Ilana Glazer on why 'Time Traveling Bong' is 'f*cking stupid' and 'weed is magical'
NEW YORK CITY -- Sometimes comedy is so dumb it's actually smart.
Just ask Ilana Glazer, the co-star and co-creator of upcoming miniseries Time Traveling Bong, who chatted with an audience about her latest project's silly, but fun premise after a Tribeca Film Festival screening.
“Time Traveling Bong is so fu*cking stupid," she says with a laugh. "But I think it is so good and I love it so much that I’m like 'it’s smart.'"
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The Broad City star, along with co-creators Lucia Aniello and Paul W. Downs (who also stars in the project), were in town to promote the upcoming series about a pair of cousins who discover, what else, a time traveling bong that takes them on a bizarre journey.
"We are calling this Comedy Central's OJ," she jokes, comparing it the FX drama The People vs. OJ Simpson: American Crime Story.
The miniseries, which will premiere on April 20, was born out of a sketch Glazer and Downs did back in 2012. It was semi-inspired by an old college professor of Glazer's, she said, who mentioned that going back in time to New York in the 1800s would be too disgusting.
"If you went back to that time you would not be able to live because it would stank so hard," she said.
“Imagine if you were stoned and experiencing that," Downs added. "It would be so intense."
But they couldn't let go of the idea, noodling on it and coming up with more time travel ideas.
In the miniseries, Glazer and Downs play Sharee and Jeff, bouncing around from Massachusetts in the 1600s to the 1960s. It's a hilarious journey that also touches on American history without running into historical figures all the time, à la Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, Downs says.
Some of those historical figure ideas were cut out, including one about accidentally breaking up a young Bill and Hillary Clinton.
“They encounter a young Bill Clinton who’s like, 'I smell weed!' Aniello recalls of the idea. "So they go to his dorm room and they get him really high. He accidentally forgets that he has, I think, it’s like his first date with Hillary, so she comes by and she’s not, like, pissed. She’s like 'oh, you’re not for me,'" Downs says.
“Comedy Central was like ‘Enough!’” Glazer adds, perhaps because Clinton was just featured on an episode of Broad City.
Some of the other ideas they chose not to explore included "Holocaust stuff," Ilana says. Downs rattles off a few other subplots they eventually nixed.
"What if we made Beethoven deaf?” Downs says. “We talked about starting the Great Chicago Fire.”
"What if we made Beethoven deaf?” Downs says. “We talked about starting the Great Chicago Fire.”
Though they shied away from historical figures, there is a pretty lengthy subplot about Michael Jackson that was actually pitched by Broad City star Abbi Jacobson, Downs says.
They also get into touchy subjects, like slavery and sexism. It was imperative for them to be "politically correct" and make sure they didn't "alienate anyone," Downs says, but it didn't keep them from creating humor in certain situations, so long as it was "well thought out."
“If you actually are giving it thought and consideration and also trying to make it funny ... anything can be material because it’s important to satirize things," he says.
Earlier in the chat, Aniello makes it clear they wanted to show the realistic downside of time traveling.
"If you are a woman who was to time travel or anybody essentially that is not a white man, you are probably not going to have the best time," she says.
"These characters, Jeff and Sharee, are, like, useless white people," Glazer adds.
“We wanted to put the characters on both the right and wrong side of history and have them grow in some way," Downs says.
As for why stoners in particular make for good television, here's Glazer's simple answer: "Weed is magical."
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Yohana Desta was the senior film reporter for Mashable. She is a Northern Virginia native and an American University grad. She enjoys carefully curating her Instagram account and can often be found reading books, going to concerts, watching movies and learning way too much about pop culture.
