How and why ‘Frankenstein’s Monster’s Monster, Frankenstein’ exists

“Why this play? At this moment in time? What were the psychological forces at work?” 

These are the questions posed by David Harbour at the start of Netflix’s Frankenstein’s Monster’s Monster, Frankenstein in reference to a (fictional) televised play from the ’70s, starring his (fictional) father, David Harbour Jr. 

But if you caught the 32-minute special at any point over the past few weeks, you probably found yourself asking some of the same questions. Along with: “How the hell does this thing exist?” and “Why”? 

On my own quest for answers, I called up writer John Levenstein and director Daniel Gray Longino to get to the bottom of it all. 

First of all: What the heck is David Harbour even doing in this movie?

Harbour’s presence here may feel totally random. But according to Levenstein, it was Harbour who got the ball rolling in the first place. 

“I got a message from him on Twitter,” Levenstein tells me. “He’d just done Nick Kroll and John Mulaney’s show, Oh, Hello on Broadway, and he was messaging me just to say how much he liked Kroll Show [on which Levenstein was a writer and showrunner], and that it would be great to work together.”

At the time, Harbour was just coming off the first season of Stranger Things, which Levenstein had not yet seen. But a quick catch-up viewing made Levenstein interested in bringing out a different side of the actor. “This was before he was doing a lot of comedy, so I felt like I was buying stock in David doing comedy early.”

That said, Levenstein knows exactly how wild it is that Harbour is involved at all. 

“For the entire time, up until we pitched this, and even once Netflix said yes, I had the feeling that at any point, if David had said to his agents, or his manager, or Netflix, ‘Is this crazy?’ They would have said yes,” he says. “And the whole thing would have fallen apart. But David never questioned it.

Where did the idea for Frankenstein’s Monster’s Monster, Frankenstein come from?

“The idea of doing Frankenstein’s Monster’s Monster, Frankenstein as a televised play from the ’70s where David played both Dr. Frankenstein and then also impersonated the monster, so he can do the transitions back and forth — it seems strange to say, but I thought of that all at once,” says Levenstein.

The pair had been talking at that point for about six months to a year, getting to know each other and trying to figure out if they could “do something funny together.” 

“I just imagined that he could play the monster and Dr. Frankenstein going back and forth without the aid of makeup, or at least with the arrogance to think he could do it without the aid of makeup, like Bradley Cooper in Elephant Man or something.” 

As for the title Frankenstein’s Monster’s Monster, Frankenstein, that was all Harbour. 

“Early on, he pitched this title, Frankenstein’s Monster’s Monster, Frankenstein. Not just as a pitch, it may have even been a condition of his involvement in the project,” recalls Levenstein, laughing. “I think he may have said, ‘I just have one condition, the title is Frankenstein’s Monster’s Monster, Frankenstein.'”

No, I mean like … how does one even dream up something like this?

The delightful WTFery of Frankenstein’s Monster’s Monster, Frankenstein stems from the fact that it’s not a parody of any one thing. It takes, as Levenstein puts it, a “kitchen sink approach,” drawing from a wide range of influences as well as Harbour’s own theater background. 

Initially, the idea was simply to present Frankenstein’s Monster’s Monster, Frankenstein as a TV special — if you were really watching an old broadcast from the ’70s. 

But Harbour felt he couldn’t perform as freely if he were trying to play a version of himself, which led to the idea him playing his own father, which led to the documentary framing device, which led to all the other cutaways we see in the final film, like The Crying Detective. “You can’t just do one archival thing because it looks naked,” insists Levenstein.

The obvious inspiration for Frankenstein’s Monster’s Monster, Frankenstein is the televised plays of the ’60s and ’70s. But there was also the 1976 BBC production I, Claudius; the ’70s series Dark Shadows; the Orson Welles documentary They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead; Ian McKellen’s one-man show, in which he tells a story about how he got into Cambridge (shades of “and that’s how I got into Juilliard!”); and a British show about acting from the ’70s (shades of The Actor’s Trunk). 

How exactly did this end up on Netflix? 

It’s hard to imagine Frankenstein’s Monster’s Monster, Monster being an easy sell anywhere, given how strange it is. “It’s not the simplest pitch,” admits Levenstein. “It’s almost like the more you say, the more confusing it is.”

“It’s not the simplest pitch. It’s almost like the more you say, the more confusing it is.”

But if you guessed that the answer basically boils down to Netflix letting Harbour do whatever the hell he wants… well, you’re not wrong. 

“The pitch was honestly that David is a big star there, they pay him a lot of money, and he was saying he’ll do this for no money, and I was saying the same thing,” says Levenstein. “So at that point, they were saying, ‘Well, if you’re really willing to do it for that budget, we’ll do pretty much whatever you want and we’ll leave you alone.” 

And how was it actually shot?

The actual shoot for Frankenstein’s Monster’s Monster, Frankenstein took place over just three days in late February and early March: one day for the play, one for the “archival” footage (like The Actor’s Trunk or the MTV-style interview), and one for the “documentary.

Getting it done, however, meant squeezing the most out of every minute and every dollar. The team was blocking the play as the sets were still being built. Some sets did double duty, while others, like the MTV-style interview or The Actor’s Trunk were added at the last minute. At one point, Levenstein and Longino had to scrap plans to shoot a hallway scene for the “documentary” footage, because they simply didn’t have enough money to put more posters on those walls. 

Working under those constraints meant letting go of the idea of perfection — which, Longino acknowledges, wasn’t entirely a bad thing. 

“It sounds kind of lame to say we embraced the challenge, but it went hand-in-hand with what we were trying to do anyway,” he says. 

Small mishaps, like a door not shutting properly, became part of the fun of Harbour Jr.’s misguided play. “Our philosophy was very much like, Whatever’s going to go wrong is going to go wrong, and to approach the play almost like a live performance.”

What is Alfred Molina doing here? 

Image: Allyson Riggs / Netflix

Truth be told, Levenstein seems almost as confused as I was about how Alfred Molina, arguably the most recognizable actor in Frankenstein’s Monster’s Monster, Frankenstein, ended up in it at all.

“David wrote him a note and Alfred responded almost right away that he wanted to do it. He was so awesome and so enthusiastic that we just assumed David was good friends with him or something,” Levenstein says.

“Then as we were doing the thing it emerged that, no, maybe he’d met him once or twice at an awards show.”

But all’s well that ends well: Levenstein describes working with Molina as “a dream.” And the Spider-Man 2 actor’s presence in the film feels wrong in exactly the right way, like another surreal detail of this ’70s-flavored fever dream. 

And why do I find it all so funny?

Well, that’s between you and the deity of your choice. But one theory? Harbour Jr. and his theater co-stars never seem like they’re trying to be terrible — to the contrary. 

“It’s not exactly bad acting. It’s more like an abuse of good acting, or at least an abuse of craft,” Levenstein says. “Like sometimes you’ll be watching actors where you feel like they’re showing off a little bit too much of their toolkit, you know?” 

In a similar vein, the Frankenstein’s Monster’s Monster, Frankenstein cast and crew were careful never to take things too far in the opposite direction, winking at the audience about the silliness of it all. 

Image: Allyson Riggs / Netflix

“You don’t want to show the audience that you’re bailing on your choice,” says Longino. “The material that John has written is unfolding in an abstract and absurd way. So if you commit to that, the result is going to be funny to me.” 

Sometimes, that meant pulling back from details that would make the play look too obviously jokey, as with a terrible wig that Harbour was originally supposed to wear on the first day of shooting, but was scrapped after Longino deemed it too silly-looking. 

“There’s a lot of points along the way where Dan would save production from doing things that are like one step too stupid,” said Levenstein. “‘Cause in comedy, everyone trying their best can push things a little bit too far in every direction.”

What do other people think of this thing?

I spoke with Levenstein and Longino roughly a week after Frankenstein’s Monster’s Monster, Frankenstein had hit Netflix, and at that point, both said the reaction so far had been “great.” Well, mostly.

“They would be like, ‘How did this get made? How did all these people make this mistake?'”

“I notice a difference even a week after it came out to when it first came out,” says Levenstein. “When it first came out, the baffled, almost angry reactions […] were a higher percentage of the reactions that I was tracking on social media, than now. Where it seems like now, people are going to it with a little more of a sense of purpose.”

Levenstein and Longino expected the initial confusion, however — and, according to Levenstein, Harbour even hoped for it. “[David] wanted people to be very confused when the thing dropped. He wanted people to not know they were watching a comedy, he wanted people to have no idea what’s coming. He was hoping for a surge of bewilderment.”

Sometimes, that puzzlement was cast in a negative light: “They would be like, ‘How did this get made? How did all these people make this mistake?'” Longino says with a laugh. 

But more often, those questions were asked with delight. “One sense that I’m getting is an excitement that it got made,” he says. “That something like this is getting made and getting put out on such a big platform. There’s enthusiasm to that.”

What’s next? Will there be more Frankenstein’s Monster’s Monster, Frankenstein?

Levenstein hopes so. Frankenstein’s Monster’s Monster, Frankenstein was originally conceived of as an anthology, and Levenstein has ideas for several more installments in mind, including one about the niece character, to be played as an adult by Natasha Lyonne; one starring Nick Kroll, which he describes as “Laughter on the 23rd Floor without a laugh in it”; and one about Harbour Jr.’s older brother starring in an ’80s psychosexual thriller. 

This is a really long article. Can I get a TL;DR?

I’ll let Levenstein sum it up for you: 

There’s really two questions. There’s how did it get made, which is purely David. Why did it get made, I think it was just a confluence of theater jokes that David and I found funny. It became a soup of things that were funny that we saw watching theater.

Frankenstein’s Monster’s Monster, Frankenstein is streaming now on Netflix.