The incredibly talented Daniel Stessen created, writes, directs and executive produces the hybrid live-action/rotoscope animated Adult Swim series “DREAM CORP LLC” alongside John Krasinski and Stephen Merchant.
The second season premiered last month and it had already been renewed for a third season before the premiere. The series stars Jon Gries, Nicholas Rutherford, Ahmed Bharoocha, Mark Proksch and Megan Ferguson. If you haven’t seen it yet, this season features some incredible guest stars too including Jimmi Simpson and Rupert Friend, among many others! Check out our exclusive interview below:
The Knockturnal: What inspired you to create Dream Corp LLC?
Daniel Stessen: I believe Dream Corp’s technology will at some point exist. In the early 2010’s I began reading a lot about Bio-Hacking and Transhumanism. Transhumanism, is the belief that the human body was meant to evolve past its current limitations, physically and mentally. That theory immediately struck me as the inevitable future and it had already arrived. I mean, we put contact lenses in our eyes and hearing aids in our ears… It began without us noticing. Reading the works of Futurists like Ray Kurzweil, Aubrey de-Grey, and Natasha Vita-More pulled back the curtain, fueling my ideas of where we as a human race are headed. I became fascinated with Cybernetics, discovering that there are cyborgs living amongst us today. Cyborgs Steve Mann and Neil Harbisson are true influencers of the Dream Corp universe. When I first saw a picture of Steve Mann while he was studying at MIT in the 80’s, fireworks went off in my head. I was like – Yo, this guy is fucking incredible. His passion for evolution exists without ego. He’s a true punk rocker, being arguably the first cyborg. Everyone’s idea of the future is too clean. 2001 Space Odyssey, Star Trek, etc., everything is the finished product. I hadn’t really seen that much of anyone exploring the beta stages of science fiction and the mistakes that were made along the way. I’m interested in the planes that the Wright Brothers crashed, not the one that flew. I want to see Nikola Tesla get shocked. Doctor Roberts fits somewhere in this crew of Bio-Hackers. I love the idea that everyone graduated from MIT, but someone had to finish last… and Doctor Roberts was born. And of course as I dug deeper into the idea of recording and saving dreams, I found that there is a Professor named Jack Gallant who is currently studying this exact subject at Berkeley Brain Imaging Center. Still waiting on my invite from him to visit his lab.
The Knockturnal: What is your collaborative process like with John Krasinski and Stephen Merchant?
Daniel Stessen: So much of the process is about trust. I trust them and they trust me. The truth is that I learn from them every time we are in the same room, whether it’s about work or not. I’m so grateful to be able to lean on two people with so much experience between them. Breaking a story with JK and seeing him light up at new ideas from the writers’ room is amazingly rewarding. So many laughs recording TERRY’s lines with Steve, whether it’s in the studio here in LA or if it’s on Skype from London. Steve and I are both editors as well so we have a special bond when it comes to sharing the early cuts. I get to tell jokes with my best friends and that is all we ever wanted to do.
The Knockturnal: How has it been to work with Adult Swim?
Daniel Stessen: There is an episode this season called “Pickle Trip.” The fact that “Pickle Trip” is going to be played on the actual television and not at some warehouse party downtown where everyone is there for the free beer, or a film festival crowd of 20 people, but on an actual television? That is something that is not lost on me. “Pickle Trip” is the kind of work I’ve been wanting to make since Theater School, and Adult Swim has given me the license to do so. All the notes come directly from the head of the network Mike Lazzo and the head of development Walter Newman. It’s rare that the head of a network takes that much pride creatively. Over the years I have found that Walter and Lazzo’s notes are so spot on and so smart, that I actually look forward to handing in drafts for them to read, or cuts for them to watch. In fact, it was their idea to make “Pickle Trip” its own episode. Originally it was the B story to the episode “What happens in Randy, stays in Randy.”
The Knockturnal: What is it like to juggle: writing, directing and executive producing?
Daniel Stessen: I compartmentalize all too well. I think it comes from being a child of divorce. Started in about 4th grade, don’t tell your mother you’re playing football. Don’t tell your father you’re taking dance classes. Deal. Really, I am an editor at heart, so every part of it for me is about the finished product. I try not to be too precious with the original plan at any stage in any department. Things are constantly evolving when you’re making indie-television. When you take your ego out and put the project first, good things happen.
The Knockturnal: Have you learned anything from wearing so many hats to create the show?
Daniel Stessen: Sleep is important.
The Knockturnal: What can fans expect from the rest of the season?
Daniel Stessen: Plan to spelunk deeper into the iceberg that is Dream Corp LLC.
The Knockturnal: How do you choose your guest stars?
Daniel Stessen: Casting Director Wendy O’Brien and Executive Producer Kahlea Baldwin are a tag team to be reckoned with. How it goes is, KB first starts a vision board the same way a serial killer might. She takes any leads and places them in a stone mortar and pestle. She grinds these leads into a powder and sprinkles them atop a bed of shredded calendars and headshots. Kahlea and Wendy then take this “Side Salad,” as they call it, and toss it with select milks and tinctures. They threw on an old ’45 of “Rhiannon” by Fleetwood Mac and play it at 33 rpm. They say “Taken by the sky,” three times in a row and add the soaking wet Side Salad along with precious metals and celebrity arm hairs into this huge 6” x 6” Le Creuset caldron that sits bubbling in the middle of our office in Los Feliz. The humidity is insane off of that thing but boy does it work. Witchcraft aside, I think what attracts the guest stars is the cast. It’s my opinion that we have the best ensemble on television at the moment.
The Knockturnal: You also worked on animated short The Gold Sparrow. Speak about your passion for animation. What are some of your favorite animated works?
Daniel Stessen: My passion for puppets, animation, and comedy all started around the same time that I started to walk. One of the earliest memories I have is of watching Merrie Melodies, Rabbit Fire aka “Rabbit Season/Duck Season,” on a black and white television in a tiny barber shop in Otisco, NY. Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny were going back and forth during Saturday morning reruns while my father got his hair cut. I was laughing, it was snowing. I had to only be 3 or 4, but holy shit I loved Daffy Duck. I still have that same reaction whenever I see him. He’s perfect. There is a lot of Daffy Duck in Patient 88. Larry Roemer’s Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer was a world I wanted to live in. Both the creature and the robot in Flight of the Navigator made my mind race. Explorers, Return to Oz, The Dark Crystal, and The Never Ending Story I watched on repeat. I’ve never been too interested in reality. As a young teenager if it was on MTV’s Liquid Television, I was all about it. The Head, Aeon Flux, and just so much influential sketch comedy and animation I fell in love with it. Liquid Television for sure turned me on to experimental music at a really early age. I imagine that is what Adult Swim is doing for this generation of kids today. Liquid Television lead me directly into Bjork, Aphex Twin, and every director they have ever worked with. Right out of college I got lucky and an owner of a little video rental place in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, gave me a VHS of the film Waking Life and I watched it on repeat for 3 days while I drank a bottle of absinthe and drew on my walls with markers and crayons. I had a feeling I would work in that medium as I was watching it. Flash forward and the idea for The Gold Sparrow was brought to me by The Brothers Lit, who originally wanted to make it a music video and who happened to be college buddies with Michael P. Garza, lead rotoscope animator on DCLLC. At the time Mike had just worked on A Scanner Darkly and I loved drinking beer with him so I was super excited to collaborate and help take this beautiful craft of rotoscope to a new place. When I got the pilot for Dream Corp I knew I wanted a portion of it to be animated and that I wanted to take Mike with me. I had a feeling if we combined Garza’s powers with those of BEMO Studios we could have something cutting edge on our hands. We are really proud of our evolution and continue to push ourselves and the genre. My passion for puppetry, animation, and comedy all came full circle when I got the call that Jim Henson studios wanted to work with me on creating TERRY. It was the most validating moment in my life next to laughing with my dad at Daffy Duck in that tiny barbershop.
