HBO’s The Life & Times of Tim is without a doubt the best new show of the TV season. Creator Steve Dildarian has taken the uncomfortable and the awkward to new levels, putting his everyman main character Tim in situations that are sometimes his fault, sometimes not, but are always hilarious.
Tim gets caught at home with a hooker (Debbie, who makes several appearances in the series) by his girlfriend Amy and her parents in the show’s very first episode. In other episodes he takes the blame for his boss’s dog’s actions, ruins Valentine’s Day for his girlfriend, is stuck with a batchelor party story that no man would want and tests the limits of what is accepted by his employer’s human resources department.
As soon as I saw the first episode I knew I had to talk to Steve Dildarian. I was electrified by the audacity of his show and wanted to help in any way I could to get the word out. It took some doing, but a couple of weeks ago, deep into a Thursday night, Steve gave me a call.
The majority of our conversation is below, save for some rambling discussions of non-essential things such as Steve’s love for Ricky Gervais and my ramblings about why I feel weird for not understanding the Englishman’s humor. Despite this difference in opinion we found a lot of common ground (mutual love of Curb Your Enthusiasm for example) and the conversation was loose and completely cool.
The Life & Times of Tim is on every Sunday night at 11 PM EST on HBO, with repeats throughout the week. The show is about halfway through its first season, so be sure to catch up with it through On Demand or repeats or however and buy the DVD when it become available. And if you don’t have HBO, get it. The show is completely worth it.
The Buzz: The Life & Times of Tim:
Rock & Roll Ghost: What prompted you to start going outside of the realm of advertising?
Steve Dildarian: Way back I was trying to write my novel and then I started painting. I worked on Budweiser for a long time and I got a lot of opportunities in TV. For a long stretch there I would work on
pilot scripts once a year. So I had my hands in a lot things for awhile. And then making a short animated film came out of that time with Budweiser. A lot of it was entertainment and character development more than TV commercials. I slowly started doing voices and drawing so I knew I had all the skills I needed to at least try
and make an animated film. It happened by accident. I wrote this thing and couldn’t figure out a way to shoot it live action and couldn’t find a way to get animators do it. So I said let me see if I can teach myself to animate it.
You had some help from your girlfriend, right?
Yeah. She’s an art director so she basically saw me flailing about trying to color in my drawings with magic markers. She said ‘Let me do this the right way.’ She basically took my drawings I had done with a Bic pen and colored them with Photoshop. That was obviously better than what I was doing. Then it was a matter of how can I get all versions of this thing and then I can pin it together against an audio track. With Photoshop, which I never knew, she said ‘I can give you 20 versions of that. I can move his arm, move his mouth, move his eyes’. She gave me back about 24 versions of the one drawing I gave her. And that’s really the basis of how we make the show now. Just variations on one master wide shot. So we were off and running after
that.
I get the impression not a lot has changed in the design and look since those humble beginnings?
Absolutely. The principles of it are all intact. The drawings are a little bit more polished. The lines are more solid, the colors more nuanced. So it looks a little more camera ready. We made it a little more slick looking, but the fundamentals are all there.
Is the first half of the first episode, “Angry Unpaid Hooker”, is that different from what you did with the short film?
It is, yeah. We made it longer first of all. The short was only six minutes long. The show came in about eleven or twelve minutes. We introduced more of the characters. We introduced her parents. We made it a little more of a full story.
Was there anything in particular you were inspired by in creating the show?
As a story I was very much inspired by “Curb Your Enthusiasm”. But as far as animation or visually I didn’t try to make it look like anything. If I tried to make another animation show tomorrow it would be the same exact thing. I’m incapable of drawing differently. This is very much the show I think I can make. That’s the way I draw. I can’t draw better and I can’t draw worse. The editing was very much the best I could do with the tools I had and the software I know. It really created its own look and style. In fact, its similar…a lot of people compare it to “Dr. Katz”, which I was a huge fan of. In that they share the same sensibilities and comic timing or whatnot. I didn’t really think of anything other than ‘Can I make this thing work?’
I was amazed and blown away by that first episode with the way that the “Rodney’s Bachelor Party” half of the first episode kept taking more and more bizarre turns.
It was like ‘We can’t have a show where the guy’s calling a hooker the first episode we meet him’. And the second part with the bum rape some thought it was crossing the line and rape is not a funny topic. I think that the lesson we all learned from and agreed on just the style of the show and the way he talks and the likeability of the guy forgives almost anything. If even sometimes things get a little weird it’s all at the end of the day pretty silly and pretty innocent to a lot of the shows that deal with things like that.
It doesn’t have that nasty edge.
Yeah. I tend to have a rather optimistic outlook on things. It’s unfair if anything, he’s still a good guy trying to do good things. He’s not a cynical guy trying to impose his viewpoints on others. He’s a little bit more the victim.
I like the idea that Tim seems to have almost no idea where the world is going to take him at any time and he makes up his whole life as he goes along.
He never does anything wrong, really. He’s guilty of either having bad judgment or being too easily persuaded. It’s minor character flaws.
I watched the “Angry Unpaid Hooker” three times and I’ve been trying to figure out if he really hired a hooker or did he truly, foolishly think he called an electrician?
It’s really funny you say that. There were two schools of thought. Either you embrace it and he’s guilty or you make it really an open ended thing where you could believe it either way. We tried to do it at least in script form. We tried to write it where it’s plausible that he did call an electrician that it was next to escort services in the Yellow Pages and maybe it was a mistake. I think in the execution it just comes across that he’s so guilty that most people end up on that side. That he did it and he’s just trying to make up lame excuses.
At one point he says something along the lines of “And sometimes you get an escort when you’re trying to get an electrician”. I think that what is great about it is that you don’t know whether to believe him or not and leaves it open to debate.
That’s why I wanted to make it the first episode. It introduces him in unfamiliar territory. You don’t know what to make of him. You just develop your opinion of him as you go. Whereas, in a lot of the following things, it is clear he is right and the world is skewing things.
Is there anything in the material of future episodes that is on a level with how outrageous that first episode was or was the “Bum Rape” sketch about as crazy as things end up getting?
I don’t think that’s terribly different from the rest of them. It’s hard to be totally objective but I have the feeling that you’re in for more of the same. We try to have a range. I don’t always want to be trying for outrageous humor. Some of them are more grounded in reality. But I’d say out of 20 shorts about half of them are in that
same vein.
How much are you involved in putting little details into the animation. The one in particular I’m thinking of is the character of “The Boss”. On his desk is a plaque that says “The Boss” but when you are looking at Tim from his perspective it reads “Not the Boss”.
We’ve got Leynete Cariapa our Art Director who has three illustrators. I instilled how the characters look and move and the rules of the drawings and the content, they took off and running and I don’t get most of the references.
I wasn’t sure if you were penciling things in.
Not me personally. I’m very involved in everything but stuff like that at some point you have to let go.
There wasn’t anything you’ve seen and gone ‘What the hell is that doing in there?’ Or an episode where you say ‘This has to be completely reworked. Send it back to the Korean animators to re-do’?
No, no. Our setup is so simple. We’ve got 18 people in Burbank. It’s very few people.
Isn’t that how The Simpsons do it, they have a whole crew in Korea to do the animation?
I guess that’s a pretty typical set up to design it here and ship it over there to color and make it all. We’re not like that at all.
Is there anything else you’re working on or planning to work on after this?
Leading up to this I was starting to get really serious about painting. Which indirectly led to this because I had never really done anything visual, I was always a writer, all I had ever done was writing comedy. So when I started painting it opened up part of my brain I never thought about or cared about. I was taking that pretty seriously. I sold a couple of paintings in different stores around the city. I’m not the kind of person to turn around and write another pilot right away. First of all, hopefully this will be on. This took years to let it simmer to the top. Within my own work this thing stuck out for a reason because it was a by product of a long time of me waiting for something to come. It happened kind of organically. I don’t like to force ideas. Some people can do that, personally I haven’t much luck with it.
We’re quickly learning with this type of show, you know, animation, risqué humor, it’s going to be a love or hate thing. I’m finding not too many people in the middle. People clearly love it, ‘Oh my God, my new favorite show’ and someone else can turn around and say ‘It’s unwatchable’.
With regards to the voices on the show are these people that you’ve known for awhile or how did you recruit them?
Half of them are friends of mine from San Francisco. Jane who plays my girlfriend, she was just a producer at the ad agency and she had never done a voiceover before. My friend Bob who does Debbie the prostitute is an editor. Everybody’s always surprised to see who it is who does those voices. Even when we did it for Fox, Fox was so critical of all of the voices. They went through the voices with a hatchet saying “recast, recast, recast”. But they didn’t recast any of these people, which I thought was great. When we went to HBO it was the same thing. They weren’t being nice to me, they just loved the voices. The fact that they’re really not polished or professional and also that you get the sense that we’re having fun in there. I try to go out of my way, with limitations, keep this all slightly unprofessional at every step of the process. As long as you’re smart about it you can do that in a good way.
I think it’s interesting to see you coming from such a different field, in this case advertising, into animated comedy. Like when a painter moves into directing and does something unique with the form.
I think the way this came to be is a great thing and will make it a special thing. I think that people can sense that when it’s the real deal. If we get to keep going I think it can only get better. When you make something up along the way like we are…even episode 5 from episode 2 it’s like we’re so much better at this now. Everything from the writing and recording to the drawing and editing…I think we’re just scratching the surface at what this thing could be.
What’s been the response from HBO on the show and have you gotten any feedback on the ratings?
They never expected it to do big and they say they don’t care and that they’re not making decisions based on that. They take pride in giving things time to find their audience. They’ve been nothing but enthusiastic and supportive. They care about the reviews and the buzz more than the ratings. If there’s enough people watching it that consider it one of their favorite shows it can be a small number, that’s all they care about. They’d rather have the coolest ideas, most progressive programming out there. The fact that we’re getting these nice reviews is pretty huge.
With HBO they seem to be finding a new avenue for quirky comedies, like your show and “Flight of the Conchords”, that take some time and begin generating serious buzz about halfway through their initial run.
That would be good, yeah. They’re doing the things that got them there in the first place. They’re not trying to repeat themselves…they don’t feel obliged to make something that’s a copy of “Sex and the City” or “The Sopranos”.
Another factor that works out for HBO’s shows are the different HBO channels and On Demand features that work for people’s schedules.
Our show in particular it seems like a lot of people just Tivo and watch On Demand, I don’t know if everyone’s watching Sunday nights at 11. It’s like with “True Blood” the first week they got a million viewers, but when you tally it up it’s really 5 million.
It affords people the luxury to watch something at different times. You and I are about the same age so we remember when there was a time when there were about 5 channels and if you wanted to watch something you’d better be there when it’s on or you weren’t going to see it. Now you can watch all of that crap all of the time.
Exactly, yeah. (laughs)
When will you know about the future of the show?
In general they’re pretty quick and some people think we’ll hear something in the next couple of weeks.
Hopefully you’ll have a little bit of time to chill out and get away from it.
Absolutely. Just to go through this process you need so much adrenaline. It’s hard to force that to happen again. You gotta recharge a little bit.
Great interview. This show is going to blow up by the end of this season. Definitely my favorite our there so far.
I'm watching The Life & Times of Tim from The UK – it's the best thing I've seen in ages.
Awesome! Glad it's found its way overseas. Also happy that you came here and checked out the interview. I don't think the show got much press, sadly.