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Andre Gregory, the theatre director and writer, once told me that the world wants you cynical. To keep your heart open to possibility.
I really took that to heart. The world needs hope, service, humor and love. It's way too easy to stay jaded and cynical and pessimistic. Such an easy fall-back position - anyone can do it.
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.
The Injury was my favorite episode. It was such freewheeling comic mayhem but so grounded at the same time.
As a Baha'i I am not political. I believe that eventually we need to ban partisan politics and write in the best person for the job who may be too humble to seek the position. What would Elon Musk or Bill Gates be like as president?
Baha'is believe that the way to be the most spiritual is to be of service! So I try to be of service in what I do. Sometimes I just really believe in the project - and want to play the character - but I believe that making great stories and entertainment is a very valuable service. Soulpancake, a for-profit company, is also a service - providing uplifting inspiring content that helps bring people together!
We have been going to Haiti regularly for many years and really fell in love with it. We both love arts education and did a lot of work and research on the fact that education of adolescent girls is the BEST WAY TO REDUCE POVERTY! So we decided to put our money where our mouth is and go to the poorest parts of Haiti and teach there. Check us out: http://lidehaiti.org
John and I on the party planning committee for Kelly's party. Hanging the brown and grey balloons. We COULD NOT STOP LAUGHING.
My favorite character to write for was quite simply Michael Scott. Steve brought such humanity to the role that you could write him to these incredible extremes and he would play them in the most believable ways. Also, he had these beautiful blind spots to his logic that were inimitable. He was almost brilliant in the ways he could be foolish: he walked this incredible blurred line between the two.
I feel that lead characters are occasionally overlooked or taken for granted by the most devoted fans of a show. (With the best intentions, but still!) I loved the Sopranos and my favorite character was Tony Soprano. I love The Simpsons and my favorite character is Homer Simpson.
My favorite sup...
1. Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov.
2. Sabbath's Theater, by Philip Roth.
3. Candy, by Terry Southern & Mason Hoffenberg.
4. Mating, by Norman Rush.
Taxi Driver. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. The King of Comedy. Pulp Fiction. The Naked Gun. Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Adaptation.
It horrified people. One of my comedy heroes is Bob Odenkirk, who I idolized from Mr. Show. I ran into him & had a twenty minute conversation before I realized I should mention that my hair was for an arc on "The Office." "Oh," he smiled. "I thought you were just a total douchebag actor."
Yes. I think it was a really great final episode, and I love that the final episode acknowledged the impact that the documentary crew had on everyone's lives, and also continued the story with the characters. And on a personal level I loved that Ryan literally ran off into the sunset with Kelly -- but abandoned a baby in order to do so. So funny and dark and happy perfect. Greg Daniels deserves all the credit in the world for wrapping up the series the way he started it out.
The episode of "The Office" that I wrote that I'm proudest of is the first one I wrote, "Diversity Day." The show was completely new and I was assigned this amazing comedic opportunity to write what happened in this incredibly rich situation. The only question was, how far were we allowed to go? Not just with the jokes, but with the characters -- with their ignorance, their mistakes, their discomfort? It turned out really far, and learning that helped all of the writers learn that we were going to be able to write the show we wanted to write; and helped the actors learn that they better ground the characters in some real humanity, because they were going to be taken to some pretty raw places...
I was the new guy on "Punk'd" before I was on "The Office." I thought that would be my "thing" for the rest of my life- and I was fine with it! I was in Denver the week after Punk'd first aired, to open for the comic Nick Swardson at Comedy Works, and I was sitting in a Starbucks, and a guy walked past the window, stopped, and stared at me, before resuming his walk. Then the next guy did the same thing. Then the next guy. It was the most amazing, strange thing that had ever happened to me. I'll never forget that day.
One thing I learned from The Office is that the line between funny and dramatic is paper-thin (no pun intended) and often non-existent. If you ground a performance in truth, it can be both as funny and as dramatic as can be. I think no one embodied that lesson better than Steve Carell.
It was incredible. The most exciting condensed period of my life and I can't imagine I'll ever do anything more exciting and I'm actually fine with that -- I don't know what could top that fantasy-camp of a filmmaking experience. The only stressful part was when we'd all go out drinking after a day on set, and I'd ask Quentin Tarantino a question, and he'd start to answer, and I'd feel this enormous pressure to REMEMBER EVERY SINGLE SYLLABLE because film history was literally being dictated to my brain, and I was the only witness, and I was two drinks in and feared I wasn't going to remember a sentence that a friend or historian would ask me for someday. It was the coolest thing ever, quite ...
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