It’s his name and face on the poster, his life story as the premise, but Dave Burd (A.K.A. Lil Dicky) isn’t sure how much he wants FXX’s Dave to feel like an autobiography. “I can just tell you that if I limited it to just absolute facts of my life, I think it’d be an unnecessary limitation to creativity,” he says to Consequence on the eve of the Season 3 premiere. “And if I eliminated truths from my life, it would be less authentic. So I think the show is at its best when it’s being its most truthful, which I think it usually is. Truth is the best engine of art to me.”
Whether it’s a subjective or objective glimpse into Burd’s life, the music-driven comedy goes big with its two-part Season 3 premiere: After the first episode showcases the rapper on tour with his entourage, Episode 2, “Harrison Ave.,” focuses on the making of a music video set in Dave’s hometown of Pittsburgh, all set to one consistent beat — a new original Lil Dicky track.
“That song was made independent of the show, and I loved it. That’s one of the best songs I’ve ever made,” Burd says of the song which anchors the episode. “I love the music, I love the beat, I love the storytelling. I think that is a classic song of mine. And I’m happy that it got a real showcase in the show. It’s easy to look at it, when you’re watching the show, and forget that it’s a real song, you know? But it is.”
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“Harrison Ave.” features the music video in progress over the course of a long day, while also showing the behind-the-scenes chaos involved in its making, using breathless long takes. “All three seasons, we really have talked about making a show where we create a music video,” Burd says. “We’ve been on sets before, but we’ve never actually shown the making of a video. And the whole season’s kind of anchored around this idea of me looking for love, and we really wanted to provide the origin story of me romantically. So the song does a lot of heavy lifting for the season, as far as setting the table for why I am the way I am, and how a music video gets made.”
Because of those afore-mentioned long takes, Burd notes, “Harrison Ave.” was “really high risk,” production-wise. “That episode’s so outside of the norm of what a typical Dave episode is,” he says. “I think the more I make the show, the more risky I’m getting as far as, like, ‘Let’s try something outside of our comfort zone.’ I think Episode 9 of Season 2 [‘Enlightened Dave’] inspired a lot of confidence for me to do that, because that episode is totally different than the one we’re talking about now. But it really was outside of our comfort zone as a show, and it’s probably my favorite episode of the series so far.”
As he continues, “That just gave me a lot of confidence to [ask] what other risks should I take this season? And the music video one was a risk because I think a lot of other shows or movies that do these long one-take-esque type things have a ton of rehearsal time, and we didn’t. We really were figuring that out, like, the morning of, and it could have all flopped and failed. All that has to happen is one person trips, and a whole three minutes of the show gets ruined. There’s literally no room for error. Everyone has to be so alert and on their cue, on their mark — it’s so choreographed. But we did it, and I’m so proud of it.”
Dave (FXX)