Speaker 1: I'm Brent Forrester. I was a writer and producer at
Speaker 1: the Office. Hello everyone, and thank you so much for
Speaker 1: joining me again. This is the Office Deep Dive, and
Speaker 1: as always I am your host, Brian Baumgartner. Today we
Speaker 1: are continuing our mini dive, if you will, into the
Speaker 1: Writer's Room with the one and only Brent Forrester. Brent
Speaker 1: joined the writing staff in season three, which, as he
Speaker 1: talks about in this conversation, this was not an easy
Speaker 1: thing to do. I mean, there were some real heavy
Speaker 1: hitters in the writer's room at that point. So how
Speaker 1: did he survive? Well? With the help of an army
Speaker 1: survival manual. That's right, he used an army survival manual
Speaker 1: to survive the writer's room at the Office, and eventually
Speaker 1: he became a real key part of the team and
Speaker 1: wrote some amazing episodes, including one that several of the
Speaker 1: other writers consider to have in it the best moment
Speaker 1: in the entire show. I'm not talking about the chili scene,
Speaker 1: but but Brent did direct that scene, all of which
Speaker 1: we talked about in great detail very shortly. I am
Speaker 1: so glad I got to sit down with him, because
Speaker 1: he is so smart and thoughtful, and he was super
Speaker 1: candid about the writer's room, both the good and the bad.
Speaker 1: I know you guys are gonna absolutely love this one.
Speaker 1: So here he is Mr Brent Forrester Bubble. I love it,
Speaker 1: bub bubb this quicker cook at every moon lift over
Speaker 1: from the Nutty. Oh yeah, what's up? Oh my goodness,
Speaker 1: it's so good to see you. Oh my gosh. I
Speaker 1: created the circumstance of office endless office reunion for yourself,
Speaker 1: everybody from Laverne, you and Kevin Riley and everybody. Everyone
Speaker 1: has been amazing, how generous people have been. And yeah,
Speaker 1: we're all hams to talk about it exactly. Ever, never
Speaker 1: underestimate the power of just untapped narcissism. I would say,
Speaker 1: how is Base Force going? Oh so fun? I mean how?
Speaker 1: It stars Steve Correll and John Malkovich as the comedy
Speaker 1: pairing at the center. Greg Daniels wrote the pilot with Steve,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, Greg's influences is all through it,
Speaker 1: as is Steve's. You know, he has this interesting sensibility
Speaker 1: which is not always what you would expect, you know,
Speaker 1: the direction he went in the office with naturalism, which
Speaker 1: is so great. He also has a silly side which
Speaker 1: is appropriate to a show like this. That's very cool.
Speaker 1: Now your podcast, by the way, do you guys, are
Speaker 1: you like Mark Marin level let's get emotionally self revelatory?
Speaker 1: Are you more history of the podcast? It's definitely neither
Speaker 1: of those. Um, I mean how I'm viewing it well,
Speaker 1: I truly am actively seeking the answer to some questions
Speaker 1: that I have about what went on and how things
Speaker 1: were constructed. And it's anything with memory, something's I firmly
Speaker 1: believe I remember, and then as I talked to people,
Speaker 1: I realized I remember incorrectly or there's different perspectives on that.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I I think for me more than anything,
Speaker 1: it's just conversation. Well we should we should win then,
Speaker 1: because it's my favorite thing. Every time I've been in
Speaker 1: this kind of situation, there hasn't been enough time. Weeks,
Speaker 1: time we have, we have time. So, um, prior to
Speaker 1: the office, what were you doing immediately before you got
Speaker 1: brought off? Um? Well, you know, my career started way
Speaker 1: back in the in the tailing dying and of the
Speaker 1: multi caam era. I got my first job on a
Speaker 1: show called Nurses, which was a multi caam show put
Speaker 1: on by with Thomas Harris. They had done the Golden Girls,
Speaker 1: and you know, there were these factories of multicam in
Speaker 1: the late eighties and early nineties, and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: so I come out of there then I had been
Speaker 1: on the Simpsons is how and you Greg, now was
Speaker 1: that Susan Susan Harris? I hear it was your first
Speaker 1: sort of mentor yea time. Yeah, you know. I had
Speaker 1: actually gone to high school with her son. And when
Speaker 1: I came out of college, I had literally Brian trained
Speaker 1: myself to be a short story writer, and that I
Speaker 1: didn't realize there was no money in short stories. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you take it even farther back, I was raised
Speaker 1: in a house with no television. My mom hated TV
Speaker 1: and would not allow it in the house. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: so I had no television and I picked that up
Speaker 1: as a habit, not watching television. And I continued in
Speaker 1: that habit through college. So when I got out of college,
Speaker 1: I had trained myself to be an expert in a
Speaker 1: dying art form. Nobody told me that short stories weren't
Speaker 1: popular anymore, because my mom had prevented me from having
Speaker 1: any contact with modern culture. Anyway. The relevance is that
Speaker 1: I suit to college and thought, oh, man, can I
Speaker 1: be a writer of some kind? It just so happened.
Speaker 1: I only knew one person who was a professional writer.
Speaker 1: It was Susan Harris, the creator of The Golden Girls.
Speaker 1: I lucked into mentorship of sorts with one of the
Speaker 1: greatest uh natural dialogue writers ever, Susan Harris. So she
Speaker 1: helped you get the job on Nurses, gave it to me. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. Yeah. You know, her son had a lot
Speaker 1: of friends who wanted to be TV writers. Um, to
Speaker 1: my knowledge, I was the only one that she ever
Speaker 1: gave a job to. And I think the reason was
Speaker 1: she just told me how to write a spec script
Speaker 1: and she said, right about what is difficult for you,
Speaker 1: even painful, and trust that it will come out funny.
Speaker 1: And I've never heard better advice in comedy writing. And
Speaker 1: I tried to do that in the form of a
Speaker 1: spec blossom Awesome. That was my winning spec that got
Speaker 1: me in the district blossom blossom. Yeah. Okay, so you
Speaker 1: work on Nurses, then you work on a number of
Speaker 1: other shows. Yeah, well I was. I was through with her. No,
Speaker 1: I was, actually I was fired from Nurses with the
Speaker 1: entire staff. They just replaced the staff. It was. It
Speaker 1: was a pretty bad show, even at the height of
Speaker 1: bad television, and they just said, we have to replace
Speaker 1: these writers. I'd only worked there about, you know, four months,
Speaker 1: just long enough to uh see that there was this
Speaker 1: thing that was the punch up writer, and there was
Speaker 1: this reverence for the writer who could throw jokes and
Speaker 1: comedy into a script and that rewrite process. So I
Speaker 1: saved my little amount of nurses money and stretched it
Speaker 1: out for like a year and just tried to teach
Speaker 1: myself joke writing and display what I learned in the
Speaker 1: form of a spec Rosianne script. And you know, that's
Speaker 1: the writer's life is like a lot of time writing
Speaker 1: what you hope is a spectacular spec script. And I
Speaker 1: happened to get that Roseanne in the hands of a
Speaker 1: young comedian who was becoming a producer named Judd Apatow.
Speaker 1: Apatao was twenty four. He had uh met Ben Stiller
Speaker 1: in lined on Elvis Costello concert and they the stories
Speaker 1: they just kind of hudsput each other into, like selling
Speaker 1: a TV show. What's your name, Ben Stiller? What do
Speaker 1: you do? I'm an actor? Yeah? Who are you? Joe?
Speaker 1: You comedian? Right? Stuff? Oh yeah, that's so the show. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's do and they went to Fox show Wow. And
Speaker 1: so you got a job on that through the Rose
Speaker 1: and inspect Yeah, and then you you end up winning
Speaker 1: an Emmy. Yeah. Yeah, it was incredible. I mean it
Speaker 1: was really Bob Odenkirk is why we won that Emmy.
Speaker 1: You know, he was the head writer of the show.
Speaker 1: He uh also created Mr Show with Bob and Dave.
Speaker 1: You know, for sure, one of the greatest sketch shows ever.
Speaker 1: UM and Bob was the head writer and under his
Speaker 1: influence of a group of totally untested writers, won the
Speaker 1: Emmy for Best Comedy Writing UH that year. And you know,
Speaker 1: for me at that point, I had a Emmy and
Speaker 1: about like a year of television writing experience and then
Speaker 1: they put me on The Simpsons and that's where I
Speaker 1: met Greg and was truly tested. So you worked on
Speaker 1: the Simpsons for what five years? No? Actually I worked
Speaker 1: two full years to full years. I had a four
Speaker 1: year contract and I bailed after two years, going to
Speaker 1: the craziest self destructive moves in a weird way. But
Speaker 1: I was young. I was in my twenties. I've worked
Speaker 1: there for two years. I felt like I've learned everything
Speaker 1: there is to learn about writing for the Simpsons, and
Speaker 1: so I quit and uh had a memorable like had
Speaker 1: to have a showdown with Jim Brooks where they called
Speaker 1: me into his office and and Brooks, Uh, he said, hey, man,
Speaker 1: I hear you're on strike. Man, do you know Brooks
Speaker 1: at all? No? I mean I've met him, seeing him,
Speaker 1: but I don't know him. No. Well, I don't think
Speaker 1: he would know me for sure, but we all worship him.
Speaker 1: He is like one of the Mount Rushmore guys of
Speaker 1: our medium. And uh, he's a genius and he's got
Speaker 1: kind of a hippie vibe. But somehow I enraged him
Speaker 1: by saying this thing that writers all knew to say,
Speaker 1: which was, hey, I don't think you'd want to have
Speaker 1: a writer in the room who doesn't want to be there.
Speaker 1: We were always told, like amongst each other, that you
Speaker 1: could get out of a contract if you just simply
Speaker 1: said that. So I said it to Brooks. He got enraged. Man,
Speaker 1: his beard was shaking, and he said, don't go down
Speaker 1: that road. Don't float that balloon. I've never heard that
Speaker 1: phrase in my life. Float that balloon, don't float that balloon.
Speaker 1: It might be like a World War two reference, like,
Speaker 1: I don't know. If you meet him, please tell him
Speaker 1: I'm sorry and asking what that means. Okay, but you meet,
Speaker 1: you meet Greg. Yeah, you meet Greg while you're there,
Speaker 1: and eventually you start working on King of the Hill
Speaker 1: with Greg. Yeah, that's right. So he liked you, he did,
Speaker 1: he did. Uh. Greg was like one of those um
Speaker 1: senior writers on The Simpsons, at least in my view.
Speaker 1: He was one of those Harvard guys who was clearly
Speaker 1: a genius. The whole staff was Harvard guys when I
Speaker 1: showed up there. Uh, you know, I was sort of
Speaker 1: in the second way if there was the Harvard guys
Speaker 1: who created the show, and then after four years half
Speaker 1: of them went off to do their own thing, and
Speaker 1: so all these slots opened up, and I got in
Speaker 1: one of those slots. Now Greg was already there, and
Speaker 1: you know, Greg was obviously just a great writer of
Speaker 1: of this show. He wrote some of the best episodes ever.
Speaker 1: Bart Sells his soul is still just I mean, untoppable
Speaker 1: and very greg. You know, because Greg liked that kind
Speaker 1: of telling, a yarn sort of storytelling. He was even
Speaker 1: then heading in the direction of naturalistic storytelling that you
Speaker 1: see in King of the Hill and then The Office.
Speaker 1: It's funny because my perspective is slightly different. I remember,
Speaker 1: I'm sure you and I had this conversation, especially in
Speaker 1: later seasons, where we would read a script and we
Speaker 1: would start looking at it and I would go up
Speaker 1: to the writer's room or have conversations with clusters of
Speaker 1: you saying, guys, guys, I am not a cartoon. There
Speaker 1: are physical things that you are writing right now that
Speaker 1: my body is incapable of doing. So it's it's I
Speaker 1: can't go from here to here in no time like
Speaker 1: you can in a our tune. I always yeah, there
Speaker 1: was definitely some Homer Simpson elements. That's funny. Well, you
Speaker 1: you know, you hit on a key thing that writers
Speaker 1: have as a deficit. You know, we are not out
Speaker 1: there physically acting. We're all in our little minds and
Speaker 1: you know, we're rewarded for what pops on the page,
Speaker 1: and so you know, we violate these rules whereas an actor,
Speaker 1: how what are you thinking. We're like, we're just trying
Speaker 1: to preserve our jobs by making the other guy in
Speaker 1: the room laugh. And we you know, if it breaks reality,
Speaker 1: we just we can't be bothered. Right. And so by
Speaker 1: the time you came in in season three, were you
Speaker 1: watching um, were you watching The Office? Seen some although
Speaker 1: I continued my habit of not watching much TV until recently,
Speaker 1: where I've really forced myself to become a consumer. So
Speaker 1: I was aware of it for sure, because the comedy
Speaker 1: writers were aware of it. The comedy writers and taste
Speaker 1: makers were aware of the British show, and we were
Speaker 1: aware of the Americans for sure. And then, of course,
Speaker 1: you know, I knew Paul Lieberstein from King of the Hill.
Speaker 1: He was a writer on King of the Hill, and
Speaker 1: so you know, Paul and I hang out and you know,
Speaker 1: we'd go for a for a jog and he would
Speaker 1: tell me about the show he was working on. I
Speaker 1: do remember when Paul said to me, all I want
Speaker 1: in my career is for this show to go on.
Speaker 1: That was season two. He had that feeling. I've never
Speaker 1: heard him say that about anything he'd ever worked on. Wow. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you came in season three. Yeah, do you remember
Speaker 1: anything about walking into the writer's room you knew some
Speaker 1: of the people there about Yeah, Well, you know, writer's
Speaker 1: rooms are very competitive, right, It's a very competitive environment.
Speaker 1: We are trying to impress each other that we're smart
Speaker 1: and talented, and we have a method, which is UH
Speaker 1: time to say something funny and who can do it?
Speaker 1: And so I definitely remember the first day I walked
Speaker 1: into the office writer's room, Mike Sure was there, uh
Speaker 1: and uh Paul liebres Gen Silata, and Uh. I knew
Speaker 1: it was going to be brutal. So I had brought
Speaker 1: in a prop. I brought in an Army Survival Manual,
Speaker 1: and I just had it with me. I thought, that's
Speaker 1: supposed to be kind of funny to call out the subtext,
Speaker 1: right like, I mean, this writer's room where nobody knows
Speaker 1: me or wants me on this show that they created.
Speaker 1: And so I'll have this Army Survival Manual and in
Speaker 1: it there's an acronym that the army has U S
Speaker 1: U R V I V A L. And each of
Speaker 1: those letters has a thing you're supposed to do s
Speaker 1: you know, to survey the situation. You understand the risks.
Speaker 1: It's impossible in a survival situation you would die. Just
Speaker 1: try to remember what the second V one of them
Speaker 1: is vanquished fear and panic. Okay, I mean you never
Speaker 1: say vanquished in your life. I love though, that's amazing. Well,
Speaker 1: it was my It was my way of surviving. I figure,
Speaker 1: if it gets tighten here, I'm gonna have a whole
Speaker 1: bit I can do. Right. I never busted that out,
Speaker 1: but I do remember it got contentious on the first day.
Speaker 1: It was, you know, just one of those kind of
Speaker 1: ego things. We were arguing over some plot points. Should
Speaker 1: the story go this way or shouldn't go that way?
Speaker 1: And so we just got into some disagreement and I
Speaker 1: just went into an English accent. Why would you do that?
Speaker 1: Did it help or did it hurt? Absolutely helped, I
Speaker 1: mean it diffused everything. And then on some level it
Speaker 1: kind of says we're playing a game of comedy performative cleverness,
Speaker 1: and this is just a move in that dimension. Do
Speaker 1: you consider Gregg a teacher? Oh for sure. Yeah, he's
Speaker 1: a friend of mine forever now. And we were in
Speaker 1: the trenches at the Simpsons ten am to ten pm
Speaker 1: every single day, so you know, we're all buddies. But
Speaker 1: for sure, big time. He uh someone someone told us
Speaker 1: this exercise that he had something that if you were
Speaker 1: having trouble breaking stories, and he called it unlikely duos,
Speaker 1: And there were note cards on the wall with all
Speaker 1: the character's names, and the idea was to pick two
Speaker 1: characters that you would not necessarily associate with each other
Speaker 1: together and then write a story on that. I think
Speaker 1: that's always a great method. Um Early on, back on
Speaker 1: Nurses for me, I asked one of the senior writers
Speaker 1: there what makes a story? And the guy called me
Speaker 1: into his office. His name was Bruce Ferber. He closed
Speaker 1: the blinds, shut the door, locked it, and he said,
Speaker 1: a story is usually about two people, and then he
Speaker 1: unlocked the door and made me leave. It sounds so
Speaker 1: a common place, but it's actually the key. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: what's great is what's an unusual pairing. That's how I
Speaker 1: got my first Simpsons episode was I paired Homer versus
Speaker 1: Patty and Selma. It had never been done before, so
Speaker 1: I got an episode. But for sure, on any show,
Speaker 1: you know what, two characters have never been in a
Speaker 1: already together? Do that right? Well, that's genius. It's the
Speaker 1: small attention to details. When you know the characters and
Speaker 1: how the characters would behave you almost don't need anything
Speaker 1: more than this. I was told that during the testing
Speaker 1: of the show with the Gems and the Dwights, The
Speaker 1: direction from Greg to the actors was very simply, Uh, Jim,
Speaker 1: bring Dwight a glass of water, right, and then what happens? Right?
Speaker 1: You know Dwight is going to be skeptical, right because
Speaker 1: you know, you know, he's afraid that Jim has done
Speaker 1: something to the water. And I felt like you guys
Speaker 1: did such a great job of of that, of studying
Speaker 1: the character's behavior and how each character would behave in
Speaker 1: a given situation. Now you've you've hit it on the head.
Speaker 1: And if you notice, uh, ask Greg what his favorite
Speaker 1: television show is of all time. I remember he was
Speaker 1: being interviewed and he sat there for an hour trying
Speaker 1: to think, you know, and asking the write is what
Speaker 1: they thought? It was? Larry Sanders and uh, Judd Apatao.
Speaker 1: If you ask him, he'll give you the same answer.
Speaker 1: I worked with Judd on a show called Love we
Speaker 1: did for Netflix. I was the head writer there and
Speaker 1: I remember we delivered scripts to Judd. The first four scripts.
Speaker 1: I thought they were good. They were real clever and funny,
Speaker 1: and he was so bummed and he as he tried
Speaker 1: to articulate what it was, he said, Wat's the Larry
Speaker 1: Sanders show. And by the end, we had a a phrase,
Speaker 1: a motto, and it was behavior over banter. I never
Speaker 1: forgot it. Man. You know, you don't have to have
Speaker 1: clever word play if the characters are in an interesting behavior. Now,
Speaker 1: I can tell you two behaviors that are funny for actors.
Speaker 1: One is lying, always funny. The other generally his seduction.
Speaker 1: Unless the person I suppose is really hot, it's gonna
Speaker 1: be kind of funny. So I wondered for you as
Speaker 1: a comic performer. You know, you're talking about the glass
Speaker 1: of water thing, which is complex behavior. Are there other
Speaker 1: categories of behavior that are funny for you to perform? Oh,
Speaker 1: that's a very interesting question. Um. For me, the biggest
Speaker 1: laughs that I ever remember was when Holly was told
Speaker 1: that Kevin was slow. That's that was my recollection, and
Speaker 1: people went sort of bonkers about it. And I think
Speaker 1: the reason why is because it was a very simple
Speaker 1: joke that is set up by years of history and
Speaker 1: knowing the character. And as soon as you hear the
Speaker 1: setup of that, you know instantly that she will believe
Speaker 1: it and that there will be confusion between her and
Speaker 1: Kevin that could play out as long as we wanted
Speaker 1: it to. I think that when you truly, when you
Speaker 1: have the time to create a character and there's an
Speaker 1: expectation from an audience on how that character would respond
Speaker 1: the anticipation of that and delivering that or the opposite
Speaker 1: of what the expectation is. To me, those things are
Speaker 1: very funny. Wow, that's gold. Um you at one point
Speaker 1: said this. It has been said by wiser artists than
Speaker 1: me that the more personal you make your writing, the
Speaker 1: more personal it will become. Um, do you feel like
Speaker 1: you right? Personally? I aspire to for sure. Our medium
Speaker 1: is very interesting because it's collaborative, and I am hired
Speaker 1: to execute the vision of somebody above me. And you know,
Speaker 1: I've come to think of the writer's room, uh as
Speaker 1: an art project. The the show runner is the artist
Speaker 1: of the show. That's the Picasso, and we're all there
Speaker 1: to sort of make his or her vision come to life.
Speaker 1: Having said that, when you get an individual episode at
Speaker 1: a certain point, they send you off, and that's when
Speaker 1: the art form becomes yours and you really try to
Speaker 1: pour yourself into it. So on the Office, I always
Speaker 1: did try to find what was personal about it for
Speaker 1: me in that episode. Um, So you join in season three,
Speaker 1: we've got this, uh Stanford story, Jim is away and
Speaker 1: your first episode that you wrote was the Merger Um,
Speaker 1: which was about the branches coming together. Are really them
Speaker 1: being folded into Scranton, But nonetheless you have new people
Speaker 1: coming in. Was there anything about your personal experience entering
Speaker 1: this show or entering the writer's room that mirrors some
Speaker 1: of the Stanford people coming over? Oh? Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: it's very common in any dynamic. Uh, if you have
Speaker 1: a workplace and somebody new comes in, there's gonna be
Speaker 1: a feeling of like we're the old guard, right. Um.
Speaker 1: That was always true in every writer's room I've ever
Speaker 1: been in. I know it was true. I shouldn't say
Speaker 1: I know, but I could feel it in the actor's
Speaker 1: new actors coming into the office. Of course, there's gonna
Speaker 1: be a period of almost testing. I would think, you
Speaker 1: know that that goes on subconsciously. I've never met a
Speaker 1: nicer group of people than the actors on the office.
Speaker 1: But as professionals, there's this sense of, Hey, we're trying
Speaker 1: to do something at the highest level. You can you
Speaker 1: step in and do this? Um, So I wouldn't surprise
Speaker 1: me that the the new actors felt really challenged when
Speaker 1: they when they first came in. Yeah, there's a weird
Speaker 1: sort of dichotomy that existed on the show, right, So
Speaker 1: when you think of the office, it's really about the bullpen.
Speaker 1: It's about the same group of people that exist in
Speaker 1: this same place over nine years. But of course when
Speaker 1: you just back up a little bit, it's really not true.
Speaker 1: And I feel like you guys did a great job
Speaker 1: of creating energy by infusing that stasis with new people
Speaker 1: or you know, even making Jim go away. That creates
Speaker 1: a different environment. Um, I thought that you guys did
Speaker 1: a really great job in keeping that energy while still
Speaker 1: maintaining the feeling that nothing is changing. Brilliantly said, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think the lion share of the credit probably goes
Speaker 1: to Greg and his three dimensional chess that he plays
Speaker 1: with this line, I remember Greg had figured out that
Speaker 1: TV shows should have arcs before anybody did you know
Speaker 1: TV historically you're watching individual episodes that could literally be
Speaker 1: shuffled in syndication. They were designed to be unrelated to
Speaker 1: each other. And Greg recognized that arcing out was the
Speaker 1: new way of doing things. He was reading Game of
Speaker 1: Thrones and and the Game of Thrones started airing and
Speaker 1: he's like, oh my god, they're benefiting from the fact
Speaker 1: that they know where they're going long term, and suddenly
Speaker 1: he was applying this very archy mentality to the show. Yeah,
Speaker 1: one of the other writers was talking to me about
Speaker 1: um that there were many arcs, medium arcs, and longer arcs. Right, So,
Speaker 1: like the Charles Minor storyline, for example, that was a
Speaker 1: set arcs six episodes or whatever it was. And then some,
Speaker 1: especially the relationship type arcs, there would be sort of
Speaker 1: a plan and if that wasn't creating the kind of
Speaker 1: energy you wanted, then it would just sort of go away, right,
Speaker 1: or if it was, then it would sort of pick
Speaker 1: up again. But it was always sort of intended to
Speaker 1: be at least some sort of arc. Yeah. Well, what's
Speaker 1: interesting about those romantic long term arcs. We discovered that
Speaker 1: you didn't have to advance them every episode, that they
Speaker 1: could just stick around and then six episodes later they
Speaker 1: could advance. And then, of course we had this crazy
Speaker 1: turn in season nine where we were gonna split Jim
Speaker 1: and Pam up, and the audience hated it so much
Speaker 1: we just bailed on that, uh, kept them you know together, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: how much were you all influenced by what you were
Speaker 1: reading or experiencing from fans. I personally never got online.
Speaker 1: I still am not on any social media. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm catching up to television give me one medium at
Speaker 1: the time. But people did, for sure, especially the early
Speaker 1: years of the Office coincided with the early years of
Speaker 1: big time internet feedback, and it first sure influenced the show.
Speaker 1: I bet somebody on this podcast has mentioned that they
Speaker 1: were reading online comments and it's skewed the gym pam
Speaker 1: thing massively because who writes comments online. Apparently it's disproportionately
Speaker 1: romantic lonely hearts, and that's really what they wanted to see, right, Um,
Speaker 1: the history of television primarily has existed. It has been
Speaker 1: pointed out to me as the central characters are the
Speaker 1: young lovers, right, uh, Mary Tyler Moore Show, or you know,
Speaker 1: really even Cheers, right, I mean, the central storyline is
Speaker 1: Sam and Diane. Most of those shows have the crazy
Speaker 1: uncle or the crazy boss in the background that comes in,
Speaker 1: gets a few laughs and leaves, whereas The Office inverted that. Right,
Speaker 1: You had the crazy boss sort of out front, and
Speaker 1: the moments between the young lovers existed, sometimes in a
Speaker 1: gesture or a look and talk to me about how
Speaker 1: you feel like that that helped the gym and Pam. Wow,
Speaker 1: it's really interesting what you're pointing out. The office is
Speaker 1: structural quite unusual. You know, you have shows that are
Speaker 1: center and eccentrics. That's Taxi with Judd Hirsch at the
Speaker 1: center and everybody else is a character actor and that's
Speaker 1: a that's a conventional structure um the office in an
Speaker 1: odd way, it splits things totally a little bit. You
Speaker 1: have a big, powerful comedy star at the center who
Speaker 1: is not the point of view protagonist. So that's interesting.
Speaker 1: It meant that frequently we'd have a more comedy storyline
Speaker 1: in the A story with Michael and Dwight, for example,
Speaker 1: and then a more straight romantic B story with Jim
Speaker 1: and Pam. Greg used to say a thing I thought
Speaker 1: it was very interesting tonally, he said, separate out the
Speaker 1: scenes that are dramatic tone from the scenes that are
Speaker 1: comic tone. He called it the mc d LT. They
Speaker 1: had this hamburger that was served hot in half the
Speaker 1: styrofoam container, and then in the other half of the
Speaker 1: styrofilm container was cold lettuce and tomato, And the gimmick
Speaker 1: was that you buy it and then and they put
Speaker 1: it together. In the hot he's hot, in the cold,
Speaker 1: see is cold? That was what he used to say.
Speaker 1: Keep the hot side hot and the cold side cold,
Speaker 1: the funny side funny, and the drama side dramatic. Interesting. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: I talked a long time with Rain about this. I
Speaker 1: was probably too nice to him. But I think in
Speaker 1: the history of television, you are hard pressed to find
Speaker 1: any comedy duo that was better than Dwight and Michael.
Speaker 1: Um what what do you think was special about their
Speaker 1: relationships and the and the way they were written that
Speaker 1: brought such comedy gold. I remember asking Rain one time
Speaker 1: about his view of Dwight, and we came to realize
Speaker 1: that we were writing a character that was, you know,
Speaker 1: the nerd, the weirdo that you make fun of for comedy,
Speaker 1: but that the performer was doing something much bigger than that.
Speaker 1: He was not making fun of this guy. He was
Speaker 1: celebrating him. And it just seems so obvious to him
Speaker 1: that that's what one would do. He said, Yeah, you
Speaker 1: can't go around judging your character, you know. And you
Speaker 1: could see how much he loved Dwight. So he's bringing
Speaker 1: this genius that's very rain this adoration for the marginal guy,
Speaker 1: and I mean Steve Correll, known in the improv community
Speaker 1: is one of the greatest of all time. So it's
Speaker 1: really those two in combination. And yeah, the dynamic between
Speaker 1: them is something extraordinary to what did what did you put?
Speaker 1: Could you put your finger on what you thought was
Speaker 1: their essential dynamic? I think that they were two characters
Speaker 1: both through the writing and the performances and their intention
Speaker 1: that were so perfect. All Michael wants is to be loved, right.
Speaker 1: Dwight loves him, and all he wants is Michael's approval
Speaker 1: and acceptance. And it's almost as though, because because that's
Speaker 1: the person that he really has, he's somewhere deep inside
Speaker 1: doesn't trust him because you know, like like not on
Speaker 1: the conscious level, but that like so he shows disdain
Speaker 1: for him for loving him, even though that's all he wants.
Speaker 1: But Michael has to play as though he doesn't care
Speaker 1: for Dwight because there's other cooler people that really he
Speaker 1: should be friends with, right it It kind of attaches
Speaker 1: to that schoolyard schoolyard I'm I'm in the nineteen fifties
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, but like you know that like
Speaker 1: grade school thing where it's like, Oh, I want to
Speaker 1: be I want the popular kid, right, I want Ryan,
Speaker 1: I want Jim. You know that those are the cool kids.
Speaker 1: Maybe it connects to that. Oh, I think you're right,
Speaker 1: that's exactly right. That's the funny irony of it is
Speaker 1: you can't accept the adoration of the one guy who
Speaker 1: worships him, right, but you, Brian, I think if any
Speaker 1: of your guests just pause to kind of analyze what
Speaker 1: was great and is great about you as a comic performer,
Speaker 1: that's unnecessary. But what is that coming? I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, please go ahead. If there's something, I can't
Speaker 1: stop you. Anybody who watches you perform, you know, can
Speaker 1: see it. But I thought that you had this tremendous
Speaker 1: collection of gifts in that you're obviously able to do
Speaker 1: real acting at any time. You know, you've got the
Speaker 1: big time dramatic chops, but in addition the comic chops
Speaker 1: and the physicality, which is not easy. Um. I remember
Speaker 1: they allowed me to shoot a webisode of a little
Speaker 1: four partner that we got to do where Kevin's Alane,
Speaker 1: where you're gonna sell ice cream from a truck, and
Speaker 1: it was all fantastic. But the moment that stood out
Speaker 1: for me was we just had this bit where you
Speaker 1: had to walk out of the building holding a suitcase,
Speaker 1: a briefcase, and you know, the instruction was, can you
Speaker 1: kind of just stumble on the curb and the briefcase
Speaker 1: flaps open or something. I don't think we had it
Speaker 1: planned at all, but you did. Four takes. Each of
Speaker 1: them was just great. They were so real and the
Speaker 1: and the way you would turn back and try to
Speaker 1: close it and give up, and and I was so
Speaker 1: impressed by that, especially when later I had opportunities to
Speaker 1: try to get physical comedy from other actors, and I
Speaker 1: found most of them can't even begin to do physical comedy. Well,
Speaker 1: It's interesting because this had never occurred to me ever
Speaker 1: ever until this moment. I remember very specifically the moment
Speaker 1: you're referencing um from Kevin's Loan, and I wonder if
Speaker 1: somewhere in the back of a writer's mind that led
Speaker 1: to Kevin's spilling the children as possible. I'm glad you
Speaker 1: brought up Kevin's filling the chili, as you recall, I
Speaker 1: directed that scene written by Aaron Sure, a great collaboration
Speaker 1: of artists there um boy, it's possible. It was a
Speaker 1: cold open, and the joke in the cold open really
Speaker 1: was this contradiction between the air edition of and in
Speaker 1: a way kind of foodie arrogance of this recipe that
Speaker 1: you're delivering, contrasting with as as you know, guttural and
Speaker 1: lowly visual as we can create. I'll tell you I
Speaker 1: remember with Kenna's chili. I was so proud of you,
Speaker 1: Brian that we were like, Okay, we're gonna build a
Speaker 1: chili tureen with a fake bottom so it'll look like
Speaker 1: it's filled. But then Brian won't have to carry seventy
Speaker 1: four pounds. You said. You looked at the expensive proper
Speaker 1: we created with a slanted bottom so that it seemed
Speaker 1: to be filled and wasn't, and you were like, I'm
Speaker 1: going in real, bring me the big tren you carry
Speaker 1: that incredibly heavy chili container. That was amazing. We only
Speaker 1: got two takes, I would call because one I did
Speaker 1: that in one time. It is my Yeah, for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: it has become the thing for which I am known.
Speaker 1: Now I own a T shirt with you carrying the
Speaker 1: carrying the filly. Yeah, it's uh. It has become the
Speaker 1: thing for me for sure, and people always ask that,
Speaker 1: and I remember, um, I haven't told this story on here,
Speaker 1: but someone came to me before and we did it.
Speaker 1: Obviously at the end of the spilling part, at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, everybody else was gone. It was
Speaker 1: just all the other actors were gone. It was just me.
Speaker 1: And they had cut a piece of carpet right that
Speaker 1: extended forever, like into the hallway around reception desk, over
Speaker 1: to Jim and Dwight's cluster there. Because if the chili
Speaker 1: spilled on the carpet, they would screw up the carpet forever.
Speaker 1: So they came and they were like, Brian, we have
Speaker 1: three piece of carpet, that's all. Well, that's all we
Speaker 1: can do, so we have to just to do that.
Speaker 1: But I yeah, it was it was one take and
Speaker 1: I and the reason I remember so well was I
Speaker 1: think in retrospect, despite three piece of carpet, we didn't
Speaker 1: have three of me. And how stained I was from
Speaker 1: even the first take, I don't think that I could
Speaker 1: have been reset. Moment when you chose to take like
Speaker 1: printer paper and try to mop up the chili is
Speaker 1: so brilliant. Everybody knows printer paper doesn't absorb it all.
Speaker 1: It's just this siss of being doomed effort to clean up.
Speaker 1: It's so great. Bran Well, I think of any thing
Speaker 1: that will live on for me way after I'm gone,
Speaker 1: that that that meme or whatever will be in Greg yes, yes,
Speaker 1: and Mike sure yes. All told me that their favorite
Speaker 1: or the best episode of the Office was Business School. Wow.
Speaker 1: I'm humbled. Um. I mean, it's just so beautiful. I
Speaker 1: have been asked about this episode before. I always say
Speaker 1: that it's one of these very lucky coming togethers of
Speaker 1: the experience of the writer and the experience of the
Speaker 1: actor in this case Jenna, and maybe of artists in general.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you think about what we're trying to do, uh,
Speaker 1: it involves dreaming big that we could be special, and
Speaker 1: inevitably we must encounter failure because none of us is
Speaker 1: great every time. And to get greatness you have to
Speaker 1: put so much heart into it, you know, writing spec scripts.
Speaker 1: For me, that's really what it's about. And and there
Speaker 1: are moments in everyone's career I imagine when they go,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, I'm not going to be one of
Speaker 1: those people who tried and and make it. You know.
Speaker 1: Of course, yeah, we all have basically almost been that person,
Speaker 1: and we know the feeling. Jenni Fisher for sure. I
Speaker 1: mean she audition for seven or eight years before she
Speaker 1: was able to support herself, and so she really knows
Speaker 1: that feeling. That's what this is all a metaphor for.
Speaker 1: Is there anything personal for you? Oh yeah, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: big time. You know, uh, I really feel the relationship
Speaker 1: between um, a young aspiring artist and a father. You know,
Speaker 1: she feels like she has failed and her art has
Speaker 1: been called motel art by somebody whose tastes she might respect.
Speaker 1: And here's a guy who she doesn't respect, like you
Speaker 1: do with your dad, who's saying, honey, you're great, and
Speaker 1: that's so beautiful and meaningful. Yeah. Um. Gregg talked about
Speaker 1: something apparently called truth and beauty and wanted to find
Speaker 1: like stark truth and reality and small moments of beauty
Speaker 1: and connection between people, like the end of business school. Sure,
Speaker 1: well that's fundamental for sure. You know what's interesting is
Speaker 1: you gotta also remember it's a comedy, and I remember
Speaker 1: there were times when you could drift out of it.
Speaker 1: I specifically remember early on when I was a new
Speaker 1: writer there, they did a screening of an episode and
Speaker 1: everybody loved it. And I remember saying the notes afterwards, guys,
Speaker 1: you have three scenes in a row where you're not
Speaker 1: even trying to be funny. And this statement was met
Speaker 1: by silence from the writers, by the way, to the
Speaker 1: point where I thought, did they not get it? And
Speaker 1: I repeated it multiple times, and then afterwards I went
Speaker 1: to Paul. I liked Paul. What happened? Did did people
Speaker 1: hear what I was saying? Because yeah, bright, we heard
Speaker 1: it the first time. Stop pounding it into us. But
Speaker 1: they had realized I guess that, Oh yeah, ship, it's
Speaker 1: not a drama. You gotta put comedy in there as well.
Speaker 1: That balance is so interesting in this art form. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: do you remember? So you know, we have the writer's strike.
Speaker 1: We also have a huge recession that happens during the show. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna reference a few of your episodes here, but
Speaker 1: the economy started tanking? Were you writing those outside realities
Speaker 1: into um episodes of the show? Business School obviously as
Speaker 1: an example that you specifically wrote Michael's lack of touch
Speaker 1: of business and where business was going. But there's also
Speaker 1: money where Michael takes a second job because he can't
Speaker 1: make ends meet. There was also you know, the storyline
Speaker 1: of Saber came at a time Comcast was coming in
Speaker 1: and taking over. Was that an intentional think? You just
Speaker 1: got kind of a glint in your eye. Bj Novak
Speaker 1: was very kind of aware of these trends in technology,
Speaker 1: you know, with Wolf, I always thought was so prescient.
Speaker 1: It's such a perfect takedown of the internet startup. And
Speaker 1: Greg to you know, Greg is always way ahead of trends.
Speaker 1: I don't know where he finds the time to read
Speaker 1: The Economist or whatever he's doing, but I mean he did.
Speaker 1: We did an episode I remember at the time it
Speaker 1: was called China, but I don't know what it ever
Speaker 1: aired as that was that was one called China Okay,
Speaker 1: good good? Yeah? And that was that was you know,
Speaker 1: Greg realizing, oh ship, China is going to take over
Speaker 1: the world economy and what if Michael reads an article
Speaker 1: about this in the dentist's office. Um, but yeah, trend awareness.
Speaker 1: Some of those smart writers were all over that, and
Speaker 1: Saver as an example for sure. Um, do you remember
Speaker 1: Comcast taking over? No? I don't do you remember? Was there? Yeah? Well,
Speaker 1: one of the things that paul Um talked about was
Speaker 1: timing that Comcast came in and took over, and there
Speaker 1: was no history with the show. You know, the ratings
Speaker 1: were declining. We know now it just kept declining on
Speaker 1: every show everywhere because people were starting to watch streaming,
Speaker 1: but the office was declining, and so they were confronted
Speaker 1: with this new entity. Here's their biggest show, and Steve
Speaker 1: Correll is leaving, so we need to bring in another star.
Speaker 1: And that was that was Paul's take on which I
Speaker 1: didn't know, like that somebody else needed to come in.
Speaker 1: I don't know where did you net out on that
Speaker 1: as an idea moving forward? Well, what you're saying makes
Speaker 1: a lot of sense, because there was an obvious consensus
Speaker 1: creatively that yeah, we don't need to add anyone at all.
Speaker 1: In fact, as I recall, it was virtually unanimous that
Speaker 1: people felt Dwight should become the new uh Michael and
Speaker 1: to take over the office just seemed obvious to us,
Speaker 1: and the fact that that there was pushback to that
Speaker 1: was contentious creatively for us. So I do remember that
Speaker 1: I didn't realize that it was coinciding with this takeover,
Speaker 1: which makes a lot of sense. When did you find
Speaker 1: out that Steve was going to be leaving. I thought
Speaker 1: that it was sort of known. He had a seven
Speaker 1: year contract, and I remember early on Hang with Steve
Speaker 1: and him saying, apropos of nothing, this is the greatest
Speaker 1: television show that I will ever be a part of.
Speaker 1: I remember being struck by that, because us he was
Speaker 1: not an old man at the end of his career.
Speaker 1: I've never met somebody who, in the midst of doing
Speaker 1: something great says this is as good as it will
Speaker 1: ever get. And he didn't mean it pessimistically. He meant
Speaker 1: it exactly opposite. Just look how incredible this show is.
Speaker 1: So him leaving, to me always felt like he had
Speaker 1: intended to do seven seasons. That was what he had
Speaker 1: portioned his energy for, and he had made his artistic
Speaker 1: statement that he had always conceived of doing and we're
Speaker 1: always going to move on. So it seemed to me
Speaker 1: like the most undramatic thing in the world, but of course,
Speaker 1: creatively for a TV show, the most challenging thing in
Speaker 1: the world. What do you do when your star leaves
Speaker 1: and you're gonna try to continue doing the show. I
Speaker 1: love the way the show responded, by the way, it's
Speaker 1: such a series of lessons in uh TV making so
Speaker 1: you weren't concerned about the show moving forward, but you
Speaker 1: were more excited about finding out what comes next. Well,
Speaker 1: I was oblivious to what was going to be the
Speaker 1: big Allen is there. Greg was not. He Greg sat
Speaker 1: the writer's down at one point and said, watch what
Speaker 1: will happen? He said, criticism comes in cycles, and so
Speaker 1: you know, it starts out the Office isn't getting ratings,
Speaker 1: but look at this champ from coming from behind and
Speaker 1: now it's great. And he was the next stage of
Speaker 1: the narrative will be the Office has lost its mojo.
Speaker 1: So he prepared us for that. He said, it happened
Speaker 1: on Saturdaynight Live. And then he goes, if you stick
Speaker 1: around long enough, then the narrative becomes the Office is back,
Speaker 1: Saturday Night Live is back. So it seemed like that
Speaker 1: was inevitable. Um, I feel like the last season and
Speaker 1: then certainly the finale, but but really the whole last
Speaker 1: season is grossly underappreciate. I feel like one thing I'm
Speaker 1: very proud about the show is that it was a
Speaker 1: show that had a beginning and had a middle, and
Speaker 1: then it had an end, and and the reveal of
Speaker 1: documentary crew was such an important element to telling the
Speaker 1: full story and having the characters see themselves exposed in
Speaker 1: a way. Um, it was very interesting as an actor,
Speaker 1: quite brilliant in its conception. Pure Greg he knew from
Speaker 1: the very start. He came into season nine saying, here's
Speaker 1: how we're going to do the finale. Um, the documentary
Speaker 1: will finally air. And he also had in mind this
Speaker 1: idea that there would be a reunion show in the finale,
Speaker 1: and that the word reunion would come to mean two things,
Speaker 1: as Pam and Jim would have split up and would
Speaker 1: have a reunion in that episode. As I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: it was so painful for the audience to explore the
Speaker 1: breakup of Jim and Pam that we put the brakes
Speaker 1: on it. Basically, you can see them getting to separation
Speaker 1: and then it just was unpleasant for everyone and we
Speaker 1: bailed on it. They come back together sort of off
Speaker 1: screen really, and they are together in the reunion. They
Speaker 1: don't have to have a reunion in that episode. Uh.
Speaker 1: How did Jenna and John feel about them potentially splitting up, Well,
Speaker 1: they seemed very much involved and on board for everything.
Speaker 1: You know. It was really cool in season nine the
Speaker 1: way the actors were invited into the writer's room more
Speaker 1: than usual. Tell us everything you've ever wanted to do
Speaker 1: on this show, because this is our last chance. And
Speaker 1: and Jenna and John, my recollection is they both are
Speaker 1: EPs in season nine as well, and we're invited to
Speaker 1: have serious creative input. I remember John saying something very
Speaker 1: cool and interesting where he was like, this last season
Speaker 1: is for the fans. Imagine them as your primary audience.
Speaker 1: We don't have to build an audience now, this is it.
Speaker 1: Let's give them the thing they most want. And that
Speaker 1: informed a lot of creative decisions. Yeah. Um, are you
Speaker 1: happy with how the show ended? Yes, very much so. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I remember going to the screening and the the emotions
Speaker 1: and I felt watching it with everybody who was involved
Speaker 1: were were so warm and positive. Now, just even saying
Speaker 1: that shows you how completely non objective my experience of
Speaker 1: the ending is. You may have noticed that Greg, who
Speaker 1: wrote the episode, Um, he cast into it tons of
Speaker 1: people who worked behind the scenes. And you you is
Speaker 1: that your acting debut on the Office? It certainly is. Uh.
Speaker 1: And you know what Greg was doing was creating a
Speaker 1: kind of yearbook for himself where he managed to photograph
Speaker 1: all these people that he cared about, so when he
Speaker 1: watches that episode, it's an emotional reunion for him too.
Speaker 1: I want to point out, Brian, that before I went
Speaker 1: on camera in that finale episode, I turned to you
Speaker 1: and I said, Brian, how do you act? I have
Speaker 1: to deliver a line? What is acting? Two minutes for
Speaker 1: you to tell me how to deliver a line? And
Speaker 1: I'll never forget what you told me. Okay, here's what
Speaker 1: it was. The line I had to say. It was
Speaker 1: something like I had to say to Jim and Pam, Um,
Speaker 1: now you've seen you got yourself on on TV. You
Speaker 1: know what was it like after all those years watching
Speaker 1: yourself on TV? And I said, how do how do
Speaker 1: I do this? And you said okay? So Brent, so Um,
Speaker 1: you know these guys have just seen themselves on TV, right,
Speaker 1: So just asked them. That's asked them. You know what
Speaker 1: was it like to see themselves on TV? I was like, okay,
Speaker 1: and that was it. You just you just kind of
Speaker 1: translated into just a massive it's really happening. That's pretty brilliant.
Speaker 1: So when you think about the office, when a fan
Speaker 1: is watching the show, obviously the actors are the face
Speaker 1: of that show, and the actors have gone to do
Speaker 1: many things afterwards, But I started thinking about you and
Speaker 1: Gen Salada and Mike Sure and all of the great
Speaker 1: writers that came out of the writer's room, the tree
Speaker 1: of Greg Daniels. And here in the last let's say,
Speaker 1: seven years, Um, these are the shows that have been
Speaker 1: headed by old writers of the Office, Space Force, Love,
Speaker 1: Parks and Wreck, The Mindy Project, Brooklyn nine nine, The
Speaker 1: Good Place, Master of None, Superstore, news Room, Hello Ladies,
Speaker 1: Four Weddings in a Funeral, Q Force, Little America, SMILF,
Speaker 1: People of Earth, Bad Teacher, Trophy, Wife Champions, Guys with Kids,
Speaker 1: Central Park, Ghosted, Platform, Never Have I Ever Champions, Sunnyside,
Speaker 1: and Abbey's. I mean, that is an incredible list of
Speaker 1: shows and shows. Really, you, guys, um, were the all
Speaker 1: stars of this creative ensemble. Well, Greg Daniels is really
Speaker 1: good at picking writers. I've always said the guy who's
Speaker 1: best at picking actors is Judd Apatow, and the best
Speaker 1: at picking writers is Greg. He's great at it. He
Speaker 1: reads scripts, and he can tell from reading a script
Speaker 1: whether a writer is good or not to a level
Speaker 1: that is unusual. And so he's brought up some really
Speaker 1: really great writers and then brought them up in a
Speaker 1: process you know that dates back a long time. We're
Speaker 1: all trained up in these rooms, and then we we
Speaker 1: bring our wisdom to new rooms. And so the office
Speaker 1: is this distillation of quite a lot of TV running wisdom,
Speaker 1: you know that that Greg brings and was shared amongst them,
Speaker 1: and then now is you know, dissipated amongst these other Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's crazy. I also heard Greg takes really long meetings.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, oh yeah, No. The meeting with a writer
Speaker 1: for Greg, oh it's crazy. I mean Robert Pattnick may
Speaker 1: have been the longest writer's meeting ever. I think he
Speaker 1: was there for twelve hours or something, the kind of
Speaker 1: thing that you can only do to something in their twenties.
Speaker 1: But Greg really like to observe the writer. And Greg
Speaker 1: felt that he could not effectively observe the writer while
Speaker 1: talking to that writer face to face. So what he
Speaker 1: would do is he would call some other writer in jents,
Speaker 1: can you come up here and meet this writer, Robert Patnick,
Speaker 1: And so Jen Salata would have a conversation with Pattick,
Speaker 1: and Greg would sit at like a forty five degree
Speaker 1: angle and just staring Robert Patnick, you know, and then
Speaker 1: you would do that with eight ten writers. Uh, and
Speaker 1: take it very, very seriously. It's a very wrenching thing
Speaker 1: to get rid of a writer, So you want to
Speaker 1: hire one with a lot of confidence when you go in, right.
Speaker 1: You know, people talk about what the legacy of the
Speaker 1: Office is. Certainly these shows and the good work that's
Speaker 1: done on so many of them is a legacy of
Speaker 1: the show. Yes, I know that Greg and others hope
Speaker 1: for more of a legacy in terms of of tone.
Speaker 1: You know, Greg thought that maybe The Office would change
Speaker 1: the tone of television a little bit more in the
Speaker 1: direction of realism, grounded acting, um unhurried plot telling, and
Speaker 1: all of those things that we think of as the
Speaker 1: platinum qualities of the Office. But it doesn't seem to
Speaker 1: have been that way. That even the next mockumentary show,
Speaker 1: Modern Family, is structured much more like a traditional show
Speaker 1: than than The Office. Why do you think the show
Speaker 1: is bigger now than it was when we were NBC's
Speaker 1: top scripted show. I have my theories. One is just
Speaker 1: the quality of the show is is truly something different? Uh?
Speaker 1: For sure, the sense of family that radiates from a
Speaker 1: great TV show, of the emotional attraction a great writer
Speaker 1: named Mike Reas original Simpsons guy told me that the
Speaker 1: secret to every hit network TV show is subtext of family.
Speaker 1: I believe that's true, definitely true of the Office, and
Speaker 1: it's it's true of the actors of the Office as well.
Speaker 1: You can feel that love that they have for each
Speaker 1: other and the respect they have for each other is performed. Uh,
Speaker 1: that's part of it. I also think though, that there
Speaker 1: are certain shows that make you feel good about liking them.
Speaker 1: People liked Frasier more than they actually liked it because
Speaker 1: it made them feel smart. Those little you know, it
Speaker 1: goes to black and you see kind of a written
Speaker 1: title for this little chapter of Frasier. Boy, am I smart?
Speaker 1: That I like? Frasier is the feeling that gives you,
Speaker 1: and the Office has a little bit of that. You know,
Speaker 1: you can tell there's something taste making about This has
Speaker 1: to do with behavior over banter, priority on realism, small
Speaker 1: real Uh. These are phrases that flowed through the writer's
Speaker 1: room and are the hallmarks of good taste in drama
Speaker 1: and comedy. So the young people know that they have
Speaker 1: good taste by liking it. Yeah, what are you most
Speaker 1: proud of about the show? Oh, gosh. I watched the
Speaker 1: whole thing from beginning to end with my daughter when
Speaker 1: she was fourteen, and that gave me an emotional connection
Speaker 1: to the show that was even greater than what I
Speaker 1: had when I was there. And it makes me very
Speaker 1: proud to be part of that. It makes my daughter
Speaker 1: look up to me just a little bit, which is
Speaker 1: extremely unusual and rare. Take it. Yeah, that's nice, um, Brent,
Speaker 1: thank you so much. It's been my pleasure to talk
Speaker 1: with you. I mean, you're writing, your contribution to the show,
Speaker 1: you're directing, and all of the heart and soul that
Speaker 1: you put into it, um is awesome. So thank you, Brian. Well,
Speaker 1: as you know, it was a great pleasure doing the
Speaker 1: office with you, and I can't wait to see what
Speaker 1: we do next exactly. Thanks buddy, Thank you. What a
Speaker 1: pleasure man. Thank You're such a great actor. I love
Speaker 1: being around great actors. Well it's a pleasure. Well, what
Speaker 1: a delight that was. Plus he called me a great actor,
Speaker 1: so there's that. But in truth, Brent, just as a
Speaker 1: way of putting a smile on your face, or at
Speaker 1: least my face, I can't see your faces. I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna assume you're smiling too. Brent, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for coming in. I am very glad that you were
Speaker 1: able to win over the writers with your British accent
Speaker 1: and survival guides. The show would not have been the
Speaker 1: same without you. And to all of you listeners, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for tuning in. Don't forget to subscribe, follow,
Speaker 1: leave us a review. It's so important and I so
Speaker 1: appreciate all of you who have done so so far.
Speaker 1: Until we meet again, which I'm guessing is next week,
Speaker 1: I hope you all have an exceptional week. The Office.
Speaker 1: Deep Dive is hosted and executive produced by me Brian Baumgartner,
Speaker 1: alongside our executive producer, Lang Lee. Our senior producer is
Speaker 1: Tessa Kramer, our producer is Adam Massias, our associate producer
Speaker 1: is Emily Carr, and our assistant editor is Diego Tapia.
Speaker 1: My main man in the booth is Alec Moore. Our
Speaker 1: theme song Bubble and Squeak, performed by my great friend
Speaker 1: Creed Bratton, and the episode was mixed by seth Olansky