Phil Lord and Christopher Miller know how to turn almost anything into a good time.
Over an expansive 20-year career, Lord and Miller, who first met at Dartmouth College, have demonstrated a unique knack for finding fun and clever stories in some of the least likely places.
The creative beacon team – who often swap writer, director and producer hats – gave the stilted plastic bricks a impressive makeover in “The Lego Movie” franchise. They helped turn lesser-known comic book character Miles Morales into an Oscar winner with “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.” They found laughs in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, with the Fox sitcom “The Last Man on Earth,” and in serious ’80s TV drama, with the “21 Jump Street” movies. They also produced Netflix’s animated Oscar nominee, “The Mitchells vs. The Machines,” which turned a terrifying technological oddity into a heartwarming family adventure.
Now they’re injecting some mirth into the killing with their new series, “The Afterparty,” the first three episodes of which air Friday on Apple TV+ (the remaining five episodes will air weekly).
When Miller birthed the idea for the murder mystery in 2010, he envisioned it as a feature, drawing inspiration from classics like “Rashomon” and “Clue.” In 2019, he revised the story to fit it into an episodic television format, and he served as showrunner and director for all episodes while Lord Executive produced. The finished product is a whodunit built like a Matryoshka doll, with multiple cinematic genres nestled inside one great mystery.
With an ensemble cast that includes Ike Barinholtz, Ilana Glazer, Sam Richardson, and Ben Schwartz, the series revolves around a high school reunion that ends in death. Tiffany Haddish plays a Columbo-style police detective who assesses the crime scene.
“We’re all stars in our own movie,” the sleuth tells the suspects, and the series literalizes the point. Almost every episode revolves around a different partygoer’s account of the night’s events and is presented in a style that reflects that character’s personality: a savory romantic comedy about Richardson’s sweetheart former student pursuing an old crush; an absurd action film for the emasculated ex-athlete of Barinholtz; a psychological thriller for Glazer’s paranoid valedictorian who has fallen out of favor.
Lord and Miller recently talked about “The Afterparty” in a joint video interview from their respective homes in Los Angeles, where they’re prepping “Spider-Man: Across the Universe (Part One)” for release in October, along with scripting and animating the reboot of their “Clone High” animated series for HBO Max. The modesty pair discussed shifting gears, sweating the details and getting a second chance to make an impression. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
You jumped into this live-action project right after finishing an animated project, “Into the Spider-Verse.” Do you approach these two mediums differently?
Phil LORD The bottom line is that we don’t really see them any differently; we treat everything the same. I don’t know if it’s that our sense of humor is just juvenile enough to appeal to kids too, but either way, we’re trying to do something we haven’t seen before. We always try to experiment. Maybe that’s why we play ping-pong.
CHRISTOPHER MILLER We always try to take a story and figure out how to make it something new and add something to the conversation. We follow this story to where it wants to be at its best.
In an animated episode, there’s a quick Easter egg gag. Should viewers search for them everywhere?
MILLER It’s a crazy thing because we are crazy. Because this was a murder mystery puzzler, we thought it would be really fun to add Easter egg style hidden clues, codes and numbers for people solve them, as a bonus. You don’t need to stop the picture and solve these problems to understand whodunnit; it’s all there in the story. But, on top of that, for the uber-nerds, there are plenty of little details in the set dressing, signage, and other hidden messages that, if you decode them, give you clues as to who made it. or not. To make a show where each episode is its own little movie, each episode is shot with different lighting, lens, costumes and music is a huge production challenge. We thought, “Why not add one Following production challenge on High of this one? »
LORD It’s like making something custom. I always love getting a gift from filmmakers, something physical that’s had that level of attention, as opposed to something that looks clean and made. The thing about this stuff is that it’s mass entertainment, but you never want it to feel mass produced.
Have you taken notes on movies of all different genres?
MILLER Absoutely. There are many different subgenres within these genres. Like, there are many different types of action movies. So there were a lot of conversations like, “Is this going to be a ‘Fast & Furious’ or a ‘John Wick’ or a classic ‘Die Hard’ action movie?” We never wanted to make anything a parody or parody. We’re big movie buffs, and it’s all done with love and admiration for how others have found interesting ways to tell stories. We kind of steal all their best ideas and put them into one thing. We wanted to use the storytelling conventions of these genres to allow us to have a window into the inner lives of these characters.
What styles would you use to tell your personal stories?
MILLER One of those rambling, improv-filled comedies that don’t have a lot of plot because I think that’s what our everyday life is like.
LORD White male boredom – like, “Oh we all just rented a house in Ojai and we’ll be working our oxen growing up.”
What was it like creating and filming during the pandemic?
LORD We did a summer bubble in 2020. We were both renting places in Malibu, so we were walking the beach and having production meetings.
MILLER But doing the show, obviously, was in person. We shot from October 2020 to February 2021. I think the chemistry of the show was because so many people had just been home alone. They showed up on set and were so happy to be around other human beings. So the atmosphere on set was unlike anything we had done before.
It’s no surprise: most of the cast members would be considered the “exclamation points” of their previous projects.
MILLER It’s basically a show filled with a dozen exclamation marks! You get all these people who are the funniest people you know in a room, and it makes for a joyful experience. So many actors are hyphens – creators, writers, directors, showrunners. They all approach this thing from the perspective of someone who also makes things. So they were able to keep this complicated thing in their head. You ask them to come in and not just play one character, but play eight different versions of one character. It’s a very complex request.
LORD They are also all in attack. No one tries to stay out of trouble, to play it safe, or to avoid looking stupid. They’re all there trying to figure out, “What could be contributed at this time?”
Did you attend any of your own high school reunions?
LORD I went to many. The first hour conversation is always like “I’m miserable!” “Yes! I hate it here!” “Let’s go!” Then, at the end, you stay with those few people you grew up with and remember why you were so close so long ago, and that’s a feeling very warm. Warmth and humiliation. On my 25th birthday they issued certificates and I got “Most Improved”. It was nice for a second to feel that I was appreciated. And then I immediately flipped the whole drinks table. I leaned on it when I felt confident, then it collapsed under my weight and I felt awkward again. In a reunion, you experience all the emotions of high school in four hours. It’s like “High School: The Ride.”
MILLER I missed one or two. It is a complicated experience. You go to these things and you’re mixed with a lot of conflicting emotions – there are good memories and painful memories; you’re going back to old dynamics and you want to feel like you’ve moved past some of those things. What high school reunions are, for many people, is that they present the version of themselves that they want their former classmates to see.
The real purpose of the show is to try and get people to take a moment to look at the world through someone else’s eyes. When you do this, you might find that people are more surprising and complex than you think.
Having worked together since college, how do you think the other has changed? Is your work dynamic different from what it once was?
MILLER It’s not like one is “that person” and the other is “that person”.
LORD were both “the messy.” Chris has been “the messy” until he met me.
MILLER He is right. I’m Phil’s Oscar Felix, but I’d be anyone else’s Oscar. But we are both very involved in every step of the creative process. In our early days, we were looking over each other’s shoulders trying to write scenes in the same room, and it was really difficult. These days we talk about our goals and then we go apart and have some room to try things, fail, figure them out, and then send them to each other. He only appears on screen if we both feel like we have something.
LORD Now, I think we’re more curious about what the other person is going to bring to it, knowing that the end product is going to be something neither of us would have done on our own. It’s the fun of having a partnership because you just don’t know where it’s going to take you. Who used to feel scary, and now it’s really exciting.
MILLER And the key to that is having a lot of trust and admiration. It’s like a wedding.
LORD Like a wedding, without some fun parts.