Tuned In: Regional comedy spotlighted in IFC's 'Portlandia' and 'Greg & Donny'
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Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein star in "Portlandia." -
The characters of Donny (Matt Yeager) and Greg (Jeff Skowron) are two guys living in Johnstown in the Web series "Greg & Donny," which IFC is developing as a potential TV series.
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PORTLAND, Ore. -- Take after take, Fred Armisen improvises his dialogue for a scene in the new IFC cable series "Portlandia," a send-up of Pacific Northwest culture. It's early September 2010, and Mr. Armisen, best known for playing President Obama on "Saturday Night Live," sits in Elements Glass Inc., a working glass studio, playing an artisanal light bulb maker.
"It takes six months to make each light bulb. They're $68 each and burn out after a couple of days," he says, in character. "They explode once in a while, so you have to be wary of that but you'll get used to it."
Starring: Fred Armisen, Carrie Brownstein.
Folks who live in the Portland area will laugh at the notion. Portland is known for artisanal this and artisanal that. It's a crunchy, eco-friendly city whose residents may sometimes take themselves too seriously.
"Portlandia" (10:30 p.m. Friday) takes this regional humor and broadcasts it nationally, something IFC could do in the future for Yinzer humor. In September the Web series "Greg & Donny," created by Johnstown natives Matt Yeager and Jeff Skowron, won the IFC Out of the Box Award at the New York Television Festival. The prize came with a deal to develop the series for cable television.
"Greg & Donny" (www.greganddonny.com) follows the exploits of two friends who live in Johnstown. The show's website includes a glossary of terms (e.g. "yinz," "jagoff," "n'at") featured in the series that has produced about a dozen short, online episodes since 2009. Mr. Yeager and Mr. Skowron previously produced and starred in a Web series called "The Burg," set in Brooklyn. They both live in New York.
The pair, who graduated from Johnstown's Westmont Hilltop High School and studied theater at Penn State, originally created two "Greg & Donny" videos as a visual/audio accompaniment to demonstrate the Western Pennsylvania accents when they were writing a script for a prospective TV series. They put the video shorts online and got enough of a response that they decided to continue it as a Web series.
"We wanted to make it the sort of project we could do for fun in our spare time," Mr. Yeager said, noting that the episodes are shot in his Queens apartment. The pair had created the characters initially for themselves and Mr. Skowron used the Greg character in an audition for a TV sketch comedy show.
First Published January 16, 2011 12:00 am
