Longtime collaborators, director Brook Linder and cinematographer Frank Mobilio, unite again to capture the irreverent spirit of John Mulaney’s live talkshow.
A live talkshow seemed incongruous to Netflix’s model when the first season of Everybody’s Live was launched last year, but the show, helmed by John Mulaney, has since gone from strength to strength.
The first season was solely focussed on the wonderfully weird world of Los Angeles during Netflix’s annual comedy festival, Netflix is a Joke, and thus required a title sequence brimming with imagery that only LA could provide.
This is where Mobilio and Linder came in: to imbue the series with their uniquely compelling and hilarious visual language. From a Lawrence of Arabia-esque smash cut between a Minion and a sunset, to a slow zoom that reveals a man dressed as an alien peeking around the corner of a building, the duo suited Mulaney’s comedy stylings to a T.
Now in it’s second season, Everybody’s Live has amassed even more character and expanded its idiosyncratic style further. Still opening with the bones of season one’s iconic title sequence, and still accompanied by Wang Chung’s “To Live and Die in LA”, segments are now shifted around and added in to suit the theme of each week’s show – creating a dynamic sequence that lives and breaths with the live-nature of the program.
Similarly, the pair have been enlisted to shoot impromptu promos for each episode that are dripping in movie references and utilise the deep sinews of John Mulaney and Richard Kind’s comedic brains. Their involvement doesn’t stop here, as they also contribute to some of the show’s postcard’s from around America – interviewing real characters from all corners of the States which Mulaney has been increasingly involved in.
How did this project come about?
Brook Linder: Frank and I worked on a comedy project with Radical Media and Zach Galifianakis. On that show we worked with a head writer called Dave Ferguson and Dave is a longtime Mulaney collaborator. Frank and I were the odd guys out on that project because we don’t do a lot of comedy, we hadn’t done anything really in that zone before. Dave hit me up before the first iteration of the show and was asking if we had any, and I quote, “weird LA footage”. It started off casually from there, coming in, talking to Mulaney, shooting some B Roll, maybe a title sequence. Then it became, “oh, Mulaney wants to do interviews around town with local people in the vein of this film called Blue in the Face” and it just kind of expanded.
How was the experience shooting for a title sequence, a fun new challenge?
B: Oh my gosh, yes! Music video stuff isn’t too dissimilar to a title sequence and there’s a long history of great ones. I’m a student of title sequences; I’m a title sequence-head! The bar was very high for us, we felt we had to get it exactly right. They’d bought the rights to the Wang Chung song that soundtracks To Live and Die in LA, so obviously it’s going to be put next to Friedkin and Robby Müller NSC BVK, so you better to a good job! You wanna do something that doesn’t look cheap, but that synthesises Freidkin with Mulaney’s irreverent comedy style. They had to come together in a way that wasn’t super obvious, but we found it over the two-month shoot.
The footage feels very observational, what was the process like waiting for these moments to happen? Were some manufactured?
Frank Mobilio: It’s a mix of all kinds; some are completely random that we found. A lot of times we have a plan to go somewhere different, and we’ll be driving along and see something on the way and pull over and shoot that as a little side mission. Sometimes the thing that we set out to shoot is cool in itself, but sometimes it’s just…bad! It’s akin to street photography in that way, you just have to put in the time and keep your eyes open.
B: Yep, keep those eyes open and try to find that funny frame. Oh, that guy’s head is behind this thing, or oh my gosh, that girl’s hair is hanging behind the bench you know.
F: We’re doing a lot of pulling over with the hazards on!
You must have a field day in the world of LA?
B: Yeah, there’s always stuff to see, but a lot of regulations and rules. We have to be on sticks, it has to be zoom… It’s two hard things: you’re finding something out in the world that will never happen again, but it also has to be composed. Frank is the master of thinking a shot is going to be about one thing, and it’s actually about something completely different. Frank is so good at finding part one and part two, and they are often in conflict with each other, or there’s something playful happening.
F: I’m always looking for ways to connect two different things that are happening in a space. In the photography that we like, there’s a lot going on and there’s depth to the image: a foreground, background and middle-ground. We’re doing this completely documentary, so we don’t plan anything and sometimes we’ll use the zoom to connect two things if they aren’t right next to each other.
I love all the playful 70s-esque zooms, they feel so organic and are always so funny.
B: My favourite one didn’t make it, it’s a little dark! But Frank had a guy up on a billboard and – this is crazy – he’s zooming in on him and then he starts leaving the guy on the billboard, and I’m like “where is he going?!” and Frank lands on, and perfectly pulls to, a sign that says ‘jump’. I sat with Mulaney when he first watched it and he gasped! I always tell people what’s so great about Frank is he’s a master composer and great at figuring out how to manipulate what’s around him, but mostly Frank is just funny as fuck. I mean everyone’s favourite shot in the title sequence is the Minion and that’s Frank’s personality right there!
The smash cut to the sunset is the cherry on top.
F: That’s all Brook!
B: Well, it’s Lawrence of Arabia really.
Oh, it’s way better than Larence of Arabia!
B: Oh yeah, we’re definitely in that conversation.
What gear are you using when you are on the move around LA?
F: It’s a little bit of a trade secret…but we use a RED KOMODO and a Cooke zoom we have which is 25-250mm and for what we do on this show, we find it to be a perfect combination with the size of it and the quality of the image. Kaitlyn Battistelli colours everything that we do for this show and she brings it all home. It combines new and old, and we try not to push the look too hard and try keep it where it still feels real. It’s playing up against the live show which is obviously live video cameras for streaming, so it doesn’t take much for it to feel cinematic next to that.
B: If the camera was two inches bigger we’d have a problem. Everything fits. We are at the max of what we can handle as a duo. Everything is perfect. I feel like we’ve been trying to crack this forever.
Were there many specific visual references or inspirations?
B: For the titles, Mulaney was really in to the exhibition Christian Marclay: The Clock. With the title sequence I went to Mulaney and said: “is it ER or is it Miami Vice?” Is it layered and busy, or is it a straight up montage? And he was like “why don’t you guys just do what you do…”, but yeah his big reference point was The Clock. Which was so cool, an exhibition that ran for 24 hours and Marclay pulled clips from 1000s of movies where clocks show up in the image, and it could just be the background, and he plays it for a full 24 hours in time order. It takes your breath away. But the interesting thing about that to Mulaney was that the show was live, which is kind of a rarity especially for Netflix, so his whole thing was to hit the clock at the right time. We drove around finding public clocks and waiting for it to hit certain times and film it.
F: I need to point out that Brook did the clocks himself.
B: I can’t ask Frank to wait for the clocks! I can’t use Frank up on missions like that.
What’s your relationship to 70s cinema in general and how has it informed you?
B: My relationship is definitely through the paranoid movies Alan J Pakula and Gordon Willis did like The Parallax View, Klute and All the President’s Men. I’m a paranoid person so I’m always looking out and thinking… like right now I can see a rusty AC unit and I’m thinking “what’s going on in there? Why hasn’t the landlord replaced it? There must be something going on.” I think the world is a really crazy place and there are lots of machinations that you don’t understand going on around you, there’s no better way to illustrate that than going from wide shot, whole world, to tiny detail with a zoom. That makes sense to me and always has. From a practical standpoint, we need camera movement and, in some instances, like the interviews, we only have a couple of hours. We can’t get a dolly out, but we can cover it perfectly with one really good zoom shot that tells the story.
Were there any examples, especially of these gorgeous zooms, that informed you specifically Frank?
F: Definitely what Brook brought up, all the Gordon Willis stuff. When I first got into cinematography, I was obsessed with all his films. That’s just always in my head. Later in life, my friend introduced me to Robert Altman and that’s where I get the more character and comedy leanings. The Long Goodbye for example, Elliot Gould’s walking through the house and then you zoom in and he’s talking, but it centres on the cat food can. It’s funny, but also super stylish in a way that tells the story of what you need to know in one shot. For us, in this documentary setting, it’s the key that we figured out would unlock a lot of things. Harold and Maude is also a great one too for some super impressive, big zooms.
This season, you’ve had a chance to shoot some of the promos which are done very imaginatively, how has that been?
F: The car park one was really cool as we didn’t set out to do that! We were shooting Mulaney’s car that he got for the show, that Brook found on Facebook Marketplace, and it barely runs. They get us to do these promos for Netflix, typically there’s no plan. All they expect is that we shoot Mulaney against a wall, but we inherently don’t want to do that.
B: We can’t not try to make All the President’s Men basically. We have a weird defect!
F: For the parking garage one, we were supposed to shoot Mulaney and Richard Kind walking to the garage, but it was raining so we thought we’d actually go inside. We were then just like “you guys go over there, we’ll wait over here far away.”
B: Yeah so it feels like there is a secret happening…
Like the rusty AC machine out your window?
B: Exactly! If you see two silhouettes in a garage, you know there is something going on…
F: Cut to when you finally see their faces, we’re on the end of the 250mm lens with doublers, so we’re going a bit Tony Scott with it. Another promo features a briefcase on the sidewalk and Richard Kind switches it out, I don’t even know why there were two briefcases!
B: I thought it would be cool because you want to do a pass off and I don’t want to introduce another character! The props guy was also like “why do I have two matching briefcases?!”
F: In the edit, it just wasn’t feeling right so we ended up colouring it like The Limey to make it work.
B: Yeah that’s a good point, Mulaney at the beginning asked us if we’d ever seen The Limey, which I think is his favourite movie, and I was like “yeah, you’re talking to the right guy!” We’re so lucky he’s so down to get weird and let us play and be strange.
F: There’s no script for anything – it’s so much fun.
It must be a nice working environment to be allowed to experiment and have these spontaneous moments.
B: Honestly, I think if we had a script for these promos, I don’t think it would be interesting to the viewer or John. He wants to figure it out in the moment. Which for us is great. We come from going out and trying to make a music video from a piece of paper floating in the street. We’re from different worlds technically, but it’s not so different really.
Can you shed a bit more light on the postcards you do that now include John Mulaney within them and involve interviewing people across America?
F: it’s super chaotic! Before we had one person and we put the camera in front of them and they talked and that was it. But now, with John there, they don’t do what you want them to do! We don’t do it handheld, and we only have one camera, so we’re not following them.
B: we’re very stubborn about that. We’re not doing a handheld two camera thing. We’ve designed a look and we are committed.
F: There’s the fun and games of them walking away from the frame you imagined, do I pan or do I wait for them to come back?…
B: We should shout out our editor at this point, Nick Pezzillo.
F: He’s a monster.
B: When Frank and I met 12 or so years ago, I assisted Nick. He’s a brilliant crafter. He thrives when you don’t give him enough material, that’s where he creates the alchemy. Where we’re in a situation where we’re only using one camera, there’s no coverage, Frank is committing to whatever he does, so he’ll go from a guy to a vent on the ceiling – so guess what – the story is about the vent now! Nick can cash those cheques. We are dependent on someone who can make good on that magic.
F: With the one camera, the zoom, the tripod, you try and listen to what the subjects are saying and time out the perfect line to close, or an object behind the subject that might connect to the story.
Are there any other essential bits of kit you’re using this season?
F: We have a sunset filter!
B: Frank sent me a screenshot of one of Tony Scott’s ACs talking about the alchemy of the filter, so we tried to reverse engineer it and add that to the arsenal! One of the first music videos me and Frank made was for a band called The Operators and it was in the style of All the President’s Men and The Parallax View, zooms of people with briefcases in downtown LA.
F: By the way, those movies don’t even use zooms that much. It just feels that way! Can I touch on the vignettes? We hear a lot about them.
B: A producer one’s referred to them as “Is that meant to happen?”
F: It’s intentional because we are too lazy to do anything about it! No, seriously, it’s intentional because it puts you in a different mindset. It lets you know that this is the serious footage, in a way.
B: It’s acknowledging that the camera is there and that makes it hyperreal in some way. It’s so hard to have a signature, to establish a distinct look. I’ll watch the show on my TV and it will look one way and different on the monitor in the studio. It’s one way where the image can’t be fucked with!
Any final thoughts?
B: This is legitimately the coolest job ever. It feels so warm to do this. Frank is my best friend and my creative partner, we’re so deeply connected it’s so amazing to be able to shred together in this way. I wish it would never end. But it is exhausting, so I don’t mind it ending really!
F: You can’t imagine a better job than driving around shooting fun incredible LA stuff with your best friend. It’s the best thing. It’s not work; it doesn’t count.
B: Don’t put that bit in there!
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Everybody’s Live with John Mulaney is live on Netflix every Thursday at 3:00 BST. Catch up with previously aired episodes now.
