'Documentary Now!': Bill Hader and Fred Armisen Get Non-Fictional
Saturday Night Live veterans Bill Hader and Fred Armisen are joining forces to prove that fact is funnier than fiction. The duo’s six-episode IFC series Documentary Now! will send-up some of the revered non-fiction series from cinema history, including Errol Morris’s groundbreaking 1987 true crime film, The Thin Blue Line and the Maysles brothers’ 1975 cult classic Grey Gardens. This just-released trailer also indicates that they’ll be going all the way back to the origins of the documentary form, Robert Flaherty’s 1922 silent epic, Nanook of the North.
A self-confessed movie buff, (check out his Top 10 favorite Criterion Collection DVDs, which winds up being more of a Top 20), Hader is clearly in his element poking fun at documentary conventions and recreating fictional versions of famous non-fiction scenes. Meanwhile, Armisen has apparently been able to call upon the expansive guest star rolodex that he uses for his other IFC series, Portlandia. Jack Black, Aidy Bryant, and John Slattery are among the notables making cameo appearances. If Hader and Armisen want to really get all meta about it, the season finale should be a documentary about the making of Documentary Now!
Documentary Now! premieres Aug. 20 at 10 p.m. on IFC.