July
26
Comic-Con: The Office, In Their Own Words
[Posted by Erin Maxwell]
"Feast your eyes on the greatest writing staff in human history," said Rainn Wilson, introducing the writers of The Office. "Behold their gorgeous, gorgeous writer bodies."
It's been three days of Comic-Con. Let's let the writers speak for themselves:
On Comic-Con
Greg Daniels: I always wanted to come to Comic-Con, but I wanted to spend time with my kids. I regret that now.
The Office vs. the office
Jennifer Celotta: One time we were just watching the animated cube bounce around the screen. Greg asked us what we were doing and we said, "It's just about to land in the corner."
Improv vs. scripted material
Michael Schur/"Mose": Rainn is a magical genius who creates all his own lines on the spot. Actually, we usually shoot the script a few times, but then we will let the actors and the writers tinker with it by adding lines. What gets in the show is a Frankenstein version of what we wrote.
Greg Daniels: The creators of the British Office, Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, told us to make the actors great. Sometimes this is too successful.
Favorite characters
Mindy Kaling/"Kelly": I like writing for Ryan, especially for this season. He turned into the biggest d-bag of all time.
BJ Novak/"Ryan": I love writing for Michael. It's so cool to see someone in authority that is so innocent and so wrong.
On Pam and Jim
Daniels: We took inspiration from the classics. Sam and Diane. Ross and Rachel.
Novak: Spence and Heidi.
Using life experiences in writing
Rainn Wilson: I killed my girlfriend's cat once.
Anthony Ferrell: I used to work at Countrywide Loans and the printer would always fail.
Daniels: We had the Dundies at my real office, but we called it the Swampies. And we also had the office Olympics there.
Kaling: Michael, isn't there that time you walked into Greg's office as you saw his penis?
On being, as one fan put it, "the resident sex symbol for The Office."
Wilson: I feel great about that. Eat my shorts, John Krazanski!
Subscribe to this blog's feed
Check out video of "The Office" Comic-Con panel here: http://youtube.com/watch?v=VSyRuBN658o
Posted by: Brad | July 26, 2008 at 05:09 PM
Hilarious. I'd love to hear the backstory about the cat.
Posted by: Liz | July 26, 2008 at 07:43 PM
Entire Office Writers' Panel in fullscreen format:
http://www.nbc.com/Comic-Con/video/clips/the-office/279939/
Posted by: JoieDeMer | July 27, 2008 at 06:37 PM