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Interview with David Hornsby of "Unsupervised" on FX 1/12/12
Final Transcript
FX NETWORKS: Unsupervised
January 12, 2012/10:00 a.m. PST
SPEAKERS
David Hornsby, Unsupervised Creator / Executive Producer / “Joel”
Kristy Silvernail, FX Media Relations Manager
PRESENTATION
Moderator Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to
the Unsupervised conference call. At this time all participants are in a
listen-only mode. We will conduct a question and answer session. As a
reminder this call is being recorded. Your host and speaker, Kristy
Silvernail. Please go ahead.
K. Silvernail Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Unsupervised
conference call with series Creator and Executive Producer, David
Hornsby, who also stars as the voice of ‘Joel.’ In addition to his
duties on Unsupervised, David also serves as executive producer and
writer of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, plus stars as ‘Rickety
Cricket.’
Before we get started I just to thank all of you for joining us today
and especially David. It’s certainly a pleasure to have you.
Unsupervised is FX’s newest original animated comedy series that
premieres its first season on Thursday, January 19th at 10:30 p.m.
Eastern and Pacific behind the season three premiere of Archer. So with
that said, let’s open it up for questions.
Moderator We do have a question from the line of Diane Morasco from
Morasco Media. Please go ahead.
D. Morasco Thank you so much. Good morning, David, how are you? I want
to know what are you looking forward to most with the unveiling of this
new original animated series?
D. Hornsby Hey, there, hello. I think we’re just excited. I work with
Rob Rosell and Scott Marder. We all worked on It’s Always Sunny in
Philadelphia and branched off to do this project. I think we’re just
excited. We feel like this show has a really unique point of view,
coupled with the type of humor that I think people enjoy from It’s
Always Sunny…, but different enough to where it feels like this has a
real unique point of view to the show.
So we’re all excited to show it’s about two kids, these high school kids
who are very optimistic and earnest freshmen in a very bleak world. And
they have a very bleak living situation in the sense that neither of
them have parents. My character has, he’s the kid that’s a 15 year old
with 65 year old parents and I feel like everyone has that person from
their high school. And Justin Long’s character [‘Gary’], his father ran
off and left him with a step-mom who does not want a child.
So they have these very bleak circumstances and yet, they’re very
optimistic, so that point of view in the show paired with a very bleak
world, we just think it makes for a great show. We’re really excited, I
think, for people to see that because it does feel different to us.
D. Morasco Thank you. You know what; I want to comment on that about not
having any parents. I think that it’s a fresh and original touch because
you’re basically dealing with the family situation and the dynamics of
what’s going on today, so I really want to say good job, way to go, and
I can’t wait, so thank you.
D. Hornsby Oh, thanks, yes. We see them as the children left behind and
there are unfortunately plenty of those. So we feel like we’re trying to
reflect as much as we can; not only the real high school experience, but
also the reality of what the world is like and how people have to
navigate it on their own, even if you’re 14 or 15.
D. Morasco Thank you so much. Oh, and one more question if I may, how
does it feel to be animated? Are you really excited? What did you hope
to get from that?
D. Hornsby It’s really fun. It’s a completely new thing for all of us. I
actually draw the characters as well, so that for me is a really
exciting in terms of having in them a show, it’s something that I’ve
always done, but never been able to share, because I’m not a
professional artist. So for me it makes it even more exciting to—I
basically design the characters, all the characters and then send them
to Floyd County, who does the production. They’re in Georgia and they do
Archer as well.
It has its own set of limitations as well. You think it’s animated, we
can do whatever we want, but you still have to worry about sets and all
that adds up…and budget. But it’s really exciting for all of us and I
have to say it’s mostly been a learning curve, as it’s our first
animated show.
But I would say in terms of the animation side of it, we write it just
like we write Sunny in that we approach it like it’s not animated. We
just approach it as breaking good stories and writing the best comedy.
It’s very character driven comedy.
D. Morasco Thank you so much.
Moderator The next question is from Earl Dittman, Wireless Digital.
Please go ahead.
E. Dittman Hey, guy, how are you this morning?
D. Hornsby Hey there.
E. Dittman I have to say that a show like yours and FX is a perfect
marriage. It seems like they’re made for each other. Did you feel that
way when you were shopping it around?
D. Hornsby Well, actually, we didn’t really shop it around. Myself and
Rob Rosell and Scott Marder, again who work Always Sunny, this show came
out of – in a sense – a room bit where the three of us were always
joking around about these sort of characters. And so we started
realizing like we have these characters with very strong points of view
and whenever you have that feeling of strong point of view from a
character in the back of your mind, that is a flag of this could be
something.
And so we went to FX, who know us very well at this point, we’ve haven’t
done much more with my career at this point, I’ve just been there for so
long that we said we have this idea for a show. What do you guys think?
And they said that’s almost exactly what we’re looking for. We want
something that feels like it could appeal that Sunny crowd, but almost
even skew younger if we want, almost like a Superbad in a way, so for
whatever reason, it was … is what it was.
E. Dittman So have you always been a fan of animation? Has that always
been your first love?
D. Hornsby Not necessarily. I’ve always drawn, for example, and I did
consider when I was younger, it was either do I become an actor or do I
become an animator cartoonist at that point. Do I work at Disneyworld or
something and do animated cells or something? But I’ve always loved
animation, but it’s not like it’s been some priority of mine and I’ve
always said I want to make an animated comedy some day. I think you’re
always trying to challenge yourself to do new things and not repeat
yourself. And so this was a way to be able to do something different and
see how that went.
I think maybe at first we thought it’s going to be fun. It’s a cartoon,
it’s going to be a little bit easier and it’s not. It’s just as much
work and you approach it like a live action, but it’s been really
rewarding.
E. Dittman But it sounds like you’re having fun anyway.
D. Hornsby Yes, absolutely, absolutely.
E. Dittman Fantastic. Well, thank you so much. We’re looking forward to
a great season.
D. Hornsby Well, thanks, man.
E. Dittman Thanks a lot.
D. Hornsby Thank you.
Moderator We have a question from John Schwarz, Bubbleblabber, please go
ahead.
J. Schwarz Hello, Dave, how are you doing? I’m more curious as to your
inspiration for some of the characters. Are you pulling from anything
when you’re writing, like ... when I was in high school, or I knew kids
that were just like this and we did things just like this, or are you
pulling from any personal experiences from when you were a kid?
D. Hornsby There’s not usually one specific person we’re talking about,
but the three of us with our combined high school experiences have
different stories and it’s funny. We try to find that universality
between all three of us because we had very different high school
experiences in a sense. We have different backgrounds, but there’s
something that’s true to all of it.
There’s always the slut in school or people who they consider the slut.
Or there’s always the druggie kid, the drug dealer who’s also super
nice. Or there’s the ‘Joel’ character; there’s that kid that has a super
old parents who’s maybe a step behind. There’s a kid that Rob Rosell
plays [‘Russ’] that has always seem to have a broken limb. He always
seems to be in a cast.
So we were just trying to find what is true to that always happens, we
have to do that. We have to put that in because that totally happens in
high school where you almost kill yourself doing something, throwing a
party even if it’s that simple. We do open the yearbooks and we do talk
about maybe different people or experiences and they can inspire, but
nothing is like particularly based on one person.
J. Schwarz Got you. Yes, I have to tell you just from watching the
trailers, I saw the little kid serving the cereal at a party. I was like
yes, that sounds like me. Thank you.
D. Hornsby That joke was initially that—and it got cut away in the
pilot, but that our character just eats cereal everyday for dinner
because that’s what he’s left with. And he doesn’t have a mom that’s
making him food and he feels like it fortifies him with a daily dose of
vitamins and minerals.
J. Schwarz Love it, thank you. I’m so excited. Thank you so much, Dave.
D. Hornsby Oh, yes, yes, yes.
Moderator Now at this time we have further questions in queue.
K. Silvernail All right, I guess we can be done then, so thank you so
much to everybody for participating. As a reminder Unsupervised
premieres its first season on Thursday, January 19th at 10:30 p.m.
Eastern and Pacific.
Moderator Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude your
conference. We do thank you for joining while using AT&T Executive
TeleConference. You may now disconnect.
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