Documentary Now!

Documentary Now! is an American mockumentary television series on IFC, created by Saturday Night Live alumni Fred Armisen, Bill Hader, Seth Meyers, and Rhys Thomas, with Armisen and Hader starring in the series and Thomas co-directing. The series spoofs celebrated documentary films by parodying the style of each documentary with a similar, but fictitious, subject. Helen Mirren serves as host for the series, which is executive produced by Armisen, Hader, Meyers, Thomas and SNL creator Lorne Michaels. The episode "The Hunt for El Chingon" premiered online on August 10, 2015, followed by the regular television premiere on August 20. The series has been renewed through season 3.

Development

On March 20, 2014, the series was announced under the working title American Documentary.Documentary Now! parodies well-known documentaries—such as The Thin Blue Line and Grey Gardens—but with fictitious subjects. British actress Helen Mirren serves as the host for the series, to add "gravitas" to each documentary. Each of the seven episodes are shot using different styles of documentary filmmaking, and "honors some of the most important stories that didn't actually happen."

Documentary film

A documentary film is a nonfictional motion picture intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record. Such films were originally shot on film stock—the only medium available—but now include video and digital productions that can be either direct-to-video, made into a TV show or released for screening in cinemas. "Documentary" has been described as a "filmmaking practice, a cinematic tradition, and mode of audience reception" that is continually evolving and is without clear boundaries.

Defining documentary

In popular myth, the word documentary was coined by Scottish documentarian John Grierson in his review of Robert Flaherty's film Moana (1926), published in the New York Sun on 8 February 1926, written by "The Moviegoer" (a pen name for Grierson).

Grierson's principles of documentary were that cinema's potential for observing life could be exploited in a new art form; that the "original" actor and "original" scene are better guides than their fiction counterparts to interpreting the modern world; and that materials "thus taken from the raw" can be more real than the acted article. In this regard, Grierson's definition of documentary as "creative treatment of actuality" has gained some acceptance, with this position at variance with Soviet film-maker Dziga Vertov's provocation to present "life as it is" (that is, life filmed surreptitiously) and "life caught unawares" (life provoked or surprised by the camera).

Fred Armisen

Fereydun Robert "Fred" Armisen (born December 4, 1966) is an American actor, voice actor, screenwriter, producer, director, singer, musician, and comedian.

Widely known as a cast member on Saturday Night Live from 2002 until 2013, Armisen has portrayed characters in comedy films, including EuroTrip, Anchorman, and Cop Out. With his comedy partner Carrie Brownstein, Armisen is the co-creator and co-star of the IFC sketch comedy series Portlandia. Armisen founded ThunderAnt.com, a website that features the comedy sketches created with Brownstein, and is the bandleader for the Late Night with Seth Meyers house band, The 8G Band.

For his work on Portlandia, Armisen was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Series in 2012, 2013 and 2014 and for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series in 2014. He has also won two Peabody Awards, one in 2008 as part of the Saturday Night Live political satire cast and one in 2011 for Portlandia.

Early life

Armisen was born on December 4, 1966, in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and moved to Manhattan, New York City, as a baby. He was raised in Valley Stream, New York, on Long Island, where he was a high school classmate of fellow SNL alumnus Jim Breuer. His mother, Hildegardt Mirabal, a schoolteacher, is from Venezuela. His father, Fereydun (later "Fred") Armisen, who worked for IBM, was born in Germany, to a Japanese father and a German mother. Armisen attended the School of Visual Arts (NYC) before dropping out to begin a career as a rock drummer. He has mentioned watching the bands The Clash and Devo perform on television, and wanting to be a performer since he was a child.

Bill Hader

William Thomas "Bill" Hader, Jr. (born June 7, 1978) is an American actor, voice actor, comedian, and writer. He is known for his work as a cast member on Saturday Night Live (2005–2013), for which he has received three Emmy nominations, South Park (2009–present), and his parody series Documentary Now! (2015–present). He is also one of the vocal consultants for BB-8 in Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015).

Hader is also known for his supporting work in comedy films, such as You, Me and Dupree (2005), Superbad (2007), Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008), Tropic Thunder (2008), Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (2009), Paul (2011), and Men in Black 3 (2012). He has also had lead voice roles in Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2009) and Inside Out (2015), as well as lead roles in the dramedy The Skeleton Twins (2014) and the romantic comedy Trainwreck (2015).

Early life

Hader was born and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the son of Sherri Renee (née Patton) and William Thomas Hader, Sr. His father owned an air-freight company and worked as a restaurant manager, a truck driver and occasionally a stand-up comedian; his mother was a dance teacher. He has two younger sisters, Katie and Kara. His ancestry includes German, Danish, Irish, English, French, and African; his surname originates in Germany. Hader is also a direct descendent of Charlemagne, his fortieth great-grandfather.

Seth Meyers

Seth Adam Meyers (born December 28, 1973) is an American comedian, writer, producer, television host, actor, and voice actor. He currently hosts Late Night with Seth Meyers, a late-night talk show that airs on NBC. Prior to that, he was a head writer for NBC's Saturday Night Live (2001–2014) and hosted its news parody segment Weekend Update.

He also hosted the 66th Primetime Emmy Awards in 2014, starred in the animated Hulu series The Awesomes (2013–2015), appeared in Journey to the Center of the Earth (2008), and is the co-creator, co-writer, and executive producer of Documentary Now! (2015–present)

Early life

Meyers was born in Evanston, Illinois, and was raised in Okemos, Michigan from ages 4–10 and Bedford, New Hampshire after that. His mother, Hilary Claire (née Olson), was a French teacher, and his father, Laurence Meyers, Jr., worked in finance. His younger brother is actor Josh Meyers. His paternal grandfather was Jewish, and although Meyers has performed at several Jewish Community Centers, he does not consider himself Jewish. His other ancestry is Czech-Austrian (from his paternal grandmother), Swedish, English, and German. Meyers attended Edgewood Elementary in Okemos and later graduated from Manchester High School West in New Hampshire. He then attended and graduated from Northwestern University in Evanston, where he became a member of the fraternity Phi Gamma Delta.