MDK Creative

Case Study: Those Who Can’t

In November of 2012 I served as Production Designer for Those Who Can’t, an original Amazon Studios comedy pilot filmed in working Denver high schools, starring The Grawlix comedy troupe.

I had worked closely with the Grawlix gents and their filmmaker collaborators the Nix Bros., so this was an exciting opportunity to partner with them for something new. I had never worked a film/TV set before, and—at the time—the idea that Amazon wanted to make TV shows was quaintly puzzling, but it turned out to be a blast. Over a crazy week I designed the look and feel of the fictitious Buchanan High School, including school mascot, background gags, props, costume wrangling, fake food styling, show title card, and anything else that needed doing.

PROJECT

Those Who Can’t

CLIENT

Image Brew/Amazon Studios

DATE

2012

PRODUCTION DESIGNER

Michael David King

Even a fictitious school needs a mascot and snappy athletic togs.
Verisimilitude required a good deal of background and costume design to give this struggling high school a real-world feel. And yes, that’s me as the school janitor!

Rory Scovel is wearing my cardigan in this scene. The coffee mug grammar joke was my idea, and we should’ve made about 1000 of those coffee mugs; after the premiere we received multiple inquiries about purchasing one.

The stars of the Tru TV version of the show walk the red carpet with the absurd school mascot I designed: Terry The Tariff.

In 2015, TruTV announced that it had ordered Those Who Can’t as its first scripted sitcom.