I came to NYU in 1987 from Cleveland, not really having more direction in life than wanting to be in the same city as Woody Allen, Saturday Night Live and the Muppets. By the middle of my 2nd year, I was a member of a sketch comedy troupe called The New Group. I was so blown away by the other people in the group. I thought they were the funniest people I’d ever met, and decided I wanted to work with them indefinitely.
By the age of 21 my dreams of being on SNL had been supplanted by wanting to get our OWN series – which somehow, we did. Now renamed The State, the eleven of us were given cameras and editing equipment and we ran around making jokes and having fun. The State MTV series was the launching pad for the eleven of us to continue on to write and direct and act in movies and TV together. We’ve been doing it for over twenty years. That’s only eight years less than R.E.M. (I’m the Michael Stipe of The State, only a little less bald and a little less gay.)
Now after years of ridiculous red tape, you can finally get The State on DVD. We busted our asses on this set – we did commentary on every episode, found tons of extras, promos, interviews, unused sketches, etc etc. The set has been getting amazingly glowing reviews, but who cares what the critics think? Honestly if even half of the people in this country bought the DVD set, then we’d sell 152 million copies, which isn’t half bad.
Bout damn time.
I can’t tell you how happy I am that the series is finally on DVD. You guys hit the air the same time I went away to college, and The State always immediately takes me back to that time and place. Watching all of your careers now just makes me swell with pride; every time a new project comes out, I smile a little smile and think to myself “I thought these guys were brilliant first”. It’s the one bit of indie rock pretension I ever allow myself.
Anyway, enough fanboy rambling. Congrats again on getting the series out, and continued success.
A bunch of friends and I got together last night and watched Season 1, then watched some of Season 1 w/ commentary.
Man, it felt good.
MUCH better than the *very* grainy versions grabbed off bit torrent years ago. But it was SO sad to not have music. I totally understand and appreciate the valiant effort it was to replace it, but… A lot of them still worked (Barely noticed that November Rain wasn’t in “Slash”), but “Pants” just didn’t feel right anymore without the original “Cannonball” (a no music / riff track option would be cool for these sketches so that fans could edit them back in).
STILL, thank you for all the great work getting around this. I am going to be very happy for days.
Quick question: Was the Laurie Anderson song really cheap to keep in, so MTV said “sure” to that one?
Thanks again.
Congrats David! You guys finally got the show out of the MTV vaults!
Oh what a good week I’m having. My copy of The State showed up dreary and early this morning, conveniently 12 hours after the premiere of Michael and Michael Have Issues.
Oh and I finally got around to ordering my copy of Role Models too.
Hope you enjoy whatever royalty money you just got from me.