by brettmerritt (bio)
Author's disclosure: I have been friends with Lisa for more than 10 years. Our kids are friends. Her husband Chris (also a former MMM contributor) is my friend. We started The Thrillionaires
improv group and continue to work on projects together. However, I am not involved with Pretty Darn Funny
and approached this interview as professionally as I could. Enjoy!
Pretty Darn Funny (aka PDF), for the uninitiated, is a comedy web series about a married, stay-at-home-mom who starts an improv/comedy troupe to bring better entertainment to the people of her community. The series follows Gracie, played by
Lisa Valentine Clark, and her troupe of vastly different characters through the often hilarious challenges of life. The show also features parody videos of pop culture such as mobile apps, Downton Abbey, Footloose, and The Hunger Games. Season one of the award winning series began in April 2012. Season two started airing in August of 2013 and can be viewed
here, or on YouTube
here.
Recently, I interviewed Lisa about her experiences with the series.
brettmerritt:
When you were doing season one of Pretty Darn Funny, did you think there would be a season two?
Lisa Valentine Clark: I really did. When we were writing for it and planning for it we were always moving forward with, "You know in the second season we could do this and in the third season we could do this," so the whole time the producers, Jeff Parkin and Jared Cardon, and I were always talking about how it would be great if this could be something that goes on.
BM:
How do you feel like season two is different from season one?
LVC: For season one, they asked me to play the role of Gracie and I was really excited. As I was preparing for it, I realized I had a lot in common with the character. So, they had me come to the writer meetings and contribute. And that was great because I had been wanting to write more sketch comedy. And, at that time, the writing of the series was set up as a class at BYU and the writing was done by a group of student writers and Jeff and Jared would edit. So when they brought me on and I started talking about my experiences with these young kids who weren't mothers, who weren't older than 22 or 23, I gave an entirely different perspective. It was fun. They were really funny and talented too and we had fun working together. So that's how the first season went.
In the second season, we hired writers. I was brought on as an executive producer with Jeff and Jared. That was really exciting for me. That changed my role because before I just had to worry about acting. Producing is an entirely different ball game. I was thrilled, because I love this project so much, to be more involved with the creating and managing of it. Then, we brought on a writing team this time because we had a different budget. So the writing team was made up of Jeff, Jared, and I as well as Adrian Cardon—Jared's wife—and Kacy Faulconer who used to teach writing at BYU, and Tom Quinn. We all are at different stages of parenting, we all have different perspectives, we all have a background in comedic writing, so it worked well. So, the producing and writing approach was different.
BM:
What about the structure of the show? In season one, there's an arc of you coming together as a group. Do we continue the story in season two?
LVC: In the second season, the episodes are more stand-alone thematically and everyone is in a different phase of their life and we explore that. You know, how do women support each other coming from different perspectives? How can we still be there and cheer each other on? The big theme is that we shouldn't take ourselves too seriously and to try to find humor in things.
