‘Hannah Einbinder: Everything Must Go’ Fuses Stand-Up and Cinema as Only ADHD Can
There are certain visual basics we expect comedy specials to have: Multiple angles of the comedian to bounce between and convey energy, a few crowd shots from the stage, maybe a cheeky little intro of the comedian getting ready to walk on from backstage. But that expected structure is not necessarily how Hannah Einbinder’s comedy works and, fittingly, it’s not how the comedian’s special, “Hannah Einbinder: Everything Must Go,” looks, either.
From the stylized drive beneath lit palm trees to the El Rey Theater that opens the special (and that the Los Angeles City Tourism Department should be so lucky to use), Einbinder and director Sandy Honig wanted to craft a fully cinematic space for the special to exist in — and a visual match for the leaps from weed and Adderall to embodying the Earth, sun, and moon to friendship betrayals in the 1930s that only Einbinder’s ADHD brain and her juke-and-run comedic timing can pull off.
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Einbinder told IndieWire that they created a detailed, technical lookbook with references to everything from “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” to Liza Minnelli live recordings to David Lynch to build the vibe of the special — sharp, in-motion, and engaged with the audience beyond the fourth wall but with a kind of grand, warm, throwback theatricality. This is not too dissimilar from the approach “Hacks” takes to Deborah Vance (Jean Smart), if not to Einbinder’s scattershot Ava Daniels on the Max series.
So it’s not surprising that Einbinder and Honig brought over a “Hacks”-heavy team to build “Everything Must Go.” Their film-focused approach inspired cinematographer Adam Bricker to meet the challenge of shooting something that looks as sculpted as each shot does on “Hacks” — but from multiple setups simultaneously in the middle of a live comedy set, in a large theater where fire codes dictate where you can be and weight limits to the number of lights you can hang.
That the world on stage morphs from saturated (and quite Lynchian) blues and reds to bursts of kaleidoscopic chaos to actual Steadicam movements that emphasize what turns out to be a very elaborate “Schindler’s List” joke is all a credit to Bricker and his team figuring out how each camera could have a bespoke perspective but still work together.
“There were a ton of limitations to shooting a live show in a live venue — where we [could] place the cameras and what would be obstructing the audience. But we knew what the mission was,” Bricker told IndieWire. “Sometimes that required just rigging [cameras] within the set or hiding them within a curtain and then de-rigging them during one act when the lights would go down and switching them to Steadicam. But it was all derived from this creative intention that Hannah and Sandy had set forth from the very beginning.”
Having a great group of collaborators also helped Einbinder pull the camera all the more into the rhythm of her comedic delivery, particularly a side wing camera that, before it transitions to Steadicam, kind of becomes the at-home viewer for Einbinder to throw looks to.
“I really enjoyed the fourth wall break,” Einbinder said. “I think we were running through it before [taping] and I looked at the camera to look at Joel [Marsh, the operator] to make him laugh, and then I was like, ‘Why would I not do that?’ It was a method for me to figure out how to translate the special from live to film because I do make a point of making eye contact with people in the crowd at my live shows.”
There’s a fun melding throughout “Everything Must Go” of a very cinematic look and a very live feel. Bricker chose a set of vintage anamorphic Panavision primes and built a film emulsion LUT to create the look of the special — and in both cases, fully expected Einbinder and Honig to tell him to pare his initial ideas back. “Then Sandy and Hannah were like, ‘Push it further.’ They were all in on their convictions there. And it’s great,” Bricker said. “I love the red curtains with the red lighting and the whole thing is just insane and grainy and vibey and cool. I absolutely love it.”
Pulling off all of the lighting changes, camera moves, and reveals pushed Bricker and his team further, too. “Bryce Bradley, our gaffer, did a wonderful job of designing lighting for each [section] that matches Hannah’s reference but also felt cohesive. And then our board operator, Jonathan Huggins, who’s our board operator on ‘Hacks,’ was receiving the cues from Bryce and Sandy,” Bricker said. “And sometimes the cues were happening in rapid succession. And it was really fun. It was sort of like Hannah was vibing on stage and we were all chasing it. And when you would get it right, it felt so good.”
Einbinder also got a lot of energy from being able to play in different environments and activate different perspectives on stage — all crafted deliberately, beat by beat, to support the joke. But the MVP camera might be hidden in curtains, looking out at the stage from behind.
“I can’t imagine the special without that camera. I turned to it in the beginning, I turned to it at the end, and the bit of me falling to my death at the end was literally 10 minutes before the first show; I was like, ‘Should I just fall, right after?’ That’s an idea that happened on the night and became such an incredibly important bookend for the piece itself,” Einbinder said. “It’s a good-ass freaking angle, right there.”
Making a comedy special with the sculpted, intentional feeling of a single-camera comedy requires nothing less than some good-ass freaking angles. But whether wrangling an old-school spotlight that needed to have gels manually switched in and out to change color or embracing a bit of anamorphic flare, Bricker’s cinematography (and the entire production team’s work) makes it really fun to watch Einbinder control center-stage.
“I can feel everyone on the team who made this, every department, everyone’s love and precision, and I can feel the collaboration when I watch it. And it’s just exquisite,” Einbinder said.
“Hannah Einbinder: Everything Must Go” is streaming on Max.
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