There’s something delightfully messy and near-catastrophic about Community creator Dan Harmon. Even the people who love him the most think so. “I’m his biggest fan,” Sarah Silverman says, looking into director Neil Berkeley’s camera. “And I fired him.”

Berkeley directed Harmontown, the doc which follows a tumultuous period in the life of the writer and showrunner. Harmon’s life looks like barely organized chaos, and it looks like Harmontown tries to capture that.

In a way, the trailer for Harmontown reminds me a bit of both Comedian, the 2002 doc about Jerry Seinfeld, and 2011’s Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop. Both films captured a pair of funny, obsessive guys honing their craft and reacting to their own work. But this somehow seems a little next-level in terms of the intensity of the man at the center of the documentary.

Nothing seems to be off-limits here, from the on-set battles with Chevy Chase (which ultimately led to the actor departing Community), to Harmon’s own rumored alcoholism (Harmon’s seen swigging a bottle of moonshine he brought to one show). From the looks of it, Harmontown tries to capture the destructive impulse that strikes so many creatives – the same thing that makes someone funny with an outsized personality is what also makes them kind of dangerous to care about. Harmon says in the trailer that he’s always been driven to please his audience, and it’s clear from his work (and personal battles to get it made) that he’s no joking about that.

Harmontown will be in select theaters and available on VOD October 3 from The Orchard Movies.

[Source: The Hollywood Reporter]