From former Simpsons writer Dana Gould, IFC's new series Stan Against Evil is looking to be scary first, and funny second.
This article originally appeared in Den of Geek's New York Comic Con special edition print magazine. You can find the digital copy here.
The path to Stan Against Evil, IFC’s upcoming half-hour series billed as a “horror-comedy,” was predetermined for creator Dana Gould.
Even for a self-deprecating humorist, satire never comes easy. Gould’s been honing his standup skills ever since he was a teenager. When a door to the writers’ room of The Simpsons opened, he became a student of what he calls the “joke math” of the never-ending animated series as he rose through its creative ranks. Over the years, he’s also written a number of comedy pilots that failed to secure a coveted green light – paying his dues until a network let him cash in.
If comedy was a craft Gould worked tirelessly at, then his love for horror could be chalked up as a guilty pleasure. However, growing up in suburban Massachusetts, and being raised next door to a cemetery (his address was 9 Cemetery street), something a little more mysterious was in play.
“When you live on Cemetery Street, maybe you are predisposed to like horror movies,” Gould says. “When I was a kid, I’d much rather watch Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man than the World Series.”
The guy credited as “Dana Ghouled” on The Simpsons“Treehouse of Horror” episodes had ideas on how he could marry his love of horror to his love of comedy. He found his match when a friend, an IFC executive, suggested Gould write a “funny X-Files,” to which he replied, “I already did.”
On November 2, IFC will premiere Gould’s Stan Against Evil. The series follows Stan Miller, a hard-nosed former sheriff who has little choice but to team up with Evie Barrett, the new sheriff, to thwart a plague of demonic creatures that haunt their small New England town. When it comes to the show’s tone, just about everyone on set references the John Landis classic An American Werewolf in London. As for the show’s DNA, it is undoubtedly influenced by boundary-pushing genre television.
“What if I took a show that I wanted to watch, like Dark Shadows, The Night Stalker or Buffy the Vampire Slayer, set in a small town in New England, and just put a character in the middle of it that didn’t belong there. It was sort of an experiment to see if it would work.”
The character at the center of the spookfest is Stan, played by John C. McGinley (Scrubs) who is also a producer, and is based on Gould’s father, whom he describes as “Archie Bunker without the elegance or sophistication.” Gould gave McGinley the space to explore his vision of the character, which the 57-year-old actor says he let come to him.
“Almost everything you need is on the page,” McGinley says. “This isn’t one of those gigs where you have to show up and pull a rabbit out of your ass every time someone calls action. The tone is on the page. It’s a matter of adhering to it and staying authentic.”
McGinley, as well as Gould, made it clear that for the show to work, it needs to be scary first, and funny second.
“My first note when I said yes to this was: When the scary stuff happens, it has to be like the monkeys in the Wizard of Oz,” McGinley says. “They have to make the hair on the back on your neck stand up. So far, that’s the tone we’re achieving.”
Playing alongside Stan is Janet Varney (You’re the Worst), whom Gould specifically had in mind when he wrote part of Evie. The new sheriff in town will have to fight off demons while keeping Stan in check.
“My character has ostensibly come from Boston to sort of cool off from the Big City and of course is met with crazier stuff than she could have possibility have imagined,” Varney says. “My guess is there are definitely moments of ‘why did I come here’ just repeating themselves. You find out pretty quickly what the town is all about.”
The late, great comedian George Carlin, a hero of Gould’s, once said “it’s the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately.” Stan Against Evil is on a mission to blur the line between horror and comedy, even if it feels a little messy sometimes.
“It’s tricky, because comedy and horror are cousins and like cousins, they can hang around together, but they can’t get into bed together,” Gould says with a laugh. “Each requires separate, but equal, suspensions of disbelief. For them to both coexist, you have to strike a very specific tone.”
Stan Against Evil premieres with back-to-back new episodes on November 2 at 10 p.m. on IFC.