Speaker 1: Well, hello there, friends, and welcome to a very special
Speaker 1: episode of Off the Beat. I am your host, Brian Baumgartner.
Speaker 1: Today we're going to take a little trip, a trip
Speaker 1: to a place that I like to call memory Lane.
Speaker 1: Believe it or not, I have now been podcasting for
Speaker 1: over three years, and it all started out with me
Speaker 1: talking to some of my old co workers on the office,
Speaker 1: the actors, directors, makeup artists, camera operators, anyone I could
Speaker 1: find basically to help me understand what made that show
Speaker 1: so special. Well, the first line of attack in that
Speaker 1: specialness was, of course, the writers. So today I wanted
Speaker 1: to highlight some of the brilliant, hilarious minds who shaped
Speaker 1: the stories and crafted the jokes that well that you love.
Speaker 1: I'm calling this my WGA episode. Seems fitting at this
Speaker 1: point in time, am I right? But you can think
Speaker 1: of this as a best of some of my favorite
Speaker 1: snippets from my conversations with some of my favorite people
Speaker 1: on the planet. Whether you're a longtime listener to the
Speaker 1: podcast or this is your first time hearing these, I
Speaker 1: hope that you'll enjoy these stories about the inner workings
Speaker 1: of the writer's room and the magical place that was
Speaker 1: and still is the office.
Speaker 2: Bubble and Squeak, I love it, Bubble and Squeakna.
Speaker 3: Bubble and Squeak.
Speaker 4: I cook it every month. Oh from the Nah people.
Speaker 1: Let's start it off with this clip from my conversation
Speaker 1: with Jeane Stupnitsky talking about how he and his writing
Speaker 1: partner Lei Eisenberg, got to be in that room in
Speaker 1: the first place.
Speaker 5: So one of the things that separated Lee and I
Speaker 5: from everyone everyone, like a lot of those a lot
Speaker 5: of the stuff went to Harvard. They were all kind
Speaker 5: of like it was almost their birthright to write the sitcoms.
Speaker 3: Okay, you know.
Speaker 5: I was from Chicago. He was from Boston, and I
Speaker 5: had just five years of just nothing. I was, like
Speaker 5: I said, I'm just getting fired a lot. I was
Speaker 5: terrible at everything. So not a good assistant, not a
Speaker 5: good PA, just a huge fuck up. Really just a
Speaker 5: history of failure in many ways. So there was no
Speaker 5: like we didn't expect anything, We weren't didn't feel like
Speaker 5: we should be there. But yes we got. I think
Speaker 5: I was maybe twenty six or twenty seven, Yeah, started.
Speaker 1: What do you think you and Lee, both of you,
Speaker 1: what do you think your greatest contribution to the show
Speaker 1: was or how do you feel like you helped?
Speaker 3: Oh wow, what are you most proud of?
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, there are certain jokes that I'm really
Speaker 5: proud of that I remember writing. That feeling you get
Speaker 5: when you just you're like this is this is this
Speaker 5: feels like it could be really good. So I have
Speaker 5: those moments in my mind of just remember writing certain
Speaker 5: jokes and they were weren't even always from my episodes,
Speaker 5: but like they're just jokes that I'm proud of.
Speaker 3: It feels so weird.
Speaker 5: This when the imposter syndrome really kicks in when you
Speaker 5: start talking about stuff like this. But I think maybe
Speaker 5: we kind of subverted. I think we like, you know,
Speaker 5: we did things like when Jim kind of became like
Speaker 5: not the greatest partner every She's like, oh, I gotta
Speaker 5: I gotta leave. I gotta go to the houses on
Speaker 5: fire or flood and you know, trying to leave camp
Speaker 5: like you would really piss Officer and a segment of
Speaker 5: the audience. But just things like that, I don't know.
Speaker 5: I think we probably wrote. Everyone had their own, Like
Speaker 5: I feel like Mike Sure wrote like Michael it is
Speaker 5: almost most noble in a way, like the best version
Speaker 5: of Michael version. Personally I like a lot, and like
Speaker 5: everyone had like a different version. But I think we
Speaker 5: probably wrote like the the most biggest British version of
Speaker 5: the show in a way. Okay, maybe some of the
Speaker 5: darker stuff.
Speaker 1: Well that that was sort of where I was going.
Speaker 1: I mean, the two episodes that you guys were responsible for,
Speaker 1: Scott's Todd's and Dinner Party unquestionably considered the most cringiest
Speaker 1: of episodes in the history of the show. Were those
Speaker 1: your ideas or did you execute them? And what I
Speaker 1: mean by that for those of you listening who don't know.
Speaker 1: Sometimes there are stories that are decided collectively in the
Speaker 1: writer's room and then you're assigned a script to write.
Speaker 1: I'm curious about sort of the genesis for either one
Speaker 1: or to those episodes.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so yeah, it's true. Some like writers will come
Speaker 5: in with ideas after we'll have like time off in
Speaker 5: between seasons. We're coming with new ideas, and the ideas
Speaker 5: who come in come in with aren't always the ones
Speaker 5: that you end up writing. Sometimes other writers write them
Speaker 5: and you write other writers ideas. Neither one was our
Speaker 5: idea Dinner Party. It might have been Greg's idea I
Speaker 5: don't actually remember whose idea that was, but I remember
Speaker 5: feeling very I knew how to write that episode, and
Speaker 5: I remember Greg assigned it to Mindy, who like wasn't
Speaker 5: that I don't think she she want to write a
Speaker 5: different episode. I think at the time it was called
Speaker 5: like Who's Afraid of John Levinson Gold? But Scott's Tots
Speaker 5: was a Paul Lieberstein original that we were assigned.
Speaker 1: Ok, you make your acting debut in the office correct
Speaker 1: on television?
Speaker 5: On television?
Speaker 3: Yes, Yes, on television.
Speaker 1: Leo and Gino the delivery guys, was this something you
Speaker 1: were excited about doing or was this just fun for the.
Speaker 5: Right I did not enjoy at all, and it was
Speaker 5: really the other writers kind of. I think Greg thought
Speaker 5: it was funny, and the other writers, like I thought
Speaker 5: it would be funny to force us to act. I
Speaker 5: hated it, didn't want to do it, fought against it.
Speaker 5: But if we were going to do it, we did
Speaker 5: Lee and I did think it was funny for him
Speaker 5: to play Geno and me to play Leo, which was
Speaker 5: just really confused when the people work on the show,
Speaker 5: you know what our names was? What our names were? Anyway,
Speaker 5: at the beginning, I think by the end, we're really confused.
Speaker 5: And sometimes if I felt someone didn't like, if I
Speaker 5: knew someone wasn't sure, if I was leader Gene and
Speaker 5: Lee would walk by and be like, hey Gene to Lee,
Speaker 5: I would call him Gene, which would just doubly confuse
Speaker 5: them and they think they finally have to haven't figured out,
Speaker 5: and then I would just continue confusing.
Speaker 1: That's so good. I mean, look the show. The show
Speaker 1: gave all of us so much. I mean, for you,
Speaker 1: your first job in a writer's room, your acting career
Speaker 1: on Delvion, whether you liked it or not, your directorial debut,
Speaker 1: when you look back on that time, what feelings do
Speaker 1: you have.
Speaker 5: I mean, I owe so much. It was my film school,
Speaker 5: you know, I owe so much to the show. It
Speaker 5: because you know easily you can easily get on a
Speaker 5: show that last six episodes, and then you get on
Speaker 5: another show and it kind of you know, gets canceled
Speaker 5: or it's I mean, we got so lucky being hired
Speaker 5: on the show, to be on a show that went
Speaker 5: as long as it did, and we didn't stay the
Speaker 5: whole time, but it changed our lives, met a lot
Speaker 5: of amazing people.
Speaker 3: We learned so much.
Speaker 5: We learned how to become showrunners and how to write
Speaker 5: and how to run a room and kind of one
Speaker 5: of the things in the Writer's Strike that we talk
Speaker 5: about is just and I know Mike Scohn record talking
Speaker 5: about this just true. It was like, you know, for
Speaker 5: the next genreal. You know, we learned from Greg how
Speaker 5: to do these things, and a lot a lot of
Speaker 5: people are aren't learning that anymore. But we just completely
Speaker 5: change our lives, can change the trajectory of our careers.
Speaker 5: I remember thinking before it became preessional writer, I thought, oh,
Speaker 5: these writers are They're so lucky. They're so lucky that
Speaker 5: they get to do this. And then when I became
Speaker 5: one and I was like, it's all talent, lucky, has
Speaker 5: nothing new with it. I'm just that talented. Now I
Speaker 5: realized I'm back to the lucky part. There's talent, for sure,
Speaker 5: but there's so much luck involved. There's just things you
Speaker 5: can't control that we got on the show that it
Speaker 5: went as long as it did, that we met these
Speaker 5: made these connections and met these people. It just it's
Speaker 5: you know, things are lot of our hands and I
Speaker 5: feel so lucky. I feel so lucky.
Speaker 3: Well, I think we were all pretty lucky to be there. Jean.
Speaker 1: However, Lee remembers their early days on the staff as
Speaker 1: a little less nostalgic. In fact, I think neurotic is
Speaker 1: a better word for it. Here's Lee Eisenberg.
Speaker 6: We had never been in a writer's room before, so
Speaker 6: we didn't know anything. And so in a writer's room,
Speaker 6: if you pitch a joke and people don't like it,
Speaker 6: they don't tell you they don't like it. It just
Speaker 6: you're met with silence, and then you extrapolate the silence to.
Speaker 3: Mean move on.
Speaker 6: But we didn't know that, so we thought that maybe
Speaker 6: like people couldn't hear and so like I remember Jean
Speaker 6: saying to Paul once, like did you hear what I said?
Speaker 6: And that like stuff like that would happen a lot.
Speaker 6: And then I pitch, I pitched something and.
Speaker 3: Because you thought they were being rude, well I didn't
Speaker 3: sea it was just like bond.
Speaker 6: Well, it's just not the way that people interact with
Speaker 6: each other. You don't you acknowledge someone you say like, oh,
Speaker 6: I'm not sure that's right for me, But like if
Speaker 6: you did, you know you're generating thousands of jokes a day,
Speaker 6: Like if you have every single joke and explain why
Speaker 6: it's not right. You would get anything done.
Speaker 1: That's funny, Lee, I don't think it's works for this moment, right,
Speaker 1: should we think of it?
Speaker 3: Yeah, no one does that. We keep going, right.
Speaker 6: It was just weird, and we didn't know what we were doing.
Speaker 6: And then everyone will go out to lunch together. They
Speaker 6: would all kind of like run to their cars and
Speaker 6: like five people pile into a car, and then Gene
Speaker 6: and I would like get into like our camera. It
Speaker 6: just we felt like we were the new kids and
Speaker 6: we didn't fit in. And so I think our contract
Speaker 6: was like twenty weeks. It was ten weeks with an
Speaker 6: option for another ten weeks or something like that. And
Speaker 6: we were ten. We're getting close to ten weeks, and
Speaker 6: we're we were nervous, but we also kind of felt like,
Speaker 6: no one's that nice to us. I think we're gonna
Speaker 6: get fired anyways, can we can we quit? And we
Speaker 6: called our agent and we said, he's like, hey, so
Speaker 6: you're you're almost up. You know you're going to you
Speaker 6: know we're gonna try getting you those other ten weeks.
Speaker 6: We said, well, what if we want to quit? He said, well,
Speaker 6: I don't stand why you're asking and we said, well, like,
Speaker 6: you know, people aren't that nice to us, like we're
Speaker 6: fourth graders at the New School. And he was like,
Speaker 6: this is the stupidest question anyone's ever asked me. And
Speaker 6: he just was Mark Provozero, who represented me and Bean
Speaker 6: and Mindy and BJ and he was like, dumbest question
Speaker 6: I've ever been asked. And he hung up on us, right,
Speaker 6: and then we stayed on the show for five more years.
Speaker 3: Were you close to being fired? Do you think? Or
Speaker 3: do you Was that just your perception because people didn't
Speaker 3: seem nice.
Speaker 6: I think that when you say people didn't seem nice,
Speaker 6: I really feel young. I think that the you know,
Speaker 6: when you're acting and when you first start acting and
Speaker 6: you're like, the scene isn't about you, and you're like
Speaker 6: you want to go up to the director and.
Speaker 3: Be like, hey, did you like what I was doing? Right?
Speaker 6: And you think the scene's about you even though no
Speaker 6: one cares about you because the scene isn't about you.
Speaker 6: That's the way I felt about the writer's room was
Speaker 6: I was like, they're scrutinizing us every moment, and they
Speaker 6: were Greg had eighty five thousand other things to worry
Speaker 6: about than the staff writer's happiness or our contributions. We
Speaker 6: were contributing, but I think for us it was like
Speaker 6: Gene I would drive back and forth. We live together,
Speaker 6: and we'd have like a forty five minute commute every
Speaker 6: day each way, and all we would do is just say, like, hey,
Speaker 6: Paul laughed a little bit at that joke I said
Speaker 6: in the small room, how did it go with Mike
Speaker 6: and Jen in the other room? Did bj acknowledge you today?
Speaker 6: I mean, it was like we were parsing out the
Speaker 6: smallest little things, and then Greg got pneumonia season two
Speaker 6: while we were breaking the fight, so we had to
Speaker 6: outline the fight. Everyone else got to outline the episode's
Speaker 6: kind of more as a group, and for us it
Speaker 6: was like me and Jean and Paul and everyone else
Speaker 6: was off on script. And then we had to go
Speaker 6: meet Greg at his house because he had walking pneumonia,
Speaker 6: and it was like, Oh, they're setting us.
Speaker 3: Up to fail.
Speaker 6: They gave us this episode that's like goofy and different
Speaker 6: from the rest of the show. There's like a fight
Speaker 6: in a dojo, like they don't want us to do well,
Speaker 6: and then when we handed a bad script, they'll fire
Speaker 6: up us. This is what we were convinced of. I
Speaker 6: think we didn't. I think we didn't feel confident that
Speaker 6: we weren't going to be fired until three years in.
Speaker 6: I'm not kidding. Every single time, Like when we wrote
Speaker 6: the Secret, we were like, they gave us the secret
Speaker 6: because there's not a lot of time, and then we
Speaker 6: won't deliver and then they'll fire us. That's all we
Speaker 6: went through the first few years. What Wait, We liked
Speaker 6: everyone eventually, but we were terrified. It wasn't like a
Speaker 6: culture of fear. It was just two insecure guys.
Speaker 3: You were just worried about yourself. Oh, we were terrified. Yeah. Wow, Yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm really sorry to hear that. Thanks. I mean, it
Speaker 3: doesn't surprise me.
Speaker 6: You're a bit neurotic, but I've monetized the neuroses.
Speaker 3: That's all that matters.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, sure, I'm glad that they didn't quit or get fired,
Speaker 1: because without them we wouldn't have had such delectable masterpieces
Speaker 1: of cringe as Scott's Tots or even Dinner Party. In fact,
Speaker 1: every writer contributed their own special element to the show.
Speaker 1: But I wasn't there, at least not for that part.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna let Moe's shrewt. I mean, Mike, sure,
Speaker 1: tell you all about it. So Lee talked about this.
Speaker 1: I was talking to him about if there were specific
Speaker 1: strengths because the episodes were different, were there ways that
Speaker 1: either interested people or that they were better at And
Speaker 1: what he said was that he felt like he and
Speaker 1: Gene were much more in the sort of cringe comedy. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: which you know, if you look at Dinner Party, that
Speaker 1: certainly fits that bill. And what they said about you
Speaker 1: was that you were much more optimistic. Do you feel
Speaker 1: like that's true?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I do.
Speaker 4: I feel like my sweet spot on the show was, well,
Speaker 4: Christmas Party's pretty optimistic episode. But like the episode Branch
Speaker 4: Closing that I wrote that story because Jan walks in
Speaker 4: on the first page of the episode and says, we're
Speaker 4: shutting a branch down, and Michael has a complete collapse
Speaker 4: and then he says, no, I'm not letting this happen.
Speaker 4: I'm going to do something about this, and he and
Speaker 4: Dwight head off and they go to David Wallace's house
Speaker 4: in Connecticut and they're just like, I'm going to confront
Speaker 4: him and I'm going to make him see that this
Speaker 4: is not the right decision. It is utterly ineffectual Wallace
Speaker 4: Network shows up. They just end up sitting there and
Speaker 4: are miserable and completely unbeknownst to them, through a variety
Speaker 4: of other machiness, the branch ends up getting saved. But
Speaker 4: there's a scene in the end where Michael and Dwight
Speaker 4: are sitting in the car and that all hope is lost,
Speaker 4: and Michael says, okay, top three favorite moments ever at
Speaker 4: the office, and Dwight says, like my first day when
Speaker 4: you sprayed me with the fire extinguisher, and when yeah,
Speaker 4: I got sick and you came into the MRI, you know,
Speaker 4: I got a concussion or whatever. And then Dwight says,
Speaker 4: what about you? What are your favorite moments? And Michael
Speaker 4: says all of them, every single one, And then Dwight says, well,
Speaker 4: what about when Jan showed up and said the branch
Speaker 4: was closing? And He's like, come on, man, But that
Speaker 4: I remember just thinking like this, and that scene wasn't
Speaker 4: in the outline, and I remember writing that scene and
Speaker 4: thinking like that that this is like I locked into
Speaker 4: that idea. And I think it's just because it was
Speaker 4: like a moment of humanity between the two of them,
Speaker 4: where like the office is very meaningful. It's all Michael
Speaker 4: has and him being able to just sort of express
Speaker 4: in a sincere and human way what he loved about
Speaker 4: the place, like that kind of thing. I really felt
Speaker 4: like that was my jam. But yeah, I mean those guys,
Speaker 4: like Greg's theory was that writing staff should be like
Speaker 4: The X Men, where he's like, if you have all
Speaker 4: people who are the same and have the same like
Speaker 4: comedic power, you're gonna have one awesome thing about the show.
Speaker 4: But if if everybody has his or her own comedic power,
Speaker 4: then you get everything. And so yeah, I think Lee
Speaker 4: and Jean were really into the like super I mean,
Speaker 4: those guys are so funny, Like Scott's Tots was an
Speaker 4: episode they pitched very early on that Greg was like,
Speaker 4: we're never doing this, and then long after I left,
Speaker 4: I was watching him like, oh, I guess Greg gave in.
Speaker 4: But yeah, they love that. Jen Solata was her superpower
Speaker 4: is just this incredible connection to Pam. She's also hilarious,
Speaker 4: but like she was like the beating heart of the show.
Speaker 4: I would say, not just through Pam, through all the characters,
Speaker 4: but like the episode where the bird dies and Michael
Speaker 4: has the funeral for the bird. That was Jen from
Speaker 4: beginning to end, and we kept like tinkering and tinkering
Speaker 4: and tickering, and she eventually was like, I think I
Speaker 4: just understand this and I just want to write it,
Speaker 4: and we were like, great, and then it's amazing. And
Speaker 4: the part of it that she really liked into was
Speaker 4: Pam Pam understanding what Michael was going through and giving
Speaker 4: the eulogy and trying to make Michael feel better by
Speaker 4: talking about this dead bird. It's a really complicated emotional moment.
Speaker 4: But Jen just like understood it at some fundamental level.
Speaker 4: And you know, Paul was really into Michael's when Michael
Speaker 4: was at his absolute worst. Like Paul was super into
Speaker 4: the Michael's worst instincts, right right, Mindy was Mindy's superpower
Speaker 4: was always the super absurdist stuff, the really like crazy
Speaker 4: flights of fancy. You know, famously in the episode where
Speaker 4: Michael burns his foot on the George Foreman grill, when
Speaker 4: Michael burns his foot. I mean again, every episode that
Speaker 4: everybody wrote was always rewritten a tremendous amount. But I
Speaker 4: will say that that first monologue Michael has where he's
Speaker 4: explained to the camera how he burned his foot. I
Speaker 4: don't think we changed a word of it. Like Mindy
Speaker 4: turned in her script and that speech was in there
Speaker 4: and it was really long and it's really complicated and
Speaker 4: it has it's a crazy roller coaster, and I don't
Speaker 4: think we changed a single word because she just like
Speaker 4: she would lock into just the the super absurdist stuff
Speaker 4: presented very straightforwardly, like yeah, I mean, everyone everybody had
Speaker 4: something they were good at. That staff is incredible.
Speaker 3: They sure, or we'll be right back.
Speaker 1: One thing I heard from basically all of the writers
Speaker 1: was that Greg Daniels, our showrunner, producer, mastermind, fearless leader,
Speaker 1: whatever you want to call him, he had a lot
Speaker 1: of games or exercises or theories as he called them
Speaker 1: that he instilled in the writer's room and used to
Speaker 1: help shape the stories.
Speaker 3: Characters are the whole world of the office.
Speaker 1: I'm not a writer, but from what I learned, this
Speaker 1: is different from how your average sitcom writer's room is run.
Speaker 1: Our writer Brent Forrester had also worked with him years
Speaker 1: before on The Simpsons and King of the Hill, so
Speaker 1: he knew Greg's weighs very very well.
Speaker 3: Here's Brent, do you consider Greg a teacher?
Speaker 7: Oh for sure. Yeah, he's a friend of mine forever now.
Speaker 7: And we were in the trenches at the Simpsons ten
Speaker 7: am to ten pm every single day, so you know
Speaker 7: we're allD buddies, but for sure big time.
Speaker 1: Someone told us this exercise that he had something that
Speaker 1: if you were having trouble breaking stories, and he called
Speaker 1: it unlikely duos, And there were note cards on the
Speaker 1: wall with all the character's names, and the idea was
Speaker 1: to pick two characters that you would not necessarily associate
Speaker 1: with each other together and then write a story on that.
Speaker 3: I think that's.
Speaker 7: Always a great method. Early on, back on nurses for me,
Speaker 7: I asked one of the senior writers there what makes
Speaker 7: a story? And the guy called me into his office.
Speaker 3: His name was Bruce Ferber.
Speaker 7: He closed the blind, shut the door, locked it, and
Speaker 7: he said, is usually about two people, and then he
Speaker 7: unlocked the door and made me leave. It sounds so
Speaker 7: a commonplace, but it's actually the key.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 7: Yeah, that's what's great is what's an unusual pairing. That's
Speaker 7: how I got my first Simpsons episode was I paired
Speaker 7: Homer versus Patty and Selma. It had never been done before,
Speaker 7: so I got an episode, right but for sure, on
Speaker 7: any show, you know what, two characters have never been
Speaker 7: in a.
Speaker 3: Story together, do that right?
Speaker 1: Oh, that's genius. It's the small attention to details. When
Speaker 1: you know the characters and how the characters would behave,
Speaker 1: you almost don't need anything more than this. I was
Speaker 1: told that during the testing of the show with the
Speaker 1: Gym's and the Dwights, the direction from Greg to the
Speaker 1: actors was very simply, Jim, bring Dwight a glass of water, right,
Speaker 1: and then what happens?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: You know Dwight is going to be skeptical, right, right,
Speaker 1: because you know, you know he's afraid the gym has
Speaker 1: done something to the water. Yeah, And I thought, like,
Speaker 1: you guys did such a great job of that, of
Speaker 1: studying the character's behavior and how each character.
Speaker 3: Would behave in a given situation.
Speaker 7: No, you've hit it on the head. And if you notice,
Speaker 7: ask Greg what his favorite television show is of all time.
Speaker 7: I remember he was being interviewed and he sat there
Speaker 7: for an hour trying to think, you know, and asking
Speaker 7: the writers what they thought it was. Larry Sanders and
Speaker 7: Judd Apatow. If you ask him, he'll give you the
Speaker 7: same answer. I worked with jud on a show called
Speaker 7: Love we did for Netflix. I was the head writer
Speaker 7: there and I remember we delivered scripts to jud the
Speaker 7: first four scripts. I thought they were good. They were real,
Speaker 7: clever and funny, and he was so bummed and as
Speaker 7: he tried to articulate what it was, he said, watch.
Speaker 3: The Larry Sanders Show.
Speaker 7: And by the end we had a phrase, a motto,
Speaker 7: and it was behavior over banter. I never forgot it.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 7: You know, you don't have to have clever word play
Speaker 7: if the characters are in an interesting behavior. Now, I
Speaker 7: can tell you two behaviors that are funny for actress.
Speaker 7: One is lying, always funny. The other generally is seduction.
Speaker 7: Unless the first that I suppose is really hot, it's
Speaker 7: gonna be kind of funny.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 7: So I wonder for you as a comic performer. You know,
Speaker 7: you're talking about the glass of water thing, which is
Speaker 7: complex behavior. Are there other categories of behavior that are
Speaker 7: funny for you to perform?
Speaker 1: Oh, that's a very interesting question for me. The biggest
Speaker 1: laughs that I ever remember was when Holly was told
Speaker 1: that Kevin was slow. That was my recollection and people
Speaker 1: went sort of bonkers about it. And I think the
Speaker 1: reason why is because it was a very simple joke
Speaker 1: that is set up by years of history and knowing
Speaker 1: the character, and as soon as you hear the setup
Speaker 1: of that, you know instantly that she will believe it
Speaker 1: and that there will be confusion between her and Kevin,
Speaker 1: and 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.
Speaker 3: Are very funny. Wow, that's gold.
Speaker 1: At one point said this. It has been said by
Speaker 1: wiser artists than me that the more personal you make
Speaker 1: your writing, the more personal it will become. Do you
Speaker 1: feel like you write personally?
Speaker 3: I aspire to, for sure.
Speaker 7: Our medium is very interesting because it's collaborative and I
Speaker 7: am hired to execute the vision of somebody above me.
Speaker 7: And you know, I've come to think of the writer's
Speaker 7: room as an art project. The showrunner is.
Speaker 3: The artist of the show.
Speaker 7: That's the Picasso, and we're all there to sort of
Speaker 7: make his or her vision come to life. Having said that,
Speaker 7: when you get an individual episode. At a certain point
Speaker 7: they send you off, and that's when the art form
Speaker 7: becomes yours and you really try to pour yourself into it.
Speaker 3: So on The Office, I.
Speaker 7: Always did try to find what was personal about it
Speaker 7: for me in that episode.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Another really unique thing about the Office was how fluid
Speaker 1: the dynamic was between the writing staff and the actors.
Speaker 1: Usually this is not the case the writers write a
Speaker 1: script and the actors acted. But on our show, not
Speaker 1: only were the lines of communication very open, but a
Speaker 1: lot of our writers were very much a part of
Speaker 1: the cast, obviously Mindy Kayling, bj Novak, and of course
Speaker 1: Paul Lieberstein, who played dunder Mifflin's beloved behted.
Speaker 3: No, No, it is that a thing.
Speaker 1: Controversial, let's say controversial. HR Rep. Toby Flanderson. You said
Speaker 1: it's not traditional and there's this huge wall typically between
Speaker 1: the writing staff, yeah, and the actors. How do you
Speaker 1: think that that difference in our show changed the dynamic.
Speaker 2: It would have been. I don't think our show would
Speaker 2: have come out that way if if there was a
Speaker 2: strict wall. We were all on the same page with
Speaker 2: the show writers and actors, and we became so close
Speaker 2: with each character an actor and liked them and liked
Speaker 2: writing for them. And that often doesn't happen when they're
Speaker 2: so separate. The writers have one idea what the show
Speaker 2: is that they want to create, and the actors have
Speaker 2: a different and so they're fighting each other on set
Speaker 2: just create without ever talking. They're fighting each other. Yeah, right,
Speaker 2: so I think, yeah, it was such a it was
Speaker 2: such a good thing to do. Often that wall is
Speaker 2: there because of the producers and the director. Now, the
Speaker 2: director typically, you know, you're not supposed to have any
Speaker 2: just supposed to be the only person talking to you
Speaker 2: about your performance, right, And I get that, But at
Speaker 2: the same time, if you have, you know, the show
Speaker 2: goes for a little while. Actors know their roles better
Speaker 2: than the director, the writers know the characters better than
Speaker 2: the director, The DP knows the show better than the director.
Speaker 2: The director's coming in knowing the least about the show
Speaker 2: of anybody, and we're all supposed to like not make
Speaker 2: the show better and just wait for the director to
Speaker 2: catch it. It doesn't really work completely, right. It's the
Speaker 2: thing about TV. I mean, it's a great rule for
Speaker 2: a great rule for a movie, and you know, you
Speaker 2: can see, like as a director too, and we all
Speaker 2: became directors. You know that building someone's performance, you want
Speaker 2: to tell them just a couple of things, you can
Speaker 2: slowly try to push them in a direction, and you know,
Speaker 2: it matters how you say things. And I think we
Speaker 2: all generally respected that right boundary while we were building
Speaker 2: a scene, but we all talked about the scenes beforehand
Speaker 2: and afterwards what was going to come up, the stories,
Speaker 2: and when things weren't working, we just stopped and we
Speaker 2: just talked to each other.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've taken that with me into the future.
Speaker 1: Like I always will show respect to a director, but
Speaker 1: I will walk over to video village and have a
Speaker 1: conversation with the writer or the creators on set just about.
Speaker 3: The character or what we're going for.
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm able to have a conversation with
Speaker 1: them and get to the core of actually what it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: which is that a director is just more skilled at
Speaker 1: having that conversation correct.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, I've really I'm really big with intention.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: I'm working on the Space Force with Greg now, so
Speaker 2: we were doing scenes with Steve and I tell him
Speaker 2: to say whatever he wants and just tell him the intention, right,
Speaker 2: I mean, he's gonna say whatever he wants anyway.
Speaker 1: But right, did you feel like you had because of
Speaker 1: your relationship with Greg did you feel like you had
Speaker 1: a greater accountability to him when you started working Like
Speaker 1: did you feel yeah?
Speaker 3: Big time?
Speaker 2: I think, you know, there's always this this I when
Speaker 2: two people are working together and related that there's there's
Speaker 2: this sense of nepotism, you know, And I felt like
Speaker 2: I had more to prove and I wanted to, for
Speaker 2: both of our sakes, defend against that by just doing
Speaker 2: more and being better, you know.
Speaker 1: Right, I just want to talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: the form of the show. We began over time to
Speaker 1: find elements that we felt like worked that was going
Speaker 1: to create you know, the best half hour television meaning
Speaker 1: in diversity day for example, like setting that episode in
Speaker 1: one day, having you know, having.
Speaker 2: All episodes were one day, right the most Yes, as
Speaker 2: a rule. As a rule, yeah, yeah, which I think
Speaker 2: that's something we broke a handful of times in two
Speaker 2: hundred episodes.
Speaker 3: And why was that important?
Speaker 2: When we were talking about the concept of the show.
Speaker 2: A documentary crew had come there that day for some
Speaker 2: reason and everything was shot was contained in like their
Speaker 2: intention and the I know at least the first few
Speaker 2: times we broke that rule, it was because a story
Speaker 2: lingered to the next day, so they followed it. But
Speaker 2: it was our feeling that they weren't there every day
Speaker 2: catching everything, whereas I think towards the end of the
Speaker 2: show we'd said, no, maybe they just are there every day.
Speaker 1: I have never heard this before. Swear to God, really,
Speaker 1: I've never heard this before.
Speaker 2: Yeah, why did they come? Because they came because they
Speaker 2: knew this person was coming to talk to Michael about
Speaker 2: you know, a problem they received, you know, the Larry movement, diversity.
Speaker 2: But there was always that hook, right were they there
Speaker 2: even if it was never stated.
Speaker 3: Or so like, oh, today it's the Christmas party? Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: You can imagine some days where nothing happened and they
Speaker 2: just didn't come, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, I love this so much. It makes total
Speaker 1: sense that the camera crew wasn't at this paper company
Speaker 1: five days a week forever, And that level of thought
Speaker 1: and detail in the world building of this thing, it
Speaker 1: just it never ceases to amaze me. And as you've heard,
Speaker 1: so much of that was the brainchild of Greg Daniels,
Speaker 1: who I truly I consider him a genius, mad genius,
Speaker 1: but a genius. He gave the show real values, a
Speaker 1: real heart. So here's the man himself telling me about
Speaker 1: one of his biggest principles on the show.
Speaker 3: A few people talk.
Speaker 1: To you about one of your core ideas, which is
Speaker 1: the idea of truth and beauty.
Speaker 8: Yeah, that was my thing with Randall, truth and beauty,
Speaker 8: Truth and beauty.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And what did that mean to you?
Speaker 8: Well, you know, to me, that was I think that's
Speaker 8: some romantic poet. I'm not sure where that came from,
Speaker 8: somebody like John Keats or something. I don't know, and
Speaker 8: I don't even know.
Speaker 3: What he meant by it.
Speaker 8: But the way I used to use it with Randall
Speaker 8: was that's what we're going for in the camera, right,
Speaker 8: Let the camera seek out truth. That's what it's trying
Speaker 8: to find. That's the point of a documentary.
Speaker 3: What's the truth?
Speaker 8: And also not like a cynical negative truth, like also
Speaker 8: where's the beauty. It's like another principle of photography of
Speaker 8: like a good photograph is, you know, a little sprig
Speaker 8: of weed coming through the cracked concrete or whatever, you
Speaker 8: know what I mean. It's like, where are you gonna
Speaker 8: do something that's a little bit inspiring but find it
Speaker 8: in a truthful way out in the real world.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: Well, Mike sure talked about it, and you told a
Speaker 1: story about a parking lot, an endless parking lot with
Speaker 1: lines and parking spaces, and in one crack there's a
Speaker 1: little flower, a little dandelion.
Speaker 8: He said that it's funny. I just made the same. Yeah, yes,
Speaker 8: I think that that, you know. I'm I like the
Speaker 8: notion of esthetic, like what are you searching for in art?
Speaker 8: And the Japanese have interesting aesthetics with a cracked pot?
Speaker 3: Did he mention that to use that a lot?
Speaker 8: So I think it's called wu I'm not sure, but
Speaker 8: it's the notion of a perfect pot is okay, you know,
Speaker 8: and we in the West probably value a perfect pot.
Speaker 8: But a cracked pot where the crack suddenly makes you
Speaker 8: feel the history of the pot and the people who've
Speaker 8: used it in their family and have treasured it and
Speaker 8: kept it even with the crack in it, like it
Speaker 8: suddenly cracks through you know, it suddenly will touch you.
Speaker 8: It's those little details often of imperfections, that's like a
Speaker 8: it's just a cool sort of philosophy.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, I have this so far off topic, but
Speaker 1: a number of years ago, my parents were moving out
Speaker 1: of their house and I went for a week and
Speaker 1: I was like helping them and throwing out all of
Speaker 1: this trash. And we go into like the corner of
Speaker 1: the closet and a guest room that no one ever
Speaker 1: slept in. And in the closet there was a big
Speaker 1: piece of paper that was folded up and I unfolded
Speaker 1: it and it was a Kennedy poster that my dad
Speaker 1: had like handed out or seen or collected or whatever.
Speaker 3: And I remember.
Speaker 1: Saying to him, can I have this? And he's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like all torn or whatever. And I took it
Speaker 1: and I framed it and I took it to this
Speaker 1: play and they were like, oh, we can you know,
Speaker 1: do this or that, And I was like no, no, no,
Speaker 1: the crack has to stay there and the wrinkle, the
Speaker 1: folded marks just as lightly as you can matt this
Speaker 1: on something and enclose it because I want that history
Speaker 1: of it.
Speaker 3: I don't know that idea. Yeah.
Speaker 8: Well, also, like I mean, you know, they don't get
Speaker 8: too psychological, but you know, when you think about your dad, right,
Speaker 8: you're so the relationship that you have with your father,
Speaker 8: the fact how old that they are, and just the
Speaker 8: sense of like passage of time being important to that
Speaker 8: relationship and fragility of it and knowing that it may
Speaker 8: not be around forever.
Speaker 3: And I can.
Speaker 8: Completely see why a tear in your dad's poster adds
Speaker 8: to the emotion of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, yeah, totally. I love that so much. The
Speaker 1: imperfections really are what make the Office so perfect. More
Speaker 1: after the break, So, as you probably heard from the
Speaker 1: news or heard from this podcast, many of your favorite
Speaker 1: shows have been ground to a halt the last few months.
Speaker 1: The Writer's Guild of America is deep in a strike now.
Speaker 1: Back in two thousand and seven, when The Office was
Speaker 1: on the air, there was a major writer strike that
Speaker 1: lasted ninety nine days.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: Well, as of today, the current strike has reached one
Speaker 1: hundred and forty days without an end in sight. We're
Speaker 1: really in it now for the long haul. I love
Speaker 1: how Mike Sure talked about the last strike, which had
Speaker 1: a lot to do with the start of streaming and
Speaker 1: online videos and how those were paid or not paid for.
Speaker 1: And I'd like to share that with you now. The
Speaker 1: account's significant because I have an Emmy congratulation, an actual Emmy,
Speaker 1: but you also won an Emmy. But we were never
Speaker 1: paid for it, and it led to the writers strike.
Speaker 1: I watched a video.
Speaker 4: Of you yesterday from when we were on strike.
Speaker 1: When you were on strike, Yeah, you guys produced a video. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you said a number of things in the video.
Speaker 4: Okay, I don't remember any of them.
Speaker 1: But I saw it and I was like, oh my god.
Speaker 1: And then we were joking that you guys were coming
Speaker 1: up with bits as you were walking the picket line
Speaker 1: and making the video. Kind of funny anyway, but you
Speaker 1: said in part that you're watching this on the internet,
Speaker 1: a thing that pays us zero dollars. They were put
Speaker 1: on NBC dot com and they sold ads and we
Speaker 1: won a Daytime Emmy and didn't make any money. The
Speaker 1: writer strike was a really big deal. Yeah, I don't know,
Speaker 1: just talk to me about that time of what you
Speaker 1: remember of Greg saying no, we're not going to produce
Speaker 1: material for free.
Speaker 4: There It was a very inspiring moment for me personally,
Speaker 4: because this central issue at the time. This is two
Speaker 4: thousand and seven. The central issue at the time was
Speaker 4: jurisdiction over the internet because Netflix hadn't started making original
Speaker 4: shows yet, but people felt like they were going in
Speaker 4: that direction and NBC and every network had a website
Speaker 4: and they were starting to like stream in primitive fashion,
Speaker 4: the stream things on the over the internet, and suddenly
Speaker 4: it was like, well, if this is the future. It
Speaker 4: didn't take a genius to think like, well, this is
Speaker 4: the future, Like, who cares whether it's a television screen
Speaker 4: you hang on your wall or sit on a platform,
Speaker 4: or whether it's your computer screen. This is how people
Speaker 4: are consuming the work we do, and we ought to
Speaker 4: get paid for them. So so those webisodes were like
Speaker 4: a big part of that because they were shot with
Speaker 4: a union labor and no one got paid. So that
Speaker 4: was like the you know, it wasn't like because of
Speaker 4: those episodes that the writers could want on strike. Those
Speaker 4: webisodes were an example of the kind of thing that
Speaker 4: we were trying. We were saying, like, if this is
Speaker 4: the way things are going, we got to do some
Speaker 4: about this, right. So, because the companies at the time
Speaker 4: were saying like, you know what, we don't have enough information.
Speaker 4: Let's just let's just let's just wait three years from now,
Speaker 4: we'll have more information and then we'll know what the
Speaker 4: future of this is. And we were like, no, you're
Speaker 4: trying to you're basically trying to grandfather in the internet
Speaker 4: as like a thing that you don't pay for. So
Speaker 4: we went on strike and it was a huge deal
Speaker 4: and it was very scary. It was like unclear what
Speaker 4: was going on. The communication wasn't sublime. And Greg was like, well,
Speaker 4: we're going to pick at our own show. And the
Speaker 4: reason we're going to pick out our own show isn't
Speaker 4: a show of solidarity. Isn't a saying like this is
Speaker 4: the thing we care about the most in the world.
Speaker 4: And we were in that little Chandler Studios in the
Speaker 4: middle of Van Eyes and it was not on a
Speaker 4: major studio lot, and so we all showed up to
Speaker 4: work at six in the morning and we pick it
Speaker 4: at our own show. And we were in the middle
Speaker 4: of season four. We were about to shoot the Dinner
Speaker 4: Party episode, one of the most famous episodes of the
Speaker 4: show of all time, the best read through I think
Speaker 4: we ever had. Do you remember that read through? That
Speaker 4: read through was like it was like a rock concert.
Speaker 4: And we had finished that script. That script was ready
Speaker 4: to go, and that script could have been shot. The
Speaker 4: actors could have just executed the script, and the directors
Speaker 4: were on strike, and the crew wasn't on strike, but
Speaker 4: Steve Carrell said, no, I'm not. This is the way
Speaker 4: we make this show is collaborative, and there's writers on
Speaker 4: the set and there's producers on the set, and we
Speaker 4: changed things and we work out new little moments and
Speaker 4: pitch new jokes, and I don't think I'm going to
Speaker 4: make the show without the writers. And he didn't show up,
Speaker 4: and so they shot a couple scenes from the episode
Speaker 4: that Michael Scott wasn't in, and then there was nothing
Speaker 4: else to do and the show shut down, and that
Speaker 4: was such a heroic thing. He just stayed home and
Speaker 4: he got calls from a lot of lawyers and a
Speaker 4: lot of studio executives, from really really powerful people saying
Speaker 4: you have to do this, and he was like, no,
Speaker 4: I don't watch me. And Greg called him and he
Speaker 4: was home and Greg was like, hey, I know that
Speaker 4: you've had a lot of pressure coming at you. Are
Speaker 4: you okay And he was like, yeah, I'm home, I'm
Speaker 4: playing with my kids, and was totally unfazed by it
Speaker 4: and had the attitude of like, this is a collaborative effort.
Speaker 4: This is a thing that we do together. We don't
Speaker 4: do this, this isn't without writers on the set. We
Speaker 4: don't make the same show, and I'm not going to
Speaker 4: make that show fire me basically was what he was saying.
Speaker 4: He called their bluff and the show shut down and
Speaker 4: writers run strike for four months, and then they gave
Speaker 4: up jurisdiction of the internet and we went back to work,
Speaker 4: and then we made the Dinner Party, which is amazing,
Speaker 4: and it was truly the story of what he did
Speaker 4: spread like wildfire. He did not have to do that.
Speaker 4: There were very few people who were in the position
Speaker 4: he was in, obviously as the star of a very popular, successful, gigantic,
Speaker 4: monolithic hit show. But still he didn't have to do that.
Speaker 3: He could have.
Speaker 4: No one would have been mad at him. He wasn't
Speaker 4: on the actors right, and.
Speaker 1: I was, you know, I remember having a huge, long
Speaker 1: conversation with my representations, saying like, how can I walk
Speaker 1: past them? How can I cross how can I cross
Speaker 1: the line? And he said that that you know, you
Speaker 1: have no choice, Yeah, you have to show.
Speaker 4: Up, and we knew that, and Ed, I remember Ed
Speaker 4: came out and was like, hey guys, and he hung
Speaker 4: out with us, and I remember Ed going, I'm really sorry,
Speaker 4: but I have and we were like no, no, no, we
Speaker 4: get it. Your union is not on strike here, like
Speaker 4: you're not. We get it. It's fine. No one's bad
Speaker 4: at you, Like no one had any animosity towards any
Speaker 4: of the actors because you were in breach of contract
Speaker 4: if you didn't show up. Steve was in breach of contract.
Speaker 4: He just said, I don't care. Fire me. And it's
Speaker 4: easier for the star of the show to do that
Speaker 4: right than it is for anyone else. But the story
Speaker 4: spread like wildfire, and Mindy wrote a sign in He
Speaker 4: hung it on his trailer that said like Steve Carrell
Speaker 4: American hero or something and took a picture of it,
Speaker 4: and it spread very quickly around the town, and it
Speaker 4: was a real wind beneath the wings of the Guild
Speaker 4: at the time.
Speaker 3: It's amazing.
Speaker 1: I mean, he you can't sort of overstate just what
Speaker 1: an amazing guy he is. Yeah, and person to work with.
Speaker 1: I get a little choked up when I remember what
Speaker 1: an amazing leader he was during that time and always,
Speaker 1: but during the strike especially. And I want to close
Speaker 1: out with one of my favorite tidbits I learn while
Speaker 1: collecting these stories about the office. The next clip release
Speaker 1: sums up the care that the writers took in every
Speaker 1: single decision. But I'm going to let the brilliant writer
Speaker 1: and later co show runner of the show, Jen Salada
Speaker 1: tell you about this. Was there anything else that specific
Speaker 1: or unique? Do you remember about this writing room? Writer's room?
Speaker 9: It was the best writer's room I've ever been in,
Speaker 9: and I feel like it will be the best writer's
Speaker 9: room I'm ever in. I think the writers were exceptionally talented,
Speaker 9: and Greg was saying that everybody had their own super strengths,
Speaker 9: but everybody was good at story and comedy and emotion.
Speaker 9: I felt that certain people, yeah, were more gift, more
Speaker 9: gifted in certain areas. But I've worked on staffs where
Speaker 9: one person was story, one person was comedy. There was
Speaker 9: a little bit more like that, and I felt like
Speaker 9: this staff, everybody had the ability to do everything, and
Speaker 9: the fact that everybody cared so much. There was an
Speaker 9: enormous discussion I don't know if anybody talked about it
Speaker 9: between whether the proposal should have sound or no sound.
Speaker 9: There were people on both sides. It was about fifty
Speaker 9: to fifty. It was the craziest discussion. It was whether
Speaker 9: or not when we saw Jim proposed to Pam we
Speaker 9: should have have sound. And hear what he's saying, or
Speaker 9: just see the visual of him in the rain getting
Speaker 9: on one knee. And I found that that really explained
Speaker 9: the writer's room. Everybody cared so much. There was one
Speaker 9: moment where Greg was getting into his car, you know,
Speaker 9: after the discussion had gone on for a month and
Speaker 9: we were about to, you know, have to settle on it,
Speaker 9: where I was coming from a trailer and he was
Speaker 9: getting into his car and I said Greg, and he
Speaker 9: like turned and he was like kind of trapped between
Speaker 9: his car door and his car and I was like,
Speaker 9: did you make did you decide yet it was sound
Speaker 9: or no sound? And he's like, no, no, I haven't,
Speaker 9: I haven't. It was literally like a horror film. I
Speaker 9: was like was stalking him to find out if the
Speaker 9: decision had been made. We argued passionately, and it was
Speaker 9: just because everybody cared, And I think that a lot
Speaker 9: of it was just for the passion with which the
Speaker 9: passion everybody had for telling the story. I can talk
Speaker 9: a little bit about the sound no sound if you
Speaker 9: want to hear it, but you might hear it from everybody.
Speaker 3: Else to oh, go ahead.
Speaker 9: So that was actually a decision a little bit that
Speaker 9: I feel like came down to another discussion that we
Speaker 9: had a lot of times in the room, which was
Speaker 9: kind of being more documentary and a little bit more
Speaker 9: real and a little bit more subtle and being a
Speaker 9: little bit more like a comedy or a show. So basically,
Speaker 9: the side that wanted to hear Jim's words were like,
Speaker 9: you've been waiting forever to hear him propose to Pam.
Speaker 9: Why would you take that moment away from people and
Speaker 9: not hear his actual words. It's like they've been waiting
Speaker 9: for it. You want to give them what they've been
Speaker 9: waiting for. Just might be slightly more of a comedy
Speaker 9: show kind of thing with a documentary documentary thing. It
Speaker 9: was a little bit more of like God, it's so
Speaker 9: beautiful and subtle, and to be across the street and
Speaker 9: to have to reach for it because he would turn
Speaker 9: his mic off in this moment. It's a big moment,
Speaker 9: and once you see him down on one knee, we
Speaker 9: know what he's saying, and then actually filling in the
Speaker 9: blank is more beautiful. We went back and forth about
Speaker 9: this for so long. At one point Greg asked me
Speaker 9: to send in my pros and CON's list, like sound
Speaker 9: and no sound. And then I remember I was in
Speaker 9: his office a little bit later. We didn't still hadn't
Speaker 9: made a decision, and I saw a list of people
Speaker 9: who wanted sound and a list of people who wanted
Speaker 9: no sound, and his wife and two kids was on
Speaker 9: one side of the list, and two other kids or
Speaker 9: white one kid. Once I listened to other kids. His
Speaker 9: family was split down the middle. So he was interviewing
Speaker 9: everybody and saying what should we do? What should we do?
Speaker 9: So there was a moment he was at the sound
Speaker 9: mix we were he had to make the decision, like
Speaker 9: this is the moment, and he's like, is there anybody
Speaker 9: we haven't asked? Is there anybody we haven't asked? And
Speaker 9: I said, oh, yeah, the security guard is there, you know,
Speaker 9: security guard whose name I can't quite remember him. Sorry,
Speaker 9: But I go and I get the security guard. And
Speaker 9: it occurs to me during my walk to the office
Speaker 9: that he's never seen the office. The lovely, lovely man
Speaker 9: protected us, all right. So I'm like, okay, cool, So
Speaker 9: now we've just got a very objective person. So I
Speaker 9: show him the scene without sound, and then I show
Speaker 9: him the scene with sound, and I say, what did
Speaker 9: you prefer, and he said I liked the second one
Speaker 9: and I said why he said, oh, because I could
Speaker 9: hear it. Okay, Greg, he said he like the second
Speaker 9: one because you could hear it. So that was it. Anyway,
Speaker 9: That wasn't how the decision was made, but that was
Speaker 9: our last person weighing in, and then you know, it
Speaker 9: ended up airing with sound. But it was the debate
Speaker 9: about whether or not it should be sound or no
Speaker 9: sound was the writer's room. To me, it was everybody
Speaker 9: incredibly passionate about something that we had worked towards and
Speaker 9: just we really cared.
Speaker 1: Thanks for caring, Jen and Greg, Mike, Paul, Brent, Lee
Speaker 1: Jean and everyone who worked on and rode on the show.
Speaker 1: These people mean so much to me, and I support
Speaker 1: what they are fighting for. I support what the actors
Speaker 1: the Screen Actors Guild is fighting for. But I hope
Speaker 1: for the sake of everyone that we get back to
Speaker 1: work very soon. I'll be back next week with a
Speaker 1: new and of course exciting guest. Until then, please everyone
Speaker 1: keep the writers and the actors and all of the
Speaker 1: crew across the entertainment industry in your.
Speaker 3: Mind this week, and we'll see you next week.
Speaker 1: Off the Beat is hosted and executive produced by me
Speaker 1: Brian Baumgartner, alongside our executive producer Lang Lee. Our senior
Speaker 1: producer is Diego Tapia. Our producers are Liz Hayes, Hannah Harris,
Speaker 1: and Emily Carr. Our talent producer is Ryan Papa Zachary,
Speaker 1: and our intern is Ali Amir Sahi. Our theme song
Speaker 1: Bubble and Squeak, performed by the one and only Creed Bratton,