February 9, 2021 • 50 mins
We begin at the beginning, with The Office’s creator and showrunner Greg Daniels. He discusses “moving the ship of comedy” in a new direction, creating the world of Dunder Mifflin, and building a collaborative on-set dynamic. Brian reminisces about the first time he tried to make small talk with Greg - let's just say, it didn’t go great.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Hello everybody. Hi uh oh, I am so excited today.
That jazzy little tune is getting me very excited. Welcome
one and all to the first, the absolute first premier,
as we call it, in the business episode of The
(00:35):
Office Deep Dive. I am your host, Brian Baumgartner. Now
where did this podcast come from? I don't know if
you're aware that I had another podcast, an oral History
of the Office. Now, if you haven't listened to that,
you should, because I mean, it's absolutely genius, if if
I say so myself. But what happened was we did
(00:58):
that podcast and we had so much fun making it
and getting back together with my old castmates and crew
and writers and directors. The problem was, we got so
much good material we could not fit all of the
great stuff in. That's what she said. So we decided
(01:20):
to make another podcast, this podcast, the one right here
that you're listening to right now, And this time I
am releasing all of my raw, unfiltered, full length interviews
for you to go even deeper. So let's dive in,
shall we. Hi. I'm Greg Daniels. I was the showrunner
(01:47):
of the Office. So how do we begin? Well, we
begin at the beginning that made no sense. Uh. The
thing is, there is only one way to begin a
podcast about the Office, and that is with Greg Daniels. Now,
(02:10):
as some of you Office fans undoubtedly no, Greg was
the creator and showrunner of the American version of the Office.
But what you may not know is that before that,
Greg was the showrunner and co creator of King of
the Hill. And before that he was a writer on
The Simpsons and Saturday Night Live. And see what is
(02:34):
so cool is that, as you'll hear momentarily, all of
that experience totally shaped Greg's vision for The Office, which
at the time was honestly revolutionary. There was nothing like
The Office on American television. I truly cannot overstate how
(02:54):
significant Greg's role was on the show. He assembled the
entire team, and he was responsible for everything from casting
to set design, production design, the shooting style. Again, all
of that you're gonna hear about in a minute. But
the point is he is literally the reason we're all
here today. Well maybe not you guys, but me. He's
(03:18):
definitely the reason that I'm here. So I'm obviously very
excited to kick things off. I'm gonna shut up now,
ladies and gentlemen, for our very first interview. I am
proud to present Mr Greg Daniels Bubble and Squeak. I
(03:39):
love it. Bubble and Squeak on Bubble and Squeaker Cookie
at every month lift over from the night before. Oh hi, buddy, Hire,
so good to see you, to see you too. I
love that carved I have Atner's chapel. I have an
(04:02):
engraved plaque. That's fantastic. We face each other. How do you?
I think we face each other. I think we're here.
It's kind of neat. It's a great room, right, Yeah,
how are you are they recording? Yeah, we're just having
a chat. We're having a chat. I've stolen a few tricks, exactly.
(04:23):
We just merge in. Actually, that's exactly right. I learned
from the best. Um, well, thank you for fighting me.
Congratulations on your podcast. Thank you so much. It's been
so fun to one just see people and to to
like reminisce and talk. I mean, everyone has been so
(04:47):
generous and thoughtful and articulate, and well that's going to change. Yeah,
I kind of figured. So I'm not talking to you
about I'm just going to talk to you about King
of the Hill because it's fun. Um so before the office,
what were you what were you doing immediately prior to well, Um, So,
(05:13):
I had just kind of come off a very intense
maybe eight years at King of the Hill, and this
was the first show that I was the showrunner. And uh,
that job is maybe not that widely known outside of Hollywood.
It's like the director of the movie. It's very full time, intense,
(05:35):
start to finish on something job. So I had come
off The Simpsons, and the Simpsons was really good training
in many ways, but there was a lot of things
I wanted to do differently because you know, when I
got to The Simpsons, it was season the end of
season four and the show was getting a little wilder
(05:57):
kind of And for Key of the Hill, I wanted
to keep it contained and realistic the whole time. And
I was very much of the opinion and you have
to really start slow on the show and just the
value of slowness, but come up with stories like from
a simple place, not a grand idea or set up.
(06:17):
Is that what you mean? Well, like, for instance, the
the pilot of King of the Hill, you know, the
first couple of minutes, these guys are standing around a
truck just going yep, you know really and um, you know,
so I I had come off that and you know,
I was a huge fan of Seinfeld and I wanted
(06:39):
to get on that show. I sold them one script.
I was a freelancer, but I generated a lot of
stories and would pitch them and I really thought about
that show a lot. And then I went on The
Simpsons instead and learned a whole bunch there. But I, um,
it was kind of a good student of knowing that
I wanted to be a runner. So I would take
(07:01):
notes and you know, write them down, and I have
all these scraps of things and I would develop a
different theories. And one of the theories that I had
I call stuff the Sausage, And that theory is a
great show like Seinfeld is wasteful of wonderful ideas, you
(07:22):
know what I mean, Like they'll have a great idea
and it might just turn into a couple of lines
or a scene, like they don't milk it and make
a whole episode out of right. So we tried to
do that on the Office too, But there was a
lot of that on King of the Hill, where you'd
have subplots and you know, really tried to put a
lot of story into an episode. What were your favorite shows? Like,
(07:45):
what were you watching at that time? Seinfeld? I loved.
But part of it was when Matt came out. You know,
it was very different and it was really on by
the skin of its teeth, and if you picked up
on it early, you had definitely this feeling of, oh
my god, here's something super funny and if I don't
watch it, it's gonna be extinguished. And actually I had
(08:08):
a I had a meeting at ABC and they were talking.
They said, what do you like to watch? And I said, oh,
I love Seinfeld And they said something like the that
they had Home Improvement and that they identified that Simon
felt was going to be a threat, and they wanted
to move Home Improvement against it and squash it in
(08:30):
its cradle, but they couldn't because they had this long
standing deal to run Sibs opposite Seinfeld, and they were
watching it kind of catch hold, and they were they
were like, as soon as they could, they were going
to squash it with Home Improvement, and I was like,
don't you dare do that? You know, um, well, that's
kind of what happened to us too. By the end, right,
they moved Gray's anatomy against US and c S. I
(08:53):
was on CBS like they were pulling all their big
shows against US. Yeah. Well, I kept making I made
a lot of Seinfeld comparisons in the beginning, because um,
you know, I was like, oh, look how small that started.
It's something new, it's something unique, it's funny, you know,
let it grow and everything. But it turns out every
single producer made Seinfeld comparisons if you had a show
that was struggling, you know, no matter how good it
(09:15):
was or how close it was the Seinfeld, they had
heard that argument before. Um, and when did you become aware?
You were aware of the British version Ricky Gervais and
uh no, here's what happened. Um okay, So so I
do King of the Hell. Yeah. I go into an
overall deal at twenty and then when that deal expired,
(09:40):
I started to kind of look for the next thing.
And my agent, our Emmanuel, sent me a VHS cassette
and said the office on it and the show was
completely unknown, and I didn't watch it, and he called
me like after the holidays and he said, um, hey,
I'm gonna, you know, send this to next guy on
(10:00):
my list. If you don't watch it. So I said,
all right, all right, hold on, I'll try and watch
it tonight. So I popped a set in like at
nine PM or something, and I stayed up till one
watching the show. And I absolutely loved it. I thought
it was amazing and I couldn't even figure out how
it was done, you know it was. It didn't feel
like scripted. It was so alive and cool. And you
(10:24):
know how I said, I was like a student a
bit of being a showrunner. So a lot of times
I wanted to meet the people who I thought were
doing the best work, whether or not I figured I
would ever work with them. So it was really important
for me to sell a freelance episode of Seinfeld so
that I could work with Larry David and see what
(10:44):
was up. And I identified that Ricky and Stephen had
created something amazing, and I really wanted to figure it
out right, but I didn't. I didn't really think that
it was plausible that it would come to American TV,
or that I would get the job or whatever. But
I wanted to meet them and asked them about it.
So I met him at Ben's office, a little bungalow
on the Universal Law yeah, and it turned out that
(11:08):
number one, they loved the Simpsons. Number two Rickey's favorite
Simpsons episode was one that I had written, called Homer Badman.
So we started vibing nicely and um, you know, and
I talked to them about what I saw in the show,
and you know how I would adapted, and a lot
(11:31):
of it came from King of the Hill being kind
of realistic and slow and poignant. Um. But anyway, we
got along really well and um, so they trusted me
to take over and do the adaptation. And Ben had
identified a few people who he thought would be really receptive,
(11:53):
and Kevin Riley was the front runner and he was
running f X, and it seemed plausible that if anybody
could take the office, it would be f X or
maybe HBO. Those were like the two we were thinking about.
But now Ben told me that HBO wasn't interested because
they didn't want to do a remake. Correct, Yes, they
(12:13):
were out of the running. So FX looked pretty good.
But what happened was, um, Kevin Riley left f X
and took over NBC, and he still wanted to do
the show. And I was very skeptical because everything on
NBC had was multi camera Will and Grace was their
number one show, and um, it did not feel at
(12:34):
all like The Office. So okay, So I started to
convince myself maybe the point of bringing the Office, I
actually thought this was, was move the ship of comedy
in a direction towards something I liked more. And even
if I just nudged it in that direction, maybe it
would be valuable, like flame out to do you know NBC,
(12:59):
even if it failed miserably, you were doing your part. Yeah,
I was gonna nudge Network Comedy or the main ship
of comedy. I wanted to nudge it in a different direction. Um.
Then a few things happened that were very anxiety producing
for me. At some point, Uh, the Office started to
air on BBC America in the United States and it
(13:21):
was very small ratings. Um. But that also made me
very anxious because I didn't think that it would ever
air in the United States. Do you know what I mean? Like,
I have the role to the Office that Norman Lear
had All in the Family because All the Family was
in English show. But no one's ever seen the English
show that all the Families based, right, so Norman Lear
(13:42):
has no points of comparison. I didn't have to worry
about anything. It was just like, oh, what a great,
great new show you got. Um so that shared air
and all the cool comedy people were really into it,
you know. And this was when we had we had
already shot pilot. So I'm jumping ahead a little bit.
This was right before, right before we uh, right before
(14:03):
we were going to airs, when I started to come
out because they wanted to like connect it, I think
to the NBC show or something. Okay, yeah, I mean
I I had gotten an early DVD of it too.
And it's interesting. I was one of the first people
to get a DVR because I felt like, well, if
I'm meeting on these shows, I need to see what's
out there, whether I like it or not. I should,
(14:25):
you know, see an episode of c S I and
see an episode of Will and Grace. So I just
spent all my time watching and to try I got
a ti VO. Yeah, and so I had watched I
had watched it at that point. I have a funny
Tevo stories sidebar. But yeah, so I got a TVO
two and they had an early version of the Netflix algorithm.
(14:47):
They were like, oh, you look, you watch this and
this and this at the time, I was watching Ken
of the Hill episodes just to make sure it aired properly. Um,
I love the Sopranos. So I was watching that and
then my kids we're watching Dragon Tales on PBS, and
so they tried to triangulate off those three and uh
(15:07):
and they said, you know what you'd like McHale's Navy.
That was the cross second of three shows. I think
it's kind of funny. So you sell the show to NBC. Yeah,
(15:37):
you're running it, and now it's time to come up
with a pilot. Now, how how did you come up
with a decision to keep it so close to the
British version? Yeah, well that was interesting. I had went
back and forth. I had generated a bunch of stories
if I was going to do a completely original story.
And when I was growing up, my dad was a
businessman who had a lot of performative interests like stand
(16:00):
He used to do a manager's meeting every year at
his company where he got Karnak hat you know, the
turban and his name is Aaron. He would do Aaronak
And my first joke writing was writing jokes for his
routine for Aaronach. And as I became a comedy writer.
Some very good people like Colan O'Brien wrote for him,
(16:20):
and you know, Mike Reis a lot of good comedy
writers wrote for Aaronach and I used that, I think
in the Dundees because I, uh, Michael has an aaronak
or karnak wig and he does the exact same joke.
That was the first joke that I wrote for my dad. Um.
But to get back to the question of what to do,
(16:40):
so uh so I used to do an award show
at King of the Hill called the swamp Eas, named
after Swampy Marsh, who was one of our designers who
went on to create Phineas and ferb and he had
a big personality, and so we called it the Swampys.
And I got those little plastics salesman trophies that are
(17:01):
not too hard to get, and I used to give
those out at King of the Hill. So anyway, I thought, well,
the Dundees Dundee Awards would be a good you know,
pilot episode, yeah, because you'd sort of by giving awards
to everybody, you could introduce all these different characters or whatever.
But um, then I started to get worried and I
didn't want to Um, do an original script that the
(17:24):
NBC executives were going to start giving notes on which
they would have I believe with an original script. And
I was just really I felt like the pilot was
like the challenge was, can we do something that feels
like The Office and not like Will and Grace and
not blow it right? I thought it was more of
a producing challenge and the hiring challenge to anything else.
(17:47):
And so ultimately I got Kevin to say, I want
to make The Office, and I said, all right, I'm
gonna hold you to that. The first the pilot we're
gonna make is going to be very close to the
English show anyway, So I made some changes to the
English pilot. I added a bunch of stuff and advanced
the romance a little bit so you'd know at the
(18:08):
end of the pilot what was going on. And ultimately,
in the edit room, which lasted forever, we did twenty
three cuts. I ended up losing a bunch of stuff
that I had added, but I did you know, there
were some good things I added, Like I added that
World's Greatest Boss mug that he bought from Spencer Gifts,
and a bunch of things like that. Um Anyway, but
(18:28):
for you, it was more about creating the world and
finding the team and finding the and the cast, the rhythm,
the dynamic and selling that as opposed to trying to
you know, write a Dundee's Award and change how the
show was launched. Yeah, I thought it was a huge
producing challenge, and you know, and I had all those
(18:51):
theories and like the stuff to sausage and stuff, and
some of the theories that I had was that the
show had to be handmade, like it couldn't be a
factory product. And what I didn't like about network television
was how much of a factory it was. And how
you know, there was a writing staff and the writers
(19:12):
wrote jokes, and the jokes got passed down to the actors,
and the writers and actress would always resent each other,
and the writers would try and write actor proof jokes
that you know, are can contain the setup in the
punchline in the same line, because they didn't ever trust
that the actors could get laughs on behavior. So the
first thing I really wanted to do was create comedy
(19:35):
television in a different pattern so that you could get
more laughs off performance and not jokes. Right, I've heard
um and people have talked about it, and you've talked
about it, Um, that you were trying to create an
environment that was more like S and L where the
writers and the actors there wasn't so much disconnect and
(19:57):
that and that writers were performing with the actors, and
actors could pitch ideas to the writers. Um what I
what I haven't heard before that you just said, which
I find so interesting that you wanted laughs to come
from behavior and from actors performances, and and and so
you needed a writing staff that understood and had trust
(20:20):
in the actors, which is in a way kind of
the reverse of how I thought about it. Yeah, well,
you know what they always said it was the biggest
laugh of all time was Jack Benny where he's getting
mugged and the guy says your money or your life
and he just like has to think about it, you know,
And like, to me, that's great because that's not a joke, right,
(20:43):
it's just like you're bringing to bear the everything you
know about the character. I thought those were such cooler
things than jokes. And Um. Anyway, so that was like
the big challenge. And then also it was that format, right,
it is mockumentary, and it was very quiet, and it
(21:03):
had its rhythm and the comedy of awkwardness where like,
you know, someone's supposed to behave a certain way and
they aren't, you know what I mean, and then it
sinks in and and um, that was certainly really hard
to pull off at that time. Yes, I had a
director that I worked with for a long time in
theater before. He always talked to me about off the beat.
(21:25):
That comedy exists off the beat. So if you have
an expectation of when you should respond, you you you
wait a half beat, you do something that jars people,
which surprises them. And I felt like, that's what what
you did so well on our show. Well, surprise is
really good for comedy, right, And to me, um, anything
(21:47):
you can do to increase surprise is good. And the
problem to me with your multi camera shows in general
was that the rhythms were so ingrained. You know, it's
always like up, you know, and you could kind of
just and it felt like like kabuki, you know, or
(22:08):
some kind of really ritualized thing. So there's a lot
of really cool things about the Office in terms of
increasing surprise. One of them to me is you're going
for poignancy half the time, you're going for something emotional,
so you're not aware as an audience, remember what the
goal of the moment is, so you think, oh, you know,
(22:30):
oh this is sad, this is a you know, and
then it's funny and then you you're surprised or if
vice verse him. So um. So the first the pilot,
we had Peter Smokeler as the DP, and a lot
of the hiring of the pilot for me was trying
to get people who I super respected from different things
that were kind of off, like not the standard sitcom.
(22:52):
So um. Alison Jones loved freaks and geeks that thought
her casting was amazing, so I really wanted to get her.
And then I had tried to work on Larry Sanders.
I did a couple of days of punch up there.
I'd identified that as something similar to to Seinfeld, like
some show that was just doing amazing stuff. And that's
(23:14):
how we got to Ken koppas Yes, And the whole
thing with Ken was wanting everybody to believe that they
were working at a paper company and absorbing that and
kind of taking the Hollywood out of it. Well, there
were so many things that you guys did. First of all,
getting a sound stage as a location and choosing to
(23:37):
put the offices in the production offices upstairs, right because
that was a real space and Ken and his making
us be all ready to go at seven am and
doing thirty minutes of just work. Yeah no, that was
really uh part of that notion of obstacles that like
(23:57):
I um, we discussed that a lot as well, which
is uh on the Hollywood set. And again this is
like trying not to be factory, not to be Hollywood. Right,
So on Hollywood set they make the walls wild a bole,
which means any room you're in you can pull the
wall off so that the camera can get back and
(24:18):
get a great shot. And our aesthetic on the office
was nothing should be wild able, you you should. The
obstacle of a column in the way is subconsciously interpreted
by the audience as another piece of evidence that this
is actually happening, that's real, which makes it much more intense,
(24:39):
right because subconsciously you're like, oh my god, they couldn't,
they can't, they can't quite see what's happening, right, So yeah,
you're totally leaning forward and that zoom lends stuff and
going through the blinds and going around the side and everything,
and there was always a debate about how much to
lean into that device, and the writer is often would
(25:02):
want to do it more than the rest of the crew.
And one of the interesting things of being a showrunner is,
first and foremost you're the head writer. You're like one
of the writing staff, but you also interact with everybody
else on the crew way more than the writers do.
And so, for instance, Phil Sheha, the prop master, He's
(25:23):
a guy that I would ask his opinion all the time.
And Dave Rodgers, the editor, I completely relied on. And
I would also often bring in the accountants. Remember this,
I would have two different cuts downstairs, and I'd bring
the accountants in. I'd play it for them because I
figured they were the closest we had to ordinary people.
(25:44):
But anyway, so like some certain key moments, the big
question was how much to use that device of obstacles. Interesting, Um,
I want to talk about the casting just a little. Yeah,
and Alison Jones, how why did you choose Alison Jones? Okay, Well, um,
so I did. Uh. While I was at Fox. I
(26:04):
did a pilot uh, and it was sort of based
on me growing up in New York and I. I
considered it sort of Seinfeld the Family show. It was
like a Seinfeld family show. And I was casting right
when Freaks and Geeks had been canceled, and I saw
all of the kids and UM, a lot of them
(26:28):
perst into tears when they went toition because they were
so sad that their show got canceled. And I ended
up using Sam Levine in this show. But anyway, I
got I was really into Freaks and Geeks and UM,
I really liked the choices, Like she chose really funny people,
but they were, you know, pretty character in a great way. Yeah.
(26:51):
So I when I tried to think of all of
the casting directors that I could try to go to,
you know, uh, I was like, I want, I want
to work with her. I think she she'd be great.
So we went into this really long casting process and
we were off for some reason. We were off cycle.
We were like going to be mid season so we
(27:12):
didn't have to compete with every single other show. And
we started with um, you know, Jim and Pam, Michael Dwight,
those were like the ones we started with. And we
saw a ton of people for Michael, and I brought
in people who I had worked with were writers. I
brought in one of the head writers of The Simpsons,
(27:34):
Mike Greece, to try out, and this writer I knew
named Chuck Tatham, And I remember taping myself on a
video camera late at night doing the sides for Michael
because I was like, I don't even know what to
tell them, you know. And I did it a bunch
of times, and I realized that one of the keys
that I thought for people trying out for Michael was
(27:58):
that he's thinking that if he does a good job
on this documentary, maybe Jennifer Anniston will watch it, and
that's in the back of his head. That was well,
that was like my direction that yeah, And I did
that from taping myself and going, oh, that's the only
thing that's motivating me into something resembling this weird performance. Um,
(28:19):
was there anyone that came in right away who you
ultimately cast that you went, that's it? Jenna? Yeah, Jenna
came in and it kind of blew my mind because
I didn't understand it. I was like, she doesn't appear
to be acting. She appears to simply be Pam. And
I had all these weird questions for her that were like, well,
(28:40):
you wouldn't ask an actor. IU was like, where where
have you worked? What is that? You know? It was
like it was a real interview for receptionists. There was
one part of me in trying to get an interesting
love story that thought maybe it should be interracial love story,
and so part of me was I had a one
version of it where Craig Robinson was Roy not Darryl.
(29:04):
And there was a really likable actress Erica Bettina Phillips,
and I was like, could she be Pam? Wow? Is
that gonna work? And everything? You know, but she was
a pretty easy pick and I felt pretty much like
that about John. I think too. Um, there were some
(29:25):
other good guys for John, but not not close and
was it about the two of them together? Yeah? And
then well the great thing also that Ken did and
it was really smart, which is he said, okay, like
we are not going to try and take these people
in front of NBC on a little stage and have
(29:48):
them read in front of the executives. And I was
completely on board with that because we would never be
shooting like that. That's not the right style. And what
that is is a filter to get more theatrical performers.
Who are good for multi camera, who can work a room. Yeah,
who work a room and come alive when they're in
front of a room and and project and you know,
(30:08):
are just more theatrical. And so we got this idea
to do screen tests like old fashioned screen tests, and
we blocked off three days and um, and we took
all the different top three or four candidates for each
role and we pitted him together in different improvs. And
(30:30):
it was great for Ken too because he worked out
a lot about the shooting style doing this. And it
was fun for me too because I came up with
lots of little improv games and could figure out things
and like, for instance, one of them was between the
Gym candidates and the Dwight candidates, and I had Dwight
sitting at his desk and I said, like, all right,
(30:52):
the Gym just bring a glass of water in a
nice way to Dwight, and Dwight be super suspicious because
why is Jim doing something nice? And it was really
nice by the way of all the actors, because a
lot of the actors gave us three days shooting. So
that's a long audition. But just like everything, it took time.
I mean, you cast for three months, then you did
(31:13):
multiple days. I'm super methodical. I have to say, like,
i feel like, if I have time to make a decision,
I'm going to chase down every option and abe it
and really try. And you know, and as you started
to find the rest of the ensemble, what were you
looking for there? Well, part of it was different types
(31:35):
of people, you know, and part of it was Allison
having passions for people, like we didn't have a ton
of choices for Kevin, right, she was really passionate about
you and came in and we could see it right away,
and it was like cool, that's great. And Oscar and
(32:01):
Angela were both you know, had come from the same
improv theater. They were both io guys. And Oscar has
the ability, like he has such a straight face, I
mean he has the ability to play it so straight
and it's so funny. Has a little Jack Benny actually
you referenced him before, just yeah, yeah. And and the
(32:22):
great thing was also the set informed a good bit
because like we were all in the same room. But
it was very useful to have a nook with three
improv masters to have a sort of create a subplot
with almost you know, you needed to cut away from
the what was happening in the triangle of Jim Pam
(32:44):
dwighte desks, and the accounts were great for that. And
the other thing that was great was you guys were
just making your own bits up. You know. We we
were the star of our own show in the corner,
which was how Areous? And you would come to me
and go, hey, hey, hey, check this out. We got
this thing going. I have to tell this story. Um.
(33:07):
We were the first season, we shoot the basketball episode,
which is your the first episode you wrote. And I'm
trying to bond with my boss, right, and I'm a
huge sports fan, big basketball fan, and so we're doing
the basketball episode and I remember I said, so, Greg
are you are you You're a big fan of basketball
(33:28):
and you turned like kind of tilted your head slightly
and said, I'm a fan of comedy and then turned
and walked away. I was like, that went really well, Brian,
a great, great job with it. Was just so so
interesting for me that you had constructed that as being
(33:48):
that was my That was funny. Yeah, I mean this, Yeah,
that's so sad and lame on my part. But I
didn't have enough brain space for sports know what I mean.
I I am marvel at people who can know all
about all the teams, and it's a great thing for
guys to hang out and bond with each other. It's
(34:09):
like my dad and my son are both great at it.
No matter where they go, they're just they can instantly
have a cool conversation about basketball. Well, they just didn't
have the room. Well there's a theory, right that people
only have the brain space for for one of three things.
One is sports, two is music, and three is useless trivia.
(34:30):
Oh I got that. That's man. So it's one of
three things and useless trivia because that's not Unfortunately it's
not music in sports. But it does help when you
write Dwight because a lot of times I would, you know,
I'd be like, yes, if there's one character I'm probably
the closest to, it's fucking Dwite. I don't know, I
(34:51):
don't know. It's sometimes it felt that way. It was
really easy to do all those bear runs. And like
one time when that do you remember that book what
was it called? It was like worst case Scenario handbook?
Remember that book? All right? So this is this was
like a Christmas type you know, novelty gift book, and
it was it was just how do you escape from
(35:11):
a bear? How do you escape from a burning building?
You know, worst case scenario and book and anyway, that Christmas,
I got like eight copies of that bad book from people.
They were like all of them were like, this is
for you, this is this is for you. So I
don't know, definitely easy to write, right. But on the
other hand, also I identified a lot with Michael. For instance,
(35:33):
the Halloween episode, this notion that you would have to
fire someone but you'd want to stay friends with them.
That comes from identifying with the boss in the situation.
And normally you identify with the employee until you've had
an experience of being a boss, and then you start
to go, oh, wait a minute, maybe there's somebody has
a point of view there. And I was the boss
of the writers, and so it was sort of funny
(35:55):
because like a lot of times they would be you know,
pulling the right at me and mocking me, and I
was like, yeah, you can use it for the show.
And Steve used to say something like, if you're in
a situation where there you don't see any Michael Scott,
you're Michael Scott, that's right, that's right. So after doing
(36:32):
the pilot, we get a very anemic pickup of five
episodes for a season one, and all of my Seinfeld
arguing rebounded against me, because you know, I was dancing
and trying to get get a pick up and everything,
and they were like, well, if it's really like Seinfeld
Seinfeld only had four episodes whenever in the first season,
(36:52):
were like, um, so we get this little skinny pick up,
and now I get the ability to hire writer, and
so I love hiring writers. And I read hundreds of scripts,
not hundreds, but at least a hundred for each time
I have to hire a staff, and I meet people,
and in the meetings, I'm describing the show because it
(37:15):
hasn't come out right, and the more you describe it,
the more your thoughts start to coalesce. And I and
I realized as I was trying to like pitch the
show over and over again to different writers, that this
was the first um comedy version of reality show, and
it was kind of the first show. And this gets
(37:38):
maybe theoretical, but like I was saying, all right, well, sitcoms,
multi camera coms are a TV show for people who
love theater and have done a lot of theater and
go to theater. That's the idea. But now everybody has
their own cam quarters, And what about a show for
people who have taken video and are used to looking
(37:59):
at the viewfinder and turning to cover one guy and
then the other guy. You know, America's funniest videos like
that cam quarter thing had come in hard and um
and reality shows. So I was kind of developing this
idea that the bones of the show wouldn't be theatrical,
they'd be video. And when you think about photography and
(38:19):
you think about the great you know, street photographers, so
much is about finding a way to look at the
real world and finding beauty in what you see right
in front of you, by the way you compose it,
or your selection of subject matter, where the decisive moment,
or you know, stuff like that. Well, randall Uh talked
(38:42):
to me a little bit about this idea. He attributes
to quote to you, which is everything that makes it
harder makes it better. Yeah, that's that obstacles and the yes.
And in terms of the obstacles and obviously a huge
part of the aesthetic was the camera as a character.
How important and was that to you. Oh, I think
that's huge. I mean I used to give notes very
(39:05):
differently to camera operators then most shows. Like most shows,
the note is okay, I want you to pan over here,
and then on this line, I want you to, you know,
do blah blah blah, push in or whatever. And I
used to only give notes to them like their actors.
I would say, Okay, here's what's interesting. You've been following
(39:25):
this story, and you know this person who's never expressed
any interest in that person before, You've suddenly noticed that
they're eyeing them with interest. Go for that. And some
of the things we used to do with Randall. I
would sometimes say, Okay, the problem with this scene is
you know what you're looking for, and I would have
(39:46):
the camera operator close their eyes and I would spin
them around and I'd say, right, find it on action,
and we go action and the scene would start and
the camera guy would open his eyes and be pointing
the wrong way and he'd have to like find find
what was interesting. Yeah, we had a bunch of tricks
like that. What I have said is the thing that
I'm the most proud of was that every single shot
(40:10):
was purposeful in terms of the camera is the camera
in the space. Are the characters aware that the camera
is there? How does that make them behave? Yeah? Well,
I you know, the writer's offices were near the stage,
and so I would often come down and look and
see stuff or get called down, which was very fun
(40:34):
but also kind of high stakes kind of deal, because
you show up, the whole crew is there and they're
they're saying, can you look at this? This doesn't seem
to be funny, Or I would look at the rehearsal
and I wouldn't think it was funny, And then you
only have a couple of minutes to figure it out.
And one thing that I noticed was that camera awareness
(40:55):
was the cause of half the times when it wasn't funny.
Is that we had gotten the camera awareness wrong and
we were in a situation where we should have been
spying on them through blinds, but the cameras are right
and everybody's face and we were expecting people to act
as if they didn't know the cameras were there, right,
or you know, sometimes it's funnier to not spy on
(41:18):
them and to let them be embarrassed that the cameras
are seeing it. Like I was just watching that one
which one was it? I guess it was the client,
remember that one, and just the camera chased Michael he
got the call being the jan didn't want to see him.
While he was he was sort of bragging the camera
and then he got this horrible call and he had
(41:39):
to actually hide in the well under his desk, and
the camera came around and like squeezed and kind of
caught him there like a raccoon in the light next
to a garbage. It's added so much, the camera could
add so much. Totally, did you right for the camera
as though it were character? Yeah? Sometimes, for sure. I
(42:04):
remember jen Um Salada actually doing that the most. Like
she she was the first person to have the camera
like nod you know, she had I forget which episode,
but she had somebody looked to camera and say where
do you go or something like that, and the camera
kind of like gestured and that was kind of fun.
(42:24):
It was. It was really up to the line though. Um.
And then you know when we had that arc of
Jenna going to art school or Pam going to art school,
we had a whole thing and it was originally I
think I think it was Mindy's idea or she was
the biggest proponent of it. But it was the idea
(42:45):
of the boom operator getting involved, and it was to
me one of the coolest ideas. I couldn't really figure
out how to work it, and we had a version
where she got mugged on a subway and the boom
operator dropped or the camera dropped the camera, and I
remember that, I remember that idea. Yea was that in
a table read? Even it probably I probably was, Yeah,
(43:08):
you know what's really fun? Now, it's like people are
talking about the show all the time, and so I
got asked about it. But it's ten years ago, fifteen
years ago, and sometimes I can't remember what made it
into the show or what was like a crazy table
read or what was pitched and I turned it down
for obvious reasons. One other question, just about the pilot.
(43:32):
Do you remember how the pilot tested? I'm guessing not good. Yes,
So Kevin Riley told the story that how testing happens
is there's certain people who are set up in different rooms,
and every room was bad. Yeah, and accept they got
to the last room, which essentially were people who didn't count,
(43:56):
but they were p a s and office assistants at
young people and they loved it. So it was like
from the very beginning that that's interesting. Well, they they
said to me, with the testing, they said, we're going
to go out in the mall and just grab a
bunch of people. You can have one question to disqualify people.
(44:20):
And so the question I had was if they were
a fan of according to Jim, that TV show. They
were disqualified because I didn't want to you know, I
didn't want to do a sitcom, so I had to
pick one. But anyway, but I mean, I had prepared
Kevin right like way before I knew this wasn't going
(44:41):
to test well, and I you know, I had certainly
laid the ground worth Kevin for that. I was like,
this thing is not going to test well. It is
firmly in the pattern of Mary Tyler Moore, Cheers Seinfeld.
It's classic NBC comedy, and you know it's gonna work.
But don't don't worry about the testing. And I said,
(45:01):
you know, there's a in this podcast room. You guys
have this Cheers poster where you've replaced all of the
Cheers characters with office heads. One of the things that's
so funny, I think inappropriate about that is about the
theme song because we had put a theme song on
the pilot that then was grabbed by another NBC show. Yes,
(45:26):
um what was it, Mr Blue Skies. That was what
was on the pilot, and it was all the internal screenings.
That was the theme song on the pilot. And the
pilot was also called The Office colon an American Workplace,
which I thought was more doc you you know that.
I also kind of figured it would open us up
to be able to do other an American workplace like
(45:47):
this is. I mean, it just didn't really apply until
we got to the finale and I managed to work
it in finally, But that was the that was the
thinking that you could you could do another series that
was something else in American workplace, where the that this
was just a season of a larger series called an
American Workplace, just to just to try and get more
(46:08):
reality to the documentary thing. Because after a while, I
mean we sort of pointed it out at the end,
like why were you here for nine years? But um,
so I had really fun experience getting the theme song
for King of the Hill where we went out to
bands and stuff and they all submitted stuff and we
had to sort of sum up what the show was
(46:29):
really quickly. And my line on King of the Hill
was Andy Griffith's back and he's pissed. That was how
I would sum up that show. But when we were
looking for a theme song for the Office, I kept
referencing Cheers because I was like, the Office is funny
and poignant and original, and it has this sort of
(46:51):
cheersy vibe. I always felt like our show that that
was where it's deepest roots was Cheers. Yeah. Um, the
only difference was these were people who had to show
up every day, whereas Cheers they chose to show up
at this particular place. But that, um, the tone of
(47:14):
familiarity and constant interaction that that it had its ties there. Yeah, no,
I agree with you, And and Cheers had a very
it's sort of there were moments of nobility and a
lot of appreciating different character people. I also used to
compare it to Hogan's heroes in the beginning. Yeah, you know,
(47:36):
because uh, the staff were kind of like prisoners. They
were all trying to like outwit the boss. Kind of
that was I don't think that's the main influence at all,
but interesting, it's fun to think about it like that. Sometimes.
(48:00):
All right, guys, we're gonna pause. We're not gonna stop,
We're just gonna pause. Um, because there is so much
more great stuff from Greg. You're gonna hear more from him,
and not just one, but two future episodes. But in
the meantime, you can go right now and you can
listen to my interview with Rain Wilson, a k a.
(48:25):
Dwight Shrewd, which, as you just heard, Greg and Dwight
kind of the same person, so it makes total sense. Now,
Normally we're just gonna put out one episode a week,
but I was just too excited. I was just too
excited about launching the podcast. So go now, America's sweetheart.
He's never been cooked that Rain Wilson. Anyway, thank you
(48:47):
so much for listening. Episode one done check. I hope
you enjoyed it, and uh yeah, we will see you
next week. The Office. Deep Dive is hosted and executive
(49:08):
produced by me Brian Baumgartner, alongside our executive producer Langley.
Our senior producer is Tessa Kramer, our associate producer is
Emily Carr, and our assistant editor is Diego Tapia. My
main man in the booth is Alec Moore. Our theme
song Bubble and Squeak, performed by my great friend Creed Bratton,
(49:29):
and the episode is mixed by Seth Olandsky. Special thanks
to the amazing production crew who recorded these interviews with
us Joanna Sakalowski, Julia Smith, Benny Spiwak, Russell with Jaya,
Margaret Borchard, Christian Bonaventura, Matthew Rosenfield, Alex Mobison, Lucy Savage,
Judson Pickward, Jack Walden, Jonathan Mayer, Andrew Stephen, David Lincoln,
(49:54):
and Saida Lee
Hello everybody. Hi uh oh, I am so excited today.
That jazzy little tune is getting me very excited. Welcome
one and all to the first, the absolute first premier,
as we call it, in the business episode of The
(00:35):
Office Deep Dive. I am your host, Brian Baumgartner. Now
where did this podcast come from? I don't know if
you're aware that I had another podcast, an oral History
of the Office. Now, if you haven't listened to that,
you should, because I mean, it's absolutely genius, if if
I say so myself. But what happened was we did
(00:58):
that podcast and we had so much fun making it
and getting back together with my old castmates and crew
and writers and directors. The problem was, we got so
much good material we could not fit all of the
great stuff in. That's what she said. So we decided
(01:20):
to make another podcast, this podcast, the one right here
that you're listening to right now, And this time I
am releasing all of my raw, unfiltered, full length interviews
for you to go even deeper. So let's dive in,
shall we. Hi. I'm Greg Daniels. I was the showrunner
(01:47):
of the Office. So how do we begin? Well, we
begin at the beginning that made no sense. Uh. The
thing is, there is only one way to begin a
podcast about the Office, and that is with Greg Daniels. Now,
(02:10):
as some of you Office fans undoubtedly no, Greg was
the creator and showrunner of the American version of the Office.
But what you may not know is that before that,
Greg was the showrunner and co creator of King of
the Hill. And before that he was a writer on
The Simpsons and Saturday Night Live. And see what is
(02:34):
so cool is that, as you'll hear momentarily, all of
that experience totally shaped Greg's vision for The Office, which
at the time was honestly revolutionary. There was nothing like
The Office on American television. I truly cannot overstate how
(02:54):
significant Greg's role was on the show. He assembled the
entire team, and he was responsible for everything from casting
to set design, production design, the shooting style. Again, all
of that you're gonna hear about in a minute. But
the point is he is literally the reason we're all
here today. Well maybe not you guys, but me. He's
(03:18):
definitely the reason that I'm here. So I'm obviously very
excited to kick things off. I'm gonna shut up now,
ladies and gentlemen, for our very first interview. I am
proud to present Mr Greg Daniels Bubble and Squeak. I
(03:39):
love it. Bubble and Squeak on Bubble and Squeaker Cookie
at every month lift over from the night before. Oh hi, buddy, Hire,
so good to see you, to see you too. I
love that carved I have Atner's chapel. I have an
(04:02):
engraved plaque. That's fantastic. We face each other. How do you?
I think we face each other. I think we're here.
It's kind of neat. It's a great room, right, Yeah,
how are you are they recording? Yeah, we're just having
a chat. We're having a chat. I've stolen a few tricks, exactly.
(04:23):
We just merge in. Actually, that's exactly right. I learned
from the best. Um, well, thank you for fighting me.
Congratulations on your podcast. Thank you so much. It's been
so fun to one just see people and to to
like reminisce and talk. I mean, everyone has been so
(04:47):
generous and thoughtful and articulate, and well that's going to change. Yeah,
I kind of figured. So I'm not talking to you
about I'm just going to talk to you about King
of the Hill because it's fun. Um so before the office,
what were you what were you doing immediately prior to well, Um, So,
(05:13):
I had just kind of come off a very intense
maybe eight years at King of the Hill, and this
was the first show that I was the showrunner. And uh,
that job is maybe not that widely known outside of Hollywood.
It's like the director of the movie. It's very full time, intense,
(05:35):
start to finish on something job. So I had come
off The Simpsons, and the Simpsons was really good training
in many ways, but there was a lot of things
I wanted to do differently because you know, when I
got to The Simpsons, it was season the end of
season four and the show was getting a little wilder
(05:57):
kind of And for Key of the Hill, I wanted
to keep it contained and realistic the whole time. And
I was very much of the opinion and you have
to really start slow on the show and just the
value of slowness, but come up with stories like from
a simple place, not a grand idea or set up.
(06:17):
Is that what you mean? Well, like, for instance, the
the pilot of King of the Hill, you know, the
first couple of minutes, these guys are standing around a
truck just going yep, you know really and um, you know,
so I I had come off that and you know,
I was a huge fan of Seinfeld and I wanted
(06:39):
to get on that show. I sold them one script.
I was a freelancer, but I generated a lot of
stories and would pitch them and I really thought about
that show a lot. And then I went on The
Simpsons instead and learned a whole bunch there. But I, um,
it was kind of a good student of knowing that
I wanted to be a runner. So I would take
(07:01):
notes and you know, write them down, and I have
all these scraps of things and I would develop a
different theories. And one of the theories that I had
I call stuff the Sausage, And that theory is a
great show like Seinfeld is wasteful of wonderful ideas, you
(07:22):
know what I mean, Like they'll have a great idea
and it might just turn into a couple of lines
or a scene, like they don't milk it and make
a whole episode out of right. So we tried to
do that on the Office too, But there was a
lot of that on King of the Hill, where you'd
have subplots and you know, really tried to put a
lot of story into an episode. What were your favorite shows? Like,
(07:45):
what were you watching at that time? Seinfeld? I loved.
But part of it was when Matt came out. You know,
it was very different and it was really on by
the skin of its teeth, and if you picked up
on it early, you had definitely this feeling of, oh
my god, here's something super funny and if I don't
watch it, it's gonna be extinguished. And actually I had
(08:08):
a I had a meeting at ABC and they were talking.
They said, what do you like to watch? And I said, oh,
I love Seinfeld And they said something like the that
they had Home Improvement and that they identified that Simon
felt was going to be a threat, and they wanted
to move Home Improvement against it and squash it in
(08:30):
its cradle, but they couldn't because they had this long
standing deal to run Sibs opposite Seinfeld, and they were
watching it kind of catch hold, and they were they
were like, as soon as they could, they were going
to squash it with Home Improvement, and I was like,
don't you dare do that? You know, um, well, that's
kind of what happened to us too. By the end, right,
they moved Gray's anatomy against US and c S. I
(08:53):
was on CBS like they were pulling all their big
shows against US. Yeah. Well, I kept making I made
a lot of Seinfeld comparisons in the beginning, because um,
you know, I was like, oh, look how small that started.
It's something new, it's something unique, it's funny, you know,
let it grow and everything. But it turns out every
single producer made Seinfeld comparisons if you had a show
that was struggling, you know, no matter how good it
(09:15):
was or how close it was the Seinfeld, they had
heard that argument before. Um, and when did you become aware?
You were aware of the British version Ricky Gervais and
uh no, here's what happened. Um okay, So so I
do King of the Hell. Yeah. I go into an
overall deal at twenty and then when that deal expired,
(09:40):
I started to kind of look for the next thing.
And my agent, our Emmanuel, sent me a VHS cassette
and said the office on it and the show was
completely unknown, and I didn't watch it, and he called
me like after the holidays and he said, um, hey,
I'm gonna, you know, send this to next guy on
(10:00):
my list. If you don't watch it. So I said,
all right, all right, hold on, I'll try and watch
it tonight. So I popped a set in like at
nine PM or something, and I stayed up till one
watching the show. And I absolutely loved it. I thought
it was amazing and I couldn't even figure out how
it was done, you know it was. It didn't feel
like scripted. It was so alive and cool. And you
(10:24):
know how I said, I was like a student a
bit of being a showrunner. So a lot of times
I wanted to meet the people who I thought were
doing the best work, whether or not I figured I
would ever work with them. So it was really important
for me to sell a freelance episode of Seinfeld so
that I could work with Larry David and see what
(10:44):
was up. And I identified that Ricky and Stephen had
created something amazing, and I really wanted to figure it
out right, but I didn't. I didn't really think that
it was plausible that it would come to American TV,
or that I would get the job or whatever. But
I wanted to meet them and asked them about it.
So I met him at Ben's office, a little bungalow
on the Universal Law yeah, and it turned out that
(11:08):
number one, they loved the Simpsons. Number two Rickey's favorite
Simpsons episode was one that I had written, called Homer Badman.
So we started vibing nicely and um, you know, and
I talked to them about what I saw in the show,
and you know how I would adapted, and a lot
(11:31):
of it came from King of the Hill being kind
of realistic and slow and poignant. Um. But anyway, we
got along really well and um, so they trusted me
to take over and do the adaptation. And Ben had
identified a few people who he thought would be really receptive,
(11:53):
and Kevin Riley was the front runner and he was
running f X, and it seemed plausible that if anybody
could take the office, it would be f X or
maybe HBO. Those were like the two we were thinking about.
But now Ben told me that HBO wasn't interested because
they didn't want to do a remake. Correct, Yes, they
(12:13):
were out of the running. So FX looked pretty good.
But what happened was, um, Kevin Riley left f X
and took over NBC, and he still wanted to do
the show. And I was very skeptical because everything on
NBC had was multi camera Will and Grace was their
number one show, and um, it did not feel at
(12:34):
all like The Office. So okay, So I started to
convince myself maybe the point of bringing the Office, I
actually thought this was, was move the ship of comedy
in a direction towards something I liked more. And even
if I just nudged it in that direction, maybe it
would be valuable, like flame out to do you know NBC,
(12:59):
even if it failed miserably, you were doing your part. Yeah,
I was gonna nudge Network Comedy or the main ship
of comedy. I wanted to nudge it in a different direction. Um.
Then a few things happened that were very anxiety producing
for me. At some point, Uh, the Office started to
air on BBC America in the United States and it
(13:21):
was very small ratings. Um. But that also made me
very anxious because I didn't think that it would ever
air in the United States. Do you know what I mean? Like,
I have the role to the Office that Norman Lear
had All in the Family because All the Family was
in English show. But no one's ever seen the English
show that all the Families based, right, so Norman Lear
(13:42):
has no points of comparison. I didn't have to worry
about anything. It was just like, oh, what a great,
great new show you got. Um so that shared air
and all the cool comedy people were really into it,
you know. And this was when we had we had
already shot pilot. So I'm jumping ahead a little bit.
This was right before, right before we uh, right before
(14:03):
we were going to airs, when I started to come
out because they wanted to like connect it, I think
to the NBC show or something. Okay, yeah, I mean
I I had gotten an early DVD of it too.
And it's interesting. I was one of the first people
to get a DVR because I felt like, well, if
I'm meeting on these shows, I need to see what's
out there, whether I like it or not. I should,
(14:25):
you know, see an episode of c S I and
see an episode of Will and Grace. So I just
spent all my time watching and to try I got
a ti VO. Yeah, and so I had watched I
had watched it at that point. I have a funny
Tevo stories sidebar. But yeah, so I got a TVO
two and they had an early version of the Netflix algorithm.
(14:47):
They were like, oh, you look, you watch this and
this and this at the time, I was watching Ken
of the Hill episodes just to make sure it aired properly. Um,
I love the Sopranos. So I was watching that and
then my kids we're watching Dragon Tales on PBS, and
so they tried to triangulate off those three and uh
(15:07):
and they said, you know what you'd like McHale's Navy.
That was the cross second of three shows. I think
it's kind of funny. So you sell the show to NBC. Yeah,
(15:37):
you're running it, and now it's time to come up
with a pilot. Now, how how did you come up
with a decision to keep it so close to the
British version? Yeah, well that was interesting. I had went
back and forth. I had generated a bunch of stories
if I was going to do a completely original story.
And when I was growing up, my dad was a
businessman who had a lot of performative interests like stand
(16:00):
He used to do a manager's meeting every year at
his company where he got Karnak hat you know, the
turban and his name is Aaron. He would do Aaronak
And my first joke writing was writing jokes for his
routine for Aaronach. And as I became a comedy writer.
Some very good people like Colan O'Brien wrote for him,
(16:20):
and you know, Mike Reis a lot of good comedy
writers wrote for Aaronach and I used that, I think
in the Dundees because I, uh, Michael has an aaronak
or karnak wig and he does the exact same joke.
That was the first joke that I wrote for my dad. Um.
But to get back to the question of what to do,
(16:40):
so uh so I used to do an award show
at King of the Hill called the swamp Eas, named
after Swampy Marsh, who was one of our designers who
went on to create Phineas and ferb and he had
a big personality, and so we called it the Swampys.
And I got those little plastics salesman trophies that are
(17:01):
not too hard to get, and I used to give
those out at King of the Hill. So anyway, I thought, well,
the Dundees Dundee Awards would be a good you know,
pilot episode, yeah, because you'd sort of by giving awards
to everybody, you could introduce all these different characters or whatever.
But um, then I started to get worried and I
didn't want to Um, do an original script that the
(17:24):
NBC executives were going to start giving notes on which
they would have I believe with an original script. And
I was just really I felt like the pilot was
like the challenge was, can we do something that feels
like The Office and not like Will and Grace and
not blow it right? I thought it was more of
a producing challenge and the hiring challenge to anything else.
(17:47):
And so ultimately I got Kevin to say, I want
to make The Office, and I said, all right, I'm
gonna hold you to that. The first the pilot we're
gonna make is going to be very close to the
English show anyway, So I made some changes to the
English pilot. I added a bunch of stuff and advanced
the romance a little bit so you'd know at the
(18:08):
end of the pilot what was going on. And ultimately,
in the edit room, which lasted forever, we did twenty
three cuts. I ended up losing a bunch of stuff
that I had added, but I did you know, there
were some good things I added, Like I added that
World's Greatest Boss mug that he bought from Spencer Gifts,
and a bunch of things like that. Um Anyway, but
(18:28):
for you, it was more about creating the world and
finding the team and finding the and the cast, the rhythm,
the dynamic and selling that as opposed to trying to
you know, write a Dundee's Award and change how the
show was launched. Yeah, I thought it was a huge
producing challenge, and you know, and I had all those
(18:51):
theories and like the stuff to sausage and stuff, and
some of the theories that I had was that the
show had to be handmade, like it couldn't be a
factory product. And what I didn't like about network television
was how much of a factory it was. And how
you know, there was a writing staff and the writers
(19:12):
wrote jokes, and the jokes got passed down to the actors,
and the writers and actress would always resent each other,
and the writers would try and write actor proof jokes
that you know, are can contain the setup in the
punchline in the same line, because they didn't ever trust
that the actors could get laughs on behavior. So the
first thing I really wanted to do was create comedy
(19:35):
television in a different pattern so that you could get
more laughs off performance and not jokes. Right, I've heard
um and people have talked about it, and you've talked
about it, Um, that you were trying to create an
environment that was more like S and L where the
writers and the actors there wasn't so much disconnect and
(19:57):
that and that writers were performing with the actors, and
actors could pitch ideas to the writers. Um what I
what I haven't heard before that you just said, which
I find so interesting that you wanted laughs to come
from behavior and from actors performances, and and and so
you needed a writing staff that understood and had trust
(20:20):
in the actors, which is in a way kind of
the reverse of how I thought about it. Yeah, well,
you know what they always said it was the biggest
laugh of all time was Jack Benny where he's getting
mugged and the guy says your money or your life
and he just like has to think about it, you know,
And like, to me, that's great because that's not a joke, right,
(20:43):
it's just like you're bringing to bear the everything you
know about the character. I thought those were such cooler
things than jokes. And Um. Anyway, so that was like
the big challenge. And then also it was that format, right,
it is mockumentary, and it was very quiet, and it
(21:03):
had its rhythm and the comedy of awkwardness where like,
you know, someone's supposed to behave a certain way and
they aren't, you know what I mean, and then it
sinks in and and um, that was certainly really hard
to pull off at that time. Yes, I had a
director that I worked with for a long time in
theater before. He always talked to me about off the beat.
(21:25):
That comedy exists off the beat. So if you have
an expectation of when you should respond, you you you
wait a half beat, you do something that jars people,
which surprises them. And I felt like, that's what what
you did so well on our show. Well, surprise is
really good for comedy, right, And to me, um, anything
(21:47):
you can do to increase surprise is good. And the
problem to me with your multi camera shows in general
was that the rhythms were so ingrained. You know, it's
always like up, you know, and you could kind of
just and it felt like like kabuki, you know, or
(22:08):
some kind of really ritualized thing. So there's a lot
of really cool things about the Office in terms of
increasing surprise. One of them to me is you're going
for poignancy half the time, you're going for something emotional,
so you're not aware as an audience, remember what the
goal of the moment is, so you think, oh, you know,
(22:30):
oh this is sad, this is a you know, and
then it's funny and then you you're surprised or if
vice verse him. So um. So the first the pilot,
we had Peter Smokeler as the DP, and a lot
of the hiring of the pilot for me was trying
to get people who I super respected from different things
that were kind of off, like not the standard sitcom.
(22:52):
So um. Alison Jones loved freaks and geeks that thought
her casting was amazing, so I really wanted to get her.
And then I had tried to work on Larry Sanders.
I did a couple of days of punch up there.
I'd identified that as something similar to to Seinfeld, like
some show that was just doing amazing stuff. And that's
(23:14):
how we got to Ken koppas Yes, And the whole
thing with Ken was wanting everybody to believe that they
were working at a paper company and absorbing that and
kind of taking the Hollywood out of it. Well, there
were so many things that you guys did. First of all,
getting a sound stage as a location and choosing to
(23:37):
put the offices in the production offices upstairs, right because
that was a real space and Ken and his making
us be all ready to go at seven am and
doing thirty minutes of just work. Yeah no, that was
really uh part of that notion of obstacles that like
(23:57):
I um, we discussed that a lot as well, which
is uh on the Hollywood set. And again this is
like trying not to be factory, not to be Hollywood. Right,
So on Hollywood set they make the walls wild a bole,
which means any room you're in you can pull the
wall off so that the camera can get back and
(24:18):
get a great shot. And our aesthetic on the office
was nothing should be wild able, you you should. The
obstacle of a column in the way is subconsciously interpreted
by the audience as another piece of evidence that this
is actually happening, that's real, which makes it much more intense,
(24:39):
right because subconsciously you're like, oh my god, they couldn't,
they can't, they can't quite see what's happening, right, So yeah,
you're totally leaning forward and that zoom lends stuff and
going through the blinds and going around the side and everything,
and there was always a debate about how much to
lean into that device, and the writer is often would
(25:02):
want to do it more than the rest of the crew.
And one of the interesting things of being a showrunner is,
first and foremost you're the head writer. You're like one
of the writing staff, but you also interact with everybody
else on the crew way more than the writers do.
And so, for instance, Phil Sheha, the prop master, He's
(25:23):
a guy that I would ask his opinion all the time.
And Dave Rodgers, the editor, I completely relied on. And
I would also often bring in the accountants. Remember this,
I would have two different cuts downstairs, and I'd bring
the accountants in. I'd play it for them because I
figured they were the closest we had to ordinary people.
(25:44):
But anyway, so like some certain key moments, the big
question was how much to use that device of obstacles. Interesting, Um,
I want to talk about the casting just a little. Yeah,
and Alison Jones, how why did you choose Alison Jones? Okay, Well, um,
so I did. Uh. While I was at Fox. I
(26:04):
did a pilot uh, and it was sort of based
on me growing up in New York and I. I
considered it sort of Seinfeld the Family show. It was
like a Seinfeld family show. And I was casting right
when Freaks and Geeks had been canceled, and I saw
all of the kids and UM, a lot of them
(26:28):
perst into tears when they went toition because they were
so sad that their show got canceled. And I ended
up using Sam Levine in this show. But anyway, I
got I was really into Freaks and Geeks and UM,
I really liked the choices, Like she chose really funny people,
but they were, you know, pretty character in a great way. Yeah.
(26:51):
So I when I tried to think of all of
the casting directors that I could try to go to,
you know, uh, I was like, I want, I want
to work with her. I think she she'd be great.
So we went into this really long casting process and
we were off for some reason. We were off cycle.
We were like going to be mid season so we
(27:12):
didn't have to compete with every single other show. And
we started with um, you know, Jim and Pam, Michael Dwight,
those were like the ones we started with. And we
saw a ton of people for Michael, and I brought
in people who I had worked with were writers. I
brought in one of the head writers of The Simpsons,
(27:34):
Mike Greece, to try out, and this writer I knew
named Chuck Tatham, And I remember taping myself on a
video camera late at night doing the sides for Michael
because I was like, I don't even know what to
tell them, you know. And I did it a bunch
of times, and I realized that one of the keys
that I thought for people trying out for Michael was
(27:58):
that he's thinking that if he does a good job
on this documentary, maybe Jennifer Anniston will watch it, and
that's in the back of his head. That was well,
that was like my direction that yeah, And I did
that from taping myself and going, oh, that's the only
thing that's motivating me into something resembling this weird performance. Um,
(28:19):
was there anyone that came in right away who you
ultimately cast that you went, that's it? Jenna? Yeah, Jenna
came in and it kind of blew my mind because
I didn't understand it. I was like, she doesn't appear
to be acting. She appears to simply be Pam. And
I had all these weird questions for her that were like, well,
(28:40):
you wouldn't ask an actor. IU was like, where where
have you worked? What is that? You know? It was
like it was a real interview for receptionists. There was
one part of me in trying to get an interesting
love story that thought maybe it should be interracial love story,
and so part of me was I had a one
version of it where Craig Robinson was Roy not Darryl.
(29:04):
And there was a really likable actress Erica Bettina Phillips,
and I was like, could she be Pam? Wow? Is
that gonna work? And everything? You know, but she was
a pretty easy pick and I felt pretty much like
that about John. I think too. Um, there were some
(29:25):
other good guys for John, but not not close and
was it about the two of them together? Yeah? And
then well the great thing also that Ken did and
it was really smart, which is he said, okay, like
we are not going to try and take these people
in front of NBC on a little stage and have
(29:48):
them read in front of the executives. And I was
completely on board with that because we would never be
shooting like that. That's not the right style. And what
that is is a filter to get more theatrical performers.
Who are good for multi camera, who can work a room. Yeah,
who work a room and come alive when they're in
front of a room and and project and you know,
(30:08):
are just more theatrical. And so we got this idea
to do screen tests like old fashioned screen tests, and
we blocked off three days and um, and we took
all the different top three or four candidates for each
role and we pitted him together in different improvs. And
(30:30):
it was great for Ken too because he worked out
a lot about the shooting style doing this. And it
was fun for me too because I came up with
lots of little improv games and could figure out things
and like, for instance, one of them was between the
Gym candidates and the Dwight candidates, and I had Dwight
sitting at his desk and I said, like, all right,
(30:52):
the Gym just bring a glass of water in a
nice way to Dwight, and Dwight be super suspicious because
why is Jim doing something nice? And it was really
nice by the way of all the actors, because a
lot of the actors gave us three days shooting. So
that's a long audition. But just like everything, it took time.
I mean, you cast for three months, then you did
(31:13):
multiple days. I'm super methodical. I have to say, like,
i feel like, if I have time to make a decision,
I'm going to chase down every option and abe it
and really try. And you know, and as you started
to find the rest of the ensemble, what were you
looking for there? Well, part of it was different types
(31:35):
of people, you know, and part of it was Allison
having passions for people, like we didn't have a ton
of choices for Kevin, right, she was really passionate about
you and came in and we could see it right away,
and it was like cool, that's great. And Oscar and
(32:01):
Angela were both you know, had come from the same
improv theater. They were both io guys. And Oscar has
the ability, like he has such a straight face, I
mean he has the ability to play it so straight
and it's so funny. Has a little Jack Benny actually
you referenced him before, just yeah, yeah. And and the
(32:22):
great thing was also the set informed a good bit
because like we were all in the same room. But
it was very useful to have a nook with three
improv masters to have a sort of create a subplot
with almost you know, you needed to cut away from
the what was happening in the triangle of Jim Pam
(32:44):
dwighte desks, and the accounts were great for that. And
the other thing that was great was you guys were
just making your own bits up. You know. We we
were the star of our own show in the corner,
which was how Areous? And you would come to me
and go, hey, hey, hey, check this out. We got
this thing going. I have to tell this story. Um.
(33:07):
We were the first season, we shoot the basketball episode,
which is your the first episode you wrote. And I'm
trying to bond with my boss, right, and I'm a
huge sports fan, big basketball fan, and so we're doing
the basketball episode and I remember I said, so, Greg
are you are you You're a big fan of basketball
(33:28):
and you turned like kind of tilted your head slightly
and said, I'm a fan of comedy and then turned
and walked away. I was like, that went really well, Brian,
a great, great job with it. Was just so so
interesting for me that you had constructed that as being
(33:48):
that was my That was funny. Yeah, I mean this, Yeah,
that's so sad and lame on my part. But I
didn't have enough brain space for sports know what I mean.
I I am marvel at people who can know all
about all the teams, and it's a great thing for
guys to hang out and bond with each other. It's
(34:09):
like my dad and my son are both great at it.
No matter where they go, they're just they can instantly
have a cool conversation about basketball. Well, they just didn't
have the room. Well there's a theory, right that people
only have the brain space for for one of three things.
One is sports, two is music, and three is useless trivia.
(34:30):
Oh I got that. That's man. So it's one of
three things and useless trivia because that's not Unfortunately it's
not music in sports. But it does help when you
write Dwight because a lot of times I would, you know,
I'd be like, yes, if there's one character I'm probably
the closest to, it's fucking Dwite. I don't know, I
(34:51):
don't know. It's sometimes it felt that way. It was
really easy to do all those bear runs. And like
one time when that do you remember that book what
was it called? It was like worst case Scenario handbook?
Remember that book? All right? So this is this was
like a Christmas type you know, novelty gift book, and
it was it was just how do you escape from
(35:11):
a bear? How do you escape from a burning building?
You know, worst case scenario and book and anyway, that Christmas,
I got like eight copies of that bad book from people.
They were like all of them were like, this is
for you, this is this is for you. So I
don't know, definitely easy to write, right. But on the
other hand, also I identified a lot with Michael. For instance,
(35:33):
the Halloween episode, this notion that you would have to
fire someone but you'd want to stay friends with them.
That comes from identifying with the boss in the situation.
And normally you identify with the employee until you've had
an experience of being a boss, and then you start
to go, oh, wait a minute, maybe there's somebody has
a point of view there. And I was the boss
of the writers, and so it was sort of funny
(35:55):
because like a lot of times they would be you know,
pulling the right at me and mocking me, and I
was like, yeah, you can use it for the show.
And Steve used to say something like, if you're in
a situation where there you don't see any Michael Scott,
you're Michael Scott, that's right, that's right. So after doing
(36:32):
the pilot, we get a very anemic pickup of five
episodes for a season one, and all of my Seinfeld
arguing rebounded against me, because you know, I was dancing
and trying to get get a pick up and everything,
and they were like, well, if it's really like Seinfeld
Seinfeld only had four episodes whenever in the first season,
(36:52):
were like, um, so we get this little skinny pick up,
and now I get the ability to hire writer, and
so I love hiring writers. And I read hundreds of scripts,
not hundreds, but at least a hundred for each time
I have to hire a staff, and I meet people,
and in the meetings, I'm describing the show because it
(37:15):
hasn't come out right, and the more you describe it,
the more your thoughts start to coalesce. And I and
I realized as I was trying to like pitch the
show over and over again to different writers, that this
was the first um comedy version of reality show, and
it was kind of the first show. And this gets
(37:38):
maybe theoretical, but like I was saying, all right, well, sitcoms,
multi camera coms are a TV show for people who
love theater and have done a lot of theater and
go to theater. That's the idea. But now everybody has
their own cam quarters, And what about a show for
people who have taken video and are used to looking
(37:59):
at the viewfinder and turning to cover one guy and
then the other guy. You know, America's funniest videos like
that cam quarter thing had come in hard and um
and reality shows. So I was kind of developing this
idea that the bones of the show wouldn't be theatrical,
they'd be video. And when you think about photography and
(38:19):
you think about the great you know, street photographers, so
much is about finding a way to look at the
real world and finding beauty in what you see right
in front of you, by the way you compose it,
or your selection of subject matter, where the decisive moment,
or you know, stuff like that. Well, randall Uh talked
(38:42):
to me a little bit about this idea. He attributes
to quote to you, which is everything that makes it
harder makes it better. Yeah, that's that obstacles and the yes.
And in terms of the obstacles and obviously a huge
part of the aesthetic was the camera as a character.
How important and was that to you. Oh, I think
that's huge. I mean I used to give notes very
(39:05):
differently to camera operators then most shows. Like most shows,
the note is okay, I want you to pan over here,
and then on this line, I want you to, you know,
do blah blah blah, push in or whatever. And I
used to only give notes to them like their actors.
I would say, Okay, here's what's interesting. You've been following
(39:25):
this story, and you know this person who's never expressed
any interest in that person before, You've suddenly noticed that
they're eyeing them with interest. Go for that. And some
of the things we used to do with Randall. I
would sometimes say, Okay, the problem with this scene is
you know what you're looking for, and I would have
(39:46):
the camera operator close their eyes and I would spin
them around and I'd say, right, find it on action,
and we go action and the scene would start and
the camera guy would open his eyes and be pointing
the wrong way and he'd have to like find find
what was interesting. Yeah, we had a bunch of tricks
like that. What I have said is the thing that
I'm the most proud of was that every single shot
(40:10):
was purposeful in terms of the camera is the camera
in the space. Are the characters aware that the camera
is there? How does that make them behave? Yeah? Well,
I you know, the writer's offices were near the stage,
and so I would often come down and look and
see stuff or get called down, which was very fun
(40:34):
but also kind of high stakes kind of deal, because
you show up, the whole crew is there and they're
they're saying, can you look at this? This doesn't seem
to be funny, Or I would look at the rehearsal
and I wouldn't think it was funny, And then you
only have a couple of minutes to figure it out.
And one thing that I noticed was that camera awareness
(40:55):
was the cause of half the times when it wasn't funny.
Is that we had gotten the camera awareness wrong and
we were in a situation where we should have been
spying on them through blinds, but the cameras are right
and everybody's face and we were expecting people to act
as if they didn't know the cameras were there, right,
or you know, sometimes it's funnier to not spy on
(41:18):
them and to let them be embarrassed that the cameras
are seeing it. Like I was just watching that one
which one was it? I guess it was the client,
remember that one, and just the camera chased Michael he
got the call being the jan didn't want to see him.
While he was he was sort of bragging the camera
and then he got this horrible call and he had
(41:39):
to actually hide in the well under his desk, and
the camera came around and like squeezed and kind of
caught him there like a raccoon in the light next
to a garbage. It's added so much, the camera could
add so much. Totally, did you right for the camera
as though it were character? Yeah? Sometimes, for sure. I
(42:04):
remember jen Um Salada actually doing that the most. Like
she she was the first person to have the camera
like nod you know, she had I forget which episode,
but she had somebody looked to camera and say where
do you go or something like that, and the camera
kind of like gestured and that was kind of fun.
(42:24):
It was. It was really up to the line though. Um.
And then you know when we had that arc of
Jenna going to art school or Pam going to art school,
we had a whole thing and it was originally I
think I think it was Mindy's idea or she was
the biggest proponent of it. But it was the idea
(42:45):
of the boom operator getting involved, and it was to
me one of the coolest ideas. I couldn't really figure
out how to work it, and we had a version
where she got mugged on a subway and the boom
operator dropped or the camera dropped the camera, and I
remember that, I remember that idea. Yea was that in
a table read? Even it probably I probably was, Yeah,
(43:08):
you know what's really fun? Now, it's like people are
talking about the show all the time, and so I
got asked about it. But it's ten years ago, fifteen
years ago, and sometimes I can't remember what made it
into the show or what was like a crazy table
read or what was pitched and I turned it down
for obvious reasons. One other question, just about the pilot.
(43:32):
Do you remember how the pilot tested? I'm guessing not good. Yes,
So Kevin Riley told the story that how testing happens
is there's certain people who are set up in different rooms,
and every room was bad. Yeah, and accept they got
to the last room, which essentially were people who didn't count,
(43:56):
but they were p a s and office assistants at
young people and they loved it. So it was like
from the very beginning that that's interesting. Well, they they
said to me, with the testing, they said, we're going
to go out in the mall and just grab a
bunch of people. You can have one question to disqualify people.
(44:20):
And so the question I had was if they were
a fan of according to Jim, that TV show. They
were disqualified because I didn't want to you know, I
didn't want to do a sitcom, so I had to
pick one. But anyway, but I mean, I had prepared
Kevin right like way before I knew this wasn't going
(44:41):
to test well, and I you know, I had certainly
laid the ground worth Kevin for that. I was like,
this thing is not going to test well. It is
firmly in the pattern of Mary Tyler Moore, Cheers Seinfeld.
It's classic NBC comedy, and you know it's gonna work.
But don't don't worry about the testing. And I said,
(45:01):
you know, there's a in this podcast room. You guys
have this Cheers poster where you've replaced all of the
Cheers characters with office heads. One of the things that's
so funny, I think inappropriate about that is about the
theme song because we had put a theme song on
the pilot that then was grabbed by another NBC show. Yes,
(45:26):
um what was it, Mr Blue Skies. That was what
was on the pilot, and it was all the internal screenings.
That was the theme song on the pilot. And the
pilot was also called The Office colon an American Workplace,
which I thought was more doc you you know that.
I also kind of figured it would open us up
to be able to do other an American workplace like
(45:47):
this is. I mean, it just didn't really apply until
we got to the finale and I managed to work
it in finally, But that was the that was the
thinking that you could you could do another series that
was something else in American workplace, where the that this
was just a season of a larger series called an
American Workplace, just to just to try and get more
(46:08):
reality to the documentary thing. Because after a while, I
mean we sort of pointed it out at the end,
like why were you here for nine years? But um,
so I had really fun experience getting the theme song
for King of the Hill where we went out to
bands and stuff and they all submitted stuff and we
had to sort of sum up what the show was
(46:29):
really quickly. And my line on King of the Hill
was Andy Griffith's back and he's pissed. That was how
I would sum up that show. But when we were
looking for a theme song for the Office, I kept
referencing Cheers because I was like, the Office is funny
and poignant and original, and it has this sort of
(46:51):
cheersy vibe. I always felt like our show that that
was where it's deepest roots was Cheers. Yeah. Um, the
only difference was these were people who had to show
up every day, whereas Cheers they chose to show up
at this particular place. But that, um, the tone of
(47:14):
familiarity and constant interaction that that it had its ties there. Yeah, no,
I agree with you, And and Cheers had a very
it's sort of there were moments of nobility and a
lot of appreciating different character people. I also used to
compare it to Hogan's heroes in the beginning. Yeah, you know,
(47:36):
because uh, the staff were kind of like prisoners. They
were all trying to like outwit the boss. Kind of
that was I don't think that's the main influence at all,
but interesting, it's fun to think about it like that. Sometimes.
(48:00):
All right, guys, we're gonna pause. We're not gonna stop,
We're just gonna pause. Um, because there is so much
more great stuff from Greg. You're gonna hear more from him,
and not just one, but two future episodes. But in
the meantime, you can go right now and you can
listen to my interview with Rain Wilson, a k a.
(48:25):
Dwight Shrewd, which, as you just heard, Greg and Dwight
kind of the same person, so it makes total sense. Now,
Normally we're just gonna put out one episode a week,
but I was just too excited. I was just too
excited about launching the podcast. So go now, America's sweetheart.
He's never been cooked that Rain Wilson. Anyway, thank you
(48:47):
so much for listening. Episode one done check. I hope
you enjoyed it, and uh yeah, we will see you
next week. The Office. Deep Dive is hosted and executive
(49:08):
produced by me Brian Baumgartner, alongside our executive producer Langley.
Our senior producer is Tessa Kramer, our associate producer is
Emily Carr, and our assistant editor is Diego Tapia. My
main man in the booth is Alec Moore. Our theme
song Bubble and Squeak, performed by my great friend Creed Bratton,
(49:29):
and the episode is mixed by Seth Olandsky. Special thanks
to the amazing production crew who recorded these interviews with
us Joanna Sakalowski, Julia Smith, Benny Spiwak, Russell with Jaya,
Margaret Borchard, Christian Bonaventura, Matthew Rosenfield, Alex Mobison, Lucy Savage,
Judson Pickward, Jack Walden, Jonathan Mayer, Andrew Stephen, David Lincoln,
(49:54):
and Saida Lee
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