Culture

Dan Harmon Descriptors, Per the New 'HARMONTOWN' Trailer

Dan Harmon has been called a lot of things – some flattering, others emphatically not so. And now, with the release of the first trailer for HARMONTOWN, there's even more to add to the list. 

By Ben Cosman
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Dan Harmon has been called a lot of things – some flattering, others unequivocally not so. When he was adrift in the nebulous of sitcom purgatory, fresh off of being relieved of his Community show running duties, Grantland writer Alex Pappademas titled him "the most famously unemployed writer in television." Chevy Chase left an infamous voicemail for Harmon calling him an "asshole, alcoholic fat shit." And now, with the release of the first trailer for HARMONTOWN, there's even more to add to the list. 

In an exclusive with Nerdist, Dan Harmon dropped the first trailer for his new documentary, which follows the Community creator and show runner as he tours the country doing a live-version of his eponymous podcast (sound familiar?) in the year between seasons three and five of his NBC sitcom.

It's exactly what you'd expect from a documentary investigating the life of an unemployed Dan Harmon – he plays Dungeons and Dragons, gets drunk, and there appears to be a scene of him taking a shit in an open field, to give you an idea. And, of course, there are a lot of other people talking about Harmon, and the descriptions run the gamut. So let's run through all the ways Harmon is described in the first trailer for HARMONTOWN:

  • A winner (from Harmon himself)
  • A writer 
  • A creator 
  • A straight up nerd
  • Definitely a fat-ass
  • Smelly
  • Alcoholic
  • No stranger to self destruction
  • The creator of Community
  • An asshole alcoholic fat shit (from the aforementioned Chevy Chase voicemail)
  • The Chuck Yeager of something (from Harmon again, referring to his avoidance of working on in-the-pipeline network pilots)
  • A tortured genius
  • A person that's given hope to all of us who don't fit in to normal society 
  • Not just a fat, fired alcoholic (Harmon, once more)

Well, there you have it. If this was simply a numbers game, it'd be obvious that Dan Harmon is, on the whole, an awful, rotten person, and a menace to himself and everyone around him. But something tells me the rest of the documentary will paint a slightly prettier picture, if only because it doesn't seem possible it could get much worse.

HARMONTOWN premieres at SXSW on March 8th. If it goes well, maybe there's hope for a Community movie after all.

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.