David Mirkin
David Mirkin (born September 18, 1955) is an American feature film and television director, writer and producer. Mirkin grew up in Philadelphia and intended to become an electrical engineer, but abandoned this career path in favor of studying film at Loyola Marymount University. After graduating, he became a stand-up comedian, and then moved into television writing. He wrote for the sitcoms "Three's Company", "It's Garry Shandling's Show" and "The Larry Sanders Show" and served as showrunner on the series "Newhart". After an unsuccessful attempt to remake the British series "The Young Ones", Mirkin created "Get a Life" in 1990. The series starred comedian Chris Elliott and ran for two seasons, despite a lack of support from many Fox network executives, who disliked the show's dark and surreal humor. He moved on to create the sketch show "The Edge" starring his then-partner, actress Julie Brown.
David Mirkin
Mirkin served as executive producer for the series, directed most of the episodes, wrote several of them, and oversaw the filming and production of them all, to ensure that they had the correct "tone". The show's production process was lengthy; Mirkin would rise at to film the show, write further episodes from until , and then repeat that the following day. Unlike most single-camera shows, which have around six days to film, Mirkin had to film each episode in two days. He enjoyed doing it, but described it as "not a healthy way to live". Due to the logistics of filming the show, especially its many sets and effects, Mirkin convinced Fox to not film it in front of a studio audience and use a laugh track instead. The show achieved steady ratings in its first season, finishing 92nd out of the listed in the Nielsen ratings. However, for its second season, it was moved from on Sunday to on Saturday and lost the bulk of its audience; it was canceled after that second season finished in 1992. In a 1999 piece about the show's DVD release, Tom Shales praised the show, concluding, "At its best, "Get a Life" achieved dizzying heights of surrealist farce. At its worst, it was at least amusingly idiotic existential slapstick. "Get a Life" is a television classic unlike any other. For one thing, most of the others are better. We're not talking "Playhouse 90" here, after all. But we are talking riotous nonsense, and that's not to be sneezed at. It's to be laughed at. Hard." A strong cult following subsequently developed, and Mirkin noted that although the show was canceled "ultimately we got the audience I was hoping for and they are super dedicated and passionate to this day."