#8 - Rick and Morty Writer - Ryan Ridley

**Craig Cannon** (0:00)
Hey, this is Craig Cannon, and you're listening to Y Combinator's podcast. So today's episode is with Ryan Ridley, who's a writer for the TV show Rick and Morty. And before Rick and Morty, he worked on Community. Ryan and I had an awesome time talking about how the show works, so we covered a bunch of the sci-fi references in season one and two. We talked a little bit about season three, which is coming out. And we also talked about their new VR game, which is called Virtual Rick-ality, and you can download that now.
And before we get started, I just want to say thanks to Dan Guterman, who I used to work with at The Onion, and he was the one who introduced us to Ryan. Okay, here we go. All right, man, we should probably jump into Rick and Morty at some point.
Before we do that, how about you just, like, give your background up until Rick and Morty?

**Ryan Ridley** (0:43)
So I didn't really know what I was doing with my life. I was a terrible student. I just, I didn't do anything. I didn't, like, I didn't... It was before the era of even making any kind of videos or so, you know, I didn't really know how to channel my creativity. I mean, I would make, like, camcorder videos when I was a younger kid. And then in high school, I was just getting high and skipping school and, you know, goofing off with my friends. And I didn't really know I wanted to get into comedy. I thought I wanted to maybe, because I was drawing, getting into cartoons or comic books or something like that. And then I was just didn't have the discipline for that.
And so it was after high school, I was barely graduated, barely gotten to community college, which turned out to serve me well for being a writer on community. So, but I was like, I don't know what I'm doing. And then it somehow had an epiphany, which I'm going to reveal some biographical information. And go, that's not really an epiphany.
I decided to do standup. Now, my dad owned a standup comedy club.
So I was going to standup comedy clubs my whole life. And he was a huge, it's a huge comedy club. It's considered one of the premier clubs in the country. And so growing up, I got to see, you know, Gary Shanling and Drew Carey, Alan DeGeneres, Jim Carey. I saw my 16th birthday with all my friends. And that was still one of the most mind-blowing experiences because it was pre Ace Ventura post in living color.
So he was big, but he wasn't, you know, as big as he would be coming in the next 10 years after that. And so, and he was so quick. And so I remember we were all there, and I had one friend, we were like 16 So of course you've got friends of different ages. I had a 14 year old friend who was very small, and it's an adult club, but I'm the owner's kid. So he gets up and he walks across to go to the bathroom, and Jim Carrey mid bit just stops and go, hey mister, that fake mustache won't fool me. And it was just like the middle of his bit. He just like saw that kid and just like made, and then we all like, my dad brought us back to the green room, shuffled us back there and, you know, opened the door. And he was just like, just like sitting there like just emanating energy. And he's like, hey, so it's your birthday? I'm like, yeah, cool. You want to come back to my hotel room and watch some porno?
It was what you'd want from a meeting Jim Carrey. So anyway, so then I, yeah, I was like, I want to get involved in comedy.
But this is pre any kind of internet video, YouTube or anything. And even like, I didn't know, all I knew how to do is edit camcorder to VCR style.

**Craig Cannon** (3:20)
Oh, like dual VCR thing?

**Ryan Ridley** (3:22)
Yeah, so I wasn't really doing this. I'm like, well, stand up is something where you can write comedy and then you can perform it and you can get an immediate reaction. So I started doing that and doing the open mics. And then eventually I was like, okay, Detroit is not for me the place I want to find my comedy voice. So I moved to Chicago, which is a great transition city. And immediately I was watching these people on stage in Chicago and just everyone was blowing my mind, just comedically.