58","slug":"dan-levy-on-not-fearing-sincerity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/dan-levy-on-not-fearing-sincerity\/","title":{"rendered":"Dan Levy on Not Fearing Sincerity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: right;\"><small><em>Illustration by Krishna Bala Shenoi.<\/em><\/small><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/talkeasypod.com\/\">Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso<\/a><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> is a weekly series of intimate conversations with artists, authors, and politicians. It\u2019s a podcast where people sound like people. New episodes air every Sunday, distributed by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pushkin.fm\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Pushkin Industries<\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p>*<\/p>\n<p>Over the past decade, writer and actor Dan Levy rose to prominence for his work on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hulu.com\/series\/a2e7a946-9652-48a8-884b-3ea7ea4de273\"><i>Schitt\u2019s Creek<\/i><\/a>. After co-creating the series with his father, Eugene Levy, he turned to a more personal project.<\/p>\n<p>Said project is his heartfelt directorial debut, a film entitled <a href=\"https:\/\/www.netflix.com\/title\/81462549\"><i>Good Grief<\/i><\/a>. At the top of our conversation, Dan shares the origin of this story\u00a0 and we discuss the importance of friendship, his experience working as a director, and a pivotal, full-circle moment from his time in London. Then, we discuss how he charted his course as a co-host on MTV Canada, the red carpet experience that clarified his path forward, and his ultimate arrival at making <i>Schitt\u2019s Creek<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>On the back-half, we unpack the pure, timeless nature of the hit series, Dan\u2019s journey to making <i>Good Grief <\/i>after the show\u2019s momentous conclusion, a powerful scene from the film, the universality of loss, and the responses that encourage him to continue creating.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/talkeasypod.com\/listen\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Subscribe and download the episode<\/a>, wherever you get your podcasts!<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border-radius: 12px;\" src=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/embed\/episode\/5tE1bhsd51ECpAuoeKzN7t?utm_source=generator\" width=\"100%\" height=\"352\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>From the episode:\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><strong>Sam Fragoso:<\/strong> <em>Schitt\u2019s Creek<\/em> has an evergreen, timeless quality to it. It feels very much in the spirit of<em> The Honeymooners<\/em> or <em>The Beverly Hillbillies<\/em> or <em>Mayberry<\/em>. But <em>Hillbillies<\/em> and<em> Mayberry <\/em>ended in 1971,<em> Honeymooners<\/em> ended in 1956. You are a spry, fresh-faced forty year old who was not around for those programs, but was using those shows as touch points\u2014as reference points\u2014was it your way of bridging the kind of generational divide between you and your father?<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><strong>Dan Levy<\/strong>: In a way, I think. I grew up watching <em>I Love Lucy<\/em> and <em>The Beverly Hillbillies<\/em>. There are television shows that were so formative to my sense of comedy, and the joy and the deep laughs that they brought. My dad had a much clearer reference of all of those older shows.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><strong>SF:<\/strong> Did he like those?<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><strong>DL:<\/strong> He did very much, and I think that\u2019s what our show ended up being. It was nostalgia with my sort of younger, contemporary cultural references overlapped overtop\u2014 and then the clash of what that is. That\u2019s what I think made it feel so inviting for people of all different ages.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><strong>SF:<\/strong> When you look back on that chapter, how do you understand the sensation it became?<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><strong>DL:<\/strong> Making the show was so special. We were so kept out of that cultural conversation because, frankly, people didn\u2019t start watching the show until we\u2019d finished it. We were able to make eighty episodes of television up in Canada completely on our own, with little to no network notes. With the complete support of the CBC in Canada and Pop Network in America, which was the former TV Guide network, which meant that something like 90% of our households were still in standard definition in America. That\u2019s how low stakes this show was. So, we had nothing but ourselves to use as an audience.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><strong>SF:<\/strong> Did that bother you?<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><strong>DL:<\/strong> Not at all. We knew it was going to be a small audience because we weren\u2019t on NBC. They passed because of the name!<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><strong>SF:<\/strong> Oh, <em>Schitt\u2019s Creek<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><strong>DL:<\/strong> So our expectations were low, and it really came down to, \u201cPlease let us have another season to continue to tell this story.\u201d It felt so special to be doing this away from the pressure of ratings and sweeps week and celebrity cameos and all of these things that are required by a lot of American television to keep and hold ratings. And the fact that it succeeded in the way that it did is an indication of the fact that we need to give people, creators, writers, television shows space and time to grow. Because it is the ultimate slow burn, <em>Schitt\u2019s Creek<\/em>. It took two full seasons of the show before our family even said \u201cI love you\u201d to each other. And yet, all of the emotional impact and all of the emotional connection that fans find that feel for the show come from every moment of sincerity being earned. And that, I think, is where the depth of emotional connection comes from.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><strong>SF:<\/strong> The show ran from 2015-2020, and for so many people it was this beacon, this light, in a pretty dark era. But the other part of it was because it imagined a world that was softer, a little kinder, free of homophobia, and I think people grabbed onto it. I think they saw it as aspirational. How do you see your new film, <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.netflix.com\/title\/81462549\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" data-saferedirecturl=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/url?q=https:\/\/www.netflix.com\/title\/81462549&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1706137360119000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2otYyuYhLiKKGyu9XYDNms\">Good Grief<\/a><\/em>, in relation to <em>Schitt\u2019s Creek<\/em>? Is it an extension of the world you were building? Is it a bookend?<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><strong>DL:<\/strong> The one thing that we weren\u2019t scared of when making Schitt\u2019s Creek was sincerity. This was also coming off of an era of TV where you weren\u2019t considered \u2018edgy comedy\u2019 unless you were making fun of someone or being incredibly vile. There was this world of edgy comedy that really came at someone\u2019s expense. It was mean-spirited. It was hard. And it was the lack of fear around being soft that I think really contributed to this new wave of feel-good TV. You look at the success of Ted Lasso. That came off of everything that we had done that really was a great sort of next step in the storytelling of kind TV. I think this film, Good Grief, has that fearlessness when it comes to touching on sincerity and earnestness and warmth and honesty. I could have gone down a path where I wanted to make it edgier and hard, but that wasn\u2019t my experience.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><b>SF: <\/b>So, it emboldened you to make the film?<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><b>DL:<\/b> Emboldened me to tell a story that was rooted in something very sincere and not be fearful of that sincerity, even though oftentimes it\u2019s criticized.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"adm\">\n<div id=\"q_26\" class=\"ajR h4\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Illustration by Krishna Bala Shenoi. Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso is a weekly series of intimate conversations with artists, authors, and politicians. It\u2019s a podcast where people sound like people. New episodes air every Sunday, distributed by Pushkin Industries.\u00a0 * Over the past decade, writer and actor Dan Levy rose to prominence for his work [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11285,"featured_media":232361,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[43071,43069,6,43093,43072,43110,86485],"tags":[93211,41410,5089,86487,51444,86486],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/image-800x400165-1.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5rKFr-YrK","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232360"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11285"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232360\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/232361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}