Salute Your Shorts: Clark and Michael

Salute Your Shorts is a weekly column that looks at short films, music videos, commercials or any other short form visual media that generally gets ignored.

When Michael Cera co-created Clark and Michael in 2006, he was yet to blow up via the stardom that would come from Superbad and Juno. Aside from the relatively small but loyal Arrested Development fanbase, he was an unknown. The show’s other creator, Clark Duke, is best-known for the series Greek and is, for the most part, still an unknown. It’s not surprising that when the pair pitched their television show around Hollywood, not much came of it.

Actually, something did come of it, but that’s the basic plot of the show, so it’s worth keeping in mind. In fact, Clark and Michael originated not because the pair was trying to get their lifelong dreams of television-writing stardom off the ground—as if such a thing existed anyhow—but rather because they were between projects and had a good idea. A pilot episode for the show was in fact created not for any real television reasons but rather for Duke’s thesis film at Loyola Marymount University where he was studying. Due to some strange luck, this show about Duke and his best friend Cera ended up as one of network television’s first forays into creating an internet-only series, not to mention one of few successful ones so far, at least from an artistic standpoint.

It’s likely that a lot of why Clark and Michael was greenlit rather than other series of the same type was sheer economy. Clark and Michael aren’t just the namesakes for the show, they’re also the show’s writers, directors and stars. Because of the show’s experimental nature not just in content but in distribution, its budget is quite obviously minimal, with the show’s run cut down to ten episodes not due to scripting but rather because ten 7-10 minute episodes was all that CBS was willing to pay for. Likewise, all of the show’s many guest stars were unpaid and seem to have gone on Clark and Michael as favors to its creators.

Because of this, Clark and Michael ends up with a homey, friends-hanging-out feeling that’s nonetheless well-shot. It’s a nice middle-ground between truly lo-fi creations like they show on Channel 101 and a professionally produced television show. The equipment is quality and the acting is top-notch, but everything else about the show was kept intentionally loose and improvisatory. Given this sensibility, it’s no surprise that Cera would mesh so well with Judd Apatow’s world of comedy.

The premise for Clark and Michael is wonderfully simple, and for any normal television show, couldn’t be sustained through more than an episode or two...at least not the way Duke and Cera keep things. It’s not a behind-the-scenes-of-a-show-getting-made sort of affair; it’s really about two roommates/writing partners living together and being frustrated with each other and the world. After some early setbacks, the duo soon accepts that success may take a while and continues to pursue this in small chunks throughout each 10-minute episode, along the way talking with a terrible agent (played by Arrested Development creator Mitch Hurwitz), playing mini-golf and hating their neighbor.

Clark and Michael obviously drew a lot from Hurwitz’s comedy and the years Cera spent under his direction, but in fact one of the bigger influences I see in the show is Seinfeld and its successor Curb Your Enthusiasm. Curb’s Larry David role is effectively split between the pair, who ably quibble and annoy all in their oblivious path on the road to success. The show’s steadfast refusal to make any sort of real progress towards the pair’s goal, who would rather spend time arguing over which of them should play the show’s hero than work on their pilot, has that brand of comedy all over it.

One of the wonderful things about the extremely short episode times for Clark and Michael is that by eschewing normal sitcom length, having a show about nothing never really gets old. Seinfeld dealt with the small irritations of life and made episodes about them, but these irritations would cause large plots and with them drama and momentum. Clark and Michael episodes are just short enough to get away with showing lengthy, idiotic arguments between the pair and not having this lack of narrative become irritating. While marathoning all 10 episodes into a 90-minute movie (of sorts) ends up somewhat unfulfilling, taken in the bursts as they should be, the way the episodes revel in digression is charming and somewhat bold.

Aside from this, one of the best parts of Clark and Michael is that it’s the fullest expression of the pair’s awkward-yet-occasionally-surreal brand of comedy. Cera seems to always play a “Michael Cera character” in movies, but from the show’s writing it’s obvious how much more range and ambition he actually has—it’s just that he’s more than a little bit typecast, not to mention being extremely good at that kind of dopey, inarticulate teen character. The show’s representation of Michael Cera is supposed to be an exaggerated version of Cera himself, which, despite exaggeration, feels far more real than a lot of the characters he’s cast as. Cera and Duke never lose their schmuck/jerk shtick entirely, but even with the show’s intentionally small ambitions, both actors show surprising depth and versatility.

Will there ever be another season of Clark and Michael? Probably not, but the pair had a great sensibility and it would be nice to see them united again for a project, whatever the circumstances.

Extra Credit: I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Clark and Michael’s theme song, which is probably the show’s best joke. I’m tempted to do a shot-by-shot analysis of this sequence, but that would be a waste of time considering how ineffable something like this really is. Feast your eyes upon it and enjoy the riches. It's pure cinema at its finest.