RYAN BARGER

Last Week Tonight made this parody of a corporate DuPont video that’s a little more straightforward about the damage that Teflon and other PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) can do. Basically, they’re toxic chemicals and they are in literally everything, so I guess we’re all screwed.

I’m pretty sure the original DuPont spot was directed by Errol Morris. I’m a huge fan!

Editor: Ryan Barger

Director: Chris Werner

Featuring: Danny DeVito

International sandwich chain Subway engages in a lot of questionable business practices. But one thing they’re undeniably good at is making Korean sandwich dramas. So Last Week Tonight decided to make our own K-Drama that is a little more honest about how Subway really operates.

This one was a little tougher than usual because I do not speak Korean!

Editor: Ryan Barger

Director: Chris Werner

Last Week Tonight produced this parody of trucking reality shows that highlights the awful and unfair working conditions in the trucking industry.

I played one of the two dispatchers who are inexplicably well-versed in Hamlet at around 2:30 in the clip. We did a whole improv riff about the two of them moving to LA and following their dreams of acting, but we had to cut it for time.

Editor: Ryan Barger

Director: Chris Werner

Featuring: Rob Cordry, Christopher McDonald, Rob Riggle

I made this short film about a father who buys a pet hamster for his daughter. When the hamster unexpectedly dies and she starts asking hard questions about life and death, things quickly spiral out of control.

The scene where I give the hamster CPR actually happened; I tried doing that as a child when my hamster died. It didn’t work then either.

Writer / Director: Ryan Barger

DP: Jonathan Furmanski

Featuring: Aaralyn Anderson, Lance Henriksen

Official Selections: Ashland Film Festival, Nitehawk Shorts Film Festival, Vimeo Staff Pick

One of my favorite parts of working at Last Week Tonight is doing these interstitial And Now segments. The show can get pretty serious, so it’s nice to be able to make something that’s just incredibly stupid and funny every week. Plus, the EPs let us get pretty weird with them sometimes! These are a couple of my favorites from the past few years.

I wrote this song and made a video for it about a lonely vampire who takes a trip to the beach during a solar eclipse. He does all kinds of beach stuff and makes friends with a giant sea turtle. Why? I don’t know man. Do you know why you do things?

Writer / Director: Ryan Barger

DP: Sarah Kinney

After John is confronted by Adam Driver for his violent sexual obsession bordering on harassment, he gets up and shows the audience around the White Void where he stayed during quarantine. Finally, he blows up the year 2020. A lot of people thought the explosion was composited somehow, but it wasn’t! Afterwards, John said it felt “very hot.”

Editor: Ryan Barger

Director: Christopher Werner

Nominated for a 2021 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Picture Editing for Variety Programming.

After blowing up the year 2020, John returned to the White Void only to discover it had actually been a sentient being all along! However we also discovered The Void kind of hated John and wanted him to get the hell out of there. The Void popped up over the course of a few episodes to needle John before he left, and eventually even got his own show on HBO (which was abruptly cancelled).

For me, working with H. Jon Benjamin was a real career highlight. He’s just great.

Editor: Ryan Barger

Director: Chris Werner

Animation: Nathan Love

Featuring: H. Jon Benjamin

I edited the musical number Eat Shit, Bob! which was dedicated to Bob Murray, the overly litigious coal baron who unsuccessfully sued Last Week Tonight for defamation. A lot of lawyers got involved and the ACLU even filed an amicus brief saying “Anyone Can Legally Say ‘Eat Shit Bob,’” which is pretty funny for the ACLU.

Editor: Ryan Barger

Director: Christopher Werner

Winner of the 2020 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Picture Editing for Variety Programming

I had the pleasure of editing this feature documentary about WFMU, a one-of-a-kind freeform radio station in New Jersey staffed by a crew of lovable, music-loving weirdos.

Editor: Ryan Barger

Director: Tim K. Smith

I got to work with comedy legend Bobcat Goldthwait on this anthology horror series. You hear the phrase “from the twisted mind of (some guy)” a lot these days, but I think he’s actually earned it.

My wife Katie and I made this music video in our Bushwick apartment over a couple months in 2013. It was a minor viral hit with about half a million total views, and it was eventually selected for the Catdance Film Festival (sponsored by Fresh Step Cat Litter). They held an event during Sundance and flew us out to Park City, Utah which was fun, but kind of embarrassing; we met some cool Sundance people there but when we told them we were there for the cat litter thing they were pretty disappointed.

Writer / Director: Ryan Barger

Co-Director: Katie Akana

Featuring: Hank and Buster

Bill Nye is sick of your shit.

Editor: Ryan Barger

Director: Chris Werner

I cut this trailer for The Wax And The Furious, a fake action movie where Warren G. Harding and a posse of presidential wax statues team up with Armie Hammer to pull off the greatest jockstrap heist of all time. This was before we all found out Armie Hammer was a cannibal sex criminal. Anyway, I ended up winning an Emmy for this and so far they haven’t taken it back because of the whole Armie Hammer thing. Russell Crowe is also in it!

Editor: Ryan Barger

Director: Christopher Werner

Winner of the 2019 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Picture Editing for Variety Programming

This piece was a parody of an old ad for mobile home ownership, which is actually a pretty predatory industry. To get the vintage look, we actually dubbed it to VHS tape through a shitty VCR and then re-digitized the footage. I love how it looks!

Editor: Ryan Barger

Director: Christopher Werner

Featuring: Lauren Adams, Darcy Carden

We made this piece making fun of Chipotle because… well, frankly because it’s easy. But also because, despite their marketing, Chipotle’s food is very unhealthy- and for a brief period in 2016 it was actually poisonous! Personally, I don’t care; I’ll keep eating that garbage.

Editor: Ryan Barger

Director: Chris Werner

Featuring: Andy Daly

Last Week Tonight produced this segment in 2018 about the realities of working for the United States Border Patrol. Things have only gotten better down there since then!

Editor: Ryan Barger

Director: Christopher Werner

Featuring: Will Arnett

Winner of the 2019 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Picture Editing for Variety Programming

This is a movie trailer parody of Spotlight, but the jokes are more about how journalism has been degraded in the internet age and less about the child sex abuse that the Catholic Church covered up for decades.

Editor: Ryan Barger

Featuring: Bobby Cannavale, Rose Byrne, Jason Sudeikis, Bryan Doyle Murray, and Mahershala Ali

Nominated for a 2017 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Picture Editing for Variety Programming.

John sat down for an interview with legal scholar Anita Hill for a conversation about how to reduce and hopefully end sexual harassment.

Editor: Ryan Barger

Monica Lewinsky sat down for a conversation about her experience being unfairly publicly shamed. She went through a lot at a very young age, but she got through it all- a truly impressive life story.

Editor: Ryan Barger

This is John's interview with Edward Snowden. It was a pretty big deal at the time since it seemed like it might be illegal for us to talk to someone accused of treason, but now that’s like half of Congress.

Editor: Ryan Barger

Nominated for a 2016 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Picture Editing for Variety Programming.

David Rees is a strange and brilliant guy. His book How to Sharpen Pencils is a wonderful mix of history, how-to manual, and deeply personal autobiography. In Going Deep, he takes the same approach to a number of seemingly mundane subjects- say digging a hole, or swatting a fly- and spins it out into an endlessly complex but entertaining investigation into the nature of reality.

This is a branded content piece for Dick’s Sporting Goods that aired on ESPN. The series follows a high school football team as they train for their upcoming season, in a style similar to HBO’s Hard Knocks.

I really love sports documentaries; I even wrote a spec script for an ESPN 30 for 30 about Air Bud! You can read it here.

Fat Guy Stuck In Internet was Adult Swim’s first fully live action show, and my first job working in comedy. I was the VFX Supervisor- a job I’d never done before- for a show that was 90% shot on green screen. I also got to cut a few scenes. It was an all-consuming job for a few months and it was exhausting, but I look back on the experience very fondly. Even though the show only lasted a season I think it holds up pretty well. You can watch all the episodes online here.

Director: Ryan McFaul

Creators: John Gemberling and Curtis Gwinn