A quick glance at the many zooms or dolly shots in HBO’s The Chair Company might conjure memories of paranoid thrillers from the 1970s, like The Conversation or The Parallax View. But watch any longer and you might recognize the star Tim Robinson from his Netflix sketch series, I Think You Should Leave, or see SNL legend Jim Downey blowing bubbles, or discover a version of A Christmas Carol unlike any other.
And that’s the thrill of the comedy-thriller, which pairs director of photography Ashley Connor’s moody, prestige TV cinematography with some of the most absurd gags on television.
Gold Derby spoke with The Chair Company co-creator Robinson and Connor about marrying to two disparate tones into something that found up even funnier because of the mismatch.
Gold Derby: Tim, when did the original idea for The Chair Company come about for you and Zach Kanin?
Tim Robinson: It’s been a long time. We had the idea may three or four years ago. I think we were doing I Think You Should Leave — maybe Season 3 — at the time. When we had a little downtime, we wrote the pilot, and then we shot the pilot.
Was there a concept for the look baked into the idea back when it was just characters and a story?
Robinson: Yeah, when we first started, we didn’t really know, but then as we started writing it and saw how the tone was shaping up and how we thought it should look, we were like watching The Conversation with Gene Hackman. That’s similar in the way that he hears something and spins out in his own way, and people don’t know what he’s talking about. We watched that a ton, but then we just wanted the tone of the show to feel like a real thriller. The thought was that when you get into the comedy moments, those will even hit even harder when you’re playing in this very real, very suspenseful place. When someone pops off with something that could almost fit into I Think You Should Leave, it would feel heightened and more real in this situation, which would make it funnier to us.
Ashley, how was the the show pitched to you when you were first hearing about the concept?
Ashley Connor: Well, I was definitely a fan of Tim and Zach’s, and I got sent the pilot because I knew Andrew DeYoung, who was directing the pilot. We’d been trying to work together on a few things that never lined up, and immediately when I read it, I just loved it so much, and so I made some crazy look book. The Conversation was in there. There was a lot of [William] Friedkin and ’70s and ’80s spy thrillers. To me, I’m not a typical comedy person, per se, but there was something in the container of this man taking the stakes of his life very seriously, who’s willing to risk his well-being, his family — the thing he loves the most — to go down this rabbit hole. When I gave Andy the pitch deck that I made, he was like, “This is exactly how I see it too.” He shared images, and they were in the same world, and so we aligned really quickly. I do a lot of TV and movie, and there’s a lot of fear around the final product and fear of failure. This was such a nice container to play in, because there was no edge. It was like, “Can you take it further? Can you push it harder?” And for me that space becomes more freeing, because I can really confidently make stranger choices.
Robinson: Once we started shooting the pilot were seeing what Ashley and Andy had planned, it was just like “Holy sh-t!” Everything we were inspired by, we were seeing happen and elevate it. Looking at the monitor, the comedy was getting elevated through what Ashley and Andy were doing.
You had the visual references, but what did you learn about that ’70s thriller style once shooting on The Chair Company began?
Connor: I’m not entirely sure what HBO was thinking we were going to give them, but yeah, we just did a lot of dollies, a lot of zooms, a lot of really aggressive coverage. Every camera position and every single dolly move was so important. Budgetarily, we didn’t have every piece of gear in the world, but I find it more creatively freeing to have limitations than if you’re capable of getting any single toy that you want. For me, once I knew what we could and couldn’t do, I just committed extra. With Tim’s style of acting and their style of comedy, everyone’s giving 100% every take, so if my crew was going to go that hard, it was just a really fun place to push people towards and to match the energy of the scenes from a camera perspective.
Tim, as a performer, did The Chair Company feel more rigid compared to I Think You Should Leave because of the stylistic choices?
Robinson: It’s somewhat looser on I Think You Should Leave because we’re shooting three sketches a day sometimes it’s not important that we’re not telling the story as much with the camera as we’re telling the story with the camera on The Chair Company. We do our basic coverage, so that when we get into the edit, we can have moments where the comedy is the most important part in a conversation or scene, but there are scenes where it is a bit more rigid, just the way Ashley’s shooting it and where it’s about what’s happening in this man’s life and less about the comedy.
Was there a sequence that was particularly difficult to shoot?
Connor: I always talk about episode five, just because I feel like it was the culmination. Usually, mid-season, you get an episode where it feels like you’re kind of slowing down, like it’s a little bit softer. I remember reading the episode, and it just was additively getting crazier and crazier, and it just didn’t stop. This episode needs to drag you from start to finish and really just grab you and take you at a click. So once we locked in there, there’s the car stunt work, and again, we’re like a smaller show. To pull off car stunts, to pull off driving sequences, to pull off huge fight scenes, and an explosion takes a lot of effort from a lot of very talented people. It was just really fun to kind of enter that psychotic space, and for me, that’s where I thrive. Take me to the psychosis, and let me loose. There’s the running basement sequence, and I think Tim and I were in the last 45 minutes of the day like, “Run this way. Run this way.” And I’m just sprinting down hallways with a camera.
Robinson: I was so nervous because she’s just hauling through these small hallways where there’s just like a laundry room and then these weird tunnels, and Ashley’s just cooking through there with a camera. Insane! Then you had to do it backwards.
Connor: I had to do it backwards. That’s what The Chair Company has given me. It’s so funny, I did the pilot, then I went and did a very sweet Sally Field-octopus movie, and then wrapped that, and came back to The Chair Company. I went from my softest, most gentlest work to my most aggressive. I love both for different reasons, but for me, it’s just a really fun set to creatively operate on. Whenever I get creatively stuck or I couldn’t see what we were doing, I just do a take where I’d shake the camera the whole entire time. It was barely used, but it would realign the room and re-enliven my operators. You can’t do that on every set, and that’s why I love The Chair Company so much.
Robinson: We were always excited when Ashley would shake the camera.
