PaleyFest DVD Series: The Office
In celebration of its accomplishments, the Paley Center for Media held a panel discussion with the cast and crew of The Office on March 2, 2007. With the likes of showrunner Greg Daniels, executive producer Ben Silverman, director of photography Randall Einhorn and such cast members as Steve Carell, Rainn Wilson and Jenna Fischer on hand, the close to ninety minute event featured a range of topics to the delight of the many fans in attendance.
“The underlying material was fantastic and it had a universality to it, in kind of that dead-end work place,” Ben Silverman remarked in regards to how and why the American version of The Office came about. “We saw this opportunity for a character and potentially an American actor to kind of create a new Archie Bunker, which I think Steve (Carell) has just owned and brought his own personality and vibe and energy. The whole show kind of lives in this very edgy space around the office and around issues like race and class and sexual orientation and it does it all through comedy, very much in the way that Archie Bunker did thirty five years ago. And there’s not anything else really exploring those themes.”
Many of the writers on The Office also portray characters on the series. Mindy Kaling, for instance, plays Kelly Kapoor while B.J. Novak is Ryan Howard and Paul Lieberstein portrays Toby Flenderson. At PaleyFest, showrunner Greg Daniels explained that such dual duties were intentional. “I’m a big fan of a lot of English comedy and it seems like over there the actors and the writers are the same people,” he said. “So when I went to hire the writing staff I was looking for people who could do some performing too. And when we looked at the acting staff, hired a lot of improv people who could kind of make up their own material, so we’re kind of right in the middle, in between both camps.”
The primary area in which the actors get to showcase their improv skills is within the confessional, the “talking head” scenes that are interspersed into the main narrative in the same fashion as a reality show or documentary. “Even from the pilot, we had the actors come up with their own stuff a lot of times,” Daniels revealed. “I think that’s probably the area that has the most original generation of stuff from the actors. If they are feeling less than inspired there’s a complete script and often times some of them enjoy making stuff up around the edges.”
Eventually the discussion turned to Randall Einhorn, the director of photography for The Office. He is the person responsible for everything from the lighting to the filming style of the series, and Greg Daniels commented that his importance and influence goes further than the average director of photography on a television series. “The thing about Randall is that in addition to directing episodes and being the DP, he is the man holding the camera,” Daniels explained. “He becomes a character in the show because Randall has an enormous amount of judgment and leeway (in regards to) where he’s looking and often that adds tremendous amount of comedy, the timing of the guy choosing to look over here, seeing what this person thinks and back and forth.”
Melora Hardin, who plays Jane Levinson, agreed with Daniels. “A lot of times you’ll do shows and they’ll do your close-up and then they’ll do someone else’s close-up,” she told the audience at PaleyFest. “With this show, literally the camera can be pointing this way in one minute and then swung all the way around to behind him. And you have to always be on your game and prepared and completely in the moment, which is so fun and so exciting for all of us because I think we’re surprised as often as the audience.”
While Randall Einhorn may indeed be an unseen character on the NBC sitcom, the true star of the series is Michael Scott. Actor Steve Carell offered a lengthy explanation of the inner workings of the character that he has so effectively brought to life. “I think he’s a man who clearly lacks self-awareness and I’ve always said that if he even caught a glimpse of who he really is, his head would explode,” he began. “And actually Ricky (Gervais) said about his character and I think it applies to Michael Scott too is that if you don’t know a Michael Scott, you are Michael Scott. It’s really fun to play obviously because he can pretty much get away with saying anything and the way the writers have created the dialogue, he can say the most incredibly offensive things and yet he, in and of himself, I don’t think he is an offensive person.”
A little later, Carell elaborated further. “It’s not that he is intrinsically racist or homophobic or sexist, he just doesn’t have a frame of reference. He’s not capable of understanding. And once he does gleam some understanding, he misinterprets it and it becomes something else altogether. But I think, at least the way I feel about the character, is that he has a decent heart, he’s a decent person and he’s just trying his best.”
Then there’s Dwight Schrute, Michael Scott’s “assistant to” within the confines of Dunder Mifflin Paper Company, and actor Rainn Wilson also reflected on his small screen persona. “I remember saying to (Greg Daniels) or sending an e-mail very earlier on, I just want to be careful that Dwight is not just this annoying villain,” he remarked. “And Greg sent me this page long ode to Dwight describing how he viewed him and his role in the office. He was talking about how Dwight has this adolescent love of hierarchies and that’s always stuck with me. If I ever get a little ungrounded in a scene or what I am playing, I’m like, ‘Oh, adolescent love of hierarchies, right.’ And I’m right there. I don’t see Dwight as angry at the system, I see him just loving the system.” Wilson then jokingly added, “He would have made an excellent Nazi.”
The Office is more than just Michael Scott and Dwight Schrute, however, as the series contains an ensemble cast that is on par with any other that has been on network television. According to the actors who participated in the PaleyFest panel discussion, the chemistry that is evident onscreen is equally present off. “I think it comes from us all sort of wanting to do this show that we believed in that not a lot of people believed in because a lot of people were fans of the original,” David Denman, Roy Anderson on the series, explained. “They’re like, ‘Why are you doing that?’ I remember my agent saying, ‘You want to go in on this?’ And I’m like, yes, I think this is going to be funny. And I think we all got to see it grow together, so we’re all like proud of something that we built. I think that helps us all have this common bond.”
Leslie David Baker, who portrays Stanley Hudson on the show, had a similar assessment of his castmates. “I’ve worked in real offices before and you get to work in the morning and you look around at the people who are there and go like, ‘Damn, nobody died on the way here today,’” he deadpanned. “And with this group, I don’t feel that way. I’m actually glad to see them in the morning. But it’s ironic that I have to play a person who has to act like, ‘Damn, nobody died on the way here today.’”
Fittingly enough, the last words of the evening were left for fan favorite Creed Bratton, who explained exactly what his eponymously named character on The Office did at Dunder Mifflin. “My character is quality assurance,” he explained. “People call up and ask about the quality of the paper and I assure them that it’s good.”
Fans of television comedies need no such assurance of the quality of The Office, however, as both the series as well as the 2007 PaleyFest panel discussion clearly demonstrate.
Anthony Letizia (July 8, 2011)
Discuss on the alterna-tv.com Forum
