David Wain is a writer/director/actor/comedian who was born in Shaker Heights, Ohio. He attended New York University where he was a founding member of The State. Wain, along with Michael Ian Black and Michael Showalter created the comedy troupe Stella which became a Comedy Central show. David co-wrote/directed the films Wet Hot American Summer, The Ten, and Role Models. He currently has multiple projects underway for television and film.
WAIN: I started getting interested in film when I was seven or eight years old. My dad had a camera and we would make home movies. I really got into that. And later we got one of those ancient video cameras where there were two boxes which plugged into the wall. I used that every day. I was a nerd. I had no dates. Instead I’d make little skits with my friends, editing with the camera. As I got into high school I started doing more of that. I got into theater and made lots of little films.
I went to New York University film school and continued doing my own thing on the side. I got involved with a sketch comedy troupe called The State. We started it my freshman year of college and stayed committed to it after we graduated. We ended up having our own show on MTV. Through that I kept doing skits with my friends. It was really the same thing over and over again. But I learned a lot about how to get stuff done. It was a big boot camp for me.
HYLTON: Can you tell me a little bit more about The State and its inception?
WAIN: We really taught each other about comedy. The State was the all encompassing thing I did in my life from age eighteen till twenty-six. I really did nothing else. The eleven of us in the group taught each other everything. I did learn some stuff in film school and I learned some stuff about directing and shooting from my own experiences during my life. But I think the special things I learned came from the other ten members of the group. As The State started to dissipate around 1996 or 1997 is when Michael Showalter and I started the path that would finally lead us to making Wet Hot American Summer.
HYLTON: And how did The State‘s television show come about?
WAIN: It was a series of a lot of lucky, lucky things and us having a really cock-sure attitude. We were convinced that there was nobody better than us and that we were the best comedy group ever and anyone would be lucky to work with us. So we walked into MTV with deal breakers. We’d be like, "If you don’t do this… we walk."
And what happened was we had been a comedy troupe and doing live shows in New York in tiny theaters here and there. I had some associations with MTV because I had a friend who had gotten some internships there. MTV had seen a short I did in college called Aisle Six and they’d asked me to be a director on this new hybrid sketch show called You Wrote It, You Watch It. In the show viewers would send in funny stories and the sketch group would reenact their funny stories. And I thought it would be funnier to actually go out into the street and get interviews and then intercut the interviews with the reenactments. And MTV was like, "No, that won’t work."
So I went home and grabbed the group. We stole costumes from NYU and everything we had at our disposal to make short films. And remember this is before computers. This was all done on video tape. So overnight we shot it and the next day I showed up with these three tapes at MTV. And I was like, "So, here’s what I mean." And they were impressed.
Back then we had basically two manager/producers. One was this guy Jon Bendis who I’ve known my whole life and had been involved with MTV. So we had a sort of in [at MTV]. And the other guy was a William Morris agent. So it was really a lucky happenstance that Bendis ran into this guy in a park and knew him from something else. I often think about the thousand ways it could have gone. But that is the way it went.
So we got this agent at William Morris and we got an offer from MTV to sit in a room with a fifty dollar production budget per week to produce three shorts per week exactly like the ones we did that one night. We did it completely ourselves. We used our own crew, lighting, locations scouting… everything. So that was a true boot camp. We never slept or did anything else while we made those thirteen episodes. And out of You Wrote It, You Watch It there were two elements MTV liked, which was the host (Jon Stewart) and us. So they gave us and Jon Stewart pilots. And from that we got our series.
HYLTON: What was the network oversight like when you were doing The State?
WAIN: The first season the network was rather nervous. They didn’t know how it was going to fit into their programing. They tried to keep it really music oriented. They tried to blast music through every sketch and made sure we did a lot of parodies of music, tv, and pop culture in our sketches. But as the seasons went on, and we consistently got good ratings, they left us alone a little more.
HYLTON: And how did that experience compare to the experience with Stella at Comedy Central?
WAIN: Well, with Stella it was actually some of the same executives who had moved to Comedy Central from MTV. Stella was remarkably hands off. The network was only supportive and let us do exactly what we wanted, for better or worse. They really supported, pushed it, and financed it lavishly. Any failures with Stella were from the three of us. It’s really tough. I have a lot of 20/20 hindsight about Stella and there are things I think we could have done to extend our audience. But I love that show. I think it’s a great DVD.
HYLTON: And how were you able to get your film Wet Hot American Summer financed?
WAIN: Well the idea was we were going to get a video camera and go into Central Park and make a movie about summer camp. It evolved into a bigger, more regular movie. We started sending out the script very early on. We sent it out well before it was really ready. But we attached Janeane Garofalo right from the beginning. So we basically went all around anywhere we could to anyone who would listen to us. And we said, "Here’s the script, we have Janeane Garofalo. You can watch my short film Aisle Six. You can watch our show, The State. " I made a little reel of stuff that Mike [Showalter] and I had written on The State. A lot of the actors, who became attached, did not end up being in the movie. Paul Rudd came on relatively early on. At that time he wasn’t that big of a name. But little by little we made it happen. We hooked up with a producer, a guy named Howard Bernstein.
We had so many close calls with getting [that film] financed. People would say "Yes " and then they would literally disappear. This happened over and over again. It was such a roller coaster. It took three years before we found the money to make the film. We just kept blinders on. Meanwhile I took a job as a writer for Mad TV out in L.A. I was miserable and I quit after seven weeks. And that was a big turning point for me. I said to myself, "Ok. I’m making this movie. I don’t care how, but I’m getting it done. " And that’s what I did. I somehow willed it into being. I finally put together a constellation of just enough money. It was done for under two million dollars.
HYLTON: Could you compare for me the process you had to go through to get The Ten and some of your more recent films produced to what you experienced with Wet Hot American Summer?
WAIN: It was much faster with The Ten. At the time [that it was released] Wet Hot American Summer was a bomb. But it’s grown into this cult classic [since then]. It seems like every year it gets more popular. And that’s amazing and great. So, it still was a little tough to get The Ten done but we had a producer, Jon Stern, who went to town and got it financed pretty quickly. But overall the process really was a lot smother and went much more quickly than with Wet Hot American Summer. I think the combination of my stature having grown and the star power of the cast helped.
HYLTON: What advice would you give to a young writer/actor/director who is trying to break into the industry?
WAIN: You have to pick the thing that feels right to you. Try to be open to gravitating towards what is really your strength. If that means that you’re out there everyday making shorts with your video camera and putting them on YouTube, in hopes that someone will discover you, that’s great. The guys who made [the film] Hot Rod got signed from the millions of shorts they shot, which were seen by an agent. They got hired on Saturday Night Live, revolutionized SNL and made the movie Hot Rod. So you can make your own films or you could go and get a job in a studio and see how that works from the inside. There is no one way. It’s whatever feels right for you. On the other hand, while there’s no one path, I think it’s important that people know that most of the people I know who didn’t make it in this industry were not really willing to put in the work. I think if you work hard and follow your own instincts you’ll make it. Some people are very unlucky. But I think luck comes to many of those who work hard.
