November 10, 2021 • 53 mins
Dwight’s weird cousin Mose AKA the incredible writer Mike Schur joins Brian in the studio for the second half of their conversation. Mike talks about being a part of the cult of Greg Daniels, all of The Office sequels that could have been, and the absolutely hilarious jokes that the writers’ room played on their fellow crew members.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
My name is Michael Shore. I was a writer for
the first four point two seasons and a producer on
the Office. Hi, everybody, Welcome to a new day, and
(00:26):
a new day brings a new episode of the Office
Deep Dive with me your host Brian baum Gartner. Now,
I'm thrilled to tell you that today I am bringing
back the incredible Mike Shure for part two of our conversation.
This is going to be a good one to remind you,
Mike was one of our original writers and producers on
(00:48):
the Office. He went on to co create Parks and
Wreck with Greg Daniels, as well as some other huge
TV shows of our time like Brooklyn, The Good Place,
just to name a few. Now, as I mentioned in
the last episode, which you should definitely check out if
you haven't already, Mike as a writer, as a producer,
(01:09):
as an artist, he's had some insane achievements, and we're
gonna get into some of those. But more importantly, you're
going to get to hear about the one thing that
he always hated, that he described as a quote waking nightmare.
That's right, his role as mos Shrewd. Now, I was, Oh,
(01:33):
you have no idea how happy I was to find
out that my suspicions were correct, that Mike had to
play Mos as kind of a cruel joke in the
writer's room, a writer's room joke because they found it
funny to make him do all of the stupid stuff
that he had to do. And boy, he had to
do some really stupid stuff. But I'm glad he did,
(01:56):
and I'm glad he is back joining us today because
Mike is a force in the world of TV, and
more than that, he was a huge and important part
of the Office family. So please join me in welcoming
the man who helped create so many of the iconic
TV personalities we know and love. Mike. Sure, Bubble and Squeak.
(02:24):
I love it Bubble and Squeak on Bubble and Squeaker
Cookie every month left over from the night before. You
(02:45):
and I. You may have forgotten this, but you and
I share an Emmy. We do we do yes for
the webisodes, for the webisodes. Yes, um, did you ever
get yours? I don't think I have a actual trophy
for it now. Well I did, I do, partly or
(03:05):
all because we were invited to the ceremony and we
accepted them, and it came home with me. Great. Yeah,
so I have it. Look it's great. Actually, it's really
was really fun. I have nothing but fun memories of
that little crazy day that we spent around you and
(03:26):
Paul wrote them and it was longer than a day.
It was three days and three days. It was ten
episodes over three days. That was like before everyone did
webisodes all the time and these little extra things like
that was a really fun like side project that we
just sort of threw together. They're really funny too, they are, yes,
(03:49):
And I think Randall's idea was we were able to
do some things there that we well, we couldn't necessarily
do that without the full camera crew. I think, yes,
it was. The premise was it was like a holiday
or something because we didn't have everyone to be in
the background. So yeah, that was right. It was. We
had a lot of backstory for why it was the
(04:09):
way it was, but um, the accounts significant because um,
I have an Emmy, congratulate an actual emmy, but you
also want an Emmy. But we were never paid for it,
and it led to the writers strike. I've watched a
video of you yesterday from when we were on strike.
(04:31):
When you were on strike, Yeah, you guys produced a
video and you said a number of things in the video. Okay,
I don't remember any of them, but I saw it
and I was like, oh my god. And then we
were joking that you guys were coming up with bits
as you were walking the picket line and making the video.
Kind of funny anyway, um, but you said in part
(04:52):
that you're watching this on the internet, a thing that
pays us zero dollars. They were put on NBC dot
com and they so old ads and we won a
Daytime Emmy and didn't make any money. The writer strike
was a really big deal. I don't know. Just talk
to me about that time and what you remember of
(05:12):
Greg saying no, we're not going to produce material for free.
There It was a very inspiring moment for me personally,
because the central issue at the time, this is two
thousand and seven. The central issue at the time was
jurisdiction over the internet because Netflix hadn't started making original
shows yet, but people felt like they were going in
(05:33):
that direction, and NBC and every every network had a
website and they were starting to like stream in primitive fashion,
the stream things on the over the internet, and suddenly
it was like, well, if this is the future. It
didn't take a genius to think like, well, this is
the future, Like who cares whether you it's a television
screen you hang on your wall or sit on a platform,
or whether it's your computer screen. This is how people
(05:57):
are consuming the work we do, and we ought to
get paid for them. So so those episodes were like
a big part of that because I they were shot
with the union labor and no one got paid. So
that was like the you know, it wasn't like because
of those episodes that the writers could want one strike.
Those we episodes were an example of the kind of
thing that we were trying. We were saying, like, if
(06:18):
this is the way things are going, we gotta do
something about this, right. So because the companies at the time,
we're saying like, you know, we don't have enough information.
Let's just let's just let's just wait three years from now,
we'll have more information and then we'll know what the
future of this is. And we were like, no, you're
you're trying to you're basically trying to grandfather in the
internet as like a thing that you don't pay for him. So, um,
(06:41):
we went on strike and it was a huge deal
and it was very scary. It was like unclear what
was going on. The communication wasn't sublime. And Greg was like, well,
we're gonna pick out our own show. And the reason
we're gonna pick out our own show is isn't a
show of solidarity. Isn't a saying like this is the
thing we care about the most in the world. And
(07:02):
we were in that little Chandler studios out in the
middle of Van Eyes and it was not on a
major studio lot, and so we all showed up to
work at six in the morning and we pick it
at our own show. And we were in the middle
of season four. We were about to shoot the Dinner
Party episode, one of the most famous episodes of the
show of all time, the best read through I think
we ever had. You remember that read through? That read
(07:23):
there was was like it was like a rock concert.
And we had finished that script. That script is ready
to go, and that script could have been shot. The
actors could have just executed the script and the directors
were on strike and the crew wasn't on strike. But
Steve Carrell said, um no, I'm not. This is the
way we make this show is collaborative. And there's writers
(07:45):
on the set and there's producers on the set, and
we changed things and we work out new little moments
and pitched new jokes, and I don't think I'm gonna
make the show without the writers. And he didn't shot up,
and so they shot a couple of scenes from the
episode that Michael Scott was in, and then there was
nothing else to do and the show shutdown. And that
was such a heroic thing. He just stayed home and
(08:08):
he got calls from a lot of lawyers and a
lot of studio executives, from really really powerful people saying
you have to do this, and he was like, no,
don't watch me. And Greg called him and he was
home and Greg was like, hey, I know that you've
been had a lot of pressure coming at you. Are
you okay? And he was like, yeah, I'm home, I'm
playing with my kids, and was totally unfazed by it
(08:30):
and had the attitude of like, this is a collaborative effort,
this is a thing that we do together. We don't
do this, this isn't without writers on the set. We
don't make the same show. And I'm not going to
make that show fire me basically, was what he was saying,
he called their bluff and the show shut down and
writs around strike for four months, and then they gave
up jurisdiction of the internet. We went back to work
(08:52):
and then we made the Dinner Party, which is amazing,
and it was truly the story of what he did
spread like wildfire. Um, he did not have to do that.
There were very few people who were in the position
that he was in, obviously as the star of a
very popular, successful, gigantic, monolithic hit show. But still he
didn't have to do that. He could no one would
(09:13):
have been mad at him. He wasn't on the actor
and I was, you know, I remember having a huge,
long conversation with my representation saying like, how can I
walk past them? How can I cross how can I
cross the line? And he said that that you know,
you have no choice. You have to show up, and
we knew that, and Ed, I remember Ed came out
and was like hey, guys, and he hung out with us,
(09:35):
and I remember Ed going, I'm really sorry, but I
have and we're like, no, no, no, we get it.
Your union is not on strike here, like you're not.
We get it. It's fine. No one's bad at you. Like,
no one had any animosity towards any of the actors
because you were in breach of contract if you didn't
show up. Steve was in breach of contract. He just said,
I don't care fire me. And it's easier for the
(09:56):
star of the show to do that than it is
for anyone else. But the story spread like wildfire, and
Mindy wrote a sign in marker um hung it on
his trailer that said like Steve Corral American hero or
something and took a picture of it, and it spread
very quickly around the town and it was a real
like wind beneath the wings of the guild at the time.
(10:17):
It's amazing. I mean he you can't sort of overstate
just what an amazing guy he is and person to
work with ya, I mean, the person who's number one
on the call sheet sets the tone of the show
age He or she just does. It's people take their
(10:38):
cues from that person. That person kind of says like,
this is what's allowable behavior, and this is what isn't
allowable behavior in a in a number of different ways,
actively and passively. And his presence at the top of
the call sheet, especially in that early going, but his professionalism,
his his dedication. He was never late a day in
his life. He knew all of his lines, and when
(11:00):
he didn't, he improvised something that was funnier than what
we had written. Um. I don't know if you know
this story, but there was a even on successful shows.
In fact, especially on successful shows, networks are always trying
to slash budgets, right, Like it's when something's making money.
It's not like thank God, we're making money, it's how
(11:21):
do we make more money? And there was a budget
meeting with NBC and Greg. It must have been after
season four because Greg and I were developing Parks and
Wreck and he asked me to come to say, like,
you're gonna have to deal with this kind of crap
and you should see what it's like. And there was
a budget terry meeting and they were trying to slash
the budget and one of the things on the table
(11:42):
was reducing the size of the cast because at that point,
how many series regulars were there? Twenty two or something.
It was a lot by far, the largest cast of
any show on television. And Greg was like, I don't
think that's a good idea that people invest in these characters.
Everyone has a different favorite character, and even a side character,
a character like you know, Jan or something who was
(12:02):
not even a series regular, Like if you don't have
her on the show in a certain number of episodes,
it doesn't feel like the same show. And they were like, well,
we have to find the money somewhere, you know, and
we're only making seven eight million dollars a year on
this thing. And so we went back and we had
a meeting with Steve and I can't remember who was there,
but Greg was like, okay, so here's what happened in
(12:23):
the meeting, and they want to cut the budget in
this and that, and they threw out a number of options,
one of which was reducing the cast, and Steve went no, no, no, no, no, no,
Like he said no like eight times in a row.
And Greg was like, well that was my reaction to
and Steve just went, no, it's not happening. That is
not happening. We with that is not going to happen,
Like he just so completely shut it down as even
(12:47):
he was like, this is the show. These are the
people on the show. This is how the show will
be until the end of the show. That's it. That's it,
And and there were executives in the room, and it
was like that ended the discussion. It was just over,
like there was no It was a little bit like
sue me or fire me. It was like, in so
many words, he was saying, I won't do the show
(13:09):
if you do that, like I will walk away, and
it just shut it down and shut it down forever,
and no one ever ever came up again, never once.
So mazing. Yeah, he's just he's just such a mench
and and his like it wasn't angry, he wasn't pounding
his fist. He was just saying, no, that's not going
to happen, that nonstarter. Move on, what's next. And that's
(13:32):
the way he is he was. It was just this quiet,
firm leadership that he exhibited all the time in every direction.
And he there was another time in two the big
future of TV was product placement. That's where money was
going to really be made, right, you were gonna Greg
used to say, like the deal was you have to
(13:52):
take some medicine when you watch TV in the medicine
as these ads, but then you get a yummy treat
and the treat is the show you like, right, And
product placement was they were going to try to whirld
of medicine into the the and um Ben was like
a big proponent of it, and so was it by
the way everyone else like it was like this is
the future, Like the futures were going back ironically to
like the fifties, and it was like the Lucky Strike
(14:13):
comedy exactly, this is delicious. So we have this big meeting,
all hands on deck meeting. Um we had done the
Staples thing, remember the Staples where you had it. You you
you bore the brunt of it because you had to
play with that shredder and Staples didn't send me a check. No,
Well that was that was that was partly. That was
a big part of Greg's objection to it was like,
(14:34):
if Brian wants to do a Staples ad, then he
can go do a Staples ad and they can pay
him money. But Staples is getting free Brian baum Gardner
and free Rain Wilson and free whoever by like giving
NBC money and the show doesn't even really benefit. It's
this kind of complicated calculus, right, But we had this
big meeting where we were really being sold on product placement,
(14:58):
and it was it was getting away from us. It
was being put to us in a way where it
was like, you're going to say yes to this. We're
going to keep telling you to do this until you
say yes. Talk talk talk talk, talk talk. And then
Craig went, Steve, what do you think? Which was a
brilliant idea, and Steve said, you know, I started in commercials,
(15:19):
and commercials are great when you're a struggling actor and
you need money and stuff. But what happens in commercials
is you do a commercial for coke, and you know,
you do a take where you take a sip of
coke and you say mmmmm, coke tastes great, and then
they go, okay, cut, can you rotate the can a
little more like this and hold it like this? Okay, good,
(15:39):
Go again and you go coke. I love coke. Coke
takes right, and they go great, But can you raise
it up to your lips an inch higher when you
take the sip? Because you just do that over and
over and over again. And he said, the idea that
anyone would have that kind of influencer control over our
show and the way we make our show, which is
loose and fun and collaborative, and the operators are diving
(16:01):
for different things, and the actors get to try different
things every time. I remember him saying the idea that
Rain would say something funny and we wouldn't be able
to use it because he wasn't holding the coke can
at the right angle. I don't think that's a good idea.
And there was a pause and then it was like, Okay, well,
let's we'll pick up this discussion, you know, next week
or something. Never brought it up again. He just like
(16:24):
he was just the He was the guardian of the show.
In that way, he and Greg were just they had
two different versions of the job, but the onset world
of the show. Steve was the guardian protector of what
we did and how it was done and who did
it and no one messed them. It was just like
(16:45):
he was the final arbiter because he knew, he understood
so implicitly what made it great and he wasn't interested
in letting anyone mess it up. What to you makes
(17:17):
the office the office? Or what does the office mean
to you? Oh? God, well those are those are even questions?
What makes the office the office? And what does the
office mean to me? What? What what does the office
mean to you? Well? I mean, it's where the Office
is where I learned how to write. And I mean
(17:39):
that in exactly as fundamental a way as I'm saying.
And I didn't know how to write before I got
the job, and now I do. And it's because of
that show, not just Greg's tutelage, but the mechanics of
the stories that we told and the the obstacles we
had to overcome. Obstacles are good for comedy, and the
Office had the basic obstacles of being a network show
(18:01):
and having to cram a story into twenty two minutes
and all that stuff, which are great obstacles everyone should
learn how to write on a network sitcom. But then
it had all these other artificial obstacles the Greg added
and the mocumentary style added, and the number of characters
that in the show. So Greg taught me how to
actually write, and then the show taught me how to write. Well,
(18:21):
I think, because any episode you did, you would look
at it and go like, well, it's like a jigsaw puzzle.
There are twenty people in the cast, and there's there's
three stories, and I have twenty one minutes and thirty seconds,
and how do I put this all together? And you
learn to be really non precious with your own writing.
You learn like these things are disposable. They're not poems.
(18:44):
Greg used to say that the scripts aren't poems, right,
their architectural blueprints there. They're living documents, and they change,
and it's okay for them to change, Like you can
think this is great. There's only a couple of times
in my life where something didn't really play well and
I really really odd for it, knowing that it wasn't
gonna play well. One of them, this is like, this
(19:06):
is like my own, this is my own like indulgence,
but I wrote it. I wrote a Dwight has a
talking head where he says, um, it was always backstory
that Dwight's and maternal ancestors were maybe Nazis, And so
we did a talking head where Dwight says, um, my
maternal grandmother is like a hundred and two and still
puttering around down in Argentina, And then he says, um,
(19:30):
I tried to visit her once, but my visa was
protested by the show of Foundation, and I just I
it didn't really It got like a moderate laugh because
a lot of people probably didn't what the show of
Foundation was. But like I remember fighting really hard for
that in the edit, like Greg wanted to cut it,
I think, and I was like, please, please, please, please please.
But that's the exception that proves the rule. Mostly it
(19:52):
was like you watch, we watched these cuts together, and
you see what works and what doesn't work, and you
just cut everything that doesn't work, like you don't get precious?
Was the show foundation in there? Yeah? That that aired? Okay, Yes,
that totally aired, and it makes me laugh every time
I remember that. I remember that part of it. No,
it aired, It definitely aired because I was basically like,
(20:12):
I will never ask you for anything for the rest
of my life if you leave this in. Was there
anything that got cut that you wish hadn't. I'm sure
there was. I don't remember offhand. So in the Job
I think it was. In the Job we wrote talking
Hand for Dwight that was I think an entire page long.
It was insane. It was like, um, a version of
(20:35):
a much shorter version of it aired, but there was
a It was about how one of his cousins, I
think or Moses brother or something was had one leg
that was shorter than the other one, and when he
ran to the bus he would have to curve in
like a long arc because the natural awkward gait of
one leg being shorter than the other one would cause
him to run in like a into like a long curve.
(20:56):
And it was nonsense. I mean it was. It went
on for so long on Paul and I were just
in a crazy giggle fit and we wrote like the
Endless talking Head for Rain and he loved it and
he like memorized the whole thing and like nailed it.
And I was like, I wish this could air, but
there's no way to justify it. It's complete. There's nothing
to do with the story at all, you know. Um.
(21:17):
Greg Greg also introduced this concept of double duty. Have
people talking about double duty. Greg's thing was like, look,
we have such a limited time here, and he said
the bad sitcoms split there lines. Some are jokes and
some are are like story, because he said, what happens
is if you've separated the story and the jokes, you
(21:38):
cut all the jokes to get the story, and then
you have nothing but stories. So he was like really
hard on us of like, you have to make the story.
Minds funny. They have to do double duty, and if
they don't, then it's not good enough and you gotta
do it again, do it again, and do it again. Yeah,
and it's that was an amazing lesson to learn it
because it was like, yeah, you don't have time. You
can't have talking heads that are jokes, except for when
(22:01):
they were about the show A Foundation. Yeah, I mean,
they're definitely worse. So that's so funny. Yeah, I want
to get you out of here. You have talked so
much about Greg and so poetically and articulately. Is there
anything that you want to say about you leaving with
Greg to start Parks and Wreck? Yeah? So he was
actually during the writers strike, we were picketing UM at
(22:23):
Paramount and he was like, Hey, I want to talk
to you, and he basically said like the network wants
me to do a new show, and I want to
do it with you, which was like, you know, I remember,
I remember, like what what does this feel like? And
I was like, oh, it feels like Mozart told me
he wants to design a piano with me or something like.
That's the closest analog I could come. Was like, this
(22:44):
is the this is it, Like this is the moment
that my life changes even more than it has already
and so at the time Ben wanted to do a
spinoff of the Office for obvious reasons. But I was like,
is that? What was that? What this is? And he
was like, I don't know. I told Ben in the
network that I would do another show with with you
(23:04):
and if it turned out that the best idea this is,
It's classic Greig. It's like, if the best idea is
to do a spinoff of the from the Office, great,
But if the best idea is something else, then we
should do something else. Which is such a again like
Greg also is a man of enormous integrity, creative integrity,
and personal integrity. But the idea that he wouldn't just
cash in. He could have cashed in so easily. He
could have taken every department. He could have taken the
(23:27):
accountants and spun them into his own show. And he
could have taken Kelly and spun her into a show.
And he could have taken Jan and spun that into
which he could have it. He could be the dick
Wolf of comedy if he wanted to. But he was like,
I don't want to harm the integrity of the office proper.
If there's a way to do it that doesn't do that,
then great, but if not, then we'll do something else.
And so the strike ends and we go back and
(23:50):
we make I don't know fifteen or sixteen episodes of
the show that year. And then he and I started meeting.
We went to um Norm's diner, and we met for
breakfast like three times a week, and I pitched him
I don't know, two hundred and seventy five ideas for
TV shows, and he and he picked, and he to
me like it wasn't a one way street. Some of
them were spin off. Some of them was like, well,
(24:11):
maybe we could do something with the warehouse, you know,
or maybe a different branch. I mean, he called the show.
I don't if you've ever heard this story, but the
reason the show is called the Office cole in an
American Workplace is because he, thinking a thousand chest moves ahead,
was like, if this works, you could do the school
an American workplace and do a show about teachers. You
could do like, you know, the Team, an American workplace
(24:33):
about a monor league baseball team. Whatever. So some of
them were spinoff, some of them weren't. We ended up
settling on what became Parts and Wreck, which was basically
like the Office is an investigation of the private sector,
and we could do it at the same thing with
the public sector. And then we got really excited about
like we can invent dunder Mifflin, but an entire town,
like an entire ecosystem with media outlets and restaurants and
(24:55):
city hall and local celebrities and all and a history
and all that stuff and now. So that was what
set our brands on fire. So I was around for
the beginning of season five through Weight Loss and a
couple other episodes, but really mostly what I was doing
was focusing on Parks and Rack from that time. So,
I mean, I I was very nervous because The Office
(25:17):
is the best job I had ever had in my
life by a factor of a thousand. But again I
was like, I don't you don't turn down the chance
to develop a show with Greg Daniels would be like
telling Mozart, no thanks, I can find a better piano teacher,
you know. Um. So it was very scary, but it
was also I was like, yeah, this is right, this
is the right move. And obviously I was correct. Right,
(25:40):
here's a I don't know, this just occurred to me.
If Greg had not said that to you, would you
have left the office? No? God, no, No, I would
have stayed. I mean I don't know if I would
have stayed the whole time, but I certainly would have stayed.
I had no plans to leave, like I was happily
working there. I would have worked there for at least
another I think my contract was like two more years
at so yeah. I mean I wasn't looking to leave
(26:03):
at all, Like, there was no part of me that
was itching. I mean when he offered me that chance,
and I sort of did my evaluation of like, is
there any reason not to do this? The only reason
not to do it was how much I love working
on my current job. And like any obvious risks involved
with starting something new, there is a real scary thing
in this business of like if you've got a bird
(26:24):
in the hand, man take like leave in your hands,
Like what are you doing? But then I was like, well,
if it blows up, I'll bet he'll hire me. Still
find some junior writer to kick out of the way.
Can I tell you my favorite here's my favorite Greg
story maybe ever And it doesn't even really involve Greg.
So we're trying to come up with the idea for
(26:45):
Parks and Wreck, and I got really excited about it.
And I was like, oh yeah, it's like it's like
a comedy West Wing. That's the like, if the stakes
of the West Wing are Russia and China are going
to go to war in Kazakhstan, the stakes of this
show are the boys soccer team and the girls soccer
team both are trying to use the same soccer field, right,
And I just saw the whole thing. I saw and
(27:06):
Greg was the one who came up with the idea
that there's like a pit that she's trying to fill in.
And and so we talked and talked and talked about
like a full day session where we'd like pitch and
it's usually with ideas for episodes or anything like you know,
it's good when, like you, it feels like you accidentally
hit an oil vein, you know, the oil spurt, like
ideas are just flying. But because he's Greg, he didn't
(27:27):
commit to it. He was like, Okay, good, we've got that.
Let's keep let's keep pitching, trying to come up with
something else. And we talked about a family show, a
mockumentary about a family, and we talked about I can't
remember what else, but just day after day after day
after day, and the whole time, I was like, no,
we have the idea, we know what it is, we
know what it is. So Greg used to have people
over to his house to watch episodes, right were the
whole cast and all the writers, everybody who come to
(27:48):
his house. And I saw his wife, Suzanne, and she
was like, how's it going? And I was like, it's
going great, you know. And she was like, do you
know what the ideas yet? And I was like no,
and she was like, I kind of hope it's that
government at one And I was like I kind of
couldn't mask my like anxiety. And I was like, yeah, yeah,
me too, me too. And she laughed and was like,
(28:10):
let me tell you a story. And I said okay,
and she said, so early on in Gregg's in my marriage,
we were driving, I think they were driving from Chicago
to New York and she says, uh, it's ten o'clock
at night and I'm starving and we're driving through like
shull Kill, Pennsylvania. And I said, honey, you gotta you
gotta start, you gotta pull around, starving. I just need
(28:32):
I need someone to eat and he was like, okay.
So we pull off the highway and we see I
was like, there's a dinner. Go to the dinner. So
we go to the diner. We walk in and the
waitresses comes over and Greg starts going out, what do
you guys serve here? Like what is everyone like? What's
everyone's favorite dish here? And she was like, oh, people,
we really like the meat loaf and and he goes like, like,
how do you prepare it? And she doesn't meat loafing
and whatever, and he's like what else do people like?
(28:54):
And Suzanne says to him, can we just sit down
and eat? And he goes, no, I don't want to
know what kind of food they have, And so he
asked that hunter more questions and she goes, Honey, I'm
starving less to see and he goes, Susanne, we may
never be in Schulkill, Pennsylvania again. This might be the
only time we're ever here. We have to like eat
at the best place. We have to like learn everything
about this place, like get the best dining experience in Scholkill, Pennsylvania.
(29:16):
And she said, Then we pulled out and we we
we left. We didn't sit down. We what drove to
another restaurant. We went in, he repeated the asked, you know,
more questions, what do you serve here? What do people like? Whatever?
And finally they found like the fourth place they went to,
and maybe they even doubled back and ended up going
back to the first one. But she tells me this
story and I'm like staring at her mouth agape, and
(29:38):
she goes, that's the man I chose to marry, and
that's the man you've chosen to develop a TV show.
And it was like I was like, you're right, You're
totally right, and like the truth is, I'll bet they
did have the best meat loaf in Scholkill, Pennsylvania, and
like there's no better TV show that I would have
(30:00):
created other than the one that we created together, and
like it's it's just who he is. Yeah, well let's
(30:26):
let's play that. Uh played number six. I thought it
was weird when you picked us to make a documentary,
but all in all, I think an ordinary paper company
like dunder Mifflin was a great subject for a documentary.
There's a lot of beauty and ordinary things. Isn't that
(30:50):
kind of the point. So it's really to me clear
that's what Greg thought it was all about. Did Lee
or anyone to talk about truth and beauty? Has that
phrase come up? Truth and beauty. There were a bunch
of phrases that were like sort of the mantras early on,
(31:12):
and Greg's the number one most repeated allem with truth
and beauty. And he was like, everything that we make
should be true, should be real, should feel like it's true,
and it should be the attempt should be to find
the beauty. And whatever you're doing and the writing and
the acting and the directing and the set design and
the costumes and everything, truth and beauty, Truth and beauty.
(31:33):
And it just got deeply ingrained in us. He gave
us an analogy for what the show was um in
the first season, which was, imagine a completely paved parking
lot in an office park. It's stretching out as far
as you can see, and you're walking across it, and
it's a hot day and as you're just in a
(31:55):
corporate industrial waste land, and then you look down and
there's a crack in the asphalt and there's a single
little dandy lion growing through the crack. He's like, that's
what the show is. It's finding that Dandylion right, finding
that little tiny glimmer of truth and beauty and happiness
in aggressively unbeautiful landscape. Greg used to say, I'm really
(32:15):
I found like like a like a cult member. It's
we're talking about Greg as much as I am, but
it's impossible to talk about the show without talking about him.
The truth and beauty was like, it didn't surprise me
when that was the end of the show. I remember thinking, like, yeah,
he nailed He like at the very end of the day,
he sort of laid out his view of what why
the show mattered for everyone through Pam, which is the
(32:39):
right character to do it through. You know, Pam believes
that Michael may have been whatever lead, but that Pam
was truly the heart of the show. Who said that,
Jenna Jenna, I think she's probably right. Um. I've had
this conversation with a bunch of people in the US
(33:00):
with the with the weird resurgence of the show in
the last couple of years. I've talked to Gentilata and
Paul and and Lee and Mindy. I think about like
just when you rewatch it, one of the episodes that
hit you the hardest. I think that the maybe maybe
the best episode that we ever did was Pam's art show.
(33:22):
The ending of that episode is no one comes to
her art show because no one likes her at that
moment in the show, and at the end of it,
Michael shows up and one of the things that she
drew was the office and he is just like so
blown away by it, and it's so meaningful that he's
there for her because no one else showed up, Jim
didn't show up, nobody showed up and um, and she
(33:45):
hugs him and then there's a great joke that I
think they added on the set where she's like, what's
in your pocket? And he goes chunky and she looks
at him and he pulls it out and it's an
actual chunky. But that the moment where he shows up,
I think is the is maybe the best moment and
that we ever did, like him showing up at her
(34:06):
our show and her reaction to it and her hugging him,
like I think she's right, Like Pam, that is the
She is the person in those moments who makes Michael
feel better when the bird dies, and who like he's
kind of the gatekeeper of everybody's emotional status and stuff
and yeah, I know, well it's interesting that you bring
that up because that coupled with that talking head. That's
(34:30):
the last moment of the show, is Pam picking up
that drawing and taking it with her. That's right, Yeah,
I know. And it was very That episode was very
hard to break. I remember I think Brent wrote it
Brent Forrester. As we did every episode, we rewrote it
over and over and over and over again, and like
that was the that was like a late addition, was
(34:52):
like that the way out of this. We're always looking
for the for the off ramp for Michael of like
how does he get out of his whatever miserable circumstance
hands he put himself in. And it was like, oh,
the way out is he goes to Pam's art chow
and then the idea that she drew the office and
he takes it back and hangs it up like he's
It was like that was the emotional solve, and uh,
(35:13):
it was like, oh, he should that's where he should
hang it, right outside his office. It should be the
thing that he sees every day before he goes to work,
you know. Is I mean those little those little tiny consistencies,
that's what's so great about having a show that lasts
for a long time as you get to do these
things in season three or whatever that are there and
that like end up mattering a whole lot in season
I mean, as a fan, I wrote the episode with
(35:36):
the teapot and the note and everything, and then it
was like in season nine when I was watching just
as a fan and I was like, oh my god,
it's coming back, right, and we had I had um
John write the note himself and I said, don't tell
anyone what you're writing. Write whatever you want, right, whatever
you think Jim would write. And I don't know what
he wrote. I no, I've never seen it, and I
(35:58):
don't think he ever told anyone. I don't think Jenn
ever told anyone. Like it's like I think I believe
it's like a secret shared by the two of essentially
by the two of them and maybe the props department
if they steamed it open and looked at Wow, Um,
what do you think it's legacy is? I mean, it's
(36:18):
legacy is Uh, it's going to be enormous, I think.
I mean for a couple of reasons. One is it's
really good. Two is the cast is incredible. And every time,
every time someone discovers Jenni Fish or John Krasinski or
Rain Wilson or you or Angelo or anybody or Craig Robinson,
they're going to go, like, where did this person start?
(36:39):
And then they're gonna go back and watch the show.
But also it just was on. It did that, We
did two episodes, Like there aren't many shows that do
that anymore. That era is over, Like there, how many
more shows are going to even do a hundred in
this era that we're in a six episode, eight episode,
ten episodes seasons, even shows that last ten years do
eight episodes or something. And I think the reason why
(37:01):
so many people have discovered it and have like really
sat with it is because it's one of the last shows,
one of the most recent shows where you feel like
you can watch a new episode every night. And and
you know, my son is eleven now. My son was
was born in season four of the show, and he's
now eleven, and he just watched every single episode, and
every kid in his grads watched every single episode. By
(37:22):
the way, here's another thing Greg did. We used to
try constantly to like put pop culture references in the show,
and Greg was like, you know, no no pop culture references. Um,
this show needs to feel like it could. It's timeless,
like it could be happening in any moment in time
from the seventies until like two thousand fifty. And I
remember thinking at the time, like, all right, you're pretty
(37:43):
high on yourself there. But they just think that this
show is gonna matter. And now look it's twenty years
later and it matters just as much. And my son
doesn't know that that show isn't on the air. Netflix
shows and ABC shows and are the same. And it's
crazy because now you can watch it and it doesn't
feel dated because there's no references to, you know, things
that were happening in two let's see. I think it's
(38:05):
different than that. I respectfully slightly disagree. Interesting because when
you watch it, which I recently did, it doesn't feel dated. Yeah,
we'll see when I think it was? Was you guys
in the writing, we're so specific. The characters were written
so specifically, and so it almost functions that because you
don't watch a documentary about the seventies and go that
(38:28):
feels dated, right, It's just like that's when it happened.
So now we're watching a documentary about this very specific
placement at this very specific moment. I I think maybe
it's both things, right. It's like we didn't call attention
to when it was happening, and also we were very
specific about what was happening. And then that way, it
just feels like it's a moment in time, of place
(38:50):
in time, wherever you want to put it. So I
like the in terms of its legacy. To get back
to that, I keep getting off topic, but I think
that people settle into the show and watch this show
because it has this incredible specificity and it has this
just deep It feels like you're eating the richest dessert
(39:10):
a tiny bit at a time, and that is a
really lovely feeling to have. Like, you know, it's a
different kind of hangout show from other successful hangout shows,
from Cheers or Friends or the It's a it's a
hangout show that that feels like the emotional lives of
the characters are completely wrought and thick and juicy, and
(39:33):
you can really follow people's psychologies and their lives as
they grow over the course of nine years. And I
don't I think a show like that is very rare,
and I think that people will still be watching this
show a very long time right now. When was the
(40:06):
decision made for writers to start acting in the show
from the before the before the pilot, I mean Greg
coming from SNL, Greg wanted SNL is very um. The
membrane between writers and actors is very thin, and all
the actors write stuff, and a lot of the writers
are in sketches and stuff. And almost everyone there's a
writer performer, even if he or she is only on
(40:28):
staff as a writer or something. And he liked that,
and he wanted to get rid of the false dichotomy
of writers and actors. So he hired Mindy specifically because
she was a performer. She was in a play called
Mattin Band that she had written in New York. He
hired b J because BJ was a stand up and
a writer. He and then like we made Paul against
(40:49):
his will play Toby in the first season, like we forced.
He did not want to do it. He hated it,
he hated acting, but we forced him to do it
because he was so funny to have him be the
guy that Michael Scott hates more than anybody. But it
was that was always the design. I think he wanted
everybody to to write and perform ideally except for me,
because he made me a freak. Most famously and most
(41:13):
annoyingly to me, played the character most shrewd. Oh my god.
We never talked about most Oh my god. I assumed
it was gonna be your first question. I I know,
I have a whole section on it. But you were
so great? Um, all right, well then just very quickly
(41:33):
sure you were cast as most I was, and you're
happy about that. Hated it. I hated every second of it.
Why did you hate it? Because I was wearing wool
clothes and had a neck beard and it was always
really hot, and I didn't The joke was I didn't talk,
and that's not a funny joke. And it was always
(41:53):
like I had to get up at four thirty in
the morning and drive to the middle of nowhere and
wear wool clothes and it was. And then the joke
came with the writers because they knew how much I
hated it. They loved like, what if you're shirtless, what
if you're on a seesaw, What if you're on a trampoline,
What if you're running as fast as you can alongside
a car like a dog I was at Parks and
wreck and they would call me and they like, we
need mos And I was like, I have a job,
(42:15):
I have a life, I have young children, and they
would just make me do it. They would compete with
each other to see what was the most humiliating possible
thing they could have me do. But that that episode
Paul So, Paul wrote that episode where they were Jim
and Pam go to Shreot Farms, and he wrote in
the in the script, it literally says, Mose appears out
of nowhere and runs along the side of the car
like a dog. That's what it says. That's I'm a
(42:37):
human being. And so we did that scene. It was
a hundred and forty degrees. I was in woolf clothes
and and old work boots that like didn't fit properly.
And that sprint is probably a hundred and fifty yards
down that dirt road from the time I come out
to the time I had to run all the way
up into Shrewt Farms. Of course cuts off long before
(42:58):
I ever get there, of course, but they like, you
got it, Paul was directing, was like, you gotta run
all the way there. So I did over and over
and over again, probably twelve or fourteen takes because Paul
delighted in it so much. And then later in that episode,
I'm in Jurassic Park pajamas that don't fit me properly.
And then Greg pitched the thing where he was like,
what if there's a loud noise and Pam goes to
(43:19):
the window and looks at it, and Moses in the
outhouse with his pants down and the doors flapping clothes.
I mean it was like it was aggressive. It was
They knew I never should have been. If I had said, like,
I love doing this, they never would have put me
in the show again. But because I hated it so
much and was so vocal about hating it, well, you
have confirmed something. Moses a is a fan favorite. You
(43:39):
hear about people loving most. Okay, let me tell you something.
What I have always said is I think Moses a
writer's room joke. Oh, you have now confirmed without a
doubt that it was literally a writer's room meant to
torture you, meant specifically to make me miserable. Yes, yes,
(44:00):
was in a coffin. I was like hanging upside down somewhere,
like there were a bunch of things that we did
that were then just cut out of the show. I
was riding a moped over like trying to jump a
bunch of cars. They made me do that moped thing.
I don't know how to drive a moped. I don't
know how to drive a moped. No one taught me
how to drive. They were like, just get on and
(44:20):
just rev the thing, because the point was if I
wipe out, it'll be really fun now, and then run
across the roofs of these cars again. If you slip
and fall and break your pelvis, it'll be really funny.
Like they was. The subtext was always the worst this goes,
the funnier it will be when it happens. Well, I
this was after you left. I mean sort of from
(44:41):
the beginning, but then more and more Kevin started having
a lot of physical comedy type stuff. And there would
be times where I would go to the writer's room
and say, I don't remember if you were ever there,
but I would say, you guys are writing for Homer
Simpson right now, and a cartoon you can force to
(45:03):
do whatever you'd like him to do. He can do whatever, right,
but I can't. My body doesn't work that way. No
one does right, like the most painful. I feel like
I still have pain from it. Is the most innocuous.
You would never ever ever know. The office workers have
to go to the warehouse and move boxes, so they
(45:23):
decide they're gonna put remember that episode Boiled Down, so
they could move boxes to get to the troll. And
everyone thought the big guy falling is really funny. So
I just kept falling slipping and which means on a
concrete surface with oil, kneecap on concrete over and it's like, guys,
(45:44):
I can't keep You've got to like, yeah, there has
to be some other solution. We had a We had
a similar thing on Parson Wreck, where Nick Offerman's character
Ron Swanson was a sort of he was a little
cartoonish in his abilities to do various things, and we
wrote this joke where he wanted to get he was
eating a he got lunch and he was eating as hamburger,
(46:07):
and and the joke was he wanted to get out
of the lunch as quickly as possible, so when the script,
he shoved the entire hamburger into his mouth and ate
it in one bite. So they Dean Holland was directing
it and he was like okay action and Nick did
his best, but then Dean was like, you you really
need to eat the whole thing in one bite, and
he was like this is a like a half pound hamburger. Okay,
Like I maybe the character can do this, but a
(46:29):
human can't. And yeah, all right, yeah right, sorry, yeah,
you're not your character, right, Okay, I almost wiped out
super hard on that moped. Like well, first of all,
the joke was someone pulls up in the car. It
was the Garden Party episode. Someone pulls up in the
car night and I'm the valve most of the valet
and I get in and they're like, just get in
(46:49):
and tear off down this road, right, And the joke
at the time is why is most driving so fast
and so insistent? And so I did, and like I
tore off down the road and I'm not a stunt driver.
I don't know, like and suddenly I'm going sixty five
on a dirt road and on a set and the
back tires fish tail because it's a dirt road, and
(47:10):
I like slowed down and was like, oh right, I'm
not This isn't a no One's gonna like save me
if I crashed this car, I'll die because I also
got in and didn't put my seatbelt on because the
joke was you get in and take off, and I
was like, oh my god, I just I forgot for
a second that I'm not fictional. I'm like, sure, I'm
not fictional. I'm a human could suffer consequences. Mine very
(47:35):
similar to that was I think it was when there's
the storyline of Dwight telling Holly that that Kevin is slow,
and there was a scene we did a number of
different ways. This didn't end up in but where I'm
driving and she's like you're driving. You have a car,
and I'm like, yeah, I have a car, And at
(47:56):
one point they were like, okay, so do that, but
then get out of the car, but leave it running,
like leave it, leave it like leave it, leave it
in gear. So like as you step out, the car
is going to move forward and then we'll have somebody
else who can jump in and stop it. Yeah, I
did ideas like profound Meanwhile, it's vedas car, right like
(48:21):
her real car. I uh. That joke that they did
with Kevin in the later years where he didn't know
the alphabet elemento. Paul pitshed that in season two and
we were like, Paul, that's insane, Like you can't say
that he doesn't know that he's an accountant. He's a
working accountant. Like he might not be the best accountant,
(48:42):
he's an accountant. It made Paul laugh so hard. And
the second that Paul took over the show, that joke aired,
and I was like, well, that's what he got what
he wanted. Six years later, he told me it was
his favorite joke that he ever wrote. Yeah, yes, element
he told me and us that and and tried to
get it into the show and like season two or
(49:03):
three or something, and we're like, you know, there's crazy
stuff like that. I mean, you know, again, this is
a writer's room joke that no one would ever know.
But what was Kevin's band going to be? And having
it be the Police? This sounds like a you thing actually,
But the idea that I was a drummer lead singer
(49:23):
of the police, and with the Police, the lyrics and
the singing is off of the beat of the drums
because they had like rhythms. You would have to be
a musical savant to be able to play drums and sing. Well,
it wasn't the Police Originally it was Steve was Steve
Miller band and they were called the Midnight Tookers. My
(49:44):
friend scotts Olvery was in a Steve Miller cover band
in high school called the Midnight Tookers. Scott's a writer,
and I always thought that was the perfect amount of
stupid for a cover. But like Midnight Tookers is like, oh,
what a great and so it's a Steve Miller band.
And then they didn't give us the rights to the music, yes,
and so we had to change it. And so I
think Mindy maybe pitched Scrantnicity Mindy or Paul. But I
(50:07):
remember being so bummed out that it couldn't be the
Midnight Pokers, just because I had really had my heart
set on it. I sang, we did the whole video, right,
that's right, and we're trying to volume down because it
was too like jet Airliner or whatever, remember what it was.
But yes, and maybe it was the Joker. I don't
know it was, yeah, right, But I'm happy at the
(50:27):
end of the day, I'm happy that it was Scrantnicity. Yes,
that was a good solution to that stupid problem. Um, okay,
you've given us so much time. Thank you so much,
so really fun. I like walking down memory Lane. It's fun. Yeah,
it's such a I mean, it's just actually awesome to see.
(50:48):
I know it's been too long, I know. And congratulations
on everything, and um, thank you so much, my pleasure,
wow the things that could have been. Thank you Mike
(51:12):
for coming back and sharing so much of your story
with us. It was so great to have you and
just so great to talk the office with you. And
thank you all as always for listening week to week
or day to day. Don't forget to come back next Tuesday,
(51:32):
same time, same place, for another very special episode, because
that day, next Tuesday, is the day that we, or
at least I have been waiting for. It will finally
be here the launch of our brand spanking new book
Next Tuesday. Head to Amazon dot Com, Barnes and Noble
(51:56):
Books a million, wherever you get your books. Basically, go
the pre order your very own copy of Welcome to
dunder Mifflin, The Ultimate Oral History of the Office, and
if you do, you could be reading it one week
from today. Grab one for yourself, grab one for everyone
that you know, because when it comes to a gift,
(52:18):
you shouldn't have a hard time getting it in. That's
what she said. Wait, no, you shouldn't have a hard
time getting it in time for the holidays or you know,
any day, because every day is a holiday when you're
with me. Oh okay, have a great week everyone. The office.
(52:48):
Deep Dive is hosted and executive produced by me Brian
bond Gartner, alongside our executive producer Langley. Our senior producer
is Tessa Kramer. Our producers are Is Hayes and Diego Tapia.
My main man in the booth is Alec Moore. Our
theme song Bubble and Squeak, performed by my great friend
Creed Bratton, and the episode was mixed by Seth Olandsky.
My name is Michael Shore. I was a writer for
the first four point two seasons and a producer on
the Office. Hi, everybody, Welcome to a new day, and
(00:26):
a new day brings a new episode of the Office
Deep Dive with me your host Brian baum Gartner. Now,
I'm thrilled to tell you that today I am bringing
back the incredible Mike Shure for part two of our conversation.
This is going to be a good one to remind you,
Mike was one of our original writers and producers on
(00:48):
the Office. He went on to co create Parks and
Wreck with Greg Daniels, as well as some other huge
TV shows of our time like Brooklyn, The Good Place,
just to name a few. Now, as I mentioned in
the last episode, which you should definitely check out if
you haven't already, Mike as a writer, as a producer,
(01:09):
as an artist, he's had some insane achievements, and we're
gonna get into some of those. But more importantly, you're
going to get to hear about the one thing that
he always hated, that he described as a quote waking nightmare.
That's right, his role as mos Shrewd. Now, I was, Oh,
(01:33):
you have no idea how happy I was to find
out that my suspicions were correct, that Mike had to
play Mos as kind of a cruel joke in the
writer's room, a writer's room joke because they found it
funny to make him do all of the stupid stuff
that he had to do. And boy, he had to
do some really stupid stuff. But I'm glad he did,
(01:56):
and I'm glad he is back joining us today because
Mike is a force in the world of TV, and
more than that, he was a huge and important part
of the Office family. So please join me in welcoming
the man who helped create so many of the iconic
TV personalities we know and love. Mike. Sure, Bubble and Squeak.
(02:24):
I love it Bubble and Squeak on Bubble and Squeaker
Cookie every month left over from the night before. You
(02:45):
and I. You may have forgotten this, but you and
I share an Emmy. We do we do yes for
the webisodes, for the webisodes. Yes, um, did you ever
get yours? I don't think I have a actual trophy
for it now. Well I did, I do, partly or
(03:05):
all because we were invited to the ceremony and we
accepted them, and it came home with me. Great. Yeah,
so I have it. Look it's great. Actually, it's really
was really fun. I have nothing but fun memories of
that little crazy day that we spent around you and
(03:26):
Paul wrote them and it was longer than a day.
It was three days and three days. It was ten
episodes over three days. That was like before everyone did
webisodes all the time and these little extra things like
that was a really fun like side project that we
just sort of threw together. They're really funny too, they are, yes,
(03:49):
And I think Randall's idea was we were able to
do some things there that we well, we couldn't necessarily
do that without the full camera crew. I think, yes,
it was. The premise was it was like a holiday
or something because we didn't have everyone to be in
the background. So yeah, that was right. It was. We
had a lot of backstory for why it was the
(04:09):
way it was, but um, the accounts significant because um,
I have an Emmy, congratulate an actual emmy, but you
also want an Emmy. But we were never paid for it,
and it led to the writers strike. I've watched a
video of you yesterday from when we were on strike.
(04:31):
When you were on strike, Yeah, you guys produced a
video and you said a number of things in the video. Okay,
I don't remember any of them, but I saw it
and I was like, oh my god. And then we
were joking that you guys were coming up with bits
as you were walking the picket line and making the video.
Kind of funny anyway, um, but you said in part
(04:52):
that you're watching this on the internet, a thing that
pays us zero dollars. They were put on NBC dot
com and they so old ads and we won a
Daytime Emmy and didn't make any money. The writer strike
was a really big deal. I don't know. Just talk
to me about that time and what you remember of
(05:12):
Greg saying no, we're not going to produce material for free.
There It was a very inspiring moment for me personally,
because the central issue at the time, this is two
thousand and seven. The central issue at the time was
jurisdiction over the internet because Netflix hadn't started making original
shows yet, but people felt like they were going in
(05:33):
that direction, and NBC and every every network had a
website and they were starting to like stream in primitive fashion,
the stream things on the over the internet, and suddenly
it was like, well, if this is the future. It
didn't take a genius to think like, well, this is
the future, Like who cares whether you it's a television
screen you hang on your wall or sit on a platform,
or whether it's your computer screen. This is how people
(05:57):
are consuming the work we do, and we ought to
get paid for them. So so those episodes were like
a big part of that because I they were shot
with the union labor and no one got paid. So
that was like the you know, it wasn't like because
of those episodes that the writers could want one strike.
Those we episodes were an example of the kind of
thing that we were trying. We were saying, like, if
(06:18):
this is the way things are going, we gotta do
something about this, right. So because the companies at the time,
we're saying like, you know, we don't have enough information.
Let's just let's just let's just wait three years from now,
we'll have more information and then we'll know what the
future of this is. And we were like, no, you're
you're trying to you're basically trying to grandfather in the
internet as like a thing that you don't pay for him. So, um,
(06:41):
we went on strike and it was a huge deal
and it was very scary. It was like unclear what
was going on. The communication wasn't sublime. And Greg was like, well,
we're gonna pick out our own show. And the reason
we're gonna pick out our own show is isn't a
show of solidarity. Isn't a saying like this is the
thing we care about the most in the world. And
(07:02):
we were in that little Chandler studios out in the
middle of Van Eyes and it was not on a
major studio lot, and so we all showed up to
work at six in the morning and we pick it
at our own show. And we were in the middle
of season four. We were about to shoot the Dinner
Party episode, one of the most famous episodes of the
show of all time, the best read through I think
we ever had. You remember that read through? That read
(07:23):
there was was like it was like a rock concert.
And we had finished that script. That script is ready
to go, and that script could have been shot. The
actors could have just executed the script and the directors
were on strike and the crew wasn't on strike. But
Steve Carrell said, um no, I'm not. This is the
way we make this show is collaborative. And there's writers
(07:45):
on the set and there's producers on the set, and
we changed things and we work out new little moments
and pitched new jokes, and I don't think I'm gonna
make the show without the writers. And he didn't shot up,
and so they shot a couple of scenes from the
episode that Michael Scott was in, and then there was
nothing else to do and the show shutdown. And that
was such a heroic thing. He just stayed home and
(08:08):
he got calls from a lot of lawyers and a
lot of studio executives, from really really powerful people saying
you have to do this, and he was like, no,
don't watch me. And Greg called him and he was
home and Greg was like, hey, I know that you've
been had a lot of pressure coming at you. Are
you okay? And he was like, yeah, I'm home, I'm
playing with my kids, and was totally unfazed by it
(08:30):
and had the attitude of like, this is a collaborative effort,
this is a thing that we do together. We don't
do this, this isn't without writers on the set. We
don't make the same show. And I'm not going to
make that show fire me basically, was what he was saying,
he called their bluff and the show shut down and
writs around strike for four months, and then they gave
up jurisdiction of the internet. We went back to work
(08:52):
and then we made the Dinner Party, which is amazing,
and it was truly the story of what he did
spread like wildfire. Um, he did not have to do that.
There were very few people who were in the position
that he was in, obviously as the star of a
very popular, successful, gigantic, monolithic hit show. But still he
didn't have to do that. He could no one would
(09:13):
have been mad at him. He wasn't on the actor
and I was, you know, I remember having a huge,
long conversation with my representation saying like, how can I
walk past them? How can I cross how can I
cross the line? And he said that that you know,
you have no choice. You have to show up, and
we knew that, and Ed, I remember Ed came out
and was like hey, guys, and he hung out with us,
(09:35):
and I remember Ed going, I'm really sorry, but I
have and we're like, no, no, no, we get it.
Your union is not on strike here, like you're not.
We get it. It's fine. No one's bad at you. Like,
no one had any animosity towards any of the actors
because you were in breach of contract if you didn't
show up. Steve was in breach of contract. He just said,
I don't care fire me. And it's easier for the
(09:56):
star of the show to do that than it is
for anyone else. But the story spread like wildfire, and
Mindy wrote a sign in marker um hung it on
his trailer that said like Steve Corral American hero or
something and took a picture of it, and it spread
very quickly around the town and it was a real
like wind beneath the wings of the guild at the time.
(10:17):
It's amazing. I mean he you can't sort of overstate
just what an amazing guy he is and person to
work with ya, I mean, the person who's number one
on the call sheet sets the tone of the show
age He or she just does. It's people take their
(10:38):
cues from that person. That person kind of says like,
this is what's allowable behavior, and this is what isn't
allowable behavior in a in a number of different ways,
actively and passively. And his presence at the top of
the call sheet, especially in that early going, but his professionalism,
his his dedication. He was never late a day in
his life. He knew all of his lines, and when
(11:00):
he didn't, he improvised something that was funnier than what
we had written. Um. I don't know if you know
this story, but there was a even on successful shows.
In fact, especially on successful shows, networks are always trying
to slash budgets, right, Like it's when something's making money.
It's not like thank God, we're making money, it's how
(11:21):
do we make more money? And there was a budget
meeting with NBC and Greg. It must have been after
season four because Greg and I were developing Parks and
Wreck and he asked me to come to say, like,
you're gonna have to deal with this kind of crap
and you should see what it's like. And there was
a budget terry meeting and they were trying to slash
the budget and one of the things on the table
(11:42):
was reducing the size of the cast because at that point,
how many series regulars were there? Twenty two or something.
It was a lot by far, the largest cast of
any show on television. And Greg was like, I don't
think that's a good idea that people invest in these characters.
Everyone has a different favorite character, and even a side character,
a character like you know, Jan or something who was
(12:02):
not even a series regular, Like if you don't have
her on the show in a certain number of episodes,
it doesn't feel like the same show. And they were like, well,
we have to find the money somewhere, you know, and
we're only making seven eight million dollars a year on
this thing. And so we went back and we had
a meeting with Steve and I can't remember who was there,
but Greg was like, okay, so here's what happened in
(12:23):
the meeting, and they want to cut the budget in
this and that, and they threw out a number of options,
one of which was reducing the cast, and Steve went no, no, no, no, no, no,
Like he said no like eight times in a row.
And Greg was like, well that was my reaction to
and Steve just went, no, it's not happening. That is
not happening. We with that is not going to happen,
Like he just so completely shut it down as even
(12:47):
he was like, this is the show. These are the
people on the show. This is how the show will
be until the end of the show. That's it. That's it,
And and there were executives in the room, and it
was like that ended the discussion. It was just over,
like there was no It was a little bit like
sue me or fire me. It was like, in so
many words, he was saying, I won't do the show
(13:09):
if you do that, like I will walk away, and
it just shut it down and shut it down forever,
and no one ever ever came up again, never once.
So mazing. Yeah, he's just he's just such a mench
and and his like it wasn't angry, he wasn't pounding
his fist. He was just saying, no, that's not going
to happen, that nonstarter. Move on, what's next. And that's
(13:32):
the way he is he was. It was just this quiet,
firm leadership that he exhibited all the time in every direction.
And he there was another time in two the big
future of TV was product placement. That's where money was
going to really be made, right, you were gonna Greg
used to say, like the deal was you have to
(13:52):
take some medicine when you watch TV in the medicine
as these ads, but then you get a yummy treat
and the treat is the show you like, right, And
product placement was they were going to try to whirld
of medicine into the the and um Ben was like
a big proponent of it, and so was it by
the way everyone else like it was like this is
the future, Like the futures were going back ironically to
like the fifties, and it was like the Lucky Strike
(14:13):
comedy exactly, this is delicious. So we have this big meeting,
all hands on deck meeting. Um we had done the
Staples thing, remember the Staples where you had it. You you
you bore the brunt of it because you had to
play with that shredder and Staples didn't send me a check. No,
Well that was that was that was partly. That was
a big part of Greg's objection to it was like,
(14:34):
if Brian wants to do a Staples ad, then he
can go do a Staples ad and they can pay
him money. But Staples is getting free Brian baum Gardner
and free Rain Wilson and free whoever by like giving
NBC money and the show doesn't even really benefit. It's
this kind of complicated calculus, right, But we had this
big meeting where we were really being sold on product placement,
(14:58):
and it was it was getting away from us. It
was being put to us in a way where it
was like, you're going to say yes to this. We're
going to keep telling you to do this until you
say yes. Talk talk talk talk, talk talk. And then
Craig went, Steve, what do you think? Which was a
brilliant idea, and Steve said, you know, I started in commercials,
(15:19):
and commercials are great when you're a struggling actor and
you need money and stuff. But what happens in commercials
is you do a commercial for coke, and you know,
you do a take where you take a sip of
coke and you say mmmmm, coke tastes great, and then
they go, okay, cut, can you rotate the can a
little more like this and hold it like this? Okay, good,
(15:39):
Go again and you go coke. I love coke. Coke
takes right, and they go great, But can you raise
it up to your lips an inch higher when you
take the sip? Because you just do that over and
over and over again. And he said, the idea that
anyone would have that kind of influencer control over our
show and the way we make our show, which is
loose and fun and collaborative, and the operators are diving
(16:01):
for different things, and the actors get to try different
things every time. I remember him saying the idea that
Rain would say something funny and we wouldn't be able
to use it because he wasn't holding the coke can
at the right angle. I don't think that's a good idea.
And there was a pause and then it was like, Okay, well,
let's we'll pick up this discussion, you know, next week
or something. Never brought it up again. He just like
(16:24):
he was just the He was the guardian of the show.
In that way, he and Greg were just they had
two different versions of the job, but the onset world
of the show. Steve was the guardian protector of what
we did and how it was done and who did
it and no one messed them. It was just like
(16:45):
he was the final arbiter because he knew, he understood
so implicitly what made it great and he wasn't interested
in letting anyone mess it up. What to you makes
(17:17):
the office the office? Or what does the office mean
to you? Oh? God, well those are those are even questions?
What makes the office the office? And what does the
office mean to me? What? What what does the office
mean to you? Well? I mean, it's where the Office
is where I learned how to write. And I mean
(17:39):
that in exactly as fundamental a way as I'm saying.
And I didn't know how to write before I got
the job, and now I do. And it's because of
that show, not just Greg's tutelage, but the mechanics of
the stories that we told and the the obstacles we
had to overcome. Obstacles are good for comedy, and the
Office had the basic obstacles of being a network show
(18:01):
and having to cram a story into twenty two minutes
and all that stuff, which are great obstacles everyone should
learn how to write on a network sitcom. But then
it had all these other artificial obstacles the Greg added
and the mocumentary style added, and the number of characters
that in the show. So Greg taught me how to
actually write, and then the show taught me how to write. Well,
(18:21):
I think, because any episode you did, you would look
at it and go like, well, it's like a jigsaw puzzle.
There are twenty people in the cast, and there's there's
three stories, and I have twenty one minutes and thirty seconds,
and how do I put this all together? And you
learn to be really non precious with your own writing.
You learn like these things are disposable. They're not poems.
(18:44):
Greg used to say that the scripts aren't poems, right,
their architectural blueprints there. They're living documents, and they change,
and it's okay for them to change, Like you can
think this is great. There's only a couple of times
in my life where something didn't really play well and
I really really odd for it, knowing that it wasn't
gonna play well. One of them, this is like, this
(19:06):
is like my own, this is my own like indulgence,
but I wrote it. I wrote a Dwight has a
talking head where he says, um, it was always backstory
that Dwight's and maternal ancestors were maybe Nazis, And so
we did a talking head where Dwight says, um, my
maternal grandmother is like a hundred and two and still
puttering around down in Argentina, And then he says, um,
(19:30):
I tried to visit her once, but my visa was
protested by the show of Foundation, and I just I
it didn't really It got like a moderate laugh because
a lot of people probably didn't what the show of
Foundation was. But like I remember fighting really hard for
that in the edit, like Greg wanted to cut it,
I think, and I was like, please, please, please, please please.
But that's the exception that proves the rule. Mostly it
(19:52):
was like you watch, we watched these cuts together, and
you see what works and what doesn't work, and you
just cut everything that doesn't work, like you don't get precious?
Was the show foundation in there? Yeah? That that aired? Okay, Yes,
that totally aired, and it makes me laugh every time
I remember that. I remember that part of it. No,
it aired, It definitely aired because I was basically like,
(20:12):
I will never ask you for anything for the rest
of my life if you leave this in. Was there
anything that got cut that you wish hadn't. I'm sure
there was. I don't remember offhand. So in the Job
I think it was. In the Job we wrote talking
Hand for Dwight that was I think an entire page long.
It was insane. It was like, um, a version of
(20:35):
a much shorter version of it aired, but there was
a It was about how one of his cousins, I
think or Moses brother or something was had one leg
that was shorter than the other one, and when he
ran to the bus he would have to curve in
like a long arc because the natural awkward gait of
one leg being shorter than the other one would cause
him to run in like a into like a long curve.
(20:56):
And it was nonsense. I mean it was. It went
on for so long on Paul and I were just
in a crazy giggle fit and we wrote like the
Endless talking Head for Rain and he loved it and
he like memorized the whole thing and like nailed it.
And I was like, I wish this could air, but
there's no way to justify it. It's complete. There's nothing
to do with the story at all, you know. Um.
(21:17):
Greg Greg also introduced this concept of double duty. Have
people talking about double duty. Greg's thing was like, look,
we have such a limited time here, and he said
the bad sitcoms split there lines. Some are jokes and
some are are like story, because he said, what happens
is if you've separated the story and the jokes, you
(21:38):
cut all the jokes to get the story, and then
you have nothing but stories. So he was like really
hard on us of like, you have to make the story.
Minds funny. They have to do double duty, and if
they don't, then it's not good enough and you gotta
do it again, do it again, and do it again. Yeah,
and it's that was an amazing lesson to learn it
because it was like, yeah, you don't have time. You
can't have talking heads that are jokes, except for when
(22:01):
they were about the show A Foundation. Yeah, I mean,
they're definitely worse. So that's so funny. Yeah, I want
to get you out of here. You have talked so
much about Greg and so poetically and articulately. Is there
anything that you want to say about you leaving with
Greg to start Parks and Wreck? Yeah? So he was
actually during the writers strike, we were picketing UM at
(22:23):
Paramount and he was like, Hey, I want to talk
to you, and he basically said like the network wants
me to do a new show, and I want to
do it with you, which was like, you know, I remember,
I remember, like what what does this feel like? And
I was like, oh, it feels like Mozart told me
he wants to design a piano with me or something like.
That's the closest analog I could come. Was like, this
(22:44):
is the this is it, Like this is the moment
that my life changes even more than it has already
and so at the time Ben wanted to do a
spinoff of the Office for obvious reasons. But I was like,
is that? What was that? What this is? And he
was like, I don't know. I told Ben in the
network that I would do another show with with you
(23:04):
and if it turned out that the best idea this is,
It's classic Greig. It's like, if the best idea is
to do a spinoff of the from the Office, great,
But if the best idea is something else, then we
should do something else. Which is such a again like
Greg also is a man of enormous integrity, creative integrity,
and personal integrity. But the idea that he wouldn't just
cash in. He could have cashed in so easily. He
could have taken every department. He could have taken the
(23:27):
accountants and spun them into his own show. And he
could have taken Kelly and spun her into a show.
And he could have taken Jan and spun that into
which he could have it. He could be the dick
Wolf of comedy if he wanted to. But he was like,
I don't want to harm the integrity of the office proper.
If there's a way to do it that doesn't do that,
then great, but if not, then we'll do something else.
And so the strike ends and we go back and
(23:50):
we make I don't know fifteen or sixteen episodes of
the show that year. And then he and I started meeting.
We went to um Norm's diner, and we met for
breakfast like three times a week, and I pitched him
I don't know, two hundred and seventy five ideas for
TV shows, and he and he picked, and he to
me like it wasn't a one way street. Some of
them were spin off. Some of them was like, well,
(24:11):
maybe we could do something with the warehouse, you know,
or maybe a different branch. I mean, he called the show.
I don't if you've ever heard this story, but the
reason the show is called the Office cole in an
American Workplace is because he, thinking a thousand chest moves ahead,
was like, if this works, you could do the school
an American workplace and do a show about teachers. You
could do like, you know, the Team, an American workplace
(24:33):
about a monor league baseball team. Whatever. So some of
them were spinoff, some of them weren't. We ended up
settling on what became Parts and Wreck, which was basically
like the Office is an investigation of the private sector,
and we could do it at the same thing with
the public sector. And then we got really excited about
like we can invent dunder Mifflin, but an entire town,
like an entire ecosystem with media outlets and restaurants and
(24:55):
city hall and local celebrities and all and a history
and all that stuff and now. So that was what
set our brands on fire. So I was around for
the beginning of season five through Weight Loss and a
couple other episodes, but really mostly what I was doing
was focusing on Parks and Rack from that time. So,
I mean, I I was very nervous because The Office
(25:17):
is the best job I had ever had in my
life by a factor of a thousand. But again I
was like, I don't you don't turn down the chance
to develop a show with Greg Daniels would be like
telling Mozart, no thanks, I can find a better piano teacher,
you know. Um. So it was very scary, but it
was also I was like, yeah, this is right, this
is the right move. And obviously I was correct. Right,
(25:40):
here's a I don't know, this just occurred to me.
If Greg had not said that to you, would you
have left the office? No? God, no, No, I would
have stayed. I mean I don't know if I would
have stayed the whole time, but I certainly would have stayed.
I had no plans to leave, like I was happily
working there. I would have worked there for at least
another I think my contract was like two more years
at so yeah. I mean I wasn't looking to leave
(26:03):
at all, Like, there was no part of me that
was itching. I mean when he offered me that chance,
and I sort of did my evaluation of like, is
there any reason not to do this? The only reason
not to do it was how much I love working
on my current job. And like any obvious risks involved
with starting something new, there is a real scary thing
in this business of like if you've got a bird
(26:24):
in the hand, man take like leave in your hands,
Like what are you doing? But then I was like, well,
if it blows up, I'll bet he'll hire me. Still
find some junior writer to kick out of the way.
Can I tell you my favorite here's my favorite Greg
story maybe ever And it doesn't even really involve Greg.
So we're trying to come up with the idea for
(26:45):
Parks and Wreck, and I got really excited about it.
And I was like, oh yeah, it's like it's like
a comedy West Wing. That's the like, if the stakes
of the West Wing are Russia and China are going
to go to war in Kazakhstan, the stakes of this
show are the boys soccer team and the girls soccer
team both are trying to use the same soccer field, right,
And I just saw the whole thing. I saw and
(27:06):
Greg was the one who came up with the idea
that there's like a pit that she's trying to fill in.
And and so we talked and talked and talked about
like a full day session where we'd like pitch and
it's usually with ideas for episodes or anything like you know,
it's good when, like you, it feels like you accidentally
hit an oil vein, you know, the oil spurt, like
ideas are just flying. But because he's Greg, he didn't
(27:27):
commit to it. He was like, Okay, good, we've got that.
Let's keep let's keep pitching, trying to come up with
something else. And we talked about a family show, a
mockumentary about a family, and we talked about I can't
remember what else, but just day after day after day
after day, and the whole time, I was like, no,
we have the idea, we know what it is, we
know what it is. So Greg used to have people
over to his house to watch episodes, right were the
whole cast and all the writers, everybody who come to
(27:48):
his house. And I saw his wife, Suzanne, and she
was like, how's it going? And I was like, it's
going great, you know. And she was like, do you
know what the ideas yet? And I was like no,
and she was like, I kind of hope it's that
government at one And I was like I kind of
couldn't mask my like anxiety. And I was like, yeah, yeah,
me too, me too. And she laughed and was like,
(28:10):
let me tell you a story. And I said okay,
and she said, so early on in Gregg's in my marriage,
we were driving, I think they were driving from Chicago
to New York and she says, uh, it's ten o'clock
at night and I'm starving and we're driving through like
shull Kill, Pennsylvania. And I said, honey, you gotta you
gotta start, you gotta pull around, starving. I just need
(28:32):
I need someone to eat and he was like, okay.
So we pull off the highway and we see I
was like, there's a dinner. Go to the dinner. So
we go to the diner. We walk in and the
waitresses comes over and Greg starts going out, what do
you guys serve here? Like what is everyone like? What's
everyone's favorite dish here? And she was like, oh, people,
we really like the meat loaf and and he goes like, like,
how do you prepare it? And she doesn't meat loafing
and whatever, and he's like what else do people like?
(28:54):
And Suzanne says to him, can we just sit down
and eat? And he goes, no, I don't want to
know what kind of food they have, And so he
asked that hunter more questions and she goes, Honey, I'm
starving less to see and he goes, Susanne, we may
never be in Schulkill, Pennsylvania again. This might be the
only time we're ever here. We have to like eat
at the best place. We have to like learn everything
about this place, like get the best dining experience in Scholkill, Pennsylvania.
(29:16):
And she said, Then we pulled out and we we
we left. We didn't sit down. We what drove to
another restaurant. We went in, he repeated the asked, you know,
more questions, what do you serve here? What do people like? Whatever?
And finally they found like the fourth place they went to,
and maybe they even doubled back and ended up going
back to the first one. But she tells me this
story and I'm like staring at her mouth agape, and
(29:38):
she goes, that's the man I chose to marry, and
that's the man you've chosen to develop a TV show.
And it was like I was like, you're right, You're
totally right, and like the truth is, I'll bet they
did have the best meat loaf in Scholkill, Pennsylvania, and
like there's no better TV show that I would have
(30:00):
created other than the one that we created together, and
like it's it's just who he is. Yeah, well let's
(30:26):
let's play that. Uh played number six. I thought it
was weird when you picked us to make a documentary,
but all in all, I think an ordinary paper company
like dunder Mifflin was a great subject for a documentary.
There's a lot of beauty and ordinary things. Isn't that
(30:50):
kind of the point. So it's really to me clear
that's what Greg thought it was all about. Did Lee
or anyone to talk about truth and beauty? Has that
phrase come up? Truth and beauty. There were a bunch
of phrases that were like sort of the mantras early on,
(31:12):
and Greg's the number one most repeated allem with truth
and beauty. And he was like, everything that we make
should be true, should be real, should feel like it's true,
and it should be the attempt should be to find
the beauty. And whatever you're doing and the writing and
the acting and the directing and the set design and
the costumes and everything, truth and beauty, Truth and beauty.
(31:33):
And it just got deeply ingrained in us. He gave
us an analogy for what the show was um in
the first season, which was, imagine a completely paved parking
lot in an office park. It's stretching out as far
as you can see, and you're walking across it, and
it's a hot day and as you're just in a
(31:55):
corporate industrial waste land, and then you look down and
there's a crack in the asphalt and there's a single
little dandy lion growing through the crack. He's like, that's
what the show is. It's finding that Dandylion right, finding
that little tiny glimmer of truth and beauty and happiness
in aggressively unbeautiful landscape. Greg used to say, I'm really
(32:15):
I found like like a like a cult member. It's
we're talking about Greg as much as I am, but
it's impossible to talk about the show without talking about him.
The truth and beauty was like, it didn't surprise me
when that was the end of the show. I remember thinking, like, yeah,
he nailed He like at the very end of the day,
he sort of laid out his view of what why
the show mattered for everyone through Pam, which is the
(32:39):
right character to do it through. You know, Pam believes
that Michael may have been whatever lead, but that Pam
was truly the heart of the show. Who said that,
Jenna Jenna, I think she's probably right. Um. I've had
this conversation with a bunch of people in the US
(33:00):
with the with the weird resurgence of the show in
the last couple of years. I've talked to Gentilata and
Paul and and Lee and Mindy. I think about like
just when you rewatch it, one of the episodes that
hit you the hardest. I think that the maybe maybe
the best episode that we ever did was Pam's art show.
(33:22):
The ending of that episode is no one comes to
her art show because no one likes her at that
moment in the show, and at the end of it,
Michael shows up and one of the things that she
drew was the office and he is just like so
blown away by it, and it's so meaningful that he's
there for her because no one else showed up, Jim
didn't show up, nobody showed up and um, and she
(33:45):
hugs him and then there's a great joke that I
think they added on the set where she's like, what's
in your pocket? And he goes chunky and she looks
at him and he pulls it out and it's an
actual chunky. But that the moment where he shows up,
I think is the is maybe the best moment and
that we ever did, like him showing up at her
(34:06):
our show and her reaction to it and her hugging him,
like I think she's right, Like Pam, that is the
She is the person in those moments who makes Michael
feel better when the bird dies, and who like he's
kind of the gatekeeper of everybody's emotional status and stuff
and yeah, I know, well it's interesting that you bring
that up because that coupled with that talking head. That's
(34:30):
the last moment of the show, is Pam picking up
that drawing and taking it with her. That's right, Yeah,
I know. And it was very That episode was very
hard to break. I remember I think Brent wrote it
Brent Forrester. As we did every episode, we rewrote it
over and over and over and over again, and like
that was the that was like a late addition, was
(34:52):
like that the way out of this. We're always looking
for the for the off ramp for Michael of like
how does he get out of his whatever miserable circumstance
hands he put himself in. And it was like, oh,
the way out is he goes to Pam's art chow
and then the idea that she drew the office and
he takes it back and hangs it up like he's
It was like that was the emotional solve, and uh,
(35:13):
it was like, oh, he should that's where he should
hang it, right outside his office. It should be the
thing that he sees every day before he goes to work,
you know. Is I mean those little those little tiny consistencies,
that's what's so great about having a show that lasts
for a long time as you get to do these
things in season three or whatever that are there and
that like end up mattering a whole lot in season
I mean, as a fan, I wrote the episode with
(35:36):
the teapot and the note and everything, and then it
was like in season nine when I was watching just
as a fan and I was like, oh my god,
it's coming back, right, and we had I had um
John write the note himself and I said, don't tell
anyone what you're writing. Write whatever you want, right, whatever
you think Jim would write. And I don't know what
he wrote. I no, I've never seen it, and I
(35:58):
don't think he ever told anyone. I don't think Jenn
ever told anyone. Like it's like I think I believe
it's like a secret shared by the two of essentially
by the two of them and maybe the props department
if they steamed it open and looked at Wow, Um,
what do you think it's legacy is? I mean, it's
(36:18):
legacy is Uh, it's going to be enormous, I think.
I mean for a couple of reasons. One is it's
really good. Two is the cast is incredible. And every time,
every time someone discovers Jenni Fish or John Krasinski or
Rain Wilson or you or Angelo or anybody or Craig Robinson,
they're going to go, like, where did this person start?
(36:39):
And then they're gonna go back and watch the show.
But also it just was on. It did that, We
did two episodes, Like there aren't many shows that do
that anymore. That era is over, Like there, how many
more shows are going to even do a hundred in
this era that we're in a six episode, eight episode,
ten episodes seasons, even shows that last ten years do
eight episodes or something. And I think the reason why
(37:01):
so many people have discovered it and have like really
sat with it is because it's one of the last shows,
one of the most recent shows where you feel like
you can watch a new episode every night. And and
you know, my son is eleven now. My son was
was born in season four of the show, and he's
now eleven, and he just watched every single episode, and
every kid in his grads watched every single episode. By
(37:22):
the way, here's another thing Greg did. We used to
try constantly to like put pop culture references in the show,
and Greg was like, you know, no no pop culture references. Um,
this show needs to feel like it could. It's timeless,
like it could be happening in any moment in time
from the seventies until like two thousand fifty. And I
remember thinking at the time, like, all right, you're pretty
(37:43):
high on yourself there. But they just think that this
show is gonna matter. And now look it's twenty years
later and it matters just as much. And my son
doesn't know that that show isn't on the air. Netflix
shows and ABC shows and are the same. And it's
crazy because now you can watch it and it doesn't
feel dated because there's no references to, you know, things
that were happening in two let's see. I think it's
(38:05):
different than that. I respectfully slightly disagree. Interesting because when
you watch it, which I recently did, it doesn't feel dated. Yeah,
we'll see when I think it was? Was you guys
in the writing, we're so specific. The characters were written
so specifically, and so it almost functions that because you
don't watch a documentary about the seventies and go that
(38:28):
feels dated, right, It's just like that's when it happened.
So now we're watching a documentary about this very specific
placement at this very specific moment. I I think maybe
it's both things, right. It's like we didn't call attention
to when it was happening, and also we were very
specific about what was happening. And then that way, it
just feels like it's a moment in time, of place
(38:50):
in time, wherever you want to put it. So I
like the in terms of its legacy. To get back
to that, I keep getting off topic, but I think
that people settle into the show and watch this show
because it has this incredible specificity and it has this
just deep It feels like you're eating the richest dessert
(39:10):
a tiny bit at a time, and that is a
really lovely feeling to have. Like, you know, it's a
different kind of hangout show from other successful hangout shows,
from Cheers or Friends or the It's a it's a
hangout show that that feels like the emotional lives of
the characters are completely wrought and thick and juicy, and
(39:33):
you can really follow people's psychologies and their lives as
they grow over the course of nine years. And I
don't I think a show like that is very rare,
and I think that people will still be watching this
show a very long time right now. When was the
(40:06):
decision made for writers to start acting in the show
from the before the before the pilot, I mean Greg
coming from SNL, Greg wanted SNL is very um. The
membrane between writers and actors is very thin, and all
the actors write stuff, and a lot of the writers
are in sketches and stuff. And almost everyone there's a
writer performer, even if he or she is only on
(40:28):
staff as a writer or something. And he liked that,
and he wanted to get rid of the false dichotomy
of writers and actors. So he hired Mindy specifically because
she was a performer. She was in a play called
Mattin Band that she had written in New York. He
hired b J because BJ was a stand up and
a writer. He and then like we made Paul against
(40:49):
his will play Toby in the first season, like we forced.
He did not want to do it. He hated it,
he hated acting, but we forced him to do it
because he was so funny to have him be the
guy that Michael Scott hates more than anybody. But it
was that was always the design. I think he wanted
everybody to to write and perform ideally except for me,
because he made me a freak. Most famously and most
(41:13):
annoyingly to me, played the character most shrewd. Oh my god.
We never talked about most Oh my god. I assumed
it was gonna be your first question. I I know,
I have a whole section on it. But you were
so great? Um, all right, well then just very quickly
(41:33):
sure you were cast as most I was, and you're
happy about that. Hated it. I hated every second of it.
Why did you hate it? Because I was wearing wool
clothes and had a neck beard and it was always
really hot, and I didn't The joke was I didn't talk,
and that's not a funny joke. And it was always
(41:53):
like I had to get up at four thirty in
the morning and drive to the middle of nowhere and
wear wool clothes and it was. And then the joke
came with the writers because they knew how much I
hated it. They loved like, what if you're shirtless, what
if you're on a seesaw, What if you're on a trampoline,
What if you're running as fast as you can alongside
a car like a dog I was at Parks and
wreck and they would call me and they like, we
need mos And I was like, I have a job,
(42:15):
I have a life, I have young children, and they
would just make me do it. They would compete with
each other to see what was the most humiliating possible
thing they could have me do. But that that episode
Paul So, Paul wrote that episode where they were Jim
and Pam go to Shreot Farms, and he wrote in
the in the script, it literally says, Mose appears out
of nowhere and runs along the side of the car
like a dog. That's what it says. That's I'm a
(42:37):
human being. And so we did that scene. It was
a hundred and forty degrees. I was in woolf clothes
and and old work boots that like didn't fit properly.
And that sprint is probably a hundred and fifty yards
down that dirt road from the time I come out
to the time I had to run all the way
up into Shrewt Farms. Of course cuts off long before
(42:58):
I ever get there, of course, but they like, you
got it, Paul was directing, was like, you gotta run
all the way there. So I did over and over
and over again, probably twelve or fourteen takes because Paul
delighted in it so much. And then later in that episode,
I'm in Jurassic Park pajamas that don't fit me properly.
And then Greg pitched the thing where he was like,
what if there's a loud noise and Pam goes to
(43:19):
the window and looks at it, and Moses in the
outhouse with his pants down and the doors flapping clothes.
I mean it was like it was aggressive. It was
They knew I never should have been. If I had said, like,
I love doing this, they never would have put me
in the show again. But because I hated it so
much and was so vocal about hating it, well, you
have confirmed something. Moses a is a fan favorite. You
(43:39):
hear about people loving most. Okay, let me tell you something.
What I have always said is I think Moses a
writer's room joke. Oh, you have now confirmed without a
doubt that it was literally a writer's room meant to
torture you, meant specifically to make me miserable. Yes, yes,
(44:00):
was in a coffin. I was like hanging upside down somewhere,
like there were a bunch of things that we did
that were then just cut out of the show. I
was riding a moped over like trying to jump a
bunch of cars. They made me do that moped thing.
I don't know how to drive a moped. I don't
know how to drive a moped. No one taught me
how to drive. They were like, just get on and
(44:20):
just rev the thing, because the point was if I
wipe out, it'll be really fun now, and then run
across the roofs of these cars again. If you slip
and fall and break your pelvis, it'll be really funny.
Like they was. The subtext was always the worst this goes,
the funnier it will be when it happens. Well, I
this was after you left. I mean sort of from
(44:41):
the beginning, but then more and more Kevin started having
a lot of physical comedy type stuff. And there would
be times where I would go to the writer's room
and say, I don't remember if you were ever there,
but I would say, you guys are writing for Homer
Simpson right now, and a cartoon you can force to
(45:03):
do whatever you'd like him to do. He can do whatever, right,
but I can't. My body doesn't work that way. No
one does right, like the most painful. I feel like
I still have pain from it. Is the most innocuous.
You would never ever ever know. The office workers have
to go to the warehouse and move boxes, so they
(45:23):
decide they're gonna put remember that episode Boiled Down, so
they could move boxes to get to the troll. And
everyone thought the big guy falling is really funny. So
I just kept falling slipping and which means on a
concrete surface with oil, kneecap on concrete over and it's like, guys,
(45:44):
I can't keep You've got to like, yeah, there has
to be some other solution. We had a We had
a similar thing on Parson Wreck, where Nick Offerman's character
Ron Swanson was a sort of he was a little
cartoonish in his abilities to do various things, and we
wrote this joke where he wanted to get he was
eating a he got lunch and he was eating as hamburger,
(46:07):
and and the joke was he wanted to get out
of the lunch as quickly as possible, so when the script,
he shoved the entire hamburger into his mouth and ate
it in one bite. So they Dean Holland was directing
it and he was like okay action and Nick did
his best, but then Dean was like, you you really
need to eat the whole thing in one bite, and
he was like this is a like a half pound hamburger. Okay,
Like I maybe the character can do this, but a
(46:29):
human can't. And yeah, all right, yeah right, sorry, yeah,
you're not your character, right, Okay, I almost wiped out
super hard on that moped. Like well, first of all,
the joke was someone pulls up in the car. It
was the Garden Party episode. Someone pulls up in the
car night and I'm the valve most of the valet
and I get in and they're like, just get in
(46:49):
and tear off down this road, right, And the joke
at the time is why is most driving so fast
and so insistent? And so I did, and like I
tore off down the road and I'm not a stunt driver.
I don't know, like and suddenly I'm going sixty five
on a dirt road and on a set and the
back tires fish tail because it's a dirt road, and
(47:10):
I like slowed down and was like, oh right, I'm
not This isn't a no One's gonna like save me
if I crashed this car, I'll die because I also
got in and didn't put my seatbelt on because the
joke was you get in and take off, and I
was like, oh my god, I just I forgot for
a second that I'm not fictional. I'm like, sure, I'm
not fictional. I'm a human could suffer consequences. Mine very
(47:35):
similar to that was I think it was when there's
the storyline of Dwight telling Holly that that Kevin is slow,
and there was a scene we did a number of
different ways. This didn't end up in but where I'm
driving and she's like you're driving. You have a car,
and I'm like, yeah, I have a car, And at
(47:56):
one point they were like, okay, so do that, but
then get out of the car, but leave it running,
like leave it, leave it like leave it, leave it
in gear. So like as you step out, the car
is going to move forward and then we'll have somebody
else who can jump in and stop it. Yeah, I
did ideas like profound Meanwhile, it's vedas car, right like
(48:21):
her real car. I uh. That joke that they did
with Kevin in the later years where he didn't know
the alphabet elemento. Paul pitshed that in season two and
we were like, Paul, that's insane, Like you can't say
that he doesn't know that he's an accountant. He's a
working accountant. Like he might not be the best accountant,
(48:42):
he's an accountant. It made Paul laugh so hard. And
the second that Paul took over the show, that joke aired,
and I was like, well, that's what he got what
he wanted. Six years later, he told me it was
his favorite joke that he ever wrote. Yeah, yes, element
he told me and us that and and tried to
get it into the show and like season two or
(49:03):
three or something, and we're like, you know, there's crazy
stuff like that. I mean, you know, again, this is
a writer's room joke that no one would ever know.
But what was Kevin's band going to be? And having
it be the Police? This sounds like a you thing actually,
But the idea that I was a drummer lead singer
(49:23):
of the police, and with the Police, the lyrics and
the singing is off of the beat of the drums
because they had like rhythms. You would have to be
a musical savant to be able to play drums and sing. Well,
it wasn't the Police Originally it was Steve was Steve
Miller band and they were called the Midnight Tookers. My
(49:44):
friend scotts Olvery was in a Steve Miller cover band
in high school called the Midnight Tookers. Scott's a writer,
and I always thought that was the perfect amount of
stupid for a cover. But like Midnight Tookers is like, oh,
what a great and so it's a Steve Miller band.
And then they didn't give us the rights to the music, yes,
and so we had to change it. And so I
think Mindy maybe pitched Scrantnicity Mindy or Paul. But I
(50:07):
remember being so bummed out that it couldn't be the
Midnight Pokers, just because I had really had my heart
set on it. I sang, we did the whole video, right,
that's right, and we're trying to volume down because it
was too like jet Airliner or whatever, remember what it was.
But yes, and maybe it was the Joker. I don't
know it was, yeah, right, But I'm happy at the
(50:27):
end of the day, I'm happy that it was Scrantnicity. Yes,
that was a good solution to that stupid problem. Um, okay,
you've given us so much time. Thank you so much,
so really fun. I like walking down memory Lane. It's fun. Yeah,
it's such a I mean, it's just actually awesome to see.
(50:48):
I know it's been too long, I know. And congratulations
on everything, and um, thank you so much, my pleasure,
wow the things that could have been. Thank you Mike
(51:12):
for coming back and sharing so much of your story
with us. It was so great to have you and
just so great to talk the office with you. And
thank you all as always for listening week to week
or day to day. Don't forget to come back next Tuesday,
(51:32):
same time, same place, for another very special episode, because
that day, next Tuesday, is the day that we, or
at least I have been waiting for. It will finally
be here the launch of our brand spanking new book
Next Tuesday. Head to Amazon dot Com, Barnes and Noble
(51:56):
Books a million, wherever you get your books. Basically, go
the pre order your very own copy of Welcome to
dunder Mifflin, The Ultimate Oral History of the Office, and
if you do, you could be reading it one week
from today. Grab one for yourself, grab one for everyone
that you know, because when it comes to a gift,
(52:18):
you shouldn't have a hard time getting it in. That's
what she said. Wait, no, you shouldn't have a hard
time getting it in time for the holidays or you know,
any day, because every day is a holiday when you're
with me. Oh okay, have a great week everyone. The office.
(52:48):
Deep Dive is hosted and executive produced by me Brian
bond Gartner, alongside our executive producer Langley. Our senior producer
is Tessa Kramer. Our producers are Is Hayes and Diego Tapia.
My main man in the booth is Alec Moore. Our
theme song Bubble and Squeak, performed by my great friend
Creed Bratton, and the episode was mixed by Seth Olandsky.
Host
Brian Baumgartner
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