Mike Schur - Pt. 1

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My name is Michael Shore. I was a writer for the first four point two seasons and a producer on The Office. Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of The Office Deep Dive. I am your host Brian Baumgartner. Today I am thrilled to present to you or introduced to you, Mr Mike Sure. Mike was one of the original writers that was hired by Greg Daniels for the Office, and as some of you may know, Mike has had

an incredible career since then. At the beginning of season five, Mike left to create Parks a Wreck with Greg, and then after that he went on to create and produce some of the greatest comedies of the last decade like Brooklyn, Master of None and The Good Place with one of my favorites, Ted Danson. And although that is very impressive, by far, his greatest singular ler professional achievement was his

portrayal of Mose Shrewd. That's right, Mike played Mose. Now Mos did not, as we all know, have a lot to say. But Mike, Mike is one of the best talkers that I know. He is an amazing storyteller. It's like his entire brain, it just it just thinks in stories. I don't know how else to put it. He is a genius, and he is a genius. But truly, I could listen to Mike all day. I know that you're

going to feel the same way. Plus, this episode is the beginning of another mini deep dive into the Writer's Room, which you will hear much more about next week when I talked to Greg Daniels. So pull up a chair, put up your feet unless you're driving, and enjoy my conversation with Mike Schure Bubble, I love it, Bubble and squeak on Bubble and Squeaker cookie every month left over from the night before. Um, are we just starting? Are

they just chatting? Yeah? I mean everything's being recorded. Um uh, what were you doing before you join the writing staff?

I was at SNL from oh four. My then girlfriend now wife had moved out here in two thousand two and we were dating long distance, and it was like, all right, well one of us has to move and it made more sense for me to leave SNL, where I had been for six years and come out to l A. So I told Lauren I was leaving sn L at the end of the year and had a year to kind of prepare rots wrote spec scripts and came out here and had meetings and everything and had

I had a million meetings, and Gregg's was the most interesting by far, like for so many reasons. First of all, because Greg's an interesting person, and because I loved the British Office, and that that meeting was like two two or two and a half hours. Lee Eisenberg told me about he was going in to meet and his agents said, just so you know, Greg does really long meetings, and so Lee said he left and was like that was a really long meeting. It went well, it was like, yeah,

but he does really long meetings. I was talking to Aubrey Plaza the other day and she was reminding me of this thing I've forgotten, which was so after season four, Greg and I started developing Parks and Wreck together, and Alison Jones called me and said, I just met with the weirdest woman I've ever met with. She's like twenty three and she's here from uc B and I I don't know if there's a part for her, but you should meet her. And when Alison Jones tells you to

meet someone, you you meet them immediately. And so I was like, yeah, however, come over right now. So she came over and I went and told Greg who was We were at the office offices, and I said this, Allison sending this actress to meet us for the new show, and he's like, okay, great. So Aubrey came over and

I said, Hi, nice to meet you. Greg. Daniel is going to join us in a second, and she was like okay, cool, and we talked for like fifteen or twenty minutes, and then Greg came in and then like ten minutes of the meeting, he just got up and left without saying a word, and Aubrey looked around, like

what's happening? And I just I was used to it, so I just kept talking, and then like half an hour later, Greg came back and just sat down with no explanation of where he had gone, and then talked for another like fifteen minutes, and then just without a word, in the middle of a sentence, got up and left again. And I was like, this is what happens with Daniels is meetings are not normal meetings. Like one way or another,

something weird is going to happen. Someone was telling us about Alison Jones about being in casting meeting at Ben Silverman's old bungalow. They're all sitting around owned a conference table and they're talking about casting for the pilot, and suddenly Greg gets up and jumps out the window and they all are like what. And apparently Nancy Perkins in her like Boston outfit was accent, was like, I've heard of producers wanting to jump out and thankfully was on

the first floor. But he uh, you know, he had left a sweater in his car, right, and that was the most efficient way to get just like he liked his terminator brain like analyzed the layout of the building and was like, oh, the quickest route. Yeah, um, so that was your That was the first time you've met Greg. Yes, I I knew who he was obviously and h but

I never met him before the meeting. And um, we had a shocking amount in common, like we both we were we both into Harvard Root for the Lampoon and both wrote a S n L. Met our girlfriends and then later wives there later when my son was born, he had red hair and Greg's on his red hair. There was it was like, it's a very weird series

of things. But um, yeah, I've never met him before. Um, there was a moment um we were in the old and those days, the offices were in down in Culver City, and there was a there was a moment where we were deep in the weeds on the episode that I think became Hot Girl, the Amy Adams episode, and we were pitching and pitching and pitching different ideas and whatever, and I was I had a notebook and I was like jotting things down and uh suddenly he said, Greg said, okay,

well let's hang on for a second. Like what makes a good story, right, Um, here's what you need for a good story. And he started talking about, you know, basic building blocks of storytelling, motivation, steaks, twists and turns, escalation stuff like that, and he was sort of like almost just thinking out loud, right like this is so we can't break this story? Why is that? But he was doing it in such a sort of professorial and thorough way that I realized like, oh, this is just

a class. I'm in a class now. And I remember turning the page in my notebook and starting to take notes like I was in college, just writing as fast as I could, like writing as if he were a professor in a biochemistry class. This was having subconsciously you were no, no, no no, I knew. I saw what was happening. This is this is the theory of this world. And I just took notes for like forty five minutes like I was in college, And this is not a joke. There are I still have them, and I still go

back and look at them, like to this day. That's now, that was two thousand four, that was probably August of two thousand four, and I still there are still moments where I'm like, why doesn't this make sense? And I'll go back and look at what he wrote, what he said that day off the top of his head, and oh, you're right, you're right, that's what's missing. Um, like maybe

a day later. No, I'm sorry much earlier. And it's like the first day of work, and you know, I went pitching, pitching, pitching, and I said like, oh, I had an episode idea where there's like a stray dog in the parking lot and that the office kind of like adopts the dog as like an office pet. And Greg got really excited and he was like, oh, oh, okay, I hadn't I had a similar idea, had a similar idea.

That's a good sign. And he brought out a spiral notebook and he flipped through it, flip flip, flip, page after page of like serial killer level writing, like margin to margin, you know, things underlined and whatever, and he goes a flip fiflip. Okay, yeah here, just okay. So here was my idea. So there's a three dog in the office park and they adopted and then they all

they're all caring for it. And I thought that Dwight could have this relationship to the dog, and Michael would be really sad because the dog didn't seem to like him, and then Jim and Pam would kind of take over care of the dog and they would feed the dog

and then at night. There was a question of who would take the dog home, and Pam would take it home one night, and Jim would take it home another night, and the dog would sort of become almost like a surrogate domestic animal for Jim and Pam, and then Roy would come in, and Roy would bond with the dog, and then the dog would going. And he laid out like an entire story from beginning to end, where this plot device of a dog just related to every single

character in the office. And he got to the end of his like eight minute long pitch and there was a beat, and I remember going, well, yeah, I mean, I feel like we should do your version. That's it

seems like you maybe thought this out. But the amazing thing to me about stories like that, of which there are many, is we never did that episode like that, Like he had episode after episode broken out and thought through just as background, just as like Grist for the mill of like how he could understand breakdown at a molecular level and understand the characters and their relationships. We never did that. We never even pitched that out. Like he had so many ideas like that that never got used.

And when you sort of go back and analyze what made the show work. To me, I always go back to that because it's like he knew everything about every character before we started doing anything, and so as a result, there was this incredible lived in field to that office, this richness, and this like this kind of layered feeling of like these people have always been here and they've had three dimensional lives before the cameras ever started rolling,

and that that's just such a rare thing. I mean, usually you're scrambling like crazy right early going of a show to try to figure out who everybody Isn't Greg already knew yes? And it ties into why Kappus was such a great choice for that too. So you have that lived in quality and Quapus with this genius idea of having us do the thirty minutes of busy work.

We were all there, ready to go seven am, and he's like, you guys, just start working, make phone calls, pretend to hand each other documents, and I'm on the adding machine and you know, just little moments, he essentially eliminated the artificial membrane between this is reality and this is fixed and he made it a fluid thing. And to your credit and the other actors in the show.

We did a thing on that show for years where it was like, even if you're in the deep background, you've got to beat your desk and it's a pain, right. It's like actors, you guys could have all been in your trailers, like playing video games or calling your children

or whatever. But like the value of it feeling real like that, I mean, these things are so delicate, right, because like it's it's asking a tremendous amount of the actors to sit at your desk for as long as you did, and all of these things that you would think of as sort of like a little theatery and a little actor e and a little kind of like we're gonna be in character and we're going to kind of like, you know, it's a little embarrassing. It's a

little like, come on, what are we doing it? You know what I mean, It's a little like but if there's a theory behind it, if it's not just like let's explore the nature of drama or whatever, you see the benefit of it. And the benefit of it was from the minute they shot the first frame, it felt like everyone was really working in that place. Nothing about

it felt fake. I mean down to the fact that, like the set design was almost exactly the actual offices that the writers worked in in Culver City, Like they just recreated that. And so when we were writing in that first season, Greg would say, like, go, everyone, spend like half an hour and just like mill around the set. We later recreated it, but like that was the set where we were working, and so we would sit at different desks and you would sort of go like, oh,

like from Pam's desk, she can't quite see Angela. That's interesting, like and then you would say, like, here's Creed and Creates got his back to the door, so like he never knows who's coming into He's always going to be

surprised anytime anyone goes whatever. These tiny observations that you think of as like is this really anything, but then it is because because the whole show was about these tiny little observations and tiny moments, and when you've actually lived inside them as an actor or writer, they become more meaningful and you understand them at a deeper level.

You know, when we went to Scranton for the Office Festival that year, whatever year that was, even then, it was what was the season was that for I think that was for the convention. Yeah, it was like season four. But even then Greg was like everyone go out fan out due research and Lee and Gene and I drove around with Jason Kessler, are writer's assistant, and like took

pictures and like broke down the names of restaurants. And there was a condo development and I took a bunch of pictures and I was like, I think this is

Michael's condo. Was hadn't been in season two, but I was like, this is the condo development, and like so I took different angles of like what it looked like down the road and stuff, and we handed them to Gallenberg and Michael Gallenberg as the production designer, and like we were still that intent at that point and in like making sure we got it right, even if it even if no one never if the ideal is even if you've never been to Scranton and you never go

to Scranton, you should still feel like you've been to Scranton. Like that's how that's how intense it was. It's a hard time for hiring, so you need a hiring partner built for hard times. That's indeed, if you're hiring, you need indeed because Indeed is the hiring partner where you can attract, interview, and hire all in one place, and Indeed is the only job site where you're guaranteed to find quality applications that meet your must have requirements or

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life was over. If it ever got out, they would kill me in a heartbeat. Listen to Deep Cover on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. So the first season we make the first season, and other than the pilot, none of the stories are related to the to the British show, right, but people still are like, boo, we know we were right.

This was bad, bad idea, and they into this day you'll find people who say like they stuck to the British scripts for the first season, which we didn't, but no one remembers that because I remember the pilot was roughly the British pilot. Yeah, I know, it's uh. I felt from the moment of Diversity Day that what we were attempting to do was something really special. Yeah, And I was like, man, if people give this a chance, Yeah,

I know. It's so funny, right because like the history of television has the same story repeated over and over and over again, and that story is the pilot air and it was the lowest rated pilot in the history of Wahawa. It's true of Seinfeld. Jerry Seinfeld has a letter has like the ratings for the testing. I think Cheers was the lowest rated pilot that NBC had ever aired to that point. The office was like a disaster

in the early going. Another thing, by the way, another thing Greg did that it's amazing that I don't know if he has ever talked about. He told NBC when they tested the show. He was like, this is going to test terribly and you have to ignore it. He was like that it's it's a mockumentary that people aren't used to it. It's washed out color and fluorescent lighting, the boss is unlikable. It's going to test terribly and

you have to ignore it. And then it tested terribly and they didn't quite ignore it, but he had primed them to look at the results in a different way, right, And it's very gutty thing to do to pre tell the network that the thing they've spent millions of dollars on is going to bomb. Well, Kevin Riley told the story that there are rooms. There are different rooms as they're being tested, and they go in and they examine and it's like bad, we think it's bad. We think

bad bad. And he got to the last room, which he said, we're all the interns and assistance and they were like this is awesome. And he was like okay, okay, like now we've got something here, and he basically took the people who didn't really count, but he was like, yeah,

this is going to catch on. And I don't know Kevin, if Kevin ever had this thought, but my thought was always that we were not fairly being represented because as my Space was happening, social media was beginning to have and you were hearing about these fanatical fans some of the online forums, and you realized how many college kids

were watching. Well, college kids don't have Nielsen Box, right, They're not weighing in on the fact that they're watching in their dorms or and so for me it was always like, yeah, but they got to know that more

people are consumed. I'm not sure they did well, you know, That's the thing is like, of course, like that the rating systems are so much better now, but they're still even now, they're crude and like in two thousand four, forget it like that, you know, there was no way for anyone to to know or to judge how many people are actually watching anything. It was a really rough measurement. And and just like it's some so retroactively grateful that

they didn't cancel the show because it's clear. I mean, look now, just now it's it's like the most popular show on Netflix today. Um Lee told me about there were a couple of exercises that I would do in the writer's room, and he mentioned to me about the He called it unlikely duos, basically taking he would he wrote everyone's name down on cards and then he grabbed two at random and would send us off and go go break some you know, uh Stanley Creed stories, you know,

go break some whatever. And yeah, and we did that very frequently. He did that once a week. I always thought there was a little bit it would. It seemed to be something he did when he was getting annoyed by us and our general and confidence. But also it didn't feel like busy work. It felt like, oh, it's interesting, Like yeah, right, what happens if Creed and stay on they or in the story or whatever? Um Creed, who was one inch away from just being written off the show?

I know, how did you decide who was gonna be gone? Devon or Creed? So um my, this is my memory of this, and Greg would remember maybe more accurately. But we broke the episode where it was Halloween, someone was getting fired, right, and it's all right, it's either Devon or Creed because those are the two people that hadn't talked yet, and the original idea was it was Creed.

Then we broke the episode, and the Greg sort of brilliant investigation of Michael Scott's psychology was, instead of ripping the bandit off and doing a responsible management thing, he tries to fire someone and then gets talked out of it and then fires the other person. And it was a coin flip. It was honestly like Creed or or Devon, who knows? And then he was like, well, I don't even know if there was a reason, but he switched it so that he fires Creed and then Creed talks

him out of it. And I was on set with Fig shooting the episode where Michael buys a condo, and Fig was going to direct that Halloween episode. So the episode that Greg wrote, which is wonderful, hasn't it? Probably a six page scene more. Michael's like, I'm sorry, I have to let you go, and Creed talks him out of it. And we read it on that We were at the location for Michael's condo and we read the script and I was like, oh my god, this is so funny. And I went to feed it. I was like,

did you read this? It's so funny. He goes that, yeah, it is really funny. Can Creed act? It's like, I have no idea. I don't think i've ever heard him talk, but like, let's roll the dice and then you know, he's amazing. So it was, but it was literally in my memory at one point it was Heat fires Creed and another point it was he fire Steven and it just ended up the way it ended up. But I don't think there was any reason for it. I think

it was. I think it was a crazy I think maybe Greg liked the real story, which we all knew by then. The Creed was the actual Creed Bratton. It would have been in the grassroots and anything, so maybe that had some effect or something. But yeah, it was random chance. That's so crazy. Um going back to the unlikely duos thing. So for a second, I was talking to Kate Flannery about Christmas party and Meredith flashing Michael, but then also having this tender moment with him after

he runs over her with his car. I don't think those came from unlikely duos. Although Michael hits someone with his car was an early pitch. I don't remember you bished it, but that that card was up on the on the board for a while before we did it. But the thing where Meredith flashes him was nothing more than like the premise of that episode, which I wrote was Michael has an image in his head of what a good party is, and a good party is like the Playboy Mansion, and he says that in the episode.

He's like, it's Playboy Mansion, it's people with headsha lamb shades on their heads. He's a very very old timey like like late seventies early eighties kind of idea of what like a crazy party. Yeah, it's just it's it's people being drunk and and lambshades on heads and stuff

like that. And so he does a bad job for a while of being a good boss and throwing a good party because he throws a hissy fit when people don't like his gift enough, and then it gets stolen in the you know whatever, and he gets an oven mit from Phillis, which he doesn't like. Uh, But and he becomes a good boss because he goes out and he buys a ton of vodka and he comes back and he's like, you know what, everybody cut loose and it's kind of a good, kind of a good move.

It's not it's a little bit of a blunt instrument, but it kind of works and the party ends up fun. And so Greg was like, well, he should get a little reward, not in the sense of like a sexual reward, but in the sense of like he should get what he wants, which is a crazy party. And the first thing that the genius of the breaking of that story, which I don't take credit for it, was they were all group efforts as a general rule, but he first tries to manufacture his own reward, which is he puts

a lampshade on his own head and runs out. It's like, look, it happened, right, And then Packer shows up and that's like kind of a reward. But then like the end of it of Meredith flashing him is like he actually got his dream. He got his dream of like a crazy office party, and like, even though it's not appropriate for the office and it's not you know, he doesn't actually feel good about that. You can see it in

his face. He's like, oh, this shouldn't be happening, but he can't resist taking a picture of it because it's like this is evidence that I did my job and through a great party. It is strangely one of my all time favorite singular moments, Meredith flashing yes, because I feel like it is so perfect. And that episode that was just such a huge episode for the ensemble. Yeah, you know, everybody, everybody really meant something to do, and the show sort of was beginning to take off at

that time. We were McDougald, which was pleasurable yet interesting experience and uh and yeah, I don't know, there was just something about the way that played, that told everything about Michael and yeah, and but you're right though, the key to that was the secret Santa White Elephant, dirty Christmas, whatever you want to call it. And the thing meant everyone when I when we were when I was a sign that episode, the first thing I did is I went home and made a list of who got who.

I did a real draw. We knew certain things. We knew that Jim had to have Pam, and we knew that Michael had to have Ryan. But then I put everyone else's name in and I just did a random draw and Kevin got Kevin. And that's where that came from. Yes, and when I and when that happened, I was like, oh my god, that's perfect, Like he just buys himself a gift, doesn't tell anyone, advised himself a footpath. But yeah,

I did. I So I did a real draw and I had it mapped out, and I when I was writing the script, I printed it out and hung it next to my computer because I got so confusing of like, wait, who has whom? And there's a bunch of stuff in the deleted scenes where you see the other gifts that people like you know, like in the episode, Oscar got Creed and get some like a crummy key chain, and Creed got Jim and gave him some old shirts that were lying around. But then like every everybody had it,

like there's a George Saunders book. Toby bought someone a book of George Saunder short stories because that book could come out. Civil War Land and Bad Decline one of my favorite books had come out, and I was like, I'm just gonna get this in the show because I want to so like you can actually map out who everyone who everyone had, and who what they got for each other person. That's awesome. Yeah, I never knew that Kevin Kevin. It was your random drawing. Kevin got Kevin

got Kevin. Ye. Hello, and welcome to our show. I'm Zoe de Chanelle and I'm so excited to be joined by my friends and cast mates Hannah Simone and Lamar and Morris to recap our hit television series New Girl. Join us every Monday on the Welcome to Our Show podcast, where we'll share behind the scenes stories of your favorite New Girl episodes, revealed the truth behind the legendary game True American, and discuss how this show got made with the writers guest stars and directors who made the show

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Is this fascinating world? Find a forest near you and start exploring it. Discover the forest dot Org, brought to you by the United States Forest Service and the ad Council. So Lee talked about this. I was talking to him about if there were specific strengths because the episodes were different, and what were there ways that either interested people or they were better at. And what he said was that he felt like he and Jean were much more in the sort of cringe comedy, which you know, if you

look at Dinner Party, that certainly fits that bill. And what they said about you was that you were much more optimistic. Do you feel like that's true? Yeah? I do. Um. I feel like my sweet spot on the show was, well, Christmas Party is pretty optimistic episode. But like the episode branch closing that I wrote, I love that story because Jan walks in on the first page of the episode and says, we're shutting your branch down and it Michael has a complete collapse and then he says, no, I'm

not letting this happen. I'm gonna do something about this, and he and Dwight head off and they go to David Wallace's house in Connecticut and just like, I'm going to confront him and I'm gonna make him see that this is not the right decision. It is utterly ineffectual. Wallace Netverik shows up. They just end up sitting there and are miserable and completely unbeknownst to them, through a variety of other machinesians, the branch ends up getting saved.

But there's a scene in the end where Michael and Dwight are sitting in the car and that all hope is lost, and Michael says, okay, top three favorite moments ever at the office and Dwight says, like, you know, my first day when you sprayed me with the fire extinguisher and when yeah, I got sick and you came into the m R. I you know, I got a concussion or whatever, And then Dwight says, what about you?

What are your favorite moments, and Michael says all of them, every single one, and then Dwight says, well, what about when Jan showed up and said the branch was closing and he's like, come on, man, But that I remember just thinking like this, and that scene wasn't in the outline, and I remember writing that scene and thinking like that

that this is like I locked into that idea. And I think it's just because it was like a moment of humanity between the two of them, where like the office is very meaningful, it's all Michael has, and him being able to just sort of express in a sincere and human way what he loved about the place, like that kind of thing. I really felt like that that

was my jam um. But yeah, I mean those guys, like Greg's theory was that writing staff should be like The X Men, where he's like, if you have all people who are the same and have the same like comedic power, you're gonna have one awesome thing about the show. But if you have if everybody has his or her

own comedic power, then you get everything. And so yeah, I think Lee and Jeanne were really into the like super I mean, those guys are so funny like Scott's Todds was an episode they pitched very early on that Greg was like, we're never doing this, and then long after I left, I was watching him like, oh, I guess Greg gave in. But yeah, they love that. Jen Silata was Her superpower is just this incredible connection to Pam Um. She's also hilarious, but like she was like

the beating heart of the show. I would say, not just through Pam, through all the characters, but like the episode where the bird dies and Michael has the funeral for the bird, that was Jen from beginning to end, and we kept like tinkering and tinkering and tinkering, and she eventually was like, I think I just understand this and I just want to at it, and we were like great, and then it's amazing. And the part of

it that she really locked into was Pam. Pam understanding what Michael was going through and giving the eulogy and trying to make Michael feel better by talking about this dead bird. It's a really complicated emotional moment, but Jen just like understood it at some fundamental level. And you know, Paul was really into Michael's when Michael was at his absolute worst. Like Paul was super into the the Michael's

worst instincts, Mindy was. Mindy's superpower was always, um, the super absurdist stuff, the really like crazy flights of fancy. You know, famously in the episode where Michael burns his foot on the George Foreman grow when Michael burns his foot. I mean again, every episode that everybody wrote was always rewritten a tremendous amount. But I will say that that first monologue Michael has where he's explained to the camera how he burned his foot, I don't think we changed

a word of it. Like Mindy turned in her script and that speech was in there, and it was really long, and it's really complicated and it has it's a crazy roller coaster, and I don't think we change a single word because she just like she would lock into just the the super absurdist stuff presented very straightforwardly, like Yeah, I mean everyone everybody had something they were good at. That stuff was incredible. Yeah, Um, you talked about yourself

and Michael and his love of the office. Was there an early idea that he would eventually find love and that would take him away. Yeah, I mean that's always an idea in every TV show, right, if anyone is single in a TV show, there's a lingering question of like does that person find a life partner? But it was also very important for the show that that doesn't

happen for a long time. And then after and as I was leaving to go develop Parksner Breck with Greg, we met with Amy Ryan and that so was beginning of season five, and that was like, that was the first time it was like, Okay, we're shifting into a different gear with this guy. Like who knows how long the show will last, but we're it feels like we're at some kind of midpoint here and we've done it.

At that point, we've done almost a hundred episodes, and it was like, okay, it's time, Like it's time to create a character for Michael Scott who's like a viable love interest. And Jen was a big part of that because she was like, oh, she should be as big a dork as he is, Like that's the way to

do this right. It's not aspirational in the sense of like she's a really put together, like you know, sophisticate who's gonna who Michael has to change for the thing that links them is like she's a dork and she does dorky voices, and she does lame videos and like dances and she's a female version of Michael Scott, which

is perfect. And all of that stuff then came after I was gone, But Jen and Paul and I at least and I think maybe um Greg met her later, But Jen and Paul and I think we're in the initial meeting we had with her where we basically dead about the wire for like an hour. Um. But she's a lovely person and Ed it was like, oh, yeah, right,

this is gonna work. This is Michael's girlfriend, right, you said earlier, Um in you know, in a slightly dismissive way, like every television show you have a single guy and then eventually they're but you know, what's so crazy? And maybe I'm alone here? But I don't think I am. I never thought about that. For Michael. It wasn't like it was the fact that he wanted it. I don't know, it was not. It was never a high stakes thing.

I think there was Jim and Pam, you know, there was some other stuff going on, and that the assumption watching was whatever whoever he gets is going to be a disaster, right, Like, it's just not it doesn't it doesn't matter, and I don't I'm not invested in that, and I think it's not until very very later when he calls her it's actually she's not even there on the phone. It's when he has herpes yes and yes and says you're wrong. Um. So Greg again had a

lot of theories and um they were all correct. And one of the things he said, he pinpointed for us very early on, what makes this what makes the British show so good? Right? And part of it is a once in a generation performance from Ricky Gervais, and some of it is um other incredible actors and and just wonderful, like a wonderful premise in the sense of like a mockumentary comedy show was a great idea, blah blah blah.

But he broke it down even further and he said, almost every show in history has had a formula, and the formula is the center of the show is a will they won't they? Sam and Diane romance, and often the corner is a wacky boss. And occasionally the wacky boss comes in, does something wacky and funny and gets big Lass and then leaves, and very simply, the British Office inverted it. The Whack Boss is the main part of the show and shoved into the corner is this

will they won't they? Romance? And what that does two things. Number one, it makes the Wacky Boss into a viable character worthy of introspection and layering and dimension in a way that the Wacky Boss is not. Traditionally, no one usually cares about what's going on in the Wacky bosses

emotional life. And it also means that when you shove the romance into the corners and it becomes this very delicate, gossamer spider web of glances and and tiny little moments in the getting someone a candy bar from the vending machine becomes an enormous emotional moment. Right then you have changed. You fundamentally changed the way audiences relate to romance, which is they're like, they're like on the edge of their seat, Like I only got eight seconds of the romance this week.

I want more. So I want to ask you about another big episode you wrote, the Job where Jim finally asks Pam out to dinner. Was there a fight about that? Finally there was a big fight about the end of season two kiss that was not there was no fight there that was like it was that was like a crazy intense time. The ends of seasons were always like we were so behind, and but Greg and Paul and I broke that episode together and we're going to write

it together. Greg was going to write the first half and Paul and I were going to split the second half. And then Greg was like, I don't have time, you guys write it. And also then Paul was like acting a lot, and it was like, all right, I guess, I guess I'll do it. But Paul and I ended up writing it. But Greg really was was like, here's what this story is, and it was like it was very complicated. There going for a job and Karen was going for the job and Jim had to leave Karen

and and go back and whatever. And so Paul and I wrote it and on the script on the read it said written by Greg Daniels and Paul labrisin I'm make sure. And after the read through, which went really well, Greg was like, I shouldn't be credited on this. I didn't write this, and I was like, yes, you did, Like you broke this story. Like we were sitting in that room with you, and you laid out the beats

of the story. Also, you you could take writing credit on every one of these episodes if you legally, if you wanted to. But he was like, no, I don't. I you guys wrote this and I should step back, which was an insane thing to do because we knew it was going to be a huge deal. Paul and I ended up winning a Writer's Guild Award for it, and I remember thinking like, this should just be Greg, Like I like, he was such a model of show runnerdom to me, just in the in the thoughtfulness with

which he did everything. Um, it's crazy that he's not credited on that episode. Anyway, there was no fight over that. That story was really clean. We changed very little of it. Everything sort of unfolded very naturally. And then that take that Jenna did. In my memory, I could be wrong. I think that's the first take we did. No, I'm sorry, it was a second take we did because there was an amazing camera thing. It's really subtle. This is why

like Randall was so great. Um, she's doing talking Head and then Jim Knock just knocks and and walks right in right and the camera swings over to him and he says, are you free for dinner? And and she says yes, and he goes great. Then it said date and he walks out and then the camera swings back to her and she says, I'm sorry. She's smiling and about to cry and says, I'm sorry, what was the question? And so the first take wat it was wonderful and

I was like, well, that's perfect, that's great. And then the second take camera swings over to Jim. He says great, said date, And when the camera swings back, it pushed in and it's just it mimics the exact thing that the audience did, which is it leaned forward. It just the camera just leaned forward because it was like, oh my god. Like And the thing that's been talked about a lot when people talk about the show is how

the cameras are characters. But a key moments like that, the operators and the directors were so good at being like, the camera should lean forward the way the audience is leaning forward at that moment, and that take is just I it's my favorite bit of acting Jena ever did on the show. I think it's absolutely perfect. Randall talked about in terms of the documentary style. He said, everything that makes it harder makes it better. And what he was talking about was that he was insistent upon having

to work to get the shot. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's also um um, that's also set design. That's everything like that. And we would often move stuff into the frame right,

like we would drag plants the plant plants. But I remember some episode I was on the set for somebody wanted to do something where there was a conversation at the desk and then the person walked off and then it sort of jumped to the other side of the room near the hallway leading to the into the kitchen, and they're like, all right, we wanted cameras are here and here, and then we jumped to this shot over here,

and Randall was like, I don't think it's possible. The camera operator would have to get all the way into the annex where Toby sits in order for that to happen, and we were like, hone. He was like, well, let me try it, and so we took a ke, loaded a camera onto his back, onto his shoulder, and they rehearsed the scene and then Randall ran down the stairs, ran through the parking lot and ran up the stairs with a gigantic camera on his shoulder to see if he could get set up in the annex to shoot

into the kitchen from the other side in time. And he was like a second late, but he was like, all right, I'm gonna say that that's possible. And it was like again, it's going back to this thing I was saying earlier. We're like all of this stuff that like is it real? Could it really happen? Like does everyone have to be in character at their seats for

half an hour before we roll? Like it's a little bit actory and a little bit like, well we're like this enter this fictional realm, and like it's a little embarrassing.

It's a little method, right, and and that stuff is a little bit like you roll your eyes a little bit, but look at the result and it isn't that unless you have people like Randall and Matt who were like, well, wait a second, what's the reality of this, Like if there's two cameras, which we pretty much established that this documentary cruit has two cameras, I mean I remember Jeff Blitz coming who was a documentary filmmaker and him directing I was talking to him about the theory of the

show and this kind of standard pattern that we would go through directors, and I was saying, like, you have to set up your shots as if they could really be captured. And he was like, well, based on the show, these are the most talented documentary camera operators of all time, because I seemed to get everything. And I was like, yes they are. They're very talented cameary filmmakers. But you have to make sure you get everything or that everything

you get is gettable by real people. Now. The rules were very, very very strict for like three or four years. As they went on, they got a little less strict, And I remember having conversations in season four about oh no, it was in season three. It was it was the

Traveling Salesman episode. Lee Gene and I wrote it, and basically like you went off with Dwight and Jim, you went off with Phillis and Carroll, you went off with Daily and Ryan, and there were cameras back in the office, and we were like, well, what do we do now, right? And Greg was like, you know, the documentary company is doing another documentary somewhere else, And it just got into a bunch of festivals and it got bought for a lot of money and they're flushed with cash and they

hired other operators. Okay, let's go, and it was just like, okay, so we're relaxing their rules a little bit because there were suddenly five or six games um, but for a long time, like, you don't get the purity of what the show was unless you create those rules and stick

to them. And I'd say like, sorry, you gotta, we gotta, and we would cheat sometimes we would have security cam footage rarely, like in the episode where there was a the Ryan burned the toast, I think there's a security cam shot because we really wanted the shot of Michael shoving people out of the way and running out the door, and there's no way to get that with the cameras that we needed still in that thing. Whatever, So we

would cheat sometimes. But it was funny because when Greg and I started Parks and Wreck, which is also a mockumentary, we were like, okay, the the the deal is the Office was such a success that now the document terrans have a lot more tools, Like we were like, now the rules are even looser, and we would set up shot and so like if you track through the entire history of both of those shows. By the end the documentary crews were like there were fifteen cameras and thirty

eight sound guys and whatever. Um. I think that's the thing that they did keep through the end though they wouldn't use a shot where a camera guy whatever. Never did that. That was the one hard and fast rule. Like if if Michael was addressing a group of people and you were right over his shoulder onto the group of people, you could not then cut over the through the crowd back flat on Michael where you saw space on both sides of him where one of the that

camera would be there. I don't think they ever broke that rule. If they did, it was very late in the game. There were times when we kind of needed to do something like that and Randall or Matt would walk around and go like, well, what if the camera's hiding behind something next to him or whatever. We would stage him near a pillar and the idea it was the camera was over there and then like got out

of the way. Like because in real life Matt and Randall would communicate with each other were using hand signals. I'm I'm demonstrating this as if this isn't a podcast. But they would communicate. They would wave like I'm going this way or back up or whatever, like in the middle of a take, and so we began to feel like, okay, well that's what they would do in real life. They were.

So there were times when there was a camera in a certain place and then when you cut to the other side, like it was a real close call whether you would have seen that camera. But as long as Randall and ma could work it out where Randall would like duck out of the way in time, they'll be like, Okay,

well that's possible. So if they're again very talented, they're very good, really well, but I really do it bears repeating, like, I don't think this show is what it is without the adherence to that kind of reality and those rules that Greg and Can and everybody else set up. You know. All right, folks, I'm gonna stop Mike there for now, but he will be back. So if you're wondering why didn't we talk about most, don't worry. We will get to that. MOS will be discussed, as well as lots

of other juicy tidbits. Thank you all for joining me. I hope you have the best week ever and we will be back next time for more of the Office Deep Dive. The Office Deep Dive is hosted and executive produced by me Brian Baumgartner, alongside our executive producer, Lang Lee. Our senior producer is Tessa Kramer. Our associate producer is Emily Carr, and our assistant editor is Diego Tapia. My

main man in the booth is Alec Moore. Our theme song Bubble and Squeak, performed by my great friend Creed Breton, and the episode was mixed by Seth Olansky. Hi guys, I'm Jade Ivan and I host Tell Me About It, the podcast that is the antithesis of a success story podcast, where we leave things like girl Boss, energy and lucky breaks at the door and instead celebrate and commiserate about

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