Name: How Danny McBride Turned His Ideas Into Hit Shows
Uploaded: 2025-03-21T13:30:27.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'How Danny McBride Turned His Ideas Into Hit Shows' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-03-21. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'How Danny McBride Turned His Ideas Into Hit Shows' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-03-21. Transcript available.

With Fist Foot Way, you didn't write that, right?
Jody Hill wrote it?
Me and Jody wrote it together.
You wrote it together.
And you guys shot that on Super 16 or no?
Super 16, yep.
Okay.
And you made that without going through SAG and stuff, right?
No, it was totally independent.
I think we shot it for about 70 grand.
Shot it in like a little less than three weeks.
And yeah, it was all just buddies.
Everyone just came down there to do it.
And yeah, I mean, it was...
Jody and I had both lived in L.A. for a few years at that point.
And neither of us had found any real success.
And so it was sort of a Hail Mary of just like,
all right, let's just see if we can kind of do this on our own.
And what do you notice that's easier about doing a film like that
or doing something where you have to go through all the...
Where everything is more guilds and all of that?
You know, if you're at a place where you can afford the guilds,
then you already have a leg up.
You're already kind of in the zone.
That thing there was like, there's no one trying to help us make it.
There's no one...
You know, they're not...
They don't care about it not being the guilds
because they just don't ever think it'll see the light of day.
So, you know, every bit of that is a fight
because not only do you have to kind of get the resources
and figure out how to do it
and how to talk people into coming and doing it
when there's no upside for them.
But then even once it's done,
there's no guarantee that anything will ever happen with it, you know?
And so I think that can be pretty discouraging for people sometimes.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's definitely interesting.
Like, we made this movie and now we're figuring out,
like, we wrote it and everything.
We funded it ourselves.
So it's super scary because you're like,
all you really have right now is this piece of debt, kind of.
But then it's, like, too long right now.
It's just, like, we got to figure it out.
It just seems like it's...
I don't know.
The whole thing has been super fascinating.
Yeah, it's a crazy process.
And now, especially, the entertainment industry has changed so much.
And, yeah, it's all risk, it seems like, these days.
Yeah.
Do you envy things about the entertainment industry right now,
like, as opposed to whenever you kind of first got into it?
You know what I find interesting is, like, I...
You know, I went to film school in North Carolina.
That's where I met Jody Hill and a lot of the guys I work with.
And, you know, in the 90s, there was just, like,
such a healthy, independent, like, film market.
I mean, you were going to film school and you're seeing guys like Tarantino
and, you know, Kevin Smith and all these dudes are just, like,
making stuff that's pretty simple.
And it's not requiring massive budgets and they're finding audiences.
And so it was inspiring.
It felt like you could do it, like you were...
Like anyone could do it.
And it's kind of funny that it was much harder to make an independent film then.
I mean, you had a shoot on film.
You had a, like...
There was all these elements of things that were super expensive.
Oh, yeah.
And it seems kind of crazy that with technology,
it should be easier than ever to make something independent.
But it feels like the market is, like, not as healthy as it used to be.
And, yeah, it's kind of disappointing.
Yeah, I think...
But, yeah, and then...
But something new will come out of it, right?
That's how you kind of think, like, how does this evolve?
What happens next?
You know?
That sort of thing.
Was there a movie that you, like, that you wrote or a role or some little piece
of something
that you wanted to do that once you started to get a little older?
Because sometimes I'm like, fuck, this thing would have, for me, would have
been great.
Like, seven years ago, I think I could have pulled it off.
But now it's just...
Like, do you ever think like that?
Like, was there some, like...
Was there something you had you were like, fuck, now I'm going to have to cast
somebody
to do it instead of do it?
I...
It's so hard writing stuff that most of the time when I have written something,
it's been with the intention of going and making it.
I only have a few things that I've written that I didn't kind of move on.
But most of them were just because it wasn't any good and it wasn't something
to kind of pursue.
But luckily, all the stuff I've really put my energy into, I've been able to
see it to fruition
in some way or another.
Wow.
Yeah.
Did you ever do stand-up too or no?
I never did stand-up, no.
I mean, I...
You desire to, you think?
I don't...
I didn't really.
You know, honestly, I didn't even really have any ambitions to be an actor.
It's like, you know, I went to film school to write and to make...
I always kind of imagined I would just be behind the camera and, you know...
And that's true 100%?
100%, yeah.
I mean, yeah, I didn't have any ambitions of trying to be an actor at all.
David Green, who was another classmate of mine, he made this movie called All
the Real Girls.
Bring it up.
It's a beautiful film about first love in Appalachia.
Ooh, really?
Yeah, but his...
He had an actor who backed out of the show at the last minute and it was an
independent movie
and he just asked me to come down and play the role because he didn't have time
to cast
somebody else.
And it was the very first time I ever acted in anything.
And after Jody saw it, he wanted to make a movie and he was like, well, you're
the only
person we know who's been in something.
So it's funny that we thought that was a leg up.
Just that dude right there we thought would somehow get something made.
It's so crazy that when you go from an idea, like even with this, like it was
all emails
and then we show up one day on set and there was a real movie going on.
Dude, I had to sit down for a while.
I was like, oh my God, I thought everybody's just fucking around.
Like, and then it was a real movie and there's like people and people don't
know what they're
doing and people do know what they're doing.
People are yelling and people are, but there was, it was like, oh my God, this
is really
it.
And then you realize it's so hard to make something really too.
Cause so many little things happen.
Like we got pushed by the fire for a week and it was like, suddenly that
changes everything.
And you have, you don't know if people are, and then we had to shoot one day,
the day
with Steve little, where it's like the winds were 40 miles an hour.
We can't afford to reshoot.
So it's like fucking pretend that the winds are 40 miles an hour.
We had the same thing on Jimson's here.
I mean, that's what a lot of this stuff becomes is it becomes surrounding
yourself with just
strategists, like people on your team that just know how to solve problems.
Because that's what a hundred percent, what all making anything is, is you got
your idea
of what it's going to be.
And then every day it's dealing with something that's coming your way to make
it less than
what you want it to be.
And you got to figure out how to navigate it.
Yeah.
When we shot the season of gemstones right near the end, like there's this like
pretty
specific location to this season.
And, uh, I fought really hard to be able to get in this place and shoot there,
but we only
had limited time in the night before we had to shoot like the last scene of the
entire
series, hurricane Helena comes through that part of Carolina and just like decimated
everything.
And this location that we're at, it's like a hundred mile per hour winds, no
power.
And it's like, there's no alternative.
You know, we have to shoot this thing.
You have to just do it.
So it's like, like, well, once these hurricane force winds die down, maybe we'll
try to get
some extension cords and finish this thing off.
And that's exactly what we did.
It was crazy.
It was crazy.