In a scene early in the Apple TV+ period comedy “Government Cheese,” the show’s Chambers family watches an episode of “The Addams Family” in which a neighbor remarks, “Addamses, you are kooks!”
The sentiment applies to both clans, as well as to the family upon which the Chambers are based: that of Paul Hunter, a creator and showrunner of “Government Cheese.”
“They called us odd,” Hunter said in a video interview from Mexico City. “They said, ‘Oh, you guys are always in the clouds. Do you know what’s going on?’ We knew what was going on. We just really were in our own world.”
Set in the late 1960s San Fernando Valley, “Government Cheese” follows the Chambers, a Black family pursuing idiosyncratic interests — inventions, pole vaulting, eagle feather hunting — with little concern for the realities of the outside world. (The title, taken from the processed foodstuff once distributed to low-income families, also refers to the delicious sandwiches Hampton’s mother made from it, and to the sense of invention and aspiration they embodied.)
Matthew J. Lloyd, the show’s cinematographer, called the Chambers family — the parents, Hampton (David Oyelowo) and Astoria (Simone Missick), and sons, Einstein (Evan Ellison) and Harrison (Jahi Di’Allo Winston) — and their adventures a “fable-ized version” of Hunter’s upbringing. Magical, fantastical things happen to Hampton, in particular, and the audience is asked to believe them.
Aeysha Carr, the other creator and showrunner, described the show’s comedic language as “absurdist, amusing, amusingly absurd.” The world of “Government Cheese” is also distinctive and fanciful, steeped in the rich olive green, mustard yellow and pumpkin orange palette of the ’60s.
“The foundation of it comes from a place that’s all built on true feelings,” said Hunter, who directed four of the 10 episodes. “Then from there, it wants to express itself from an unusual lens. It captures the spirit of dreamers.”
In “Government Cheese,” there are little, carefully constructed vignettes nested within vignettes like Matryoshka dolls, with nods to the work of William Eggleston, David Lynch, Wes Anderson and others. The attention to detail is painstaking, as it was in selecting that specific “Addams Family” scene.
“From the composition to the cinematography, everything is very considered,” said Hunter, a former music video and commercial director perhaps best known for his 2001 Nike freestyle ad. “Nothing is random.”
In separate interviews, Hunter, Carr, Lloyd, the production designer Warren Alan Young, and the costume designer Nancy Steiner discussed several scenes from the first episode that illustrate how they built the surreal world of “Government Cheese.”
Fresh out of the slammer
When “Government Cheese” begins, Hampton is in prison for tax fraud. When he is released early in the first episode, viewers get their first look at Hampton as he sees himself. The needle drops on the buoyant “Hot Fun in the Summertime” by Sly & the Family Stone, and Hampton struts down the hallway, almost catwalk style. It’s the fresh fit that sells it.
“One of my favorite looks is when Hampton comes out of jail,” Steiner said. “It’s a green suit with the mustard top. And I loved that suit. And I just loved the swagger of it and the boldness of it.”
We don’t know exactly how long Hampton has been in prison, but it has clearly been a few years — his clothes feel a twinge dated. But they are still sharp and a little flashy, the dress of a man who lost some time in jail but none of his self-assurance. Much of the show follows Hampton’s pursuit of success and riches via the self-sharpening drill he dreamed up in the prison machine shop, and soon he will change into a blue suit, a crisp white shirt and a tie — the picture of a respectable businessman. His get-out-of-jail clothes show us the confidence he will bring to the effort.
“That’s the thing about clothing,” Steiner said. “It’s all a facade, in a way. It’s what you want to say to the world about yourself.”
A chilly homecoming
Sly & the Family Stone fade out as Hampton arrives, triumphant and expectant, at the front door of his home. Astoria greets him with a combination of disbelief, disappointment, frustration and resignation.
Eleven years ago, Lloyd, the cinematographer, received a cold call from Hunter. They met for breakfast and Hunter handed Lloyd a script for “Government Cheese” — which was written as a feature film at the time. A few years later they instead made it into a 20-minute short, also starring Oyelowo as Hampton, which they eventually showed to Apple when they were selling the show.
“It really just became about: How do you photograph someone who’s coming back into their own space, but now he’s alien to it, to some degree, and it’s not really his anymore?” Lloyd said.
When Hampton heads for their bedroom, Astoria informs him that he’ll be sleeping in the garage instead, where all of his things — including a prized Barcalounger chair — have been piled into a heap. Lloyd and Hunter referenced the photography of Eggleston and Stephen Shore in designing the show’s visual style, and the carefully composed sequence creates a pungently colorful image of suburban dilapidation. (Hunter even tipped over the patio umbrella for an extra dash of chaos.)
“There’s that wonderful image of the garage door flying open,” Lloyd said. “And the cutting pattern in the scene: They’re inside, and the door flies open, you’re on his face, and then you just go wide and you see a very Eggleston-inspired image of the garage and the backyard and the umbrella has folded over. It fell together in this wonderful tableau.”
Trapped in the Valley
Hunter and Young, the production designer, grew up in and around Los Angeles around the same time, and they have “similar childhood memories of what the sky looked like,” Hunter said.
“How the sun goes down in the San Fernando Valley; what that feels like,” he added.
Young remembers when the Valley was still largely rolling orange groves, part of the backdrop of the show. Then neighborhoods like Chatsworth — where the Hamptons live and where Hunter spent much of his childhood — popped up, full of California-style ranch houses. Young surveyed hundreds of these before settling on a house in L.A.’s Northridge neighborhood for exterior shots. The interior of the Hamptons’ house was built on a soundstage in North Hollywood.
“What I wanted to do is make sure that we had some vertical lines in the wallpaper in the main area, the living room area, to help remind us that both Astoria and Hampton are seeking to escape from wherever they were,” Young said. “We tried to put vertical lines around Hampton as much as we could to remind everyone that there’s a place he’s trying to escape from, but he’s still trapped.”
Astoria works as a secretary at an interior design firm and aspires to become a designer herself. A bulletin board on the wall doubles as her vision board, collaged with snippets, clippings and swatches in marigold yellows and bright blues.
“She’s thinking about things that a lot of people — especially white people at the time — would not think Black people might be thinking about,” Young said. “Even in the African American community, there are people who would not necessarily be thinking about this, because, hey, that’s what white people do.”
“Astoria was clearly on her own planet, and her own person,” he added. “We worked to really make that clear.”
Hunter said the creators’ diligence with these individual grace notes amounted to a unified vision for the show. “It comes together in a really cohesive way,” he said. “It all feels like one thought.”
“I was thinking of this as a meal,” he added. “There’s just so many levels of taste here that you can enjoy.”
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