Let’s say you keep having these reoccurring nightmares of killer clowns and it’s keeping you up at night. You could go to a therapist, but you don’t have the time or patience to get to the root of the problem by “talking about it.” Instead, you choose to go undergo an experimental and dangerous new procedure that claims to be able to solve all your issues immediately. That’s basically the premise of Adult Swim’s newest show, Dream Corp LLC, which premieres Sunday, Oct. 23, at 11:45 EDT.
At New York Comic Con, iDigitalTimes sat down with Daniel Stessen, the creator of Dream Corp LLC , and actors Stephen Merchant, Jon Gries and Nick Rutherford.
What The Hell Is Dream Corp LLC ?
“Dream Corp LLC is a psychedelic comedy about a dream therapist in a rundown dream therapy facility, who can walk through your dreams and lead you to the route of the issue that you come to therapy for and rewire it right there,” said Stessen. Going to a normal therapist could take years to get to the route of the issue, while at Dream Corp you only need one visit.
Dream Corp LLC will follow a “narrative continuum that does carry the show,” said Gries, who plays Dr. Roberts, an absent-minded scientist who’s trying to get his dream technology accepted by the rest of the world.
“We are still trying to get our company recognized, we are working in a strip mall, our backing and financiers left us for greener pastures, which make money, and we are still trying to do that.”
Dream Corp LLC uses rotoscope, an animation technique where live actors are filmed and then frame by frame, painted over. Actors on the show perform “in a raw space in a room and there are grid markers on the floor, but the film crew are right there,” Gries said. “The cameramen are on film when we are taping in those sequences, and they are just animated out.”
According to Rutherford, who play’s Patient 88, a client of Dream Corp LLC who quickly joins the team, there’s no difference between regular acting and performing for a rotoscope. Well, except for having to act in some really ridiculous situations. “You look down and you're on top of a hot air balloon and you're falling, the raw footage is hilarious.”
There are a ton of liberties the actors are allowed to take working inside a dream, where the rules of the real world don’t apply. At one moment you could be a baby suckling on a man’s teet and then the next be a child with the face of Nicholas Cage, the only limit is how creative you can be. “Because it’s a dream that continuity or that fluidity of a thought process or a motivation gets derailed very quickly, especially when you only have 12 minutes,” Gries said.
Dream Corp LLC will have guest stars coming in to get their dreams analyzed and fixed by Dr.Roberts and his team. June Squibb comes in to try and quit smoking and ends up in a dream having sex with Dr. Roberts at her high school prom. Even the amazing Liam Neeson makes a cameo, whose dream has a dragon, leopard print dancers and some jelly – try to say that about any other show.
Stessen grew up watching Chris Cunningham, a visual artist who you might remember from those old terrifying PlayStation ads and Stanley Kubrick, director of 2001: A Space Odyssey and one of the most influential directors of all time.
“I love Kubrick, we went for a broken Kubrick feel.”
T.E.R.R.Y The Robot And Stephen Merchant
It’s no coincidence that Stephen Merchant is playing T.E.R.R.Y, the robot on DreamCorp LLC, the mechanical brains who’s going to be making a lot of jokes at the patient’s expense. Stessen “took specific liberties to borrow from what (Merchant) had already created so brilliantly and tried to use those characters as examples.” One of Merchant’s best roles is Wheatley, the dumb witted, maniacal one-eyed robot from the video game Portal 2 . T.E.R.R.Y is a lot less evil than Wheatley, but has just as strong of a sarcastic wit.
Merchant came on board after Stessen had developed the idea for the show, but still wanted to flesh it out.
“(Stessen) already had this amazing idea for the universe and the characters and that incredible visual sense he’s got that he’s developed over the years as a video music director,” Merchant said. “All I did was help him take this unwieldy idea that he had and try to make it more accessible for the viewer.”
There’s a ton of weird stuff that happens in the dreams on the show – this is Adult Swim we are talking about here. Having a surreal show discussing the metaphysical aspects of dreams isn’t really a stretch for the channel that brought us talking meatballs, a Jonny Quest homage and a murderous dog that prays to Satan .
Be sure to check out Dream Corp LLC on Adult Swim, which premieres Sunday, Oct. 23, at 11:45 EDT.
