So said Ilana Glazer said at the Tribeca Film Festival premiere of “Time Traveling Bong.” The three-part Comedy Central miniseries takes that statement literally: Two cousins, Sharee (Glazer) and Jeff (Paul W. Downs) find a mysterious bong that allows them to travel to different time periods whenever they smoke up. It’s a bulletproof premise, and Glazer says it was born out of a (stoned) conversation about “old New York, before the sewer system was invented and it was so fucking disgusting” and how terrible it would be to go back to that time period.
“Imagine if you were stoned and experiencing that,” Downs added. “It would be so intense. It would be horrible.” From there, they made a one-off video and, as they kept hanging out together, they kept having more and more time travel ideas. According to director Lucia Aniello, eventually “it got to a point where we were like, let’s see what we can do with this because it feels like there’s a lot of fun stuff we’d love to explore.”
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Sharee herself is far from Glazer’s “Broad City” character — and not just because of the stick straight hair that is jarring to see on Glazer. Sharee lacks the confidence of Ilana, isn’t as clever and at first isn’t even into the idea of time traveling while high. On “Broad City,” Ilana would certainly be game.
But this isn’t “Broad City,” though the high absurdity is certainly familiar. Instead, it’s essentially a 70-minute movie, one that was shot in 12 days and that went from pre- to post-production in just three months. It’s “prestige comedy,” Glazer said. “It’s Comedy Central’s ‘O.J.,’” she added, referring to FX’s hit series “The People vs. O.J. Simpson.” (She is also quickly added, “‘Time Traveling Bong’ is so fucking stupid.”)
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What’s Netflix’s “People v. O.J. Simpson”? Well, “Special Correspondents” might be as close as they come.
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