Rabbit. Hey, kids, welcome to the Phile for a Friday, it's May 1st already. Congratulations, you successfully made to to the end of April. Welcome to Level 5 of Jumanji. My new month budget was gas... zero dollars, entertainment... zero dollars, clothes... zero dollars and groceries... $1,624. Walmart is now asking customers to use masks. Good luck with that. You can't even get them all to wear pants.
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden today categorically denied allegations from a former Senate staffer that he sexually assaulted her in the early 1990s, saying “this never happened.” Biden’s first public remarks on the allegation by a former employee, Tara Reade, come at a critical moment for the presumptive Democratic nominee as he tries to relieve mounting pressure after weeks of leaving denials to his campaign. “I’m saying unequivocally, it never, never happened,” Biden said in an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” Biden said he will ask the National Archives to determine whether there is any record of such a complaint being filed, but he said repeatedly that he doesn’t believe such a record exists. “The former staffer has said she filed a complaint back in 1993,” Biden said. “But she does not have a record of this alleged complaint. The papers from my Senate years that I donated to the University of Delaware do not contain personnel files.” Biden said, “There is only one place a complaint of this kind could be... the National Archives.” The former vice president said “there are so many inconsistencies” in Reade’s various accounts. But Biden said he does not “question her motive.” He said that over his five decades in public life, none of his employees, including Reade, were asked to sign nondisclosure agreements. “There’s no NDA signed,” Biden said. “No one’s ever signed, I’ve never asked anybody to sign an NDA. There are no NDAs, period, in my case. None.” Republicans worried about President Donald Trump’s increasingly precarious political standing are seizing on Reade’s allegation to portray Democrats as hypocrites who only defend women who allege wrongdoing against conservatives. They are digging in despite the fact that it could renew attention on the multiple sexual assault allegations lodged against Trump. Democrats, meanwhile, are in an awkward position of vigorously validating women who come forward with their stories while defending the man who will be their standard-bearer in what many in the party consider the most important election of their lifetimes. “It’s not helping, it’s just damaging... not only to the person who has come forward, but it’s also damaging the candidate,” said former Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Donna Brazile before Biden’s interview. The November contest between Biden and Trump will be the first presidential race of the #MeToo era, which has led numerous women to come forward with allegations of sexual assault. Trump has been accused of assault and unwanted touching by numerous women, allegations he denies. Women are a core constituency for Democrats, and Biden has a mixed history. While he wrote the Violence Against Women Act as a senator, he also came under heavy criticism for his handling of Anita Hill’s Senate testimony in the 1990s. Just before he launched his 2020 campaign, several women accused him of unwanted touching, behavior for which he apologized. Biden has pledged to pick a woman as a running mate, and the allegation has left those thought to be in contention in a tough spot. “Women deserve to be heard,” said Stacey Abrams, the former Georgia Democratic governor candidate, “but I also believe that those allegations have to be investigated by credible sources.” That echoed talking points issued by the Biden campaign to surrogates last week that were obtained by the Associated Press. They pointed to investigations by The New York Times, The Washington Post and the AP that found no other allegation of sexual assault and no pattern of sexual misconduct. On Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi also defended Biden. Speaking on CNN, she said she was “satisfied with how he has responded,” even as she acknowledged “it’s a matter that he has to deal with.” Some Democratic donors and fundraisers say the issue has not come up in calls with party financiers. Others worry that it could be used against Biden, much as Hillary Clinton’s private email server and the activities of the Clinton Foundation were wielded against her by Trump. Some female Democratic operatives expressed concerns the allegation is particularly damaging because it’s an indictment of Biden’s central campaign rationale: that he provides a moral counter to Trump and that the election is a “battle for the soul of America.” “The stakes could not be higher for defeating Donald Trump... but at the same time, I think we have to apply a consistent standard for how we treat allegations of sexual assault, and also be clear-eyed about how Donald Trump will use these allegations in the general election campaign,” said Claire Sandberg, who worked as Bernie Sanders’ organizing director. Republicans are trying to take advantage of an issue that was, in 2016, more fraught when Trump was asked to answer for the more than two dozen women who alleged varying levels of sexual assault and harassment. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told Fox News on Thursday that Biden will “have to participate in releasing all the information related to” the allegation, a stance he didn’t take on the allegations against Trump. The GOP argues Democrats aren’t being consistent, pointing to aggressive questioning of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh when he faced an allegation of sexual assault. Biden on Friday pushed back on those notions. “What I said during the Kavanagh hearings was that she had a right to be heard,” Biden said. Biden said “women are to be believed, given the benefit of the doubt. If they come forward... they should start off with the presumption the presumption they are telling the truth. Then you have to look at the circumstances and the facts. And the facts of this case do not exist.” Speaking about the allegation for the first time on Thursday, Trump said Biden “should respond” before proceeding to criticize Kavanaugh’s treatment of Kavanaugh as “an absolute disgrace to our country.”
Many parents are feeling the heat as this Harvard law professor attacked homeschooling in the latest issue of Harvard Magazine and again in the most recent issue of the Arizona Law Review. Elizabeth Bartholet, a professor at the renowned Harvard Law School, called to ban homeschooling, explaining how the risks of homeschooling basically violates children’s rights. Bartholet explained that homeschooling violates fundamental rights by giving homeschooling parents “authoritarian control” over their children. She furthers the argument by saying how this kind of power is used to promote “racist ideologues.” She told Harvard Magazine, “The issue is, do we think that parents should have 24/7, essentially authoritarian control over their children from ages zero to 18? I think that’s dangerous.” She wrote in the Arizona Law Review that “descendants of the original conservative Christian wing. Estimates range… from a majority up to 90 percent,” essentially using Christianity as one example of how, “parents are committed to homeschooling largely because they reject mainstream, democratic culture and values and want to ensure that their children adopt their own particular religious and social views.” Bartholet backs her argument with claims that 2 million American children are homeschooled, adding that this number is equivalent to that in charter schools and greater in Catholic schools. She goes on explaining that she believes homeschooling families choose to homeschool their children because “exposing their children to ideas such as secularism, atheism, feminism, and value relativism is inconsistent with the values they espouse and undermines their ability to inculcate in their children their beliefs in the sacred, absolute truth of the Bible.” But what really set people off in her argument was when she made another claim that homeschoolers do it to emphasize more racist ideologues and to encourage racial segregation. A Harvard University graduate and homeschooler, Kerry McDonald, wrote a letter to Harvard Magazine’s editor against the law professor stating, “Aside from its biting, one-sided portrayal of homeschooling families that mischaracterizes the vast majority of today’s homeschoolers, it is filled with misinformation and incorrect data.” More criticisms have been made about Bartholet’s claim, explaining how her argument is one-sided and is too generalized to describe the entire homeschooling regime. Other criticisms have explained that her argument basically advocating that children who go to public schools are better able to understand democracy at its core, makes no sense with the limits the public education system has. “She is concerned with families having this power, while I worry about giving that power to government,” a statement to ponder over in deciding how to feel about a credible academic tearing apart homeschooling with no concessions. What do you think about this Harvard Law professor’s claims? It’s a little interesting to release this argument during a pandemic when everyone is forced to homeschool, don’t you think?
Hand sanitizer seems almost impossible to come across these days, but there’s a brand new hand sanitizer on the market that’s actually in stock. No, it’s not a Germ-X or Purell competitor. This hand cleansing gel does disinfect like those popular brands, but it doesn’t smell like alcohol. Stinky Ass Hand Sanitizer smells like pure ass. Don’t believe it? A kid bought the real hand cleansing gel and decided to play a prank on his grandma. The gross smell must be that bad because Grandma starts cursing out her grandson. If Grandma says it smells like shit, then it smells like shit. I believe her. If you’re not convinced that the Stinky Ass Hand Cleansing Gel smells like farts and buttcrack, you should read the Amazon customer reviews. It’s a real hand sanitizer. This is the perfect gag gift for germaphobes. As someone who used hand sanitizer way before COVID-19 made it popular, anyone could’ve fooled me with this funny prank. Or should I say funky prank? I never say no to hand sanitizer. (Please, no one get any ideas and try to prank me with this. I feel so bad for the victim’s hands once they have used it. They have to walk around smelling like they wiped their ass with their hands all because someone wanted to be funny. I have to admit, this is a great new prank. The unsuspecting label is genius.
There truly isn’t a better time than now to prank someone with Stinky Ass Hand Sanitizer. Who is saying no to clean hands these days? If you’re feeling inspired to play a practical joke on someone that involves shitty smells, consider Liquid Ass Fart Spray. A customer said, “This stuff smells less like a fart and more like an unwashed anus of a homeless man who just jogged a mile in 95 degree heat.” These hilarious prank products can all be found on Amazon. They make excellent funny gag gifts for the jokester of the family. Christmas will be here before you know it, so get a head start on stocking stuffers!
De Lune, an organization that works nonstop to provide safe and effective menstrual health solutions everywhere, published an article entitled, “Fertilizing Your Plants with Period Blood: A How-to (and If-to) Guide”. At first glance of this topic... using period blood to help your plants grow seems like a big, monster yikes. And it’s not not a big yikes, to be fair. But fertilizing plants with menstrual blood is a thing that, apparently, people already do. The article basically says, “Hey, you might have heard of this. Yeah it’s a thing and here’s how to do it, if you’re curious.” That’s reasonable enough. The article goes on to explain the science and justification behind using period blood as free, extremely organic fertilizer. Menstrual blood contains three electrolyte nutrients that are important to both human and plant metabolism: nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium... the very same combo you’ll find in store-bought fertilizer. Fertilizing with blood (albeit not human blood) is, to some extent, already a thing farmers do, especially organic farmers who are limited in the types of fertilizers they can legally use under organic standards. According to Matt Gura, Greenhouse Operations Manager of Pure Green Farms, “Plants thrive in organic matter because it provides the perfect balance of mineral nutrition. Blood meal is a popular and effective fertilizer in organic production. The author, Courtney Mayszak, even draws her own lines in period blood usage. Also, if you squirm at the sight (or smell) of blood, this practice is perhaps not for you. For the sake of convenience, I recommend it only for menstrual cup or disc users, as hand-squeezing a saturated tampon into a plant is a bit much. That’s an image. All of this is to say that, if this is a way you want to feel in tune with the earth, knock yourself out. Really this article does a perfect job of explaining the process and justifications for doing it or not doing it in a wonderfully adult, reasonable way. I’d just add that, if you do decide to do this, that’s fine, but only share that information with your crunchiest friends. I don’t want to be hanging out at your house, enjoying drinks or whatever, and then have that bomb dropped on me while a troublingly lush fern sits 11 inches away from me in the corner. Not any more than I want to be at a barbecue in someone’s backyard and have them point to a pile of dirt and say, “That’s where I compost my feces!” But hey, it’s a free country.
I think we have suffered enough, May will be better...
Because everyone in Italy is quarantined, the natural wildlife has returned to the water and forests...
Church signs have been getting very creative recently...
Haha. It's good to wear a mask and gloves when you go out but some people are taking it way too far...
I was thinking of getting a new tattoo once the tattoo places reopen but someone had the same idea I had.
If I had a TARDIS I would probably end up where Hitler is taking to a snow ravaged solider...
One thing I like to do for fun is to look up words on Twitter to see what people are talking about and one of those words is "Foghat." Here's a tweet I saw recently...
Which guy from Foghat? Must be Roger. Man, those protestors sure have some dumbass signs...
Hey, future kids, this was Tarzan...
Now here's something that will cheer you up... a pic of "dog food."
Now from the home office in Port Jefferson, here is...
Top Phive Things Said By People Who Still Have No Idea What Day It Is
5. Okay, now that classes are over I really don't know what day of the week it is.
4. I'm so messed up I don't even know what day it is anymore as I thought today was Thursday and once again I missed my Zoom meeting. LOL. Please tell me I'm not the only one.
3. Some days I eat all day. Other days I forget to eat at all. I don't even know what day it is. Send help, and chicken nuggets.
2. How does my professor expect me to go to my Zoom Tuesday/Thursday classes if I don't know what day it is.
And the number one things said by a person who still has no idea what day it is is...
1. How am I supposed to take my birth control when I don't know what day it is.
A Florida man has been arrested for practicing medicine without a license resulting in bodily injury ... which is a second-degree felony... for performing a castration on another man, who requested the surgery for reasons of sexual gratification. Seventy-four-year-old amateur genital surgeon Gary Van Ryswyk of Sebring, Florida had just performed a failed-ish castration on a man he met online when a Highlands County Sheriff’s Deputy showed up to Van Ryswyk’s house, responding to a 911 hang-up call. It was there that the deputy discovered a man in the bedroom, bleeding profusely from the groin. According to authorities, Van Ryswyk had a full operating room set up in his house, complete with medical equipment, painkillers, and a camera to record the, again, sexual in nature procedure. The sheriff also spotted a pink container near the bed which held two "body parts" (hence the ish in failed-ish). Van Ryswyk told police that he met the man on a dark web site called eunuch.com, which is for men with a castration fetish. Van Ryswyk was able to convince the man to choose his redneck medical clinic after informing him that he’d performed castration surgeries on many animals and also, one time, a guy at a motel. The victim was taken to a hospital and then flown to a medical center but is in stable condition. While most us may be rightfully recoiling in horror that some guy was getting his rocks off by literally getting his rocks off, there is, somehow, a worse part to this story. For whatever reason, the Highlands County Sheriff’s Office decided to make their statement to the press about a guy getting his testicles sawed off in some dirty Florida man’s filthy house a pun-laden dad joke essay. It is… egregious. Just listen to these quotes. “This one is a little... let’s just say sensitive. You could even say it’s kinda nuts.” You are professionals, sirs and madams. But most of them don’t make the cut when it comes to being memorable. This one will definitely hang around in the memory for a while. Nearby, there was a pink container which held two body parts that had recently been much closer to the victim. “Van Ryswyk had dropped the ball on this one.” Oh, you by ball do you mean the two testicles he illegally chopped off a likely mentally ill man? Normally I’d excuse this a little bit because I would assume that the job gets a little boring for the people at the sheriff’s office but considering it’s a Florida sheriff’s office, there’s no way that’s true. You can read the entire statement on the Highlands County Sheriff’s Office’s Facebook page. Kind of just makes you wonder how many terrible "take your ball and go home" jokes they made while the new eunuch was getting loaded into the ambulance. Keep this stuff in the group texts, guys.
Font
You know, the way the words look
This creative mask use.
Okay, let's take a look to see what's going on in Port Jeff...
Not too much. I really wish the camera pointed the other way into the village. Hmmm.
President Donald Trump likes to talk about the most, the best, the thing that nobody has ever seen. Now he is trying to make a virtue of a lower number, arguing that the efforts of his administration have warded off a far greater death toll than otherwise would have been seen. But the reported U.S. death toll on Wednesday crept past 60,000, a figure that Trump in recent weeks had suggested might be the total death count. He had cited the estimate as a sign of relative success after the White House previously warned the U.S. could suffer 100,000 to 240,000 deaths. Trump also has repeatedly used the outer band of any estimate... the potential that 2.2 million Americans could have died had there been no interventions... to try to make his case most powerfully. The U.S. death toll from COVID-19 is certain to keep growing from here. And, like the unemployment rate, the numbers also will be revised... and likely upward, due to underreporting. The focus on death tallies also overlooks other important markers such as immunity levels and infection rates. “All these pieces of data are like a giant jigsaw puzzle that you’re putting together,” said Dr. Howard Markel, director of the University of Michigan’s Center for the History of Medicine. “The death toll is just one of them.” Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, said it’s simplistic for Trump or other public officials to focus on the death toll since it’s incomplete. Cases not initially classified as COVID-19 could be added at a later date. “The problem is you look at the number on your television screen and the number looks real,” she said. “What you don’t have is that that number should have an asterisk next to it.” Dr. Deborah Birx, coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force, on March 29th revealed models projecting the deaths of 100,00-240,000 Americans, assuming social distancing efforts were ongoing. At the same time, she said epidemiology models initially had predicted a worst-case scenario of 1.5 million to 2.2 million U.S. deaths without mitigation efforts such as social distancing, hand washing and staying home as much as possible. Soon after, Trump began speculating that the 100,000 figure was an outer limit. Later, he leaned more toward a 60,000 projection. “The minimum number was 100,000 lives, and I think we’ll be substantially under that number,” he said April 10th. “Hard to believe that if you had 60,000... you could never be happy, but that’s a lot fewer than we were originally told and thinking.” Trump tempers his comments by saying even one death is too many, but he’s also appeared relieved at the notion of a toll of 60,000. That’s more in a matter of months than the 58,220 U.S. military deaths during the Vietnam War but far below the 675,000 deaths from the 1918 flu pandemic that Trump often cites. Trump has used the 2.2. million death estimate to suggest he saved millions of lives through leadership that he and other administration officials say was “decisive.” His actions have been challenged by state, local and public health officials who have complained about shortages of testing supplies and safety gear for doctors and nurses. Trump often cites restricting travel from China, where the virus originated, and from Europe, where it took hold before exploding in the U.S., as among his most important first steps. “We did the right thing, because if we didn’t do it, you would have had a million people, a million and a half people, maybe 2 million people dead,” the president said on April 20th. “Now, we’re going toward 50, I’m hearing, or 60,000 people,” he continued. “One is too many. I always say it. One is too many. But we’re going toward 50 or 60,000 people.” Trump offered a revised estimate Monday when asked if he deserved a second term with a death toll akin to the American lives lost in Vietnam. “Yeah, we’ve lost a lot of people,” he said in the Rose Garden. “But if you look at what original projections were... 2.2 million... we’re probably heading to 60,000, 70,000. It’s far too many. One person is too many for this.” Calvin Jillson, a presidential scholar at Southern Methodist University, contrasted Trump’s public talk of death counts to the reluctance of administration and military officials to discuss Vietnam War body counts. Jillson said Trump doesn’t realize the numbers are always “going to turn negative at some point” and that the way he talks about the death count suggests a lack of empathy. “It highlights how infrequently he will actually talk about these numbers as people, as loved ones, as fellow Americans, as people no longer with us,” Jillson said. “That is natural to a politician whose stock in trade is to feel the audience and to empathize with them.” The White House had resisted any public announcement about a potential death toll until Birx and other experts unveiled their own model of the anticipated cost to the nation... both with and without social distancing measures. Earlier last month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began posting projections on the number of anticipated U.S. deaths from the coronavirus from seven different research teams. The teams use different types of data and make different assumptions, including about the effects of social distancing, use of face coverings and other measures. The most recent summary showed modelers predicted a cumulative U.S. death toll of 50,000 to 100,000 by mid-May. CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield declined to predict the death toll during an Associated Press interview Tuesday. “I use models to try to predict the impact of different interventions. That’s really the important thing,” Redfield said.
If you or someone you know is experiencing substance abuse, call the National Drug Helpline at 1-844-289-0879.
This is very exciting for me... the 123rd book to be pheatured in the Phile's Book Club is...
Ms. Sally Field will be the guest on the Phile a week from today... next Friday.
The lifeguard told the mother to make her young son stop urinating in the pool. "Everyone knows," the mother lectured him, "that from time to time, young children will urinate in a pool." "Oh really?" said the lifeguard, "from the diving board!?!?"
Today's guest is an American television producer, writer, and actor. He was a producer and writer for the comedy series "The Office," and co-created "Parks and Recreation" with producer Greg Daniels. He created "The Good Place," co-created the comedy series "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" and was a producer on the series "Master of None." So, he didn't do too much. Haha. Please welcome to the Phile... Michael Schur.
Me: Hey, Michael, welcome to the Phile. How are you?
Michael: Hello, Jason, I am well. Thank you.
Me: Okay, so, I have to admit I have seen "The Office" and "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" but have never seen "Parks & Recreation" or "A Good Place." But I know a lot of people who love those shows. I do know those shows have a lot of "nice" characters. So, what makes you like to write those kind of characters?
Michael: Throughout the history of television there are characters who are generally good people aimed to do good and be nice and kind and are emphatic and are other directed and all those sort of things, then there's other characters who are miserable who want to create evil and be terrible. I personally just prefer the former. I've always been attracted to and identified with characters who were warm and nice and sort of default setting was kind instead of cruel. It seems sort of reductive and simplistic to say that but if I go personally back through my history of who I identified with or which characters I personally liked they all seemed to have in common so it makes a certain amount of sense now that I'm writing them that's how I would lean.
Me: Okay, I interviewed D'arcy Carden from "The Good Place" who kinda explained what the show is about. What was it about to you?
Michael: This was a show that not only looks at goodness but what it takes to make someone good. If you watch it the more good you are on Earth, the more good you do on Earth, the more likely end up in the "good place" which come people will call "Heaven."
Me: So, is working on a show about what makes us be good makes you think differently about what makes us be good? That I think is the most annoying question I ever asked on the Phile. Hahahahaha.
Michael: Ha ha ha ha ha. Yeah, yeah. I would say two things. One is the show came out of me thinking about that a lot. It's a thing I thought about a lot on my life. It's the central question of existence, right, it's the "what am I doing? Why am I doing it? Is it good or bad? Could it be better?" If you don't think about those or ask yourself those four questions all the time what are you doing. Like what else is there? So it's a thing I've been thinking about my whole life and wrestling with because there are a lot of theories... there are religious theories, there are ethical theories, there are personal theories and a lot of art is asking those big questions. And I had asked them in my personal life just walking around and being on Earth but I asked them really explicitly at least through writing. So when I had to create a new show I thought that's what I'm interested in. I don't know, I assume other people are. I don't know for sure but I assume other people are interested. I figured there ought to be a way to do a comedy show where we're asking those questions.
Me: When D'Arcy Carden was here on the Phile back in June last year she said, "They sort of figured out a way to like talk about these really big moral philosophy basically wrapped in a fart joke I think that's what Ted Dansen said." And she said, "Like we're discussing ethics and discussing like heaven and hell but then there's a great fart joke." What do you think about that?
Michael: Jason, "The Good Place" wasn't your typical television show. The thing people got out of it as a viewer is not sheer entertainment. You can potentially, and actually they do, get some guidance on philosophy and how to live a good life.
Me: Does knowing that change the stakes of this show opposed to other shows that you have worked on?
Michael: I think that every writer ideally is simply writing about something that he or she thinks is interesting. We pick a topic or a setting or a group of characters or an autobiographical piece of our life or something that we think is interesting and a story worth telling and we try to write it. That's the ideal situation for everybody. This just happens what I find interesting and the way I find it interesting is that I don't understand a lot of it, it's really hard to read this stuff that I have read a lot of books while creating this show and writing this show. I have finished very few of them. They're really hard to read, they're really dense and many of them I find that I need to be more versed, I didn't start in the right place, I don't have the foundation to fully read and to fully understand almost any of this stuff. I also think this stuff is worth talking about. It's interesting I tried to write this show that's a version of that idea. What we tried to do simply is here's all their theories distilled down to their ethesis in way that we understand them and in a way we hope anyone can understand them and there is value in mulling them over. That's all we tried to do. We're tried to say the world might be a better place if we all just have even the most cursory understanding of the basic ideas of what makes someone good or bad. And also we liked jokes. We liked making jokes and we had a bunch of really funny people in the cast and if we can have those funny people in the cast tell a bunch of jokes while also throwing up in the air the possibilities of how we can have a good life and we could tell compelling stories which is also fun and we can give people 21 minutes and 30 seconds of free Ted Dansen and Kristen Bell every week, well that seems a pretty good thing.
Me: Haha. I agree. So, do you think the other writers had a hard time writing this show?
Michael: The people that were creating the silliest and goofiest show are trying to put something of value into the Universe, even if that thing is imply we are trying to distract the viewer for 20 minutes and make them laugh and make their day a little bit brighter. At it's essence is not that different from any other show its just more explicit about its aims and intentions I think.
Me: Do all your shows you created and worked on have something in common?
Michael: It's been said there's always this central romantic relationship. And in that central relationship it's typically one that has broken how TV sitcoms treat relationships normally.
Me: What do you mean by that?
Michael: What I mean is their might be some tension but they get together, they can stay together and the show can remain generally interesting as opposed a show ending with will they or won't they and the shows series finale finding out will they or won't they and more than often they "will they." Getting together is not the point of the series.
Me: Hmmm. Do you have an example?
Michael: In "Parks and Recreation" when Amy Poehler's character Leslie Knope and Adam Scott's Ben Wyatt exchanged wedding vowels.
Me: Is that how you like romantic relationships play out on the screen?
Michael: I would say a couple of things about this. One, my original experience of working on a long term relationship on TV was Jim and Pam and again that came from source material of Tim and Dawn from the British "Office" and that relationship had been thought over from every angle by Greg Daniels. He had notebook, after notebook, after notebook on thoughts and feelings and ideas about Jim and Pam and who they were and what made their relationship specific and unique. The writing staff executed that relationship so slowly and carefully. Greg used to describe it like a spider-web. If you shifted your angle how you're looking at it it would catch the light in different ways. A little bit of dew would glisten at a certain angle but if you cocked your head the other way it would sort of disappear and you wouldn't be able to see it. It was this rather fragile delegate thing that was growing in the margins of the show. That was part of the genius of "The Office."
Me: I loved Jim and Pam... especially Pam. Did you learn anything from writing and working out their relationship?
Michael: We told these tiny, tiny, tiny little stories about how delegate relationships blossoms in a very, very slow way. But the main lesson I learned from it was we cannot just do that, we cannot just run the same play book with another two people on another show, in another setting, with another theme. The main reason for that is the audiences have become very savvy, we're 70 years into TV at the point and every story has been told a hundred ways and the people don't have the patience for this anymore. If we're just trying to run a standard playbook of like this is a Jim and Pam, or this is like a Sam and Diane or this is like Ross and Rachel, everyone is just on to us very quickly. So the goal became tell a real story about real people, treat the characters like they're real people and they to figure out how the real relationship will go.
Me: So, what about Leslie and Ben? I have no idea about their relationship. How was that different?
Michael: They had some obstacles that were professional and fewer that were personal and they kind of liked each other after Ben's initial entrance onto the show they liked each other pretty quickly. Once they found they liked each other I thought these two wouldn't break up, that's ridiculous. Why would they break up? They like each other too much.
Me: Did they ever break up?
Michael: They broke up once. Leslie was running for office and Ben was her boss and it was unseemly or perhaps borderline unethical. But that ended because she was like "screw this, I found someone I like, you matter to me and I don't care what the ramifications are. I want us to be together and I'm going to figure it out. i'm still going to run for office. I'm not going to give this up because it's important to me too and we're just going to be together."
Me: Are there any set rule you have for the relationships with the characters?
Michael: The only real rule I followed personally was think about the actual characters and the develop the relationships from who they are and don't run with some other shows playbook. It won't work.
Me: So, your shows are always a hit I think. Why do you think that is?
Michael: I think its because they're very uncynical. These are shows that are hopeful. even "Parks and Rec" which is a show presumably about government even though it's about so much more. It somehow manages to be uncynical.
Me: So, are you an hopeful person? What keeps you uncynical?
Michael: I think I am. And I also think a part of that is just again this is what I prefer. It's my neutral default setting I think is more a green arrow pointing up rather than a red arrow pointing down. Greg Daniels used to describe "The Office" the sort of metaphor... there are a lot of metaphors used for "The Office" and they had to do with not necessarily the actual episode by episode show but the tone or the vive or whatever, it's what we're describing like the feeling we wanted it to present. The visual metaphor that Greg gave us for the show at large was like a paved over concrete boring looking office park parking lot with one little kind of flower peeking up through a crack in the pavement. His point was this is a satire about the modern world of parking lots and office parks and fluorescent lights and drop ceilings. But the soul of the soul, the emotional part of the show was that little flower that somehow found its way. That little tiny bit of brightness that found its way through a crack in this very sort of paved over Universe. That was a very powerful metaphor. I think about that all the time.
Me: Are you ever cynical?
Michael: Look, I can be as cynical as the next guy or girl. I have moments, I think we all do. But it's like okay, pick myself up and dust myself off and go back to the drawing board and try to find something to say that is not that the world stinks. To me that is a better idea than just giving in and shrugging my shoulders and saying LOL, everything sucks.
Me: So, what advice can you give to someone who wants to create their own TV show?
Michael: Well, I don't find that interesting any movie, TV show or book that's just about how terrible everything is. Yeah, the world is scary, there's a lot of terrible stuff in the world. Take it to Twitter. Go complain about that on Twitter. But when I'm making something interactive, that in a sense we're trying to connect with people and connect with our audience and have a dialogue about the world that we're all sharing be descriptive, have a plan. Have a suggestion. It might not work then make another suggestion.
Me: Okay, so, many people I know or saw on the Internet have talked about conspiracy theories about "The Office." Can I ask you some of them?
Michael: Sure, why not?
Me: The first one is Kevin can afford to buy the bar at the end of the series because he's been insider trading or embezzling money on Dunder Mifflin stock for years. What do you say?
Michael: I cannot comment on that because I was not around in the final seasons but I can tell you we did a casino night episode early on where we very casually mentioned that Kevin has a World Series of Poker bracelet because he won a World Series of Poker Tournament, and that did start a number of inside jokes.
Me: Did they mention that on the show?
Michael: I don't think that most of them ever made it into the show, but just that Kevin had this kind of weird other career/life as a high stakes poker player and was constantly sort of disappearing. And then that led to a couple jokes about how he was embezzling money to gamble and to cover his gambling losses.
Me: So, do you think it's true?
Michael: I wasn't around for Seasons 6, 7, 8, 9, but I can tell you that the idea of Kevin being a poker player/slightly loose with the numbers in order to cover his poker losses, that was discussed in the room.
Me: Okay. The next conspiracy theory is the company that is working on this documentary is buying paper to keep the Scranton branch alive.
Michael: Ha ha ha. I don't know if anyone discussed that after I left, but I never heard that one. I love it though. I wish it were true. I wish we had had that idea. That sounds really funny, that their livelihood is now tied to the livelihood of the company. Here's what it would really be: there's a phenomenon these days where billionaires don't know what to do with their money from Silicon Valley or from overseas and they're like, "We want to produce movies." And so the theory I think would be that the documentary is being run by the child of some oil baron and the documentary was in year seven or something, and the billionaire parent of this kid was like, "What the hell have you been doing with my money?" And then that kid was like, "Don't worry, it's going to come out. But you need to start purchasing paper to keep the company afloat, just so I can finish my documentary." That's the one I'll counteroffer for that conspiracy theory.
Me: Hahaha. Okay, I have one more, Michael. Bob Vance of Vance Refrigeration understands free advertising. When he says "Bob Vance, Vance Refrigeration" every time he introduces himself, he is marketing to the cameras and getting free television advertisement.
Michael: I think that's absolutely true. But I would also say two things. Number one, Bob Vance, Vance Refrigeration, I believe we had talked about him, but I think he first appeared in an episode that I wrote that was a Christmas episode in the second season. Our idea of him was always that that's how he introduced himself to everyone, that if he met you at a cocktail party and there were no cameras rolling, or if he met you on the street, no matter where, that's what he said.
Me: Where did that character come from?
Michael: That was based on a friend of mine named Hayes MacArthur who is an actor, and when Hayes MacArthur met you, no matter who you were or where you were, he would introduce himself as Hayes MacArthur, Chicago Illinois, because he was from Chicago. And it always made me laugh. I would say, "Do you know my friend Hayes?" and he would go, "Hayes MacArthur, Chicago Illinois." And so Bob Vance, Vance Refrigeration came from Hayes. But in my head he was saying it to everyone all the time no matter what.
Me: So, what about the conspiracy theory?
Michael: In terms of that theory, I would say that he was extra excited when the camera crews were around because he was like, "This is good for me." He's always advertising himself is the idea, and now he gets to do it on TV, so I think he was probably extra happy.
Me: Ha! Mike, this was a fun interview. Thank you for being on the Phile. Your shows rock. Please come back again.
Michael: Thanks for the nice words and thanks for having me, Jason.
Man, I had so many more "Office" questions. Haha. That about does it for this entry of the Phile. Thanks to my guest Michael Schur. The Phile will be back on Tuesday with voice-over actor Jess Harnell. Spread the word, not the turd... or virus. Don't let snakes and alligators bite you. Bye, love you, bye.
I don't want you, cook my bread, I don't want you, make my bed, I don't want your money too, I just want to make love to you. - Willie Dixon
1 comment:
Hello mate great bllog
Post a Comment