I’m a big fan of discomfort humor, the anti-comedic move of making a situation so painfully unpleasant all you can do is laugh it off. It’s the only kind of humor I experience in my day-to-day life, though it can be hard to find in the wild. The excruciatingly stiff and stripped-down Funny or Die talk show Between Two Ferns was a great source of that style of humor for me as a teenager, standing along side other internet talk show The Michael Showalter Showalter in amounts of sheer unpleasantness that you just had to chuckle while the rest of your body curled into itself.
I haven’t thought about either show in some time, though, with Nathan for You as the only current staple of deep cringe humor on my radar (when the show’s not in some long gap between seasons). So, it was a pretty cool surprise to see that Netflix will be releasing a Between Two Ferns movie with Zack Galifianakis and “Celebrities You’ve Heard of.”
By way of a fittingly stripped-down poster you can view below, Netflix not only announced the film but also that it will hit the streaming service on September 20. Whatever a feature-length adaptation about a show in which Glifianakis tries really hard to touch Michael Cera’s leg will look like remains a mystery, but I’m excited to have some very high quality cringe to look forward to.
