The Secret Weapons of 'Broad City' Make Fine Art from Crude Humor
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The Secret Weapons of ‘Broad City’ Make Fine Art From Crude Humor Lucia Aniello and Paul W. Downs, writers for “Broad City,” at their home in Los Angeles. Emily Berl for The New York Times LOS ANGELES — When writing episodes of “Broad City,” Lucia Aniello and Paul W. Downs like to get physical with their comedy. In the series’ third season premiere, Wednesday, Feb. 17, on Comedy Central, Ilana Glazer gets chained to the back of a truck whizzing through New York traffic, and her co-star Abbi Jacobson is trapped in a porta-potty. Call it slapstick feminism: “Broad City” is rife with sexual oversharing, drug-fogged high jinks and toilet humor. One sequence from the new season compresses months of the women’s bathroom activity — farting, vomiting, dancing, pregnancy testing and reading a Hillary Clinton book — into an epic montage of goofy grossness. “We like big pants-down moments that feel very real,” said Ms. Aniello, sitting with Mr. Downs in a cafe near the Silver Lake Reservoir here. And the two are profoundly expanding the terrain of graphic female humor on TV. “Feminism is a big part of their agenda,” Ms. Glazer said, “which lines up perfectly with the ‘Broad City’ approach.” Romantic and professional partners, Ms. Aniello and Mr. Downs are forging a career out of recasting traditionally lowbrow dude genres. The couple are in the middle of production on the mini-series “Time Traveling Bong,” scheduled to have its premiere on Comedy Central in April, which they describe as a feminist take on the normally bro-heavy stoner time-travel movie. They’re also finishing the screenplay for their female spinoff of “21 Jump Street” while casting “Move That Body,” a raunchy bachelorette movie they wrote that co-stars Mr. Downs and is to be directed by Ms. Aniello for Sony. (She has directed many episodes of “Broad City.”) Continue reading the main story “Writing this stuff, we are not thinking, how do we make a statement about women?” Mr. Downs said. “It’s great that it’s groundbreaking. But all we are thinking about is, what is the funniest thing?” He added that Amy Poehler, an executive producer of “Broad City,” “always encouraged us in terms of having women who are unpolished and fart and have sex casually, but she also steers us toward the heart of relationships.” In an email, Ms. Poehler said of the couple, “They can do so many things well, and they always look very cool when they do it.” Ms. Aniello and Mr. Downs met in an improv class at Upright Citizens Brigade (which was co-founded by Ms. Poehler). That’s also where they collided with Ms. Glazer and Ms. Jacobson. The first time Ms. Glazer saw Ms. Aniello, the two women were dressed identically — and stoned. “We thought it was a miracle,” Ms. Glazer recalled, “like we were meeting different versions of ourselves.” From left, Abbi Jacobson, Paul W. Downs and Ilana Glazer in an episode of “Broad City.” Comedy Central After teaching themselves editing skills via Internet tutorials, Ms. Aniello and Mr. Downs began to make comedy videos (like “The Real Housewives of South Boston” and “Diary of Zac Efron”) while Ms. Glazer and Ms. Jacobson put a prototype of “Broad City” online. When “Broad City” moved to television, the actresses asked Ms. Aniello to direct the pilot; cast Mr. Downs as Abbi’s boss, Trey — a zealous gym trainer with a secret porn-star past — and hired the couple to join the writers’ room. “Lack of experience was our North Star,” Mr. Downs said. They didn’t worry about the correct way to do things, just on amusing one another. “Because we were all best friends,” he said, “it was easy to tell stories that were truthful to us. Everyone in that room had experience with locking themselves out of their apartment for the ninth time or …” Ms. Aniello jumped in: “… having to pick up a package at a FedEx office that was so far away from your apartment it was like another world.” In an early “Broad City” episode written by Ms. Aniello and Mr. Downs, a missed delivery sends Abbi on a Kafkaesque search to a dilapidated island where an old woman sits in a warehouse guarding unclaimed packages. Continue reading the main story “Broad City” often stretches ordinary female and urban experiences to the point of absurdity. And like “Portlandia,” the show sends up the quirks of young hipsterdom, whether it’s waiting in line for churrons (the hot new churro-macaron hybrid) or taking desperate measures to retain membership in a holier-than-thou food co-op. Ms. Aniello and Mr. Downs now live in Los Angeles and find the distance helpful. “It has really clarified some of the things that are truly insane about living in New York,” Ms. Aniello said. Like the “rat orgy” she witnessed on a recent trip to Manhattan: “It was maybe 20 rats rubbing against each other. Sometimes New York is very ‘Les Miz,’” she said. “Thank God it’s funny, or no one would put up with it.” Mr. Downs shrugged. “We just think it’s funny now because we can escape it.” A day later, the couple sat at a table in a cavernous, half-empty office space in North Hollywood discussing stunts and special effects with the production team for “Time Traveling Bong.” Racks of costumes hung in an adjacent room; handmade mood boards for different eras were tacked up next door. “Are you going to be throwing girls into the fire?” the stunt coordinator asked, referring to a witch-related scene set in Colonial America. The concept for the mini-series dates to 2011, when Ms. Glazer was staying at the couple’s Los Angeles apartment. They started “talking about how cool it would be to time travel but how everyone in the past actually smelled bad,” Mr. Downs recalled. Now they are making their stoner daydream a reality, with Ms. Glazer and Mr. Downs starring as cousins who acquire a slightly broken magical bong that lets them toke their way through history. Ms. Aniello’s interest in the subject goes back to her Columbia University days, when she wrote a thesis on time-travel movies. “I do think there is underlying social commentary in ‘Bong,’” Ms. Aniello said, since the aim is to imagine “what it was like, especially for women and minorities in history. When you do go back you see how bad it was for a lot of people.” “History makes the present look pretty good,” Mr. Downs added. Like “Broad City,” “Time Traveling Bong” might just suggest that for all the problems of the current moment, there is such a thing as progress..