Repetition is a part of this theatre of the absurd. As “Matt and Jay try to get a show at The Rivoli…” appears at the start of almost every episode, the series is defined by increasingly complicated schemes to try to secure a gig; displaying an accidentally explicit banner of the band opposite the venue, various heists and break-ins, and even kidnapping a sick child in the hope of hijacking their Make-A-Wish request. No lessons are learned from their schemes or mistakes, just as ultimately no progress is made. This cycle of continual, hopeless stasis in spite of continuous dreaming, scheming and loitering sees ‘Waiting for Godot’ turned into Waiting for a Show.
Unlike other shows where a mooted or desired movie never came to fruition – or, like Community, are long-running gags and sources of speculation – there has always been a dogged sense of forward motion of the real-life Nirvanna The Band, even amidst periods of hiatus. This can be seen in the growing ambitions of the evolution of the work, which always seemed to be looking ahead, running in parallel with the ambitions of its creators. Taking the opening credits as an example, those of the web series predominantly referenced television shows including Frasier and The Wire. Moving to television, the reference points moved to cinematic touchpoints including Home Alone, My Dinner with Andre and Dog Day Afternoon.
The duo’s world grows too. The original apartment and its recurring gag of a copy of 1993’s Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story becomes a house wallpapered with Criterion Collection posters and decorated with a sprawling VHS collection. The setting becomes catnip for cinephiles; arthouse posters for Antonioni, Fassbinder and Bunuel films blend with mainstream hits Jurassic Park, Heathers and The Naked Gun and eagle-eyed sightings of curios including Don Cherry’s Rock Em Sock Em 5. The increasing visual references within the home that the characters inhabit matches that of the complex world of the show, which is influenced by their escapism into films, TV and video games.
The ascension of the show in both scope and ambition ran alongside Johnson’s own move into feature film direction with The Dirties (2013) and Operation Avalanche (2016), the latter of which premiered at Sundance and inspired one of the key Nirvanna episodes, ‘The Big Time’, which sees the band’s attempt to make it big by making a movie. As with other semi-autobiographical elements of the show, the inept film that the duo make is an alternate-reality film, also titled Operation Avalanche, and gets snuck into the festival by Matt. The multiverse feel is rounded off by a quarrel being mediated by Sundance regular and fellow Jay-partner Kevin Smith, playing a version of himself.
It might feel like a stretch to suggest that this is proof of any grand plan to ultimately reach cinemas. However, foreshadowing has been a key element of the show. A seemingly throwaway moment in which Jay gets distracted by borrowing VHS tapes from a library in ‘The Banner’ (S1,E1), including Jurassic Park, Home Alone and The Negotiator, is notable in retrospect, as all become the basis of future episodes, including the season’s bank robbery finale.
Likewise, in the first episode of the TV series, there is a familiar sound cue from Back to the Future that is ultimately resolved in The Movie: a time-travel plot heavily inspired by Back to the Future with a healthy side-dose of The Butterfly Effect. Not only is the film a natural conclusion of the growing scope and depth of ambition from web, to television, to feature film, but it is also the logical endpoint of its continuing absurdity. If the series transformed Waiting for Godot into a sitcom premise, the expansion into a science-fiction feature film sees the metaphorical loop of the show converted into a literal one.