It is difficult for some to imagine a world without YouTube, but with its introduction in the 2000s came about a creative revolution that has changed art, entertainment, and culture as we know them today. While it is a notable thing to become a viral sensation in modern times, it somehow feels different from the early hit videos that permeated culture in the nascent days of the platform, especially with the sheer amount of content being consumed today. With fewer videos to choose from, viral videos felt ubiquitous, most prominently among the younger generations, as they were excitedly shared around and quoted incessantly.
One of the biggest beneficiaries of the new platform was NYU sketch comedy group Derrick Comedy, consisting of Dominic Dierkes, D.C. Pierson, and Donald Glover in front of the camera, and Dan Eckman and Meggie McFadden behind the scenes as director and producer, respectively. With millions of views from videos like Girls Are Not To Be Trusted and National Spelling Bee, the group used their momentum to produce their first feature film, Mystery Team, which debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in 2009. Looking back on the film, it is amazing to see how many familiar faces made their feature debut here, including Aubrey Plaza, Ellie Kemper, Neil Casey, Ben Schwartz, and Bobby Moynihan.
The film has been a cult favorite for years, but it is only now that it is finally getting a proper Blu-Ray release courtesy of the Vestron Video series through Lionsgate Limited. In addition to finally being able to own the film in high definition, the new release comes packed with special features including a new Q&A with the cast, a retrospective documentary, a commentary track, deleted material, and more. To celebrate this new release, director Dan Eckman and star D.C. Pierson stopped by GVN to reflect on their experiences with the film and the joy of returning to it for this second life on physical media.
The following interview has been edited for clarity.
Dillon Gonzales (GVN): It is a true honor to be speaking with you. I’ve been a big fan for a very long time. On the day we are recording this, it is the first day of the Sundance Film Festival, and I know that Mystery Team premiered at Sundance all those years ago. Do you want to give some of your reflections on what it was like for you to premiere at Sundance?
Dan Eckman: Yeah, I mean, it was the most amazing experience ever, and also one that we’ve been talking about recently. Looking back on it now, all these years ago, I, personally, can say that I was so focused on the movie’s future and whether or not we were gonna get a sale on all those things, that I don’t think I fully savored the experience of being a first-time filmmaker at Sundance. They do such an amazing job of making you feel incredible while you’re there, and I felt like an imposter, and looking back, I thought, dude, you should have just enjoyed it more.
It was amazing, and the night of the premiere was incredible. We had some of the most fun times. We all stayed in a place together. We got to see some incredible movies that year as well, but I still feel like I didn’t savor it the way that I should have for a first-time experience like that.
D.C. Pierson: Yeah, I would agree with that. That first night was amazing, and then I think there was something that we all had where it’s, like, your dad watching a football game that’s not going well. It’s like, where, if you frown and furrow your brow, you can somehow affect the outcome that I think, like… We were not able to do that because that’s not how anything works. (laughs)
Dan Eckman: Fortunately! (Laughs)
D.C. Pierson: But, yeah, looking back on it, I don’t know, there’s a quote that, like, Tom Colicchio from Top Chef has about, like, why he and his wife had their wedding even though 9\11 had just happened. Where he said something like, “don’t postpone joy,” and I do think there was a little bit of joy postponing that we all did on our own behalf. Where it was just like, no, fucking enjoy it! You never know when this is gonna happen again. So yeah, I think that’s, in retrospect, a good lesson that we took away from that experience.
I still look back on it incredibly fondly. I’m still very proud of it.
Dan Eckman: I think it would have been in a lot of ways weirder if we had been in our mid twenties and had the full perspective of life to appreciate it, but you know, it still kind of is like, ugh.
GVN: Yeah, that’s fair, and then contrasting with that, on the new Blu-ray, which we are here to talk about, and I’m thrilled is finally coming to Blu-ray, there is a new Q&A from last summer, where you guys got to speak in front of what I assume is a pretty large audience and reunite after all these years in front of passionate fans. I love that it’s on the disc, and there’s a lot of really great stories. How was that for you? After all these years, to maybe have more of that perspective and how the movie has aged, what did you take away from that night?
Dan Eckman: That night, I actually appreciated. D.C., you want to speak to it?
D.C. Pierson: Oh, yeah, I completely agree. It was cool really getting to see, as close as I will ever see the movie, to seeing it with fresh eyes. Because when we watched it a gajillion times in various stages of the process when we were making it, we obviously wrote it, experienced making it, and all that different stuff. We saw it a bunch when we were touring with it, and then getting to see it without having seen it for maybe ten plus years was really, really cool. It’s as close as I’ll ever get to seeing it just as any other person that wasn’t involved in it has been able to see it, and getting to be like, “Oh, I really like this!” Like, as close as I’ll ever get to being not biased.
I think it’s so neat being able to see certain things where it’s like, oh yeah, we would have taken the mystery less seriously or had to put in less detail in, but it’s also kind of fun to see some of the little things that we would do differently now. I don’t know, I just appreciate that, too. It feels like, aw, you guys were trying so hard, that’s great.
Dan Eckman: Yeah, I think we wouldn’t look at it and go, there’s not a wart on this thing, you know?
D.C. Pierson: Totally.
Dan Eckman: But I think that experience was like, you know what? It’s what it was, and for what it was, I am proud of what we did. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t things that we would do differently today, or whatever, but that was a nice experience, yeah.
GVN: Yeah, and I think that, paired with the new documentary that’s on the Blu-ray disc, that’s like a 30-minute documentary, which I really, really enjoyed, just hearing all your different perspectives, and getting a large assortment of the cast and everyone together to reflect on that, I learned a lot about the movie. I think fans will too. I especially think everyone who watches it will agree that the MVP of the production was Meggie [McFadden, producer of Mystery Team and wife of Dan Eckman].
D.C. Pierson: I strongly agree.
GVN: And just seeing that personal touch of your proposal and everything, I think that was a really rewarding part of this new supplemental feature. So, how was it getting back into that headspace after all these years to really dive into the troubled production and everything that went into making this labor of love?
Dan Eckman: It was one of the trippiest things I’ve ever been through, honestly, because while we were being asked to provide the footage and other stuff, it felt like–you know, you have that dream where you’re like, I’m late for class, and you’re like, I haven’t been to school in 20 years! But it was like, I finished making Mystery Team 20 years ago!
But then Jon Mefford put the documentary together, who I thought did a really wonderful job, and it was the first time I’d ever seen anything from the movie that I hadn’t personally edited. The fact that I was involved directly, you know, it showed my proposal to Meggie. It was a really weird and unique experience for me to watch when he first sent it, but it was also very validating because the way that he put the thing together, that was my memory of what it was like–the way that it is in the documentary.
Over the years, I started to question, like, “Did I make that up or not?” And then, to see it, I realized it was fairly accurate to my memory of what happened. Meggie and I have kids now. They’re not gonna see the movie just yet, because they’re three and six, but we’re like, this is your parents’ origin story, you know? It was sweet to me that someone had put that together.
D.C. Pierson: Yeah, it was also such a trip to, like, sensorially remember the movie. You remember the experience. Then, watching the documentary and seeing moments from the behind-the-scenes footage of being like, oh, I remember that. That’s where that set was. Just like weird little sense-memory shit that comes back, and then also I think from a perspective of a much older person now but still spry (chuckles), just looking back at it and going, like, oh yeah, like, you got to spend about a month plus with your four best friends making something you all really believed in.
Golly.
How special is that experience? You know what I mean?
Dan Eckman: It could be a lot worse, honestly, than getting to do that.
D.C. Pierson: Yeah, for sure.
Dan Eckman: I mean, we knew at the time that it was special.
D.C. Pierson: Oh, it was so fun. Yeah, among many other things that it was, it was very fun, but I think, yeah, you appreciate it differently.
GVN: Absolutely, and I’m glad audiences can now get a glimpse of that and see what it was actually like to make the movie.
One thing I noticed while watching the movie this time, and coupled with the documentary, is how impressively shot it is, and the production design, like you talked about, D.C. I know you added a lot of flourishes with some of the production design elements, and Dan, just some of the shots that you were able to accomplish with this first feature, and how you didn’t want to compromise in terms of scale. Just looking back at that, how does your current self feel about the ambition of your younger self and how that eventually ended up on the screen, and what you accomplished?
Dan Eckman: Part of me looks back, and I know that certain things I was trying to solve. Now, older me knows a way that I could have solved it and not compromised the way that I was fearing. So in that way, it’s kind of frustrating for me to see where I know now that there was actually a way to get what I wanted out of that shot without it having to be exactly that way, but I didn’t know that at the time.
I don’t regret pushing as hard as I did to get the shots the way we did because you’re not the first person who’s mentioned that to me, and it does mean a lot to me because it was such a struggle to get them done.
D.C. knows me very well. You know, we’re still super close, yes.
D.C. Pierson: Yeah, no, I think I appreciated Dan’s work at the time, but I really appreciate Dan’s work in retrospect. Just knowing that this did not come easy. I was there. I know that, and I know that there were so many reasons in so many cases to be like, well, we could kind of shift this around and we could do this. That would make it easier to whatever, but we always talk about how film is forever, you know what I mean? So the fact that Dan stood his ground in certain scenarios and was just like, “I really see it this way, I think we can do it, let’s do this a few more times, and we’ll get it.” Then we did, and then we have it forever, is really, really, really important to me. That means a lot to me. I’m still grateful to him.
I think, as far as the art direction stuff for me, I really enjoyed doing it at the time. To me, it’s very, like, what I’ve now realized are kind of my values. Where it’s trying really, really, really hard on something where nobody’s probably ever gonna see a close-up of the back cover of this old-fashioned book about, like, a Depression-era children’s book.
Dan Eckman: That’s some of our favorite stuff, though. That tiny little detail that someone really loves.
D.C. Pierson: And I remember just being in a musty church basement on an old MacBook. It wasn’t old at the time, but, like, doing this little design work and fiddling, scanning it in, and printing it out, and doing whatever, and just being like, oh, I’m so glad I did that for something that doesn’t matter that much. That makes it that much more important to me.
GVN: Absolutely. I think that tactile nature really shines through, and I think that’s what’s really special about this new Blu-ray release. Because it is a collector’s medium, and it is something tangible someone can hold in their hands, and hopefully, in the best quality possible.
So, I guess my final winding-down questions are, what does it mean to you to have this movie resurface now on Blu-ray for people to be able to add to their collections? And what do you hope people take away all these years later from the Mystery Team experience?
Dan Eckman: I feel like it puts a period at the end of the sentence that we were trying to complete back in 2009 and 2010, in a lot of ways, because they had Blu-rays back in 2009. Having lived in a period of time where it’s not just a bunch of unknowns in the movie, I think it makes it coming out now like a different release than it than just a movie that came out, had a bunch of famous people in it at the time, and then came out later on Blu-ray. I hope that people who missed it will have an opportunity to experience it, but at the end of the day, it’s not gonna be for everybody, and that’s okay.
That’s part of what I’ve come to love about it, you know? It’s like you’re a parent. You love your kid in all of its different ways. Right, D.C.?
D.C. Pierson: Yeah, I would agree with that. I’m so incredibly fond of it. It’s such a time capsule for us, and then I also think it’s really meaningful to me that over the years people have expressed to me, and then especially now that it’s coming out, people are getting a chance to talk about it more. It was something meaningful to their friends and them. They would take their friends and show it to them, or they would watch it and quote it. Because we all had stuff like that that we bonded over, and so the idea that we would be that for somebody else is pretty special.
Hopefully, people will…be cool about it! Don’t just, like, subject your friend who doesn’t care to watching a thing they don’t want to watch.
Dan Eckman: No.
D.C. Pierson: But if this is an opportunity for somebody now to do that with their friend or loved one and continue that, then that’s really awesome. I love that.
Dan Eckman: And if that documentary or the Q&A thing somehow sheds some sort of light on what the experience is like for young filmmakers trying to make it happen, that would be cool, too. Because I used to love stuff like that.
Like, honestly, Meggie and I originally bonded when we first started dating, we rented Wet Hot American Summer on DVD, and we watched the making of, which was them all goofing off behind the scenes. They made it sound like it was a tough shoot because there was all this rain, and it was supposed to take place on this one sunny day, and we ate that shit up. It still is, to this day, one of my favorites. The making of that movie is one of my favorite movies alone. That also had a bunch of famous people before they were famous–Bradley Cooper and whatever.
D.C. Pierson: We like to call ourselves the Wet Hot for a new generation that’s now also old. (Laughs)
GVN: Absolutely! (Laughs)
D.C. Pierson: But I do think coming from NYU and being sort of in, hopefully, that Stella tradition, like, the idea that anybody ever mentions this movie in the same breath as Wet Hot is pretty special. We could not have dreamed of more.
Dan Eckman: That alone would be enough for us.
D.C. Pierson: Dayenu.
Dan Eckman: I was about to say it, but then I was like, don’t be too ethnic.
D.C. Pierson: When I do it, it’s just fun.
Dan Eckman: When you do it, it’s a cute thing, but I was like, I don’t know.
GVN: Well, it is a very special movie, and I’m glad everyone’s now getting this new opportunity to view it through a new lens. This is more than enough, but are there any upcoming projects you both want to maybe tease or promote before we end things here?
Dan Eckman: I have a handful of things I’m really excited about, but not that I can promote. What about you, D.C.?
D.C. Pierson: I had my first novel come out shortly after we made Mystery Team, and I found out after the fact that some publicity people with my publisher were mad at me that I didn’t promote the book more when I was trying to promote Mystery Team. We were driving around in a rental car, handing people foam swords, trying to get them to care about our movie in the middle of rural Iowa, so there wasn’t an opportunity, really, to promote something else. I’m more than happy at this moment to just be promoting Mystery Team at this moment. Let’s continue to get the word out about this project. I have a clarity of purpose to that right now that I find really nice. It’s just really exciting to still be talking about this movie.
Mystery Team is currently available to purchase on Blu-Ray exclusively from Lionsgate Limited.
Dillon is most comfortable sitting around in a theatre all day watching both big budget and independent movies.
