UNCOMFORTABLE ARMCHAIR: An interview with Patrick Lyman
One of the best things about programming D E E P is surfacing the unexpected, stumbling upon something I didn’t realize I wanted, something I didn’t realize could exist.
That’s how I felt when I found Uncomfortable Armchair, a short comedy sketch by Emerson College students Kat Garelli, Patrick Lyman, and Alex Hawthorne that was featured back in Transmission 6.
The blink-and-you-miss-it title card announces some strangeness afoot: it lists the genre of the film (“Psychological Thriller”), credits the filmmakers as “Members” of “Group 8”, and features a link to baked beans on Walgreens.com.
Then we’re in the woods. A runner slowly (very slowly) approaches the finish line in one single, unbroken shot, until he collapses before crossing. Then some dude accidentally steps in the shot, and the camera decides to pursue him instead. Elegiac music plays as we follow the guy walking through the woods and standing emotionless in his house, like we’re in some slow Béla Tarr film. But then we follow him as he goes to Subway and nervously asks the sandwich artist if he can put his own mustard on his order.
I won’t spoil the rest, but the sketch continues to take punky left turns into the absurd and meta. It’s one of many maddeningly structured videos by the trio, buoyed by layers of inside jokes and visual gags that are cleverer and more hilarious than any slickly produced SNL-aspirational comedy crew.
I talked with Patrick Lyman a bit about their process.
So I stumbled upon your work on Vimeo very randomly before it had gained much traction and it blew me away. Can you talk a bit about yourselves and your work?
So Alex, Kat, and I are film students at Emerson College finishing our Junior years. We all met Freshman year from me and Alex being roommates and having a mutual friend with Kat. We all found out we have similar views on filmmaking and have just kinda always worked together on projects since.
I’m so impressed by the layering of gags and callbacks in your work, from the nesting doll elements of Uncomfortable Armchair, to the way multiple actors “tap in” for the same character in There’s No Ketchup In The Ketchup, to the total left turn into meta student filmmaking in Two Dylans. To me, a lot of the bits seem to revolve around the inherent silliness of the act of filmmaking in and of itself. How do you guys riff on concepts that are difficult to convey visually and build out the unconventional structure of your sketches?
A lot of times when making something we just try and think about what the audience will be thinking at this point and how we can play with that. Mostly our films start with a visual that we build a story around rather than trying to deliberately portray one message or meaning. We like that this approach puts a lot more on the audience to have an emotional reaction rather than linearly following a character.
As far as riffing goes, we typically have the inciting visual and then think practically what could happen next and all pitch ideas before landing on the one that would best fit the current feel and lend itself to more possibilities.
We all agree that student films can flop because they’re reliant on the production aspects of filmmaking that we just don’t have access to yet, whether it be experience or financials. So we try and make the feeling of the films fit the restrictions that we can’t get away from, hopefully the concept itself being interesting enough that people pay attention to that instead of how nice of a camera we’re using.
You guys make comedy videos and put them online, but they’re infinitely stranger and cooler than most of the stuff I come across on YouTube or whatever — how do you feel about the current state of comedy, especially online, and where do you see the work you’re doing fitting into that?
I think comedy currently is in a very interesting place especially on social media. It’s really cool that anyone can post something that can gain enough traction for thousands of people to see, it really shows how funny most people can be.
Because of that accessibility, I don’t really like trying to make solid jokes in any films we make, sometimes it feels too forced. Being specifically a comedy film puts the audience in a weird position where there’s one expected emotional reaction and if the film doesn’t get that then it’s considered unsuccessful. I like the fact that something can still be funny to certain groups without being a joke, and even if some don’t like the style they’re at least not sitting through a bad comedy, just a confusing film.
So I’m not entirely sure where our films fit in to the massive world of comedy, but we try to not think about fitting in to one scene, we all just really like the idea of making something that hasn’t been made yet.
What are you working on next?
Right now we are all working on individual projects for a moment before coming together for a bigger production. Alex has been working on music a lot recently, along with making some films for classes, Kat is producing a couple productions for on-campus organizations, I’ve been doing a little music recently but have been focusing a lot on writing.
Collectively we’ve had a TV show in the works that will hopefully have an episode up before the end of the year. Besides that we’ve just been trying to find the resources to help us create a film that can surpass our past work, both conceptually and in production value.
