Technically the debacle started before season 4 because one of the primary things I had intended to do was have Jeff Winger reunite with his Dad in season 3. The beginning of my firing, I think, was when I got a call from one of the compulsively unenjoyable personalities at NBC who just wanted to let me know that he had just had lunch with someone "very, very high up" [by the way, this is the kind of shit I will not miss about network television, why are you WITHHOLDING THE NAME of someone you're about to give me a note from] that was "concerned" because they had recently seen a little bit of Community and it had been Joel McHale attacking the study room table with an axe and so this anonymo...
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Orville Wright, yes. I was reading the David McCullough biography of the Wright brothers while I was writing the pilot, and early on there seemed to be some depiction of Orville as the "beta" brother. Seemed like a good fit for our midlevel craft.
The pin really did slip from my fingers and catch on my sweater. That was not something that was planned. But what we didn't show in the episode is that I had a second backup pin taped behind my ear with a band aid (skin color so you couldn't really see it). In practicing, the pin was really easy to drop, so I wanted a backup. If the pin hit the ground, I would have gone for my backup pin.
I did. I write about this a great deal in my book. McKenzie had a brilliant sense of being unhinged and taking himself completely seriously. I just outright stole that. He's amazing. I love watching him and I was thrilled to take the mantle of that character from Gareth to Dwight.
Dan had the idea. He liked the idea of a guy who took the time to look ridiculous and then having the guy hating being called ridiculous.
Oh man there were so many. I actually had butterflies in my stomach during a lot of those dates. Rachel, who doesn't like wearing socks, was tough to get a read on. But a fascinating person. LA, the lady who was trying to promote her album, was also a delight. Lais, who tried to kiss me.. that was a really intense one for me. It was very surreal how seriously competitive the women were getting. Actually, a fight broke out (verbal, not physical) between two of the women over how much time they were getting with me. We ended up cutting it from the episode because it felt a bit too much like a moment you'd actually see in The Bachelor, but it was a very crazy moment and a very surreal night.
We shot video for many many years. When I would edit the videos and see myself cracking up it ruined the bit. So I got good at keeping a straight face. Practice.
I think he liked it. Steinbrenner was unfamiliar with the show. His grandchildren watched it, and his grandchildren talked him into letting us use his name. The last episode I think of the '96 season, we came up with the idea to actually fly him in and put him on the show because up to that point, we'd only been seeing the back of his head, and I was doing his voice. And then we thought it would be fun if he was - if he actually made a real appearance.
So we called him up, and he said, yeah, he would do it. So we flew out to do it. He did the show. We started editing the show. And as I watched it, I'm going, oh, my god, this is not good. And we thought it's so much better to just see the ba...
Each season has had its difficulties in producing them - and let me just say that I am really proud of the episodes in the second half of season three. I think they're super funny. There is a story to why I think they're a little inconsistent in production:
For season two, we wrote all 20 episodes before we started shooting, and we shot them all out of sequence. I think the christmas episode with Zach was one of the first ones we shot, and I know the Halloween ep with Pee-wee was in our second week. So we really got to figure out an order after the fact that made sense.
For season three, we had an earlier premiere date, but we started at the same time. So, even though we still wrote everyth...
plotting can be tough because you're never quite sure you're doing it right - it's usually kind of like an exploration. You try something, and figure out what it needs. For instance, one episode we were plotting last night, I felt like it was all things happening, and no emotional connection from our charaters. So we figured out what my own personal connection to the plot would be, and that actually helped us figure out the things that would happen more easily. It's also helpful if your characters can have opposite points of view about what's occuring.
To motivate, I would try to outline as much as you can before you ever start writing a line of dialogue. If you're having trouble plotting, ...
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I tend to assume vodka and I know it seems unlikely that Rick wouldn't use sci-fi tech to somehow augment whatever he drinks but I think in rick's mind part of the "addiction" to the flask of good old fashioned booze is that it anchors his identity, and I think he knows that if he augmented the booze or the flask, then why not just whip up a very rudimentary nanobiotic alcohol dispenser in his body or inject himself with a plasma component that just amounts to always having a certain blood alcohol level, and I think the reason he doesn't do that is because he's a little afraid he'll lose sight of who he is
There's a term for that that i learned in college - it became a term in college - for anybody who could get behind a professor, and make the strangest faces AT him without being seen BY him while he's talking to another student, and seeing if you could break up another student without getting caught.
It was "harshing."
And that's what i was doing on WEEKEND UPDATE, later, when they first did an editorial I believe, I would just back off a little bit and just start harshing her! Jane wouldn't be able to see it, she knew I was doing it, but she wouldn't let on. And she tried to catch me. And I would always wipe back to a straight face.
Chris was always doing that bit to me at work. We shared an office, and you had to walk through our office to get to Chris Rock & Adam Sandler's office, so these 2 microscopic offices were back to back, and Chris' desk was behind mine, and he didn't really know how to write, or read, really (kidding!) but he would come in bored, because I would have to write my sketches to try to get on but they would always let him on, so he would get behind me and be bored, everyone would write him sketches, and he would say "Davey… turn around" and I said "if this is Fat Guy in a Little Coat I'm not turning around, it's not funny anymore." And he would say "no, i've got a whole new thing I'm doing."
And ...
The first time we did it, Fred just starting doing that voice ("Whaaaaaat are you doing here?!") and Kristen and I were like "What?" It was so funny. I hadn't heard him do it before. Man o man it made me laugh. Then it became a game of who could stretch out the vowels in their sentences the most. It got crazy.
It was a joy. I didn't have to deal with any of the pressures and anxieties that I'm sure are a constant over there. Stepping off an elevator into a lobby with a giant MARVEL logo is already insane, it feels like you're being brought into the Pentagon. Then to finally meet the mucky mucks over there like Kevin Feige was so refreshing and uplifting....I've been pitching and babbling about high concept stuff for twenty years and I'd gotten so used to this dichotomy of the "suits," who loved sports and couldn't wait to leave work and who barely cared about the medium, versus the writers, who were the only nerds on a movie, constantly irritating the suits with their logical points about the orig...
Larry David and I discovered that we were both obsessed with superman and admired him and also found him very funny at the same time, so that is why he came up a lot. Are you related to the hot dog Kobayashi in Coney Island?
On my show, the ad breaks are about 2 seconds long. I explain to the host that they can return from break as if no time as passed, or as if a ton of time has passed, something crazy happened during the break, or whatever they want, and then we go for it!
John Krasinski is one funny bastard. He could make me laugh at the drop of a hat. I would say everyone is generally much more low key than their characters. Except for Oscar. He has a very natural energy on the show its pretty close to who he is. But he's a lot less judgmental and more friendly in real life!
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