Saturday Night Live Was Director School for Julio Torres

:o) Photo: Getty Images for Vulture

It’s hard being a multi-hyphenate. “I was a very visual kid,” Julio Torres said at Vulture Festival. “And then I got it in my head that I wanted to write film and TV. I thought that would mean abandoning the visual side of me.” Torres did stand-up in New York, worked on The Chris Gethard Show before writing on Saturday Night Live. There, he broke out with pre-taped sketches. And it was by watching the directors of those sketches that Torres found a way to marry the visual with the comedic. “I shadowed directors, basically, and I learned what little I know of directing through observing and almost exclusively working with Dave McCarry,” Torres said. “He was very gracious and always opening, always keeping me in the loop with everything — hair, wardrobe, all these little things that maybe aren’t your priority if you’re a different kind of writer. We treated every sketch as if they were a little short film.” These short films include “Wells for Boys,” and “The Sink.” They’re cinema.

After SNL, Torres and McCarry (and McCarry’s wife/producing partner Emma Stone) kept getting their collab on by making Torres’ directing debut Problemista. “When I meet someone that I really like, I want to make something with them,” Torres said. That spirit of collaboration (and Torres’ enthusiasm for the visual world) come from his mother. “She’s an architect by trade, and she’s always been a designer,” Torres said. “There was always this exploration of affection through creation. It was very informative.” Ultimately, Problemista was part of a “lifelong visual collaboration with my mom.”