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.
Related posts tagged 'Making a show'
More
Related posts tagged 'Making a show'
Her name was Tracy and I accidentally named Traci Reardon the same name - I came into the studio planning to name Traci Reardon Brittney Reardon and I just told Scott my name was Traci on accident! I did the original "tracy" again but changed her name to Amanda Calzone. You can hear her on the first Betsy Sodaro ep of WSGLL.
Ben and Tom are having lunch with a drunk Joan Calamezzo who is creepily hitting on Tom and we have this exchange:
Joan: I'm going to go to the bathroom and powder my nose... amongst other things.
Ben: Dude, is she gonna go powder her vagina?
Probably the hardest scene I've ever had to get through without breaking. Adam and I just had to skip doing it for the first few takes. It's on the blooper real I believe. Also, props to Mo Collins, who always brings it as Joan.
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!
You know, they just didn't like the direction of the show - for example, the Chinese restaurant episode.
They hated - they hate - they hated that show. They didn't even want to air it. And you know, there was a big meeting about the kind of shows they liked and the kind of shows they didn't like. And you know, I just said, well, I'm not going be able to do that. So I just thought that I would quit. But then I learned another lesson - that when you say no, you invariably get your way. And it's a wonderful feeling to...
I can't believe I never did it before.
You just say no. And then they go, OK, OK, well, you don't have to.
GRANT! U.S. Grant (Hiram Ulysses Grant was his true name). I have been messing with an idea for a screenplay about the man. I quiet, unassuming fellow who was passed over for years by everyone around him (nickname "Useless") but in the end he drove it home and saved our beautiful republic.
No, no. It was never mentioned. I never thought of it. Jerry never thought of it - furthest thing from my mind. And by the way, I couldn't have done it anyway. There's no way that I could have. First of all, they wouldn't have let me do it (laughter). But even had they let me do it, there's no way that I could have done that and also been the executive producer of the show. It would have been way too hard. I mean I had a 24/7 job just on the writing end of it and the producing end. So there's no way I could have been in it.
The Christmas episode where Michael asked Kevin to sit on his lap, and Steve had to pretend to be crushed under his weight. I think I'm laughing on camera.
On navigating the the challenges of having a main cast member pass away (in the show Silicon Valley)
On navigating the the challenges of having a main cast member pass away (in the show Silicon Valley)
The loss of CEW was fucking hard. I saw him with @rosepetalpistol at a place on the east side days before he passed away, his wife and beautiful daughter were there and we talked for 40 minutes about life, the show, and him. It was a huge blow to the show, he was the funniest person on it. So he's irreplaceable and I think that everyone felt that, and I felt worst for the writers and editors, seeing him over and over, writing him out of the show, the whole lot of it. But in the most disgusting and at the same time beautiful way, "the show must go on."
I think that saying means something bigger than most people think. The show is the most important thing in many ways, because it is for the w...
I like animated shows better because I hate living people who act. They always make fun of my crooked teeth.
I wanted to do an episodic, non-serialized show. There's no real interest in that kind of storytelling on the Netflixes out there - they like continuing stories you can binge-watch. So the network made sense.
A lot of times it's like a crazy person running up to a whiteboard in the writers room and drawing a turd monster with breasts for testicles. And that crazy person's name is Justin Roiland, or, as I call him, Li'l Goldmine!
Being on Curb was the most fun I've ever had other than watching my twin boys clown around for me. It was like comedy fantasy camp. Larry David is another mega-hero for me. I auditioned and got cast as Yari, the vaguely foreign softball coach/mechanic. But I didn't know until I showed up for the shoot that they wanted me to do a speech to the team. So I asked Larry Charles, the director, if it's okay to curse. And he gave me the answer I wanted to hear. So I had about ten minutes to write a couple of things down that made me laugh. Then we shot it and Larry didn't know what was coming. I've heard he's an easy laugher but still, seeing him crack up felt like alley-ooping to Michael Jordan. I'...
My parents were never informed of anything. They were never paid to do the show. They never shot promos for the network. They were just living their lives and we would show up and prank them. This was before anyone had seen anything like this on TV so it was a much different reaction from people watching back then. People freaked out!
I spent a lot of time there in college, and I hadn't ever seen anyone depict it in a comedy series. Felt fresh. Like a mini-Boston. And the accent is hilarious.
We had a writer's summit where for 2 weeks we had Weird Al, Emo Phillips, Maja Da Oust, Jason Louv, Johnny Pemberton, Brendon Walsh (Gawd I hope i'm not forgetting someone), come up with ways the world could end. Then we broke the apocalypses we liked best into beats and "hung" the podcast dialogue on that framework. It was REALLY challenging because too much animated plot distracts from the conversation but if a GIANT ZOMBIE is eating the white house you can't just keep talking about weed so we had to figure out ways to pin the dialogue to the animation using VO we recorded after we had pieced together the animatics enough to know where it needed it.
Question: You've been listed as a video editor on most of your projects. What program do you use to edit and why have you decided to take on this role?
Answer: I love editing. I have used Avid in the past but I exclusively use Final Cut Pro now, though I am concerned about the future... You always have to put three dots after the future...
editing is part of the process. it's how you form everything. In some ways not editing yourself would be like a sculptor dropping some clay off at a guys house and saying "Make a naked lady chasing a bull. and do it nice."
Dr. Jan Adams walked off the show, Mel Brooks jumped on top of the desk and sang a song called "Dancing in the Dark" saying it was how old jews die, they jump on the desk, they can't hit the high note, and they die. Or when I asked Heather Mills to show me what an artificial leg looked like, and she took it off. That was a great moment.
sometimes it just naturally goes in directions people didn't expect - i'm thinking of pam murphy and will hines on a recent episode. when we take a break, I'll usually ask, "Is there somewhere else you were thinking of going with it, and can i lead you back there?" Most improvisers don't care about where it ends up, because the journey is more important than the destination.
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...
Popular categories
Foam corner
Making a show
Inside baseball
Filmmaking
Favorite books
Favorite comedians
Coming up with ideas
Relationship with other comics
Advice for aspiring comedians
Childhood
General life advice
Writing
Favorite movies
Acting
Relationship with fans
Working with other comedians
Styles of comedy
Performing
Podcasting
Comedic influences
Saturday Night Live
Favorite memories as a comedian
Favorite music
Reflecting on own work
Fan stories
Favorite jokes
Creativity
Finding your voice
Yuks
Screenwriting
Seth MacFarlane