Archer’s Adam Reed stumbles into VIFF industry

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      It was in 2009 that a long-time Adult Swim staffer (Sealab 2021, Frisky Dingo) named Adam Reed created an animated show about a foul-mouthed spy with a mother who eerily resembles Lucille Bluth from Arrested Development. By all accounts, not a whole lot was expected from the project, which aired on FX. The first season started slowly and put the program on the verge of cancellation. Then, a funny thing happened: people realized karate really is “the Dane Cook of martial arts”, to pull just one great line from Reed’s infinitely quotable work.

      Today, Archer is a cult hit, earning a “Popular” designation on Netflix (the streaming site doesn’t release data, so that’s the best we can do in terms of statistics) and generally being that show that your friends won’t stop talking about.

      Reed, speaking in Vancouver as part of the VIFF Industry Conference on Friday (October 3), is somewhat flabbergasted by his own success. After all, this is a guy who got started in television getting blasted on Cartoon Network voicing a cowboy hand puppet (for High Noon Toons ).

      “I don’t know what they’ll ask me,” says Reed, talking to the Straight from Atlanta, Georgia, about his upcoming local appearance. “Hopefully, I won’t just sound like an idiot, because I don’t know too much of how everything works. I’m sort of blindly stumbling along in the industry.”

      A North Carolina native with a friendly southern drawl, Reed talks about the way his career started (his sister got him a job at Turner Broadcasting, which kept snowballing into different opportunities) and the cast of Archer (including SNL’s Chris Parnell and the hilarious Jessica Walter, basically reprising her role as Lucille Bluth) with an earnestness that makes it quite apparent he actually believes himself to be the luckiest guy alive.

      There’s more to it than that, though, as Reed learned how to push his material around a changing entertainment landscape. “It’s changed so much that they used to tell us, ‘Hey, you know, you have to move to Los Angeles,’” Reed recalls. “But you don’t have to do that anymore, and YouTube has just changed the game so much. I think if somebody has a project, just start making films and if they’re good enough, somebody’s going to find them. The networks are watching YouTube as well.”

      You hear a lot of creative types warning young people not to go into the industry. Major in business, they say. Reed is not one of those people. “Yeah, it’s a great job!” he exclaims. “I haven’t worn a suit to work in 25 years. So that’s good. That’s the biggest plus there is. And it’s just been so incredible throughout the whole run of Archer to go to Comic-Con or Dragon Con and see people dressed as Archer characters or see people with Archer tattoos. It’s amazing. Sometimes it’s like, ‘Wow, what have we done? What have we done here that now somebody has got a tattoo of Krieger?’ ”

      The VIFF Industry Conference runs Wednesday to Saturday (October 1 to 4). More information is at www.viff.org/.

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