By Sam Roads.
Alan Tudyk
If you aren’t familiar with Alan Tudyk’s vast acting resume, including roles on Joss Whedon’s Firefly and Dollhouse, you probably know his voice work, from films like I, Robot and Frozen. Recently, Tudyk raised over $3 million on crowdfunding site IndieGoGo, for his new comedy show Con Man, currently released on Vimeo, where it is breaking viewing records.
The satirical comedy borrows heavily from Tudyk’s real-life experiences. On it, he plays Wray Nerely, a struggling actor who once starred as a starship pilot on fictitious short-lived sci-fi series Spectrum. While Wray’s Spectrum co-star Jack Moore (Nathan Fillion) goes on to achieve mainstream movie stardom, a frustrated Wray is relegated to the convention circuit where he must learn to love his fans.
In this interview with Creative Screenwriting Tudyk discusses the joys of writing, his major influences and the chance to reunite the crew of Firefly.
Alan Tudyk as Wray Nerely and Mindy Sterling as Bobbie in Con Man
Do you write in a special time and place, or did you work on Con Man in hotel rooms after convention appearances?
No, when I went to conventions and something struck me, I would just jot it down on my phone, because that’s the one thing I know I won’t lose. All slips of paper leave me before they’re of any use. Typically, I tend to write sitting on my couch at home. I usually write for an hour, fall asleep for two, write for another hour, then make excuses not to write until the next day.
Is semi-consciousness part of the process?
[Laughs] I don’t know where that fits in. Jogging definitely fits in. If ever I get stuck, I go running, and a lot of times the thing that I can’t solve gets figured out somewhere on the trail.
Are you a writer who plans out structure, character backgrounds and story arcs, or do you let the story guide you?
I’ve done both. The first episodes of Con Man, I just let it go and let it guide me. I try to write in the three act structure for a half hour and then Vimeo breaks it up into acts of 10 minutes episodes. However, first thirty minutes became forty minutes because I just wrote whatever I wanted to, and that had to be cut way down.
I wrote episode five the fastest, and I came up with Act 1, Act 2 and Act 3, and how it was all going to work together, then banged it out very fast, to the point where I was thinking, “This can’t be any good!”. Now that’s it’s done, I think that some of the funniest scenes are in that episode.
Sean Astin playing himself, Alan Tudyk as Wray and Nolan North as Jerry Lansing in Con Man
Do you have any formal training or experience as a storyteller?
No. It’s interesting. I was trying to figure out what my style was. I kept saying “this seems different than the television shows I’ve seen”. Maybe it has similarities to Ricky Gervais’ Extras, because it’s about a struggling actor, and also to Louie, which focuses around a stand-up comedian. There’s some absurdist stuff in those shows that links to some absurd things that happen in Con Man.
As far as the style of comedy and the way jokes are told, scenes tend to be longer than in most half hour television shows, and I attribute that to doing plays. I’m a theater actor, and after I got my training from Juilliard I got involved with a handful of new comedies, where I had a chance to learn how to write.
When you’re acting in a new comedy, you run through it and then watch the author start changing it to make it better, and there are times you’re thinking: “I know what you should do here. I think I have a solution to the problem we’re trying to solve.” A few times I was allowed to do that, and seeing it play out in front of an audience, watching them react to the thing that now worked. Oh my God, that was exhilarating!
Were you concerned that the central idea of the story requires viewers to know about other science fiction shows?
No. Yes and No. I want there to be jokes only the science fiction fans will get, but not to the point that it will ruin the experience for people who don’t know those references. An example is when someone comes up to Wray and tries to convince Tricia Helfer’s character that I’m not a bad guy and says to me, “Hey, aren’t you Wray Nerely, can I have an autograph?” And I say “Oh look, Jason Mamoa!” I think probably a lot of general viewers will not know who Jason Mamoa is. He was in Game of Thrones as Kal Drogo, so in that world he’s huge. That might pass by a couple of people when they see that it’s a man in a dress that looks nothing like Jason Mamoa.
Amy Acker as Dawn with Alan Tudyk as Wray in Con Man
Some actors play themselves, while others – specifically anyone connected to Firefly, have a changed name, they’re not playing exactly themselves. Why was that?
I had an opportunity with the show within the show. Wray Nerely, the protagonist, is a science fiction actor who resembles me in a lot of ways. He did a show roughly ten years ago which was cancelled too soon and has this great cult following for him. That’s where we’re very similar.The show that was cancelled for me was Firefly. The show that was cancelled for Wray Nerely was Spectrum, and in the last three episodes we will see Spectrum and meet the entire cast.
I had the opportunity to cast Firefly actors in those roles and put us all in a spaceship again. This seemed like the fastest way to get back into space with those people, because it doesn’t look like there is ever going to be a Firefly reunion and if there is a Firefly show again, I certainly won’t be on it because my character, spoiler alert, is currently dead.
Currently?
You never know. Joss Whedon has said a few times that in the world of Firefly, it doesn’t make sense to bring somebody back from the dead!
Are you at all worried that some fans are going to crowdfund Spectrum as a feature film?
[Laughs] They could go right ahead. Sure we’d love to make one of those. We crowdfunded a lot of money! We got $3.2 million and we’d finished funding Con Man after $1.8 million. Science fiction author PJ Haarsma and I had written together the first chapter of a novel about Spectrum, because we wanted this show within the show to have a world it exists in, to have roots, and not just be a sketch of an idea. Having planned to finish it one day, we decided “Let’s just crowd fund that now!” We also crowdfunded the comic book that would tell the story of Spectrum, and most importantly and most expensive of all is the mobile device game, which should be out next year.
Alan Tudyk, PJ Haarsma and Nathan Fillion at a charity event for kidsneedtoread.org
Is what we see on screen the script as written, or has there been any improvisation?
It’s primarily what I wrote, except on the day I’m able to switch things around and change things very quickly, because nobody is there to tell me no. Mostly, however, we stuck to the lines, because a lot of the writing was contingent. You had to set things up to pay them off later. So you couldn’t go too out of the box. I wanted always to write something that didn’t just veer off into just comedy for comedy’s sake or funny for funny’s sake. I think there’s a lot of that out there and it’s great and it’s not what I wanted to do. You’ll see this in comedies. There’ ll be a joke. And it’s almost like you’re watching a writers’ room play out in front of your face. The set up is there and then there’ll be a punchline, another punchline and another punchline and they’ll just do as many punchlines as they can get away with and even beyond they can get away with. Reality goes out the window and you’re just watching someone be funny at that point.
I think there’s a lot of comedy in not letting reality go away. For Con Man, Wray is the person who’s standing there going “What?! Wait a second! Back up! Did you just say SNUFF films?”
You have to have the person who says “What is going on?”
Are there any films, shows or people that have influenced your writing?
Mel Brooks, in the third episode. The setup is that my volunteer assistant, played by Felicia Day, instead of cosplaying a character I play, actually dresses just like me. I wake up by myself in my apartment after a party and I only find one shoe, my shirt’s on wrong and my belt is undone. I open the door, and she’s standing there dressed exactly like me, with two coffees. And there’s this long pause back and forth and then I say “Is one of those coffees for me? Come in.”
It reminds me aof the outrageous moment in Young Frankenstein, when Gene Wilder says to Igor, played by Marty Feldman, “You know, I’m a rather brilliant surgeon. Perhaps I can help you with that hump,“ And Igor says: “What hump?” And there’s this long pause where he considers telling him he’s got a hump. And throughout the film, the hump keeps moving around, and later Wilder says: “Wasn’t that on the other side?” Igor says: “What?” Wilder just says “Nevermind.” It just becomes this thing which you can’t even approach. You think “It’s so insane, do I even broach it?”
Mindy Sterling as Bobbie, Alan Tudyk as Wray and Felicia Day as Karen in Con Man
Has Joss Whedon given you any writing advice?
On Con Man, when I first came to him years ago, I was thinking about making it into a movie. It was a very different movie, but it dealt with the same world. He said “Don’t make fun of the fans”. A movie that followed this advice very well was Galaxy Quest. The nerds are super-nerds and they’re geeky oddball people, and then through their knowledge of the sci-fi show, they save the universe. And that’s perfect.
In Con Man, if Wray tries to take advantage of a fan’s love for sci-fi or their love of Spectrum, or take it for granted, then he ends up suffering for that. He’s the fool who falls down and that’s how I walk that line.
Why do you write?
It’s so much fun. When I write something and I find it funny, it gives me a lot of joy. I mean a LOT! More than acting. But it’s also a chance to say things I wanted to get off my chest for a long time. It’s not a big political statement, but in the third or fourth episode you meet Lesley Jordan, a very out homosexual man. He confides in Wray that he’s not at all homosexual, He’s straight, but pretends to be homosexual so that he can sleep with conservative cougars. Because their hearts are so corroded and empty from their insistence that homosexuality is a choice, so he can say, “You’re right, it is a choice and I’m choosing you!” It validates their whole warped world view and they surrender to him fully. So as a writer, I get to make the statement that if you’re one of those people: quit it. You’re silly. You’re as silly as this bit is.
As a writer, what’s next?
I want to write more Con Man episodes. I’m not done. And I would still like to do that original film idea that I mentioned going to Joss Whedon about. But I would like to see if I could have Wray Nerely, my character in Con Man, write the movie for himself and Jack Moore, played by Nathan Fillion, and then make the movie and have myself and Nathan Fillion play in it.
You mentioned Galaxy Quest. Are you the first comic con themed show which doesn’t have Sigourney Weaver in it?
[Laughs] I think I am. I hope not to be. I want her in there. She would make a good love interest for Wray, or a rival for the character of Bobby. I’ll call Sigourney. I’ll see what she’s doing these days. Hopefully, Con Man.
Galaxy Quest
Con Man is available now on Vimeo on Demand and the last batch of new episodes are out this Wednesday.
