Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Glory Adam, host of Well Read Black Girl.
Speaker 1: Each week, we journeyed together through the cultural moment where art,
Speaker 1: culture and literature collide and pay homage to the women
Speaker 1: whose books we grew up reading. It's the literary kickback
Speaker 1: you never knew you needed. Listen to a Well Read
Speaker 1: Black Girl on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts. Check out the new podcast,
Speaker 1: I Am Kobe. Do you want to understand how Kobe
Speaker 1: Bryant achieved his unequal determination? How did he come to
Speaker 1: his incredible passion to win? In I Am Kobe, we
Speaker 1: reveal intimate, never before heard tapes of Kobe when he
Speaker 1: was a teenager, just as he was starting to glimpse
Speaker 1: his own greatness. It's about the making of an icon.
Speaker 1: We weave together these tapes with Kobe's high school coaches,
Speaker 1: his friends, and the figures who knew him in his youth.
Speaker 1: All episodes are out now so you can binge the
Speaker 1: whole thing. Listen to I Am Kobe on the I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts. Hi,
Speaker 1: I'm Hillary Clinton and I'm so excited to be back
Speaker 1: with a third season. Of you and me both. When
Speaker 1: I started this podcast, we were going through some tough
Speaker 1: times and let's face it, we still are. And here's
Speaker 1: what I know. We cannot get through this alone. So
Speaker 1: please join me for more conversations with people who will
Speaker 1: make you think, make you laugh, and help us find
Speaker 1: a path forward. This season, I'll be talking about the
Speaker 1: state of our democracy with experts and with people organizing
Speaker 1: on the ground. We'll draw inspiration from some amazing people
Speaker 1: like Olympic star Alison Felix and Grammy Award winner Brandy Carlisle.
Speaker 1: And we'll get into the hard stuff with writer Cheryl
Speaker 1: Strait and my dear friend and colleague, Huma Aberdeen. So
Speaker 1: join us listen to you and me both on the
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts. My name is Michael Shore. I was a
Speaker 1: writer for the first four point two seasons and a
Speaker 1: producer on The Office. Hi, everybody, Welcome to a new day,
Speaker 1: And a new day brings a new episode of The
Speaker 1: Office Deep Dive with me your host Brian baum Gartner. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm thrilled to tell you that today I am bringing
Speaker 1: back the incredible Mike Sure for Part two. Of our conversation.
Speaker 1: This is going to be a good one to remind you,
Speaker 1: Mike was one of our original writers and producers on
Speaker 1: the Office. He went on to co create Parks and
Speaker 1: Wreck with Greg Daniels, as well as some other huge
Speaker 1: TV shows of our time like Brooklyn nine, The Good Place,
Speaker 1: just to name a few. Now, as I mentioned in
Speaker 1: the last episode, which you should definitely check out if
Speaker 1: you haven't already, Mike as a writer, as a producer,
Speaker 1: as an artist, he's had some insane achievements, and we're
Speaker 1: gonna get into some of those. But more importantly, you're
Speaker 1: going to get to hear about the one thing that
Speaker 1: he always hated that he described as a quote waking nightmare.
Speaker 1: That's right, his role as Mos Shrewd. Now, I was, Oh,
Speaker 1: you have no idea how happy I was to find
Speaker 1: out that my suspicions were correct that Mike had to
Speaker 1: play Mos as kind of a cruel joke in the
Speaker 1: writer's room, a writer's room joke because they found it
Speaker 1: funny to make him do all of the stupid stuff
Speaker 1: that he had to do. And boy, he had to
Speaker 1: do some really stupid stuff. But I'm glad he did,
Speaker 1: and I'm glad he is back joining us today because
Speaker 1: Mike is a force in the world of TV, and
Speaker 1: more than that, he was a huge and important part
Speaker 1: of the Office family. So please join me in welcoming
Speaker 1: the man who helped create so many of the iconic
Speaker 1: TV personalities we know and love. Mike. Sure, Bubble and Squeak.
Speaker 1: I love it Bubble and Squeak, Bubble and Squeaker Cookie
Speaker 1: at every month lift over from the natty bore. You
Speaker 1: and I. You may forgotten this, but you and I
Speaker 1: share an Emmy. We do we do yes for the webisodes.
Speaker 1: For the webisodes. Yes, um, did you ever get yours?
Speaker 1: I don't think I have an actual trophy for it? Now,
Speaker 1: Well I did, I do partly or all because we
Speaker 1: were invited to the ceremony and we accepted them and
Speaker 1: it came home with me. Great, Yeah, so I have
Speaker 1: it it. Look it's great. Actually, it's really rebisodes was
Speaker 1: really fun. I have nothing but fund memories of that
Speaker 1: little crazy day that we spent around you and Paul
Speaker 1: wrote them. And it was longer than a day. It
Speaker 1: was three days, three days. It was ten episodes over
Speaker 1: three days. That was like before everyone did webisodes all
Speaker 1: the time. And these little extra things like that was
Speaker 1: a really fun like side project that we just sort
Speaker 1: of threw together. They're really funny too, they are, Yes,
Speaker 1: And I think Randall's idea was we were able to
Speaker 1: do some things there that we, well, we couldn't necessarily
Speaker 1: do without the full camera crew. I think, yes, it was.
Speaker 1: The premise was it was like a holiday or something
Speaker 1: because we didn't have everyone to be in the background.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that was right. It was. We had a
Speaker 1: lot of backstory for why it was the way it was,
Speaker 1: but um, the accounts significant because, um, I have an
Speaker 1: Emmy congratulated, an actual Emmy, but you also want an Emmy.
Speaker 1: But we were never paid for it, and it led
Speaker 1: to the writers strike. I've watched a video of you
Speaker 1: yesterday from when we were on strike. When you were
Speaker 1: on strike, Yeah, you guys produced a video and you
Speaker 1: said a number of things in the video. Okay, I
Speaker 1: don't remember any of them, but I saw it and
Speaker 1: I was like, oh my god. And then we were
Speaker 1: joking that you guys were coming up with bits as
Speaker 1: you were walking the picket line and making the video.
Speaker 1: Kind of funny anyway, Um, but you said in part
Speaker 1: that you're watching this on the internet, a thing that
Speaker 1: pays us zero dollars. They were put on NBC dot
Speaker 1: com and they sold ads and we won a Daytime
Speaker 1: Emmy and didn't make any money. The writer strike was
Speaker 1: a really big deal. I don't know, just talk to
Speaker 1: me about that time and what you remember of Greg
Speaker 1: saying no, we're not going to produce material for free.
Speaker 1: There It was a very inspiring moment for me personally
Speaker 1: because the central issue at the time, this is two
Speaker 1: thousand and seven. The central issue at the time was
Speaker 1: jurisdiction over the internet because Netflix hadn't started making original
Speaker 1: shows yet, but people felt like they were going in
Speaker 1: that direction, and NBC and every every network had a
Speaker 1: website and they were starting to like stream in primitive fashion,
Speaker 1: the stream things on the over the Internet. And suddenly
Speaker 1: was like, well, if this is the future. It didn't
Speaker 1: take a genius to think like, well, this is the future. Like,
Speaker 1: who cares whether you it's a television screen you hang
Speaker 1: on your wall or sit on a platform, or whether
Speaker 1: it's your computer screen. This is how people are consuming
Speaker 1: the work we do and we ought to get paid
Speaker 1: for them. So so those episodes were like a big
Speaker 1: part of that because I they were shot with the
Speaker 1: union labor and no one got paid. So that was
Speaker 1: like the you know, it wasn't like because of those
Speaker 1: episodes that the writers could want one strike. Those we
Speaker 1: episodes were an example of the kind of thing that
Speaker 1: we were trying. We were saying like, if this is
Speaker 1: the way things are going, we gotta do something about this, right.
Speaker 1: So because the companies at the time, we're saying like,
Speaker 1: you know, we don't have enough information. Let's just let's
Speaker 1: just let's just wait three years from now, we'll have
Speaker 1: more information and then we'll know what the future of
Speaker 1: this is. And we were like, no, you're you're trying
Speaker 1: to you're basically trying to grandfather in the internet as
Speaker 1: like a thing that you don't pay for him. So, um,
Speaker 1: we went on strike and it was a huge deal
Speaker 1: and it was very scary. It was like unclear what
Speaker 1: was going on. The communication wasn't sublime. And Greg was like, well,
Speaker 1: we're gonna pick out our own show. And the reason
Speaker 1: we're gonna pick out our own show is isn't a
Speaker 1: show of solidarity. Isn't a saying like this is the
Speaker 1: thing we care about the most in the world. And
Speaker 1: we were in that little Chandler Studios out in the
Speaker 1: middle of Van Eyes, and it was not on a
Speaker 1: major studio lot, and so we all showed up to
Speaker 1: work at six in the morning and we pick it
Speaker 1: at our own show and we were in the middle
Speaker 1: of season four. We were about to shoot the Dinner
Speaker 1: Party episode, one of the most famous episodes of the
Speaker 1: show of all time, the best read through I think
Speaker 1: we ever had. You remember that read through? That read
Speaker 1: there was was like it was like a rock concert.
Speaker 1: And we had finished that script. That script is ready
Speaker 1: to go, and that script could have been shot. The
Speaker 1: actors could have just executed the script, and the directors
Speaker 1: were on strike and the crew wasn't on strike. But
Speaker 1: Steve Correll said, um, no, I'm not. This is the
Speaker 1: way we make this show is collaborative, and there's writers
Speaker 1: on the set and there's producers on the and we
Speaker 1: change things and we work out new little moments and
Speaker 1: pitched new jokes, and I don't think I'm gonna make
Speaker 1: the show without the writers. And he didn't show up,
Speaker 1: and so they shot a couple of scenes from the
Speaker 1: episode that Michael Scott wasn't in, and then there was
Speaker 1: nothing else to do. And the show shutdown, and that
Speaker 1: was such a heroic thing. He just stayed home and
Speaker 1: he got calls from a lot of lawyers and a
Speaker 1: lot of studio executives, from really really powerful people saying
Speaker 1: you have to do this, and he was like, no,
Speaker 1: don't watch me. And Greg called him and he was
Speaker 1: home and Greg was like, hey, I know that you've
Speaker 1: been had a lot of pressure coming at you. Are
Speaker 1: you okay? And he was like, yeah, I'm home, I'm
Speaker 1: playing with my kids and was totally unfazed by it
Speaker 1: and had the attitude of like, this is a collaborative effort,
Speaker 1: this is a thing that we do together. We don't
Speaker 1: do this, this isn't without writers on the set, we
Speaker 1: don't make the same show. And I'm not going to
Speaker 1: make that show fire me basically was what he was saying.
Speaker 1: He called their bluff and the show shut down and
Speaker 1: write it around strike for four months, and then they
Speaker 1: gave up jurisdiction of the internet. We went back to
Speaker 1: work and then we made the Dinner Party, which is amazing,
Speaker 1: and it was truly the story of what he did
Speaker 1: spread like wildfire. Um, he did not have to do that.
Speaker 1: There were very few people who were in the position
Speaker 1: that he was in, obviously as the star of a
Speaker 1: very popular, successful, gigantic, monolithic hit show. But still he
Speaker 1: didn't have to do that. He could, No one would
Speaker 1: have been mad at him. He wasn't on the active
Speaker 1: and I was, you know, I remember having a huge,
Speaker 1: long conversation with my representations saying like, how can I
Speaker 1: walk past them? How can I cross how can I
Speaker 1: cross the line? And he said that that you know,
Speaker 1: you have no choice. You have to show up, and
Speaker 1: we knew that, and Ed, I remember, Ed, came out
Speaker 1: and was like, hey, guys, and he hung out with us,
Speaker 1: and I remember Ed going, I'm really sorry, but I
Speaker 1: have and we're like, no, no, no, we get it.
Speaker 1: Your union is not on strike here, like you're not.
Speaker 1: We get it. It's fine. No one's bad at you.
Speaker 1: Like no one had any animosity towards any of the
Speaker 1: acts because you were in breach of contract if you
Speaker 1: didn't show up. Steve was in breach of contract. He
Speaker 1: just said, I don't care fire me. And it's easier
Speaker 1: for the star of the show to do that than
Speaker 1: it is for anyone else. But um, the story spread
Speaker 1: like wildfire, and Mindy wrote a sign in marker Um
Speaker 1: hung it on his trailer that said like Steve Corral
Speaker 1: American hero or something and took a picture of it,
Speaker 1: and it spread very quickly around the town and it
Speaker 1: was a real like wind beneath the wings of the
Speaker 1: guild at the time. It's amazing. I mean he you
Speaker 1: can't sort of overstate just what an amazing guy he is.
Speaker 1: And person to work with, ya, I mean, the person
Speaker 1: who's number one on the call sheet sets the tone
Speaker 1: of the show. It he or she just does it's
Speaker 1: people take their cues from that person. That person kind
Speaker 1: of says like this is what's allowable behavior, and this
Speaker 1: is what isn't allowable behavior in a in a number
Speaker 1: of different ways, actively and passively. And his presence at
Speaker 1: the top of the call sheet, especially in that early going,
Speaker 1: but his professionalism, his his dedication. He was never late
Speaker 1: a day in his life. He knew all of his lines,
Speaker 1: and when he didn't, he improvised something that was funnier
Speaker 1: than what we had written. Um. I don't know if
Speaker 1: you know this story, but there was a even on
Speaker 1: successful shows. In fact, especially on successful shows, networks are
Speaker 1: always trying to slash budgets, right, like it's when something's
Speaker 1: making money, it's not like thank god, we're making money,
Speaker 1: it's how do we make more money? And there was
Speaker 1: a budget meeting with NBC and Greg. It must have
Speaker 1: been after season four because Greg and I were developing
Speaker 1: Parks and Wreck and he asked me to come to say, like,
Speaker 1: you're gonna have to deal with this kind of crap
Speaker 1: and you should see what it's like. And there was
Speaker 1: a budget terry meeting and they were trying to slash
Speaker 1: the budget, and one of the things on the table
Speaker 1: was reducing the size of the cast because at that point,
Speaker 1: how many series regulars were there, twenty two or something.
Speaker 1: It was a lot by far, the largest cast of
Speaker 1: any show on television. And Greg was like, I don't
Speaker 1: think that's a good idea that people invest in these characters.
Speaker 1: Everyone has a different favorite character and even a side character,
Speaker 1: you know, a character like you know Jan or something
Speaker 1: who was not even a series regular, Like if you
Speaker 1: don't have her on the show in a certain number
Speaker 1: of episodes, it doesn't feel like the same show. And
Speaker 1: they were like, well, we have to find the money somewhere,
Speaker 1: you know, and we're only making seven eighty million dollars
Speaker 1: a year. On this thing. And so we went back
Speaker 1: and we had a meeting with Steve and I can't
Speaker 1: remember who was there, but Greg was like, okay, so
Speaker 1: here's what happened in the meeting. And they want to
Speaker 1: cut the budget in this and that, and they threw
Speaker 1: out a number of options, one of which was reducing
Speaker 1: the cast, and Steve went no, no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: like he said no like eight times in a row.
Speaker 1: And Greg was like, well, that was my reaction to
Speaker 1: and Steve just went no, it's not happening. That is
Speaker 1: not happening. We with that is not going to happen.
Speaker 1: Like he just so completely shut it down and is
Speaker 1: even he was like, this is the show. These are
Speaker 1: the people on the show. This is how the show
Speaker 1: will be until the end of the show. That's it.
Speaker 1: That's it, and and there were executives in the room
Speaker 1: and it was like that ended the discussion. It was
Speaker 1: just over, like there was no It was a little
Speaker 1: bit like sue me or fired me. It was like,
Speaker 1: in so many words, he was saying, I won't do
Speaker 1: the show if you do that, like I will walk away.
Speaker 1: And it just shut it down and shut it down forever,
Speaker 1: and no one ever ever came up again, never once,
Speaker 1: So mazing. Yeah, he's just he's just such a mench
Speaker 1: and and his like it wasn't angry, he wasn't pounding
Speaker 1: his fist. He was just saying, no, that's not going
Speaker 1: to happen, that nonstarter, move on, what's next. And that's
Speaker 1: the way he is. He was. It was just this quiet,
Speaker 1: firm leadership that he exhibited all the time in every direction.
Speaker 1: And he there was another time in two the big
Speaker 1: future of TV was product placement that where money was
Speaker 1: going to really be made, right, you were gonna Greg
Speaker 1: used to to say, like the deal was you have
Speaker 1: to take some medicine when you watch TV. In the
Speaker 1: medicine as these ads, but then you get a yummy
Speaker 1: treat and the treat is the show you like, right,
Speaker 1: And product placement was they were going to try to
Speaker 1: swirl the medicine into the into the and um Ben
Speaker 1: was like a big proponent of it, and so was
Speaker 1: it by the way everyone else, Like it was like
Speaker 1: this is the future, Like the futures were going back
Speaker 1: ironically to like the fifties, and it was like the
Speaker 1: Lucky Strike comedy exactly, this is delicious. So we have
Speaker 1: this big meeting, all hands on deck meeting. Um, we
Speaker 1: had done the Staples thing, remember the Staples where you
Speaker 1: had it. You you you bore the brunt of it because
Speaker 1: you had to play with that shredder and and Staples
Speaker 1: didn't send me a check. No, Well that was that
Speaker 1: was that was partly. That was a big part of
Speaker 1: Greg's objection to it was like, if Brian wants to
Speaker 1: do a Staples ad, then he can go do a
Speaker 1: Staples ad and they can pay him money. But Staples
Speaker 1: is getting free Brian baum Gardner and free Rain Wilson
Speaker 1: and free whoever. By like giving NB see money you need,
Speaker 1: the show doesn't even really benefit. It's this kind of
Speaker 1: complicated calculus, right. But we had this big meeting where
Speaker 1: we were really being sold on product placement, and it
Speaker 1: was it was getting away from us. It was being
Speaker 1: put to us in a way where it was like
Speaker 1: you're going to say yes to this. We're going to
Speaker 1: keep telling you to do this until you say yes.
Speaker 1: Talk talk talk talk talk talk. And then Craig went, Steve,
Speaker 1: what do you think, which was a brilliant idea, and
Speaker 1: Steve said, you know, I started in commercials and commercials
Speaker 1: are great when you're a struggling actor and you need
Speaker 1: money and stuff. But what happens in commercials is you
Speaker 1: do a commercial for coke, and you know, you do
Speaker 1: a take where you take a sip of coke and
Speaker 1: you say mmmmm, coke tastes great, and then they go, okay, cut.
Speaker 1: Can you rotate the can a little more like this
Speaker 1: and hold it like this? Okay, good? Go again and
Speaker 1: you go coke. I love coke. Coke takes right, and
Speaker 1: they go great, but can you raise it up to
Speaker 1: your lips an inch higher when you take the sip?
Speaker 1: Because you just do that over and over and over again.
Speaker 1: And he said the idea that anyone would have that
Speaker 1: kind of influencer control over our show and the way
Speaker 1: we make our show, which is loose and fun and collaborative,
Speaker 1: and the operators are diving for different things and the
Speaker 1: actors get to try different things every time. I remember
Speaker 1: him saying the idea that Rain would say something funny
Speaker 1: and we wouldn't be able to use it because he
Speaker 1: wasn't holding the coke can at the right angle. I
Speaker 1: don't think that's a good idea. And there was a
Speaker 1: pause and then it was like okay, well, let's we'll
Speaker 1: pick up this discussion, you know, next week or something.
Speaker 1: Never brought it up again. He just like he was
Speaker 1: just the He was the guardian of the show. In
Speaker 1: that way, he and Greg were just they had two
Speaker 1: different versions of the job, but the onset world of
Speaker 1: the show, Steve was the guardian protector of what we
Speaker 1: did and how it was done and who did it
Speaker 1: and no one messed them. It was just like he
Speaker 1: was the final arbiter because he knew, he understood so
Speaker 1: implicitly what made it great, and he wasn't interested in
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Speaker 1: wondered how a true crime podcast like Lost Tales gets made?
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Speaker 1: from his early promise he should have been the successor
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Speaker 1: North Korea. It's business, it's not personal. When somebody challenges you,
Speaker 1: that challenger must be eliminated. Listen to Big Brother on
Speaker 1: the I Heart Radio app Apple Podcast or wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts coming February. What to you makes the
Speaker 1: office the office? Or what does the office mean to you? Oh? God?
Speaker 1: Well those are those? Are you even questions? What makes
Speaker 1: the office the office? And what does the office mean
Speaker 1: to me? What? What? What does the office mean to you? Well?
Speaker 1: I mean it's where the office is where I learned
Speaker 1: how to write. And I mean that in exactly as
Speaker 1: fundamental a way as I'm saying. And I didn't know
Speaker 1: how to write before I got the job, and now
Speaker 1: I do. And it's because of that show, not just
Speaker 1: Greg's tutelage, but the mechanics of the stories that we
Speaker 1: told and the the obstacles we had to overcome. Obstacles
Speaker 1: are good for comedy, and The Office had the basic
Speaker 1: obstacles of being a network show and having to cram
Speaker 1: a story into twenty two minutes and all that stuff,
Speaker 1: which are great obstacles everyone should learn how to write
Speaker 1: on a network sitcom. But then it had all these
Speaker 1: other artificial obstacles the Greg added and the mockumentary style added,
Speaker 1: and the number of characters that in the show. So
Speaker 1: Greg taught me how to actually write, and then the
Speaker 1: show taught me how to write well, I think because
Speaker 1: any episode you did, you would look at it and
Speaker 1: go like, well, it's like a jigsaw puzzle. There are
Speaker 1: twenty people in the cast, and there's there's three stories,
Speaker 1: and I have twenty one minutes and thirty seconds? And
Speaker 1: how do I put this all together? And you learn
Speaker 1: to be really non precious with your own writing. You
Speaker 1: learn like these things are disposable. They're not poems. Greg
Speaker 1: used to say that the scripts aren't poems right there,
Speaker 1: architectural blueprints there, they're living documents, and they change, and
Speaker 1: it's okay for them to change, like you can think
Speaker 1: this is great. There's only a couple of times in
Speaker 1: my life where something didn't really play well and I
Speaker 1: really really fought for it, knowing that it wasn't gonna
Speaker 1: play well. One of them, this is like, this is
Speaker 1: like my own, this is my own like indulgence. But
Speaker 1: I wrote. I wrote a Dwight has a talking head
Speaker 1: where he says, um, it was always backstory that Dwight's
Speaker 1: and maternal ancestors were maybe Nazis, And so we did
Speaker 1: a talking head where Dwight says, um, my maternal grandmother
Speaker 1: is like a hundred and two and still puttering around
Speaker 1: down in Argentina, and then he said, um, I tried
Speaker 1: to visit her once, but my visa was protested by
Speaker 1: the show of Foundation, and it didn't really it got
Speaker 1: like a moderate laugh because a lot of people probably
Speaker 1: didn't what the show of Foundation was. But I remember
Speaker 1: fighting really hard for that in the edit, like Greg
Speaker 1: wanted to cut it, I think, and I was like, please, please, please,
Speaker 1: please please. But that's the exception that proves the rule.
Speaker 1: Mostly it was like you watch, we watched these cuts together,
Speaker 1: and you see what works and one doesn't work, and
Speaker 1: you just cut everything that doesn't work, like you don't
Speaker 1: get precious, what's the show of Foundation in there? Yeah?
Speaker 1: That dead aired? Okay, Yes, that totally aired, and it
Speaker 1: makes me laugh every time I remember that. I remember
Speaker 1: that part of it. No, it aired, It definitely aired,
Speaker 1: because I was basically like, I will never ask you
Speaker 1: for anything for the rest of my life. You leave
Speaker 1: this in. Was there anything that got cut that you
Speaker 1: wish hadn't. I'm sure there was. I don't remember offhand.
Speaker 1: So in the Job, I think it was in the
Speaker 1: Job we wrote him talking for Dwight that was I
Speaker 1: think an entire page long. It was insane. It was like, um,
Speaker 1: a version of a much shorter version of it aired,
Speaker 1: but there was a verse. It was about how one
Speaker 1: of his cousins I think or Moses brother or something
Speaker 1: was had one leg that was shorter than the other
Speaker 1: one and when he ran to the bus, he would
Speaker 1: have to curve in like a long arc because the
Speaker 1: natural awkward gait of one leg being shorter than the
Speaker 1: other would would cause him to run in like a
Speaker 1: into like a long curve. And it was nonsense. I
Speaker 1: mean it was. It went on for so long. Paul
Speaker 1: and I were just in a crazy giggle fit and
Speaker 1: we wrote like the endless talking head for Rain and
Speaker 1: he loved it and he like memorized the whole thing
Speaker 1: and like nailed it. And I was like, I wish
Speaker 1: this could air, but there's no way to justify it.
Speaker 1: It's complete. There's nothing to do with the story at all,
Speaker 1: you know. Um. Greg Greg also introduced this concept of
Speaker 1: double duty. Have people talking about double duty. Greg's thing
Speaker 1: was like, look, we have such a limited time here,
Speaker 1: and he said the bad sitcom split their lines. Some
Speaker 1: are jokes and some are are like story, because he said,
Speaker 1: what happens is if you've separated the story and the jokes,
Speaker 1: you cut all the jokes to get the story, and
Speaker 1: then you have nothing but stories. So he was like
Speaker 1: really hard on us of like, you have to make
Speaker 1: the story lines funny. They have to do double duty
Speaker 1: and if they don't, then it's not good enough and
Speaker 1: you got to do it again, do it again, and
Speaker 1: do it again. Yeah, and it's that was an amazing
Speaker 1: lesson to learn it because it was like, yeah, you
Speaker 1: don't have time. You can have talking heads that are
Speaker 1: just jokes, except for when they were about the show
Speaker 1: a foundation. Yeah, I mean, they're definitely worse. So that's
Speaker 1: so funny. Yeah, I want to get you out of here.
Speaker 1: You have talked so much about Greg and so poetically
Speaker 1: and articulately. Is there anything that you want to say
Speaker 1: about you leaving with Greg to start Parks and Wreck? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So he it was actually during the writers strike, we
Speaker 1: were picketing um at Paramount and he was like, Hey,
Speaker 1: I want to talk to you, and he basically said
Speaker 1: like the network wants me to do a new show
Speaker 1: and I want to do it with you, which was like,
Speaker 1: you know, I remember, remember, like what what does this
Speaker 1: feel like, and I was like, oh, it feels like
Speaker 1: Mozart told me he wants to design a piano with
Speaker 1: me or something like. That's the closest analog I could come.
Speaker 1: Was like, this is the this is it, Like, this
Speaker 1: is the moment that my life changes even more than
Speaker 1: it has already. And so at the time, Ben wanted
Speaker 1: to do a spinoff of the Office for obvious reasons.
Speaker 1: But I was like, is that? What was that? What
Speaker 1: this is? And he was like, I don't know. I
Speaker 1: told Ben in the network that I would do another
Speaker 1: show with with you and if it turned out that
Speaker 1: the best idea, this is It's classic Greg. It's like,
Speaker 1: if the best idea is to do a spinoff of
Speaker 1: the from the Office, great, But if the best idea
Speaker 1: is something else, then we should do something else. Which
Speaker 1: is such a again like Greg also is a man
Speaker 1: of enormous integrity, creative integrity, and personal integrity. But the
Speaker 1: idea that he wouldn't just cash in. He could have
Speaker 1: cashed in so easily. He could have taken every department.
Speaker 1: He could have taken the accountants and spun them into
Speaker 1: his own show. And he could have taken Kelly and
Speaker 1: spun her into a show, and he could have taken
Speaker 1: Jan and spun that into which he could have it.
Speaker 1: He could be the dick Wolf of comedy if he
Speaker 1: wanted to. But he was like, I don't want to
Speaker 1: harm the integrity of the Office proper. If there's a
Speaker 1: way to do it that doesn't do that, then great,
Speaker 1: but if not, then we'll do something else. And so
Speaker 1: the strike ends and we go back and we make
Speaker 1: I don't know fifteen or sixteen episodes of the show
Speaker 1: that year. And then he and I started meeting. We
Speaker 1: went to um Norm's diner and we met for breakfast
Speaker 1: like three times a week, and I pitched him I
Speaker 1: don't know, two hundred and seventy five ideas for TV
Speaker 1: shows and he and he picked, and he to me
Speaker 1: like it wasn't a one way street. Some of them
Speaker 1: were spin off. Some of them was like, well, maybe
Speaker 1: we could do something with the warehouse, you know, or
Speaker 1: maybe a different branch. I mean, he called the show.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you've ever heard this story, but
Speaker 1: the reason the show is called The Office cole an
Speaker 1: American workplace is because he, thinking a thousand chests moves ahead,
Speaker 1: was like, if this works, you could do the school
Speaker 1: an American work place and do a show about teachers.
Speaker 1: You could do like, you know, the Team an American
Speaker 1: workplace about a monor league baseball team whatever. So some
Speaker 1: of them were spinoff, some of them weren't. We ended
Speaker 1: up settling on what became Parts and Wreck, which was
Speaker 1: basically like the Office is an investigation of the private sector,
Speaker 1: and we could do it at the same thing with
Speaker 1: the public sector. And then we got really excited about
Speaker 1: like we can invent dunder Mifflin, but an entire town,
Speaker 1: like an entire ecosystem with media outlets and restaurants and
Speaker 1: city hall and local celebrities and all and a history
Speaker 1: and all that stuff and that. So that was what
Speaker 1: set our brands on fire. So I was around for
Speaker 1: the beginning of season five through Weight Loss and a
Speaker 1: couple other episodes, but really mostly what I was doing
Speaker 1: was focusing on Parks and Rack from that time. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, I I was very nervous because The Office
Speaker 1: is the best job I had ever had in my
Speaker 1: life by a factor of a thousand. But again I
Speaker 1: was like, I don't you don't turn down the chance
Speaker 1: to develop a show with Greg Daniels and be like,
Speaker 1: tell Mozart, no things. I can find a better piano teacher,
Speaker 1: you know. Um. So it was very scary, but it
Speaker 1: was also I was like, yeah, this is right, this
Speaker 1: is the right move. And obviously I was correct. Right,
Speaker 1: here's a I don't know, this just occurred to me.
Speaker 1: If Greg had not said that to you, would you
Speaker 1: have left the office? No? God, no, No, I would
Speaker 1: have stayed. I mean, I don't know if I would
Speaker 1: have stayed the whole time, but I certainly would have stayed.
Speaker 1: I had no plans to leave, like, I was happily
Speaker 1: working there. I would have worked there for at least
Speaker 1: another I think my contract was like two more years
Speaker 1: at that point. So yeah, I mean I wasn't looking
Speaker 1: to leave at all. Like I there was no part
Speaker 1: of me that was itching. I mean when he offered
Speaker 1: me that chance, and I sort of did my evaluation
Speaker 1: of like, is there any reason not to do this?
Speaker 1: The only reason not to do it was how much
Speaker 1: I loved working on my current job and like, and
Speaker 1: the obvious risks involved with starting something new. There is
Speaker 1: a real scary thing in this business of like, if
Speaker 1: you've got a bird in the hand, man, take like
Speaker 1: leave in your hands, like what are you doing? But
Speaker 1: then I was like, well, if it blows up, I'll
Speaker 1: bet he'll hire me. Still find some junior writer to
Speaker 1: kick out of the way. Can I tell you my
Speaker 1: favorite here's my favorite Greg story maybe ever And it
Speaker 1: doesn't even really involve Greg. So we're trying to come
Speaker 1: up with the idea for parks and rec and I
Speaker 1: got really excited about it, and I was like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like it's like a comedy West Wing. That's the like,
Speaker 1: if the stakes of the West Wing are Russia and
Speaker 1: China are going to go to war in Kazakhstan, the
Speaker 1: stakes of this show are the boys soccer team and
Speaker 1: the girls soccer team both are trying to use the
Speaker 1: same soccer field, right, And I just saw the whole thing.
Speaker 1: I saw And Greg was the one who came up
Speaker 1: with the idea that there's like a pit that she's
Speaker 1: trying to fill in. And and so we talked and
Speaker 1: talked and talked, had like a full day session where
Speaker 1: we'd like pitch and it's usually with ideas for episodes
Speaker 1: or anything. Like you know, it's good when like you
Speaker 1: it feels like you accidentally hit an oil vein, you know,
Speaker 1: the oil spurt, like ideas are just flying, but because
Speaker 1: he's Greg, he didn't commit to it. He was like, Okay, good,
Speaker 1: we've got that. Let's keep let's keep pitching, trying to
Speaker 1: come up with something else. And we talked about a
Speaker 1: family show and mockumentary about a family, and we talked
Speaker 1: about I can't remember what else, but just day after
Speaker 1: day after day after day, and the whole time, I
Speaker 1: was like, no, we have the idea, we know what
Speaker 1: it is, we know what it is. So Greg used
Speaker 1: to have people over to his house to watch episodes, right,
Speaker 1: we had the whole cast and all the writers, everybody
Speaker 1: would come to his house. And I saw his wife, Suzanne,
Speaker 1: and she was like, how's it going? And I was like,
Speaker 1: it's going great, you know. And she was like, do
Speaker 1: you know what the ideas yet? And I was like no,
Speaker 1: and she was like I kind of hope it's that
Speaker 1: government one. And I was like I kind of couldn't
Speaker 1: mask my like anxiety and I was like, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: me too, me too. And she laughed and was like,
Speaker 1: let me tell you a story. And I said okay,
Speaker 1: and she said so early on in Gregg's in my marriage,
Speaker 1: we were driving I think They were driving from Chicago
Speaker 1: to New York and she says, uh, it's ten o'clock
Speaker 1: at night and I'm starving. And we're driving through like
Speaker 1: shul Kill, Pennsylvania. And I said, honey, you gotta you
Speaker 1: gotta start, you gotta pull around starving. I just weaned.
Speaker 1: I need someone to eat. And he was like, okay.
Speaker 1: So we pull off the highway and we see I
Speaker 1: was like, there's a diner. Go to the diner. So
Speaker 1: we go to the diner. We walk in and the
Speaker 1: waitress comes over and Greg starts going out, what do
Speaker 1: you guys serve here? Like? What is everyone like? What's
Speaker 1: everyone's favorite this year? And she goes like, oh, people
Speaker 1: were like the meat loaf and and he goes like like,
Speaker 1: how do you prepare it? And she doesn't meat loafing whatever?
Speaker 1: And he's like, what else do people like? And Susanne
Speaker 1: says to him, can we just sit down and eat?
Speaker 1: And he goes, no, I don't want to know what
Speaker 1: kind of food they have, you know, And so he
Speaker 1: asked a hundred more questions and she goes, honey, I'm starving.
Speaker 1: Less to see and he goes, Susanne, we may never
Speaker 1: be in Schokill, Pennsylvania. Again, this might be the only
Speaker 1: time we're ever here. We have to like eat at
Speaker 1: the best place. We have to like learn everything about
Speaker 1: this place, like get the best dining experience in Scholkill, Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1: And she said, then we pulled out and we we
Speaker 1: we left. We didn't sit down. We what drove to
Speaker 1: another restaurant. We went in. He repeated the asked, you know,
Speaker 1: more questions, what do you serve here? What do people like? Whatever?
Speaker 1: And find they found like the fourth place they went to,
Speaker 1: and maybe they even doubled back and ended up going
Speaker 1: back to the first one. But she tells me this
Speaker 1: story and I'm like staring at her mouth agape, and
Speaker 1: she goes, that's the man I chose to marry, and
Speaker 1: that's the man you've chosen to develop a TV show.
Speaker 1: And it was like I was like, you're right, You're
Speaker 1: totally right, and like the truth is, I'll bet they
Speaker 1: did have the best meat loaf and shol Kill, Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: and like there's no better TV show that I would
Speaker 1: have created other than the one that we created together,
Speaker 1: and like it's it's just who he is. Yeah, Hi,
Speaker 1: I'm Glory Adam host of Well Read Black Girl. Each week,
Speaker 1: I sit in close conversation with one of my favorite
Speaker 1: authors of color and share stories about how they found
Speaker 1: their voice, home, their craft, and navigated the publishing world,
Speaker 1: and composed some of the most beautiful and meaningful words
Speaker 1: I've ever read. We journey together through the cultural moment
Speaker 1: where art, culture and literature collide, and pay homage to
Speaker 1: the women whose books we grew up reading. And of
Speaker 1: course I check in with members of the Well Read
Speaker 1: Black Girl book Club. It's a literary kickback you never
Speaker 1: knew you needed, and you're all invited to join the club.
Speaker 1: So tell your friends to tell their friends so we
Speaker 1: can be friends who love books. Listen to Well Read
Speaker 1: Black Girl on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts. M Hi, I'm Elizabeth
Speaker 1: Dutton and I'm Elizabeth Dutton. Wait sorry, do you want
Speaker 1: to say your name? I'm good ahead. We're the hosts
Speaker 1: of Ridiculous Crime. People love true crime right, the mystery,
Speaker 1: the intrigue, the human frailty totally. But what a lot
Speaker 1: of us don't like is the blood and the guts
Speaker 1: and the mayhem. Wait wait, wait, wait, some of us
Speaker 1: do like the Mayhem. Okay, but let's be real, there's
Speaker 1: nothing funny about murder. Our show gives you stories like
Speaker 1: the kidnapping of Frank Sinatra Jr. And the Max Headrooms
Speaker 1: signal hijacking. Oh so you mean ridiculous stories like the
Speaker 1: UK cat Shaver and Pablo Escobars cocaine hippos. Yeah, stories
Speaker 1: like the dudes who stole Buzzy the animatronic whatever he
Speaker 1: was from Disney World, and the woman whose husband tried
Speaker 1: to kill her but came back from the dead and
Speaker 1: surprised him at her own funeral. Yeah, that does sound good.
Speaker 1: You can find this new podcast, Ridiculous Crime all over
Speaker 1: the place, the I Heart Radio app, the Apple podcast,
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcast. I don't know how
Speaker 1: you live Ridiculous Crime. Hello, Hello, Hi, Oh my god.
Speaker 1: I want to come through the screen and hug you. Hey, everybody.
Speaker 1: Jessica's are here, also known as Vanessa Abrams on Gossip Girl.
Speaker 1: I am so excited to share my new podcast with
Speaker 1: you guys. It's called XO XO and it's a walk
Speaker 1: down memory lane all about Gossip Girl. I'll chat with
Speaker 1: some of the cast, crew, fans of the show and
Speaker 1: I'm just so pumped for you guys to go on
Speaker 1: this journey with me. All I made Westwick, I played
Speaker 1: Chuck Bass. I just can't leave that. I did that
Speaker 1: with my life Jay. We had like the most amazing time.
Speaker 1: Listen to XO XO on the I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Well, let's
Speaker 1: let's play that. Uh played number six. I thought it
Speaker 1: was weird when you picked us to make a documentary,
Speaker 1: but all in all, I think an ordinary paper company
Speaker 1: like dunder Mifflin was a great subject for a documentary.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of beauty and ordinary things. Isn't that
Speaker 1: kind of the point. So it's really to me clear
Speaker 1: that's what Greg thought it was all about. Did Lee
Speaker 1: or anyone to talk about truth and beauty? Has that
Speaker 1: phrase come up? Truth and beauty? There were a bunch
Speaker 1: of phrases that were like sort of the mantras early on,
Speaker 1: and Greg's the number one most repeated, almost truth and beauty.
Speaker 1: And he was like, everything that we make should be true,
Speaker 1: should be real, should feel like it's true, and it
Speaker 1: should be the attempt should be to find the beauty
Speaker 1: and whatever you're doing in the writing and the acting
Speaker 1: and the directing and the set design and the costumes
Speaker 1: and everything. Truth and beauty, Truth and beauty, and it
Speaker 1: just got deeply ingrained in us. He gave us an
Speaker 1: analogy for what the show was um in the first season,
Speaker 1: which was, imagine a completely paved parking lot in an
Speaker 1: office park. It's stretching out as far as you can see,
Speaker 1: and you're walking across it, and it's a hot day
Speaker 1: and as you're just in a corporate industrial waste land,
Speaker 1: and then you look down and there's a crack in
Speaker 1: the asphalt and there's a single little dandelion growing through
Speaker 1: the crack. He's like, that's what the show is. It's
Speaker 1: finding that dandelion, right, finding that little tiny glimmer of
Speaker 1: truth and beauty and happiness in aggressively unbeautiful landscape. Greg
Speaker 1: used to say, I'm really I feel like like a
Speaker 1: like a cult member. It's we're talking about Greg as
Speaker 1: much as I am, but it's impossible to talk about
Speaker 1: the show without talking about him. The Truth and Beauty
Speaker 1: was like, it didn't surprise me when that was the
Speaker 1: end of the show. I remember thinking, like, yeah, he
Speaker 1: nailed he he like, at the very end of the day.
Speaker 1: He sort of laid out his view of what why
Speaker 1: the show mattered for everyone through Pam, which is the
Speaker 1: right character to do it through. You know, Pam believes
Speaker 1: that Michael may have been whatever lead, but that Pam
Speaker 1: was truly the heart of the show. Who said that, Jenna, Jenna,
Speaker 1: I think she's probably right. Um. I've had this conversation
Speaker 1: with a bunch of people in the last with the
Speaker 1: with the weird resurgence of the show in the last
Speaker 1: couple of years. I've talked to gent Alata and Paul
Speaker 1: and and Lee and Mindy. I think about, like, just
Speaker 1: when you rewatch it, one of the episodes that hit
Speaker 1: you the hardest. I think that the maybe maybe the
Speaker 1: best episode that we ever did was Pam's art show.
Speaker 1: The ending of that episode is no one comes to
Speaker 1: her art show because no one likes her at that
Speaker 1: moment in the show. And at the end of it,
Speaker 1: Michael shows up and one of the things that she
Speaker 1: drew was the office, and he is just like so
Speaker 1: blown away by it and it's so meaningful that he's
Speaker 1: there for her because no one else showed up. Jim
Speaker 1: didn't show up, Nobody showed up, and Um and she
Speaker 1: hugs him, and then there's a great joke that I
Speaker 1: think they added on the set where she's like, what's
Speaker 1: in your pocket? And he goes chunky and she looks
Speaker 1: at him and he pulls it out and it's an
Speaker 1: actual chunky. But that the moment where he shows up,
Speaker 1: I think is the is maybe the best moment and
Speaker 1: that we ever did, like him showing up at her
Speaker 1: our show and her reaction to it and her hugging him,
Speaker 1: like I think she's right, Like Pam, that is the
Speaker 1: She is the person in those moments who makes Michael
Speaker 1: feel better when the bird dies, and who like he's
Speaker 1: kind of the gatekeeper of everybody's emotional status and stuff.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I know, well it's interesting that you bring
Speaker 1: that up because that coupled with that talking head, that's
Speaker 1: the last moment of the show. Is Pam picking up
Speaker 1: that drawing and taking it with her. That's right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know. And it was very That episode was very
Speaker 1: hard to break. I remember I think Brent wrote it
Speaker 1: Brent Forrester. As we did every episode, we rewrote it
Speaker 1: over and over and over and over again, and like
Speaker 1: that was the that was like a late addition, was
Speaker 1: like that the way out of this. We're always looking
Speaker 1: for the for the off ramp for Michael of like
Speaker 1: how does he get out of his whatever miserable circumstances
Speaker 1: he put himself in. And it was like, Oh, the
Speaker 1: way out is he goes to Pam's art show and
Speaker 1: then the idea that she drew the office and he
Speaker 1: takes it back and hangs it up like he's It
Speaker 1: was like that was the emotional solve, and uh, it
Speaker 1: was like, oh, he should That's where he should hang it,
Speaker 1: right outside his office. It should be the thing that
Speaker 1: he sees every day before he goes to work, you know.
Speaker 1: Is I mean those little, those little tiny consistencies. That's
Speaker 1: what's so great about having a show that lasts for
Speaker 1: a long time, as you get to do these things
Speaker 1: in season three or whatever that are there and that
Speaker 1: like end up mattering a whole lot in season I mean,
Speaker 1: as a fan, I wrote the episode with the teapot
Speaker 1: and the note and everything, and then it was like
Speaker 1: in season nine when I was watching just as a
Speaker 1: fan and I was like, oh my god, it's coming
Speaker 1: back right and we had I had um John write
Speaker 1: the note himself and I said, don't tell anyone what
Speaker 1: you're writing, would write whatever you want, right, whatever you
Speaker 1: think Jim would write. And I don't know what he wrote.
Speaker 1: I have no I've never seen it, and I don't
Speaker 1: think he ever told anyone. I don't think Jenn ever
Speaker 1: told anyone. Like it's like I think I believe it's
Speaker 1: like a secret shared by the two of essentially by
Speaker 1: the two of them and maybe the props department if
Speaker 1: they steamed it open and looked at Wow, Um, what
Speaker 1: do you think it's legacy is? I mean, it's legacy
Speaker 1: is Uh, it's going to be enormous, I think. I
Speaker 1: mean for a couple of reasons. One is it's really good.
Speaker 1: Two is the cast is incredible. And every time every
Speaker 1: time someone discovers Jenna Fish or John Krasinski or Rain
Speaker 1: Wilson or you or Angelo or anybody or Craig Robinson,
Speaker 1: they're going to go like, where did this person start?
Speaker 1: And then they're gonna go back and watch the show.
Speaker 1: But also it just was on. It did we did
Speaker 1: two episodes? Like there aren't many shows that do that anymore.
Speaker 1: That is over, Like there how many more shows are
Speaker 1: going to even do a hundred in this era that
Speaker 1: we're in a six episode, eight episode, ten episodes seasons,
Speaker 1: even shows that last ten years to eighty episodes or something.
Speaker 1: And I think the reason why so many people have
Speaker 1: discovered it and have like really sat with it is
Speaker 1: because it's one of the last shows, one of the
Speaker 1: most recent shows where you feel like you can watch
Speaker 1: a new episode every night. And and you know, my
Speaker 1: son is eleven now. My son was was born in
Speaker 1: season four of the show, and he's now eleven, and
Speaker 1: he just watched every single episode, and every kid in
Speaker 1: his grads watched every single episode. By the way, here's
Speaker 1: another thing Greg did. We used to try constantly to
Speaker 1: like put pop culture references in the show, and Greg
Speaker 1: was like, you know, no, no pop culture references. Um,
Speaker 1: this show needs to feel like it could. It's timeless,
Speaker 1: like it could be happening in any moment in time
Speaker 1: from the seventies until like two thousand fifty. And I
Speaker 1: remember thinking at the time, like, all right, you're pretty
Speaker 1: high on yourself there. But they just think that this
Speaker 1: show is gonna matter. And look, it's twenty years later
Speaker 1: and it matters just as much. And my son doesn't
Speaker 1: know that that show isn't on the air. Netflix shows
Speaker 1: and ABC shows that are the same. And it's crazy
Speaker 1: because now you can watch it and it doesn't feel
Speaker 1: dated because there's no references to, you know, things that
Speaker 1: were happening in two five. See, I think it's different
Speaker 1: than that. I respectfully slightly disagree. Interesting because when you
Speaker 1: watch it, which I recently did, it doesn't feel dated. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll see when I think it was was you guys?
Speaker 1: In the writing, we're so specific. The characters were written
Speaker 1: so specifically, and so it almost functions now because you
Speaker 1: don't watch a documentary about the seventies and go that
Speaker 1: feels dated, right, It's just like that's when it happened.
Speaker 1: So now we're watching a documentary right about this very
Speaker 1: specific moment, at this very specific moment. I I think
Speaker 1: maybe it's both things, right. It's like we didn't call
Speaker 1: attention to when it was happening, and also we were
Speaker 1: very specific about what was happening, And then that way
Speaker 1: just feels like it's a moment in time of place
Speaker 1: and time, whoever you want to put it. So I
Speaker 1: like the in terms of its legacy. To get back
Speaker 1: to that, I keep getting off topic, but I think
Speaker 1: that people settle into the show and watch the show
Speaker 1: because it has this incredible specificity and it has this
Speaker 1: just deep It feels like you're eating the richest dessert
Speaker 1: a tiny bit at a time, and that is a
Speaker 1: really lovely feeling to have. Like, you know, it's a
Speaker 1: different kind of hangout show from other successful hangout shows
Speaker 1: from Cheers or Friends or the it's a it's a
Speaker 1: hangout show that that feels like the emotional lives of
Speaker 1: the characters are completely wrought and thick and juicy, and
Speaker 1: you can really follow people's psychologies and their lives as
Speaker 1: they grow over the course of nine years. And I
Speaker 1: don't I think a show like that is very rare,
Speaker 1: and I think that people will still be watching this
Speaker 1: show a very long time. Right now, from Cavalry Audio,
Speaker 1: the studio that brought you The Devil Within and The
Speaker 1: Shadow Girls, comes a new true crime podcast, The Pink
Speaker 1: Moon Murders. The local sheriff believes there may be more
Speaker 1: than one killery. It's been four days since those bodies
Speaker 1: were found and there's no arrest as it this morning.
Speaker 1: They were afraid it's face it out in that area,
Speaker 1: what if they come back or whatever. It scared me
Speaker 1: to death, like it scared me. I was very, very
Speaker 1: intimidating to live here. Crazy to think you go to
Speaker 1: sleep one night, maybe snuggling with your loved one, and
Speaker 1: never wake up, or maybe you wake up in a
Speaker 1: struggle for your life, which you lose. Joint host David
Speaker 1: Raderman as he explores one fateful night when evil descended
Speaker 1: upon smaller town, Ohio, killed eight members of an Ohio
Speaker 1: family in a pre planned execution. The family was targeted,
Speaker 1: most of them targeted while they were sleeping. The Pink
Speaker 1: Moon Murders is if they will on February twenty second,
Speaker 1: and you can follow the Pig Moon Murders on the
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts. Conquer your New Year's resolution to be more
Speaker 1: productive with the Before Breakfast podcast. In each bite sized
Speaker 1: daily episode, time management and productivity expert Laura vander Caam
Speaker 1: teaches you how to make the most of your time
Speaker 1: both at work and at home. These are the practical
Speaker 1: suggestions you need to get more done with your day.
Speaker 1: Just as lifting weights keeps our body strong as we age,
Speaker 1: learning new skills is the mental equivalent of pumping iron.
Speaker 1: Listen to Before Breakfast wherever you get your podcasts. When
Speaker 1: was the decision made for writers to start acting in
Speaker 1: the show from the before the before the pilot, I
Speaker 1: mean Greg coming from SNL, Greg wanted SNL is very
Speaker 1: the membrane between writers and actors is very thin, and
Speaker 1: all the actors write stuff and a lot of the
Speaker 1: writers are in sketches and stuff. And almost everyone there's
Speaker 1: a writer performer, even if he or she is only
Speaker 1: on staff as a writer or something. And he liked that,
Speaker 1: and he wanted to get rid of the false dichotomy
Speaker 1: of writers and actors. So he hired Mindy specifically because
Speaker 1: she was a performer. She was in a play called
Speaker 1: Mattin Band that she had written in New York. He
Speaker 1: hired b J because BJ was a stand up and
Speaker 1: a writer. He and then like we made Paul against
Speaker 1: his will play Toby in the first season, like we
Speaker 1: forced it. He did not want to do it. He
Speaker 1: hated it, he hated acting. But we forced him to
Speaker 1: do it because he was so funny to have him
Speaker 1: be the guy that Michael Scott hates more than anybody.
Speaker 1: But it was that was always the design. I think
Speaker 1: he wanted everybody to to write and perform ideally, except
Speaker 1: for me because he made me a freak. Most famously
Speaker 1: and most annoyingly to me, played the character most shrewd.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. We never talked about most Oh my god.
Speaker 1: I assumed it was gonna be your first question. I
Speaker 1: I know, I have a whole section on it. But
Speaker 1: you were so great? Um, all right, well then just
Speaker 1: very quickly, sure you were cast as most I was,
Speaker 1: and you're happy about that now. I hated it. I
Speaker 1: hated every second of it. Why did you hate it?
Speaker 1: Because I was wearing wool clothes and had a neck
Speaker 1: beard and it was always really hot and I didn't
Speaker 1: The joke was I didn't talk, and that's not a
Speaker 1: funny joke. And it was always like I had to
Speaker 1: get up at four thirty in the morning and drive
Speaker 1: to the middle of nowhere and wear woolf clothes and
Speaker 1: it was. And then the joke became with the writers
Speaker 1: because they knew how much I hated it. They loved
Speaker 1: like what if your shirtless, what if you're on a seesaw,
Speaker 1: what if you're on a trampoline, What if you're running
Speaker 1: as fast as you can alongside a car like a dog.
Speaker 1: I was at parks and wreck and they would call
Speaker 1: me and they like, we need most and I was like,
Speaker 1: I have a job, I have a life, I've young children,
Speaker 1: and they would just make me do it. They would
Speaker 1: compete with each other to see what was the most
Speaker 1: humiliating possible thing they could have me do. But that
Speaker 1: that episode Paul So Paul wrote that episode where they
Speaker 1: where Jim and Pam go to shoot farms, and he
Speaker 1: wrote in the in the script it literally says, Mose
Speaker 1: appears out of nowhere and runs along the side of
Speaker 1: the car like a dog. That's what it says. That's
Speaker 1: I'm a human being. And so we did. That scene
Speaker 1: was a hundred and forty degrees. I was in woolf
Speaker 1: clothes and and old work boots that like didn't fit properly,
Speaker 1: and that sprint is probably a hundred and fifty yards
Speaker 1: down that dirt road from the time I come out
Speaker 1: to the time I had to run all the way
Speaker 1: up into shrewd farms. It of course cuts off long
Speaker 1: before I ever get there. But they were like, you
Speaker 1: got it. Paul was directing, was like you get a
Speaker 1: run all the way there. So I did, over and
Speaker 1: over and over again, probably twelve or fourteen takes because
Speaker 1: Paul delighted in it so much. And then later in
Speaker 1: that episode, I'm in Jurassic Park pajamas that don't fit
Speaker 1: me properly. And then Greg pitched the thing where he
Speaker 1: was like, what if there's a loud noise and Pam
Speaker 1: goes to the window and looks at it, and Moses
Speaker 1: in the outhouse with his pants down and the doors
Speaker 1: flapping clothes. I mean it was like it was aggressive.
Speaker 1: It was. They knew I never should have been. If
Speaker 1: I had said, like, I love doing this, they never
Speaker 1: would have put me in the show again. But because
Speaker 1: I hated it so much and was so vocal about
Speaker 1: hating it, Well, you have confirmed something. Moses a is
Speaker 1: a fan favorite. You hear about people loving most. Okay,
Speaker 1: let me tell you something. What I have always said
Speaker 1: is I think Moses a writer's room joke. Oh, you
Speaker 1: have now confirmed without a doubt that it was literally
Speaker 1: a writer's room joke meant to torture you, meant specifically
Speaker 1: to make me miserable. Yes, yes, I was in a coffin.
Speaker 1: I was like hanging upside down somewhere like there were
Speaker 1: a bunch of things that we did that were then
Speaker 1: just cut out of the show. I was riding a
Speaker 1: moped over like trying to jump a bunch of cars.
Speaker 1: They made me do that moped thing. I don't know
Speaker 1: how to drive a mope head. I don't know how
Speaker 1: to drive him moped. No one taught me how to.
Speaker 1: They were like, just get on and just rev the thing,
Speaker 1: because the point was if I wipe out, it'll be
Speaker 1: really fun now, and then run across the roofs of
Speaker 1: these cars again. If you slip and fall and break
Speaker 1: your pelvis, it'll be really funny. Like they was. The
Speaker 1: subtext was always the worst this goes, the funnier it
Speaker 1: will be when it happens. Well, I this was after
Speaker 1: you left. I mean sort of from the beginning, but
Speaker 1: then more and more Kevin started having a lot of
Speaker 1: physical comedy type stuff, and there would be times where
Speaker 1: I would go to the writer's room and say, I
Speaker 1: don't remember if you were ever there, but I would say,
Speaker 1: you guys are writing for Homer Simpson right now, and
Speaker 1: a cartoon you can force to do whatever you'd like
Speaker 1: him to do. He can do whatever, right, but I can't.
Speaker 1: My body doesn't work that way. No one's does. Like
Speaker 1: the most painful I feel like I still have pain
Speaker 1: from it is the most innocuous you would never ever
Speaker 1: ever know. The office workers have to go to the
Speaker 1: warehouse and move boxes, so they decided they're gonna put
Speaker 1: remember that episode, yeah, boiled down so they could move
Speaker 1: boxes to get to the troll. And everyone thought the
Speaker 1: big guy falling is really funny. So I just kept
Speaker 1: falling slipping and which means on a concrete surface with oil,
Speaker 1: kneecap on concrete over and it's like, guys, I can't
Speaker 1: keep You've gotta like, yeah, there has to be some
Speaker 1: other solution. We had a We had a similar thing
Speaker 1: on Parson Wreck where Nick Offerman's character Ron Swanson was
Speaker 1: a sort of he was a little cartoonish in his
Speaker 1: abilities to do various things, and we wrote this joke
Speaker 1: where he wanted to get he was eating a he
Speaker 1: got lunch and he was eating his hamburger and and
Speaker 1: the joke was he wanted to get out of the
Speaker 1: lunch as quickly as possible, so in the script, he
Speaker 1: shoved the entire hamburger into his mouth and ate it
Speaker 1: in one bite. So they Dean Holland was directing it
Speaker 1: and he was like okay action and Nick did his best,
Speaker 1: but then Dean was like, you you really need to
Speaker 1: eat the whole thing in one bite, and he was
Speaker 1: like this is a like a half pound hamburger. Okay,
Speaker 1: like I maybe the character can do this, but a
Speaker 1: human can't. And yeah, all right, yeah right, sorry, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're not your character, right, Okay, I I almost wiped
Speaker 1: out super hard on that moped. Like well, first of all,
Speaker 1: the joke was someone pulls up in the car. It
Speaker 1: was the Garden Party episode. Someone pulls up in the
Speaker 1: car night and I'm the valve Mos the valet and
Speaker 1: I get in and they're like, just get in and
Speaker 1: tear off down this road, right, And the joke at
Speaker 1: the time is why is most driving so fast and
Speaker 1: so insistent? And so I did, and like I tore
Speaker 1: off down the road and I'm not a stunt driver.
Speaker 1: I don't know, like and suddenly I'm going sixty five
Speaker 1: on a dirt road and on a set and the
Speaker 1: back tires fish tail because it's a dirt road, and
Speaker 1: I like slow down and was like, oh right, I'm
Speaker 1: not This isn't a no One's gonna like save me.
Speaker 1: If I crashed this car, I'll die. Because I also
Speaker 1: got in and didn't put my seatbelt on because the
Speaker 1: joke was you get in and take off, And I
Speaker 1: was like, oh my god, I just I forgot for
Speaker 1: a second that I'm not fictional. I'm make sure I'm
Speaker 1: not fictional. I'm a human could suffer consequences. Mine very
Speaker 1: similar to that was I think it was when there's
Speaker 1: the storyline of Dwight telling Holly that that Kevin is slow,
Speaker 1: and there was a scene we did a number of
Speaker 1: different ways. This didn't end up in but where I'm
Speaker 1: driving and she's like you're driving. You have a car,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, yeah, I have a car. And at
Speaker 1: one point they were like okay, so do that, but
Speaker 1: then get out of the car, but leave it running,
Speaker 1: like leave it, leave it like leave it, leave it
Speaker 1: in gear. So like as you step out, the car
Speaker 1: is going to move forward and then we'll have somebody
Speaker 1: else who can jump in and stop it. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: did ideas like profound Meanwhile, it's vedas car, right like
Speaker 1: her real car. I uh. That joke that they did
Speaker 1: with Kevin in the later years where he didn't know
Speaker 1: the alphabet elemento. Paul pitched that in season two and
Speaker 1: we were like, Paul that's insane, Like you can't say
Speaker 1: that he doesn't know that he's an accountant. He's a
Speaker 1: working accountant. Like he might not be the best accountant,
Speaker 1: he's an accountant. It made Paul laugh so hard, And
Speaker 1: the second that Paul took over the show, that joke aired,
Speaker 1: and I was like, well, that's what he got what
Speaker 1: he wanted. Six years later he told me it was
Speaker 1: his favorite joke that he ever wrote. Yeah, yes, Elmo,
Speaker 1: he told me and us that and and tried to
Speaker 1: get it into the show and like season two or
Speaker 1: three or something, and we're like, you know, there's crazy
Speaker 1: stuff like that. I mean, you know, again, this is
Speaker 1: a writer's room joke that no one would ever know.
Speaker 1: But what was Kevin's band going to be? And having
Speaker 1: it be the Police? This was like a you thing actually,
Speaker 1: But the idea that I was a drummer lead singer
Speaker 1: of the Police, and with the Police, the lyrics and
Speaker 1: the singing is off of the beat of the drums
Speaker 1: because they had like rhythms. You would have to be
Speaker 1: a musical savant to be able to play drums and sing. Well,
Speaker 1: it wasn't the Police originally it was Steve was Steve
Speaker 1: Miller band and they were called the Midnight Tookers because
Speaker 1: my friend scotts Olvery was in a Steve Miller cover
Speaker 1: band in high school called the Midnight Tookers. Scott's a writer,
Speaker 1: and I always thought that was the perfect amount of
Speaker 1: stupid for a cover but like a Midnight Tokers is like, oh,
Speaker 1: what a great and so it was a Steve Miller
Speaker 1: band and then they didn't give us the rights to
Speaker 1: the music, and so we had to change it. And
Speaker 1: so I think Mindy maybe pitched Scrantnicity Mindy or Paul.
Speaker 1: But I remember being so bummed out that it couldn't
Speaker 1: be the Midnight Tookers, just because I had really had
Speaker 1: my heart set on that. I sang, we did the
Speaker 1: whole video, was right, that's right, And we had trying
Speaker 1: to volume down because he was to like jet airliner
Speaker 1: or whatever, remember what it was. But yes, and maybe
Speaker 1: it was the joker. I don't know, it was, yeah, right,
Speaker 1: But I'm happy at the end of the day, I'm
Speaker 1: happy that it was grantnicity. Yes, that was a good
Speaker 1: solution to that stupid problem. Um, okay, you've given us
Speaker 1: so much time, thank you so much. So really fun
Speaker 1: I like walking down memory lane. It's fun. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: such a I mean, it's just actually awesome to see.
Speaker 1: I know, it's been too long, I know. And congratulations
Speaker 1: on everything, and um, thank you so much, my pleasure,
Speaker 1: wow the things that could have been. Thank you Mike
Speaker 1: for coming back and sharing so much of your story
Speaker 1: with us. It was so great to have you and
Speaker 1: just so great to talk the office with you. And
Speaker 1: thank you all as always for listening week to week
Speaker 1: or day to day. Don't forget to come back next Tuesday,
Speaker 1: same time, same place, for another very special episode, because
Speaker 1: that day, next Tuesday, is the day that we, or
Speaker 1: at least I have been waiting for. It will finally
Speaker 1: be here the launch of our brand spanking new book
Speaker 1: Next Tuesday. Head to Amazon dot Com, Barnes and Noble,
Speaker 1: Books a million, wherever you get your books. Basically go there,
Speaker 1: pre order your very own copy of Welcome to dunder Mifflin,
Speaker 1: The Ultimate Oral History of the Office, and if you do,
Speaker 1: you could be reading it one week from today. Grab
Speaker 1: one for yourself, grab one for everyone that you know,
Speaker 1: because when it comes to a gift, you shouldn't have
Speaker 1: a hard time getting it in. That's what she said, wait, no,
Speaker 1: you shouldn't have a hard time getting it in time
Speaker 1: for the holidays or you know, any day, because every
Speaker 1: day is a holiday when you're with me. Okay, have
Speaker 1: a great week everyone. The Office. Deep Dive is hosted
Speaker 1: and executive produced by me Brian bom Gartner, alongside our
Speaker 1: executive producer Langley. Our senior producer is Tessa Kramer. Our
Speaker 1: producers are Liz Hayes and Diego Topia. My main man
Speaker 1: in the booth is Alec Moore. Our theme song Bubble
Speaker 1: and Squeak, performed by my great friend Creed Bratton, and
Speaker 1: the episode was mixed by Seth o'landski from Cavalry Audio,
Speaker 1: the studio that brought you The Devil Within and The
Speaker 1: Shadow Girls. Comes a new true crime podcast, The Pink
Speaker 1: Moon Murders. The local sheriff believes there may be more
Speaker 1: than one killery. They were afraid he's face it out
Speaker 1: in that area. The family was targeted, most of them
Speaker 1: targeted while they were sleeping. The Pink Moon Murders is
Speaker 1: available on February twenty second, and you can follow The
Speaker 1: Pink Moon Murders on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Glory Adam,
Speaker 1: host of Well Read Black Girl. Each week, we journey
Speaker 1: together through the cultural moment where art, culture and literature
Speaker 1: collide and pay on it to the women whose books
Speaker 1: we grew up reading. It's a literary kickback you never
Speaker 1: knew you needed. Listen to a Well Read Black Girl
Speaker 1: on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcasts. You can watch the NFL playoffs
Speaker 1: like a fan, or you can prep like a scout
Speaker 1: if you listen to the award winning Move the Sticks podcast.
Speaker 1: The show is hosted by me, Daniel Jeremiah and my
Speaker 1: partner Bucky Brooks. The two of us are bringing the
Speaker 1: knowledge from a career as NFL talent scouts to the
Speaker 1: podcast world so fans can watch and understand the nuances
Speaker 1: of the game like never before. We'll break down film
Speaker 1: from the professional and college game to get you ready
Speaker 1: for the Super Bowl, the Draft, and kick off next fall.
Speaker 1: Subscribe now and listen to the Move the Sticks podcast
Speaker 1: on the I Heart Radio app, on Apple podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts.