Party Monster: Scratching the Surface

Hamm texted, "You people are monsters"

Party Monster: Scratching the Surface is the third episode of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt's fourth season. Netflix also filed it as a separate special, which is why catalogs treat the 33-minute mockumentary as a movie. latestnetflix.com's take is that Wikipedia's episode list dates it to May 30, 2018, credits Rhys Thomas as director and Meredith Scardino as writer, and notes the standalone listing.The plot, in one line, is DJ Fingablast hunting a wedding DJ and landing on his childhood hero, DJ Slizzard, the prison name for Reverend Richard Wayne Gary Wayne.,

Tina Fey had wanted a documentary defense of the Reverend as background texture. Once the writers made it a whole episode, Scardino could write unreliable narration. Robert Carlock told TV Guide the format let them invent people "who take the Reverend's side and who want to present a half-hour of documentary as a defense of him." Derek Klena, the Broadway actor who had played Jacqueline's dog-masseur Douglas and then DJ Fingablast on a Mets party cruise, became the camera. Carlock compared bringing him back to how he and Fey reused Tituss Burgess on 30 Rock. Scardino's shorter version: a guy named DJ Fingablast is that guy.

Thomas came from Documentary Now!. He told the Kimmy crew to break their professional habits and shoot like amateurs who did not know the next beat. Some scenes were filmed by the actors. Some were shot on Thomas's own iPhone. He said jokes that would play with cameras on Jon Hamm, Bobby Moynihan, and Klena at once had to be restaged, because a real documentary would not cover everyone. The Reverend clocks the crew and starts performing innocence. Hamm plays a criminal playing a wrongly accused man.

The Big Date tape

The clip of young Reverend Wayne losing a dating show is not a pastiche. It is Hamm, age 25, on The Big Date in 1996, talking about "fabulous food," "fabulous conversation," and a "fabulous foot massage for an evening of total fabulosity." Decider and Digital Spy both reported that producers changed the name tag to Richard and left his dialogue intact. Carlock told TV Guide he did not even mention the clip to Hamm first. They cleared it, sent the rewritten script, and Hamm texted, "You people are monsters." He stayed on board. Decider notes ADR that addresses him as Richard. In the episode, that rejection becomes the Reverend's origin story for kidnapping women.,,

Aidy Bryant appears as Tabby Bobatti. Moynihan plays Fran Dodd of the Innocence Broject. Ellie Kemper is mostly the subject of the smear, then the last shot of her watching the cut. Carlock said the remaining six episodes of season 4 would not bring Fingablast back. "He's touring right now." Scardino added, "He's in Dubai on an island shaped like his face." That is the gossip around a sitcom episode so self-contained that Netflix sold it twice.,