Dan Harmon
Daniel James Harmon (born January 3, 1973) is an American screenwriter and producer.[1] He is best known as the creator and producer of the NBC and Yahoo! Screen sitcom Community (2009–2015), creator and host of the comedy podcast Harmontown (2012–2019), co-creator of the Adult Swim animated sitcom Rick and Morty (2013–present) and its subsequent franchise along with Justin Roiland, and co-founder of the alternative television network and website Channel 101 along with Rob Schrab.
Dan Harmon
- Writer
- producer
- actor
1996–present
Early life[edit]
Daniel James Harmon[2] was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on January 3, 1973. He graduated from Brown Deer High School in Brown Deer, Wisconsin, and attended Marquette University. He briefly attended Glendale Community College in Glendale, California, an experience which would later form the basis of his sitcom Community.[3]
Writing style[edit]
"Story circle" technique[edit]
Harmon adapted the hero's journey, a well-known storytelling framework, for use in television; he calls this technique the "story circle".[26] He began developing the technique while stuck on a screenplay in the late 1990s, and wanted to codify the storytelling process to unveil the "structure" that powers movies and TV shows. He said, "I was thinking, there must be some symmetry to this. Some simplicity."[26] While working on Channel 101, he found that many of the directors he was working with claimed that they were unable to write plots for television shows.[27] This prompted him to simplify Joseph Campbell's structure of the hero's journey into a circular eight-step process that would reliably produce coherent stories.
Awards[edit]
In July 2009, Harmon was nominated in two Emmy categories for his part in writing the 81st Academy Awards telecast: Outstanding Writing for a Variety Special and Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics, the latter of which he was awarded for "Hugh Jackman Opening Number" at the 61st Primetime Emmy Awards.
In 2018 and 2020, Harmon won the Emmy for "Outstanding Animated Program" as the executive producer of Rick and Morty.[35]
He was also nominated with Chris McKenna for a Hugo award for writing the Community episode, "Remedial Chaos Theory".[36]
Personal life[edit]
In 2011, while writing the character Abed for Community, Harmon realized through researching the character's traits that he might have Asperger syndrome. He consulted a doctor about it and concluded that he himself is on the spectrum.[37][26] On a podcast hosted by Kevin Pollak, he said, "I know I'm not normal, but I think the important thing is that [...] I started to discover that I had a lot more in common with Abed than I did with Jeff."[38]
Harmon proposed to his girlfriend Erin McGathy in December 2013,[39] and they were married in November 2014.[40] They announced they were divorcing in October 2015.[41] In 2016, Harmon started dating TV writer Cody Heller.[42] In January 2019, Heller proposed to Harmon and the couple are now engaged.[43] Heller adapted a real-life experience with Harmon into the TV series Dummy, starring Anna Kendrick as Heller and Donal Logue as Harmon.[44]
Controversies[edit]
Sexual misconduct[edit]
On January 2, 2018, Harmon alluded to sexual misconduct from himself towards other people. Megan Ganz, a writer who worked with him on Community, named herself as a victim of his misconduct. In response to his apology and willingness to make things right, Ganz said that while she appreciated his gestures, she was not yet ready to forgive him.[45]
After the exchange, he made a lengthy apology on his podcast Harmontown and went into detail about his wrongdoings, which included making advances on Ganz and then mistreating her after she turned him down. Ganz ultimately accepted his apology; she said that she felt vindicated by his admission, called it a "masterclass in how to apologize", and urged her Twitter followers to listen to it.[46][47]
Baby doll video[edit]
In July 2018, Harmon received criticism when a comedy skit from 2009 resurfaced. The video, titled "Daryl", was intended to be a parody of Dexter and featured Harmon acting out raping a baby (which, in the video, was a doll).
Harmon apologized for the video and said, "In 2009, I made a 'pilot' which strove to parody the series Dexter and only succeeded in offending. I quickly realized the content was way too distasteful and took the video down immediately. Nobody should ever have to see what you saw and for that, I sincerely apologize."[48] Adult Swim released a statement criticizing the video, but appeared to be satisfied with Harmon's apology.[49]
Multiple sources associated Harmon's decision to delete his Twitter account with the backlash.[48][50][51] However, on an episode of Harmontown in February 2019, he revealed that he had deleted his Twitter account prior to the backlash in response to Disney's firing of James Gunn for jokes that Gunn had made on Twitter between 2008 and 2012.