For Greendale Community’s first exclusive interview I had the chance to speak to Dino Stamatopoulos, who you all know as “Star-burns” on Community. What you may not know is that in addition to being a consultant on Community he has written for virtually every funny show for the last 20 years. His writing credits include “The Ben Stiller Show,” "Mr. Show with Bob and David," "TV Funhouse," in addition to creating the masterpiece "Moral Orel" for Adult Swim. He is now working on a new stop-motion animation show for Adult swim called “Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenhole.” I recently had the chance to speak to him about Community and some of his other projects.
You’ve been a part of most of the funniest shows of the past couple decades starting with The Ben Stiller Show but you mostly worked as a writer in the past how did you become involved with Community and as an actor?I'm a consultant on Community, which means I go in a couple days a week and try to say funny things that go in the script. I think at some point they thought, "Hey, the best way to use Dino is to have him try out our weirder jokes on camera." That's what they did with Star-burns. I got a text from Dan Harmon (who was probably three feet away at the time) that said, "quit shaving. We may need you for star burns." It was a non-speaking part at the time and I thought, "What the fuck. Couldn't hurt." Then it eventually turned into a reoccurring part and I got a little scared. I was very busy with Frankenhole and TV wastes a lot of time. I ended up sitting on the Community set for hours before they used me. Well, eventually, I embraced doing the part. I even grew the star burns onto my own face instead of having the make-up person apply them.
Did the writers give you any direction on the character of Star-burns?
