Phil Morris Talks Real Fake History

Yesterday saw the launch of Machinima’s new webseries Real Fake History.

Modeled on the documentaries of Ken Burns, the series asks the question: how would history view the events seen in movies and on TV, if we lived in a world where those things weren’t entertainment but actually occurred in the world around us?

And of course puts a little spin on it.

You can check out the latest episode below, covering the Battle of New York from Marvel’s The Avengers.

Real Fake History is narrated by veteran character actor Phil Morris, familiar to comic book fans as the Martian Manhunter from Smallville, among many other roles including Jackie Chiles in Seinfeld.

Morris joined ComicBook.com to talk briefly about the project.

What drew you to Real Fake History in the first place?

On an individual level, I was excited to work with Tony Janning again; he wrote and produced and I did some on-camera work on Instant Short for Roddenberry Entertainment, and I liked him immediately.

I’m also a huge Ken Burns freak, so I was drawn to the idea and then it was just such good material. The writing is clever, and it stuck to the tenets of the Burns structure.

What did you react to the most in the writing?

I think the best setups are the most simple. What we’re doing is just saying, if these things were real, how would we react? And because it’s so straightforward and so instantly familiar, the Ken Burns documentary style helps establish that firmament. Then once you’re in the work, there’s a tone that’s specific to this, but it still evokes them.

It’s also interesting because generally the humor doesn’t go super-broad. So it isn’t This is Spinal Tap. It’s a whole different type of mockumentary.

Christopher Guest is brilliant. But you’re right, that’s not what this is. What you have to do is look at what you have and you look at somebody like that and say, how do you create your own expression of that?

Is there anything you’d like to see them do if there was a second season?

That’s a question for the creators more than for me. It would take me a while to come up with some good ones.