The State is still one of my favorite sketch comedy shows of all time, and it’s been frustrating that the show has never been on DVD. Today Thomas Lennon and Ben Garant came to Comic Con to talk about their new film, the ping pong/karate comedy Balls of Fury, and in an interview before their panel they dropped the big news that The State would soon be available again.
Lennon: The State, at long last, is actually coming out on DVD or iTunes or something like that.
Garant: They’ve been rescored and we’re doing ADR.
Lennon: The thing that was preventing it was music clearances. At the time MTV had a deal that any [song] with a video you could just use. No longer the deal.
Garant: All of our sketches that were built around a Breeders song or a Lenny Kravitz song –
Lennon: Which was a fair amount.
Garant: Which was a lot of them, yeah. We had to rescore everything, but MTV put up the money to rescore everything and I guess it’s coming out.
Lennon: It’s coming out sometime this year, I bet.