Dan Perrault, a co-creator of Netflix’s American Vandal (premiering September 15), is particularly proud of one element of his show—a true-crime parody that applies the format to the mystery of whether a teenager drew a bunch of dicks on his teachers’ cars. “We had our own 3-D re-creation of a hand job on a lake, which I’m thrilled that we were able to get away with in general—but also doubly thrilled that it made it into the trailer,” Perrault says. “It’s my favorite 3-D hand job ever.”
In context, this bit of graphic wizardry—presented, like the rest of American Vandal, with an entirely straight face—is used to determine if a horny dork is telling the truth about his sexual exploits, a detail which in turn is crucial to the case of the spray-painted phalluses. The comedy created by Perrault and Tony Yacenda, the latter of whom also directs, sends up the super-serious genre by tackling what Yacenda calls the “most medium-stakes crime possible.” The potential culprit is Dylan Maxwell (Jimmy Tatro), a slacker who has a reputation for drawing penises on whiteboards. But Hanover High School’s very own Sarah Koenig, a sophomore named Peter Maldonado (Tyler Alvarez), is convinced something doesn’t add up.
What you’re watching is ostensibly the work of Peter—the title sequence credits him rather than Perrault or Yacenda—and because it’s told through his eyes, American Vandal ends up being strikingly realistic. It understands that, for most, high-school drama doesn’t look like the soap-opera plots that unfold on, say, Riverdale or Gossip Girl; instead, the scandals are hilariously mundane. (See: the 3-D hand job.)
“In a way this is a four-hour dick joke, but in a more general sense, it’s basically taking very silly things and treating them extremely seriously,” Perrault explains. “High school is really the perfect setting for that, because when we’re teenagers everything is high-stakes to us, even though we’re just talking about hookups and parties.”
Perrault and Yacenda have long been purveyors of penis-related content. They created Woodhead Entertainment with actor Sean Carrigan, who appears in American Vandal as a gregarious but suspicious coach, after making a short lampooning football star Brett Favre for allegedly sending lewd photos. The duo has also explored documentary structure before—in 2013 they created a spoof of ESPN’s 30 for 30 that facetiously examines the pivotal game in Space Jam. They came up with the concept for American Vandal in early 2016, shortly after Making a Murderer premiered.