PARKS AND RECREATION PANEL – 1/12/11
JESSICA NEVAREZ: Hi everyone. I'm Jessica Nevarez, the studio publicist for "Parks and Recreation." First of all, I just wanted to thank everyone on behalf of the cast and crew and the producers for your undying support. We've been off the air since May, and for those of you that are here and those of you that are going to read it on the transcript, we just really appreciate that you've written and continue to write about the show. And now we're going to be on the air next Thursday, and it's been incredibly encouraging and comforting for the actors, who've been working tirelessly since June for Season 3, to finally have this day and have you guys here and continuing to be so supportive.
So you've met everyone, the cast and producers of "Parks and Recreation." As soon as they get mic'd, we'll open it to the floor if you guys have questions you want to ask them. We don't have a lot of time. I know you guys, some of you are moving on to "Criminal Minds." So I'll let you know when we have the last question. Slowly.
AZIZ ANZARI: Does anyone want to talk about "Criminal Minds" while we're waiting to get mic'd?
(Laughter.)
QUESTION: What's the mystery of the first episode?
AZIZ ANZARI: I've never seen "Criminal Minds."
(Laughter.)
QUESTION: It's a brand new series. It's a spinoff.
AMY POEHLER: Somebody's taking notes.
QUESTION: Amy, can you talk a little bit about how your character has changed? Gotten smarter, I think, in the second season.
AMY POEHLER: I think she's the same intelligence, yeah. I always thought she was smart. I don't know why,but I think, you know, in the first couple episodes of our show, we're introducing Leslie in the world and how she kind of wasn't quite she didn't have a lot of game, and she wasn't really cool. But I don't think her naivete was ever a sign of a lack of intelligence, nor I do think optimism means that you're stupid. But to answer your question, what was your question?
(Laughter.)
Oh, how much did it change? How did she change? Well, I think that the show is evolving in that Leslie's realizing her big dream of building a park is so much harder than she thought it was, and so we start Season 3 kind of in triage mode with everyone trying to save their jobs. It's a little less idealistic, I think, when we come back in Season 3.
QUESTION: I got to talk to a few of you earlier, but for the people I didn't get to talk to yet, I work for Studio City website. We're excited to have your production here. What does the City of Studio City do for your production?
MICHAEL SCHUR: Well, we really like being here. I'll say that much. It's a little intimidating -- when Greg and I were touring the set for the first time, and you're driving on a golf cart, and it's like, "Oh, that's where 'Seinfeld' was shot," like that kind of I mean, it's really fun and nice and good, and I'm happy that that's the case because it feels like we're part of a tradition and everything. But it's also, like, you can't help but think, "Oh, you have to be as good as 'Seinfeld' now," and, you know, that's impossible. So we really like being here. It's a great location. The lot's been really good to us. I don't know.
GREG DANIELS: The shops and restaurants of Studio City.
MICHAEL SCHUR: Restaurants are great.
RASHIDA JONES: Yeah, I love them. Good restaurants.
GREG DANIELS: Good meals around here.
AMY POEHLER: Aubrey goes to CBS a lot, she said.
AUBREY PLAZA: I like CBS on our side of the street too.
(Laughter.)
It's bigger and cleaner.
(Laughter.)
GREG DANIELS: Aubrey's in the Studio City public school system.
(Laughter.)
AUBREY PLAZA: Ha, ha, ha.
(Laughter.)
QUESTION: What happens at the Harvest Festival? It sounds a little sinister.
MICHAEL SCHUR: Did you watch it? It was playing on the bus. Right? Some of you saw it on the bus.
QUESTION: One of the six episodes.
MICHAEL SCHUR: It's the 7th.
NICK OFFERMAN: It's a little creepy through the wicker man's segment.
(Laughter.)
Then there's sort of a happy dinema.
(Laughter.)
MICHAEL SCHUR: I don't want to spoil it for you. There's a I don't want to spoil it for you. You should just watch it. I think it turned out really well.
AZIZ ANZARI: Someone gets killed by a swarm of bees.
(Laughter.)
UNIDENTIFIED PANELIST: Don't say that, man.
NICK OFFERMAN: The harvest is a harvest of blood.
(Laughter.)
QUESTION: Just to get a time line here, when were you renewed? When did you go back into production? Are you still shooting? Have you wrapped?
MICHAEL SCHUR: We are done shooting Season 3. We finished before the holidays. We were renewed early because somebody– huh, huh, huh got knocked up (indicating Amy Poehler).
AMY POEHLER: (Gesturing.)
AZIZ ANZARI: What?
MICHAEL SCHUR: We shot the first six right after we finished Season 2. Then we took a break so that somebody could go have a baby (indicating Amy Poehler).
(Laughter.)
Then we shot ten more between September and December, and we wrapped the 10the episode and 16th and final episode of the season right before the holidays.
RASHIDA JONES: Impressive.
MICHAEL SCHUR: What is?
RASHIDA JONES: That you could say all that.
MICHAEL SCHUR: You know I work on the show.
RASHIDA JONES: Oh.
(Laughter.)
MICHAEL SCHUR: Yeah. How are you? We've never met until this moment.
(Laughter.)
QUESTION: For the producers, do you think of each season do you think about season arcs? Or do you just kind of go episode to episode?
MICHAEL SCHUR: Both.
GREG DANIELS: Arcs.
MICHAEL SCHUR: I mean, Season 3 happens to be when we knew we had to shoot six additional episodes because huh, huh, huh(indicating Amy Poehler) we decided it would make it easier if we had a sort of arc to that chunk of the season. So we came up with this harvest festival idea, the idea being Leslie sort of gambles the entire future of the parks department on this one big project. So that's the arc of the first half of the season, almost exactly half of the season. Then, if there's an arc to the second half, I mean, there are certainly character arcs. There's romance arcs and stuff, and there's relationship arcs, but if there's a work arc to the second half of the season, it's sort of the aftermath of that project and what happens when that after that project is done. But there's always but then we also, if we just some of the episodes are completely standalone and would just be what the funniest idea we could think of at the time was.
QUESTION: Can you guys talk about the show is doing more and more romantic comedy, I think. Can you guys, the actors, talk about the fun of doing romantic comedy? We don't see a lot of it on television. It's usually friends, or it's couples, married couples. Talk about the fun of doing that.
JIM O'HEIR: Well, I'm hooking up with Little Sebastian this season.
(Laughter.)
To be honest, I want to you'll see. I'm not going to give it away.
GREG DANIELS: He just ruined the whole thing.
(Laughter.)
ADAM SCOTT: And that is not played for laughs.
(Laughter.)
RASHIDA JONES: I feel like what's nice about these dudes Greg and Mike is not necessarily just the romance side of it, but this idea that they're interested in how people relate emotionally and so it doesn't feel like, you know, people just hook up to hook up or break up to break up so that there's a cliffhanger. It feels like you can understand why people end up together or why people don't end up together, why they try things out or why they're not working out. They make an effort to be subtle and nuanced and specific about the dynamics of a relationship, but it's not just another tool, you know, to end an act break or a season.
QUESTION: And they're all pretty lonely people, don't you think? That makes you want to cheer for them more.
RASHIDA JONES: Lonely people?
QUESTION: I think so. I don't know.
AMY POEHLER: I don't know. I don't think they're lonely. I think that they but, you know, you usually end up dating people who you work with. Right? So I mean
RASHIDA JONES: We're all dating in real life.
(Laughter.)
GREG DANIELS: Show of hands. Show of hands, guys.
RASHIDA JONES: You guys are all dating too. Right?
(Laughter.)
AMY POEHLER: But I think it is, you know, they're like a community. The people that work together in this department are a community, and they start to bring people in their community, and they start to --there's, like, relationships that happen, but as Rashida said, I think it's dealt with in a very real way. I think it takes a long time for people to get interested in each other. Also I think this is a show where people actually have sex, which doesn't happen a lot on shows, or you don't see it, but it's inferred.
(Laughter.)
Not yet.
ADAM SCOTT: Season 4.
(Laughter.)
AMY POEHLER: Just all sex all the time.
(Laughter.)
It would be so weird.
QUESTION: Adam, your character seems to really be a logical mix with Amy's character. I mean, he has certain qualities that she has and doesn't have. Kind of what was the character when you came in there and if you helped develop the character because you've done improv in other places. Kind of talk about how he's developed.
ADAM SCOTT: It was I mean, it was all, you know, kind of conceived before I got here, and Mike told me about the boymayor history of the character, and I was just immediately just so excited because it's just such an incredible idea. You know, you see that pop up in the news every few years, like this kid gets elected mayor to a town.
(Laughter.)
And it's hilarious, and I always wonder, like, how did that go?
(Laughter.)
Like how did the town how did he do? And you never hear about that. You just hear about him getting elected. So it's kind of funny to think about just the utter failure of it and where that guy is, you know, 15, 20years later.
QUESTION: He seems to have like a shy quality or something that just makes him perfect with Leslie, doesn't he?
ADAM SCOTT: I think that there are things about those two characters that, you know, they have a lot in common but maybe don't really know it at first, and over a period of time, maybe they start to kind of realize that, maybe not. I don't know.
(Laughter.)
It's unnecessarily cryptic.
(Laughter.)
QUESTION: For the producers, for the Harvest Fest episode, did you find Harvest Fest and glom onto it? Or did you build that completely from scratch and the corn maize and all that?
MICHAEL SCHUR: No. That's a real it's at Pierce College up in is it Moorpark, I think? I don't know.
ADAM SCOTT: Yeah.
MICHAEL SCHUR: Yeah, we never would have been able to build that. It's a massive, sweeping, giant, you know, tractorandcornmaize festival. So we actually shot that episode out of sequence because, if we had shot it in sequence, the week that we would have been shooting was the week that it was like 148 degrees here, and the actors would be dead now. They'd all be dead.
(Laughter.)
QUESTION: It seems like you guys are the whole cast and the producers are in kind of a unique position where you're done with production. Now you wait four months or so to find out whether you're picked up. Meanwhile, those Comcast people come in, and God knows what they'll do.
(Laughter.)
ADAM SCOTT: You're making it all so scary.
(Laughter.)
Have a waffle.
QUESTION: It is kind of a unique position to be in. What are you all going to do with your time? Are you going to start schmoozing with the Comcast people immediately?
RASHIDA JONES: That's what we're going to do with our time.
ADAM SCOTT: We're staying here and schmoozing with Comcast.
(Laughter.)
MICHAEL SCHUR: I don't know. It's nothing we can control, you know. We made the show as good as we can possibly make it. The best thing about having all this time before we aired was that we got every episode from the conception to the writing to the acting to the editing exactly the way we wanted it without any time pressure, which was an incredible luxury. So we think the show is really, really strong and really good. We really believe in it, and we hope it gets a bigger exposure being behind "The Office," and then whatever the machinations are of the powers that be, you know, it's nothing we can control.
QUESTION: Amy, it will give you a chance to spend a lot more time with your baby.
AMY POEHLER: Oh, yeah, we'll spend time with our family. That's what you wanted? Yeah.
(Laughter.)
NICK OFFERMAN: What was I yeah.
AMY POEHLER: We're going to spend time with our family.
MICHAEL SCHUR: Oh, yeah, sure, I'll
UNIDENTIFIED PANELIST: Absolutely.
(Laughter.)
QUESTION: Is there a backstory to Little Sebastian? Did you find some adulation for some tiny horse?
MICHAEL SCHUR: Well, I think that it's a fairly common phenomenon in small to mediumsized towns that there are just unlikely local heroes that spring up, you know. And is Goor here? Where's Dan Goor? Or, Yang, do you remember, was there a specific?
ALAN YANG: (Not mic'd) This was early last it was a long time ago. Yes, Season 2 there's a I don't know -- I think Einstein, the world’s smallest horse.
MICHAEL SCHUR: Yeah, that's right.
ALAN YANG: Einstein, we loved the pictures of him, and then, like, eight months later, it's like, "Let's talk about a tiny horse."
(Laughter.)
MICHAEL SCHUR: Yeah. It's one of those things you see on weird and whacky news on CNN where it's like the world's smallest horse, and you're like, "Why am I reading this and not spending time with my family?"
AMY POEHLER: That's a nice way to underline like how Ben, Adam's character, is still new to the town and doesn't still quite get it because everybody loves his horse, and Ben does not understand it. And it really shows that he really didn't grow up in Pawnee, and it's just like a private joke that everybody gets but him.
MICHAEL SCHUR: I honestly think my two favorite moments of the entire show are back to back, and they're Aziz' and Nick's reaction when Little Sebastian walks in the first time.
(Laughter.)
Aziz lights up like a light bulb.
(Laughter.)
And then Nick Offerman in real life has a very funny giggle.
(Laughter.)
And it rarely comes out when he's playing Ron Swanson because it's not a Ron Swanson giggle.
(Laughter.)
But it completely yeah, don't turn and try to intimidate me (to Nick Offerman).
NICK OFFERMAN: (Gesturing.)
MICHAEL SCHUR: Watch it if you have the chance to watch it again, just focus on those two reactions. They make me laugh every time I see them. It really like Nick claps his hands together
(Laughter.)
like an old-time prize fighter or something. It's really delightful.
(Laughter.)
QUESTION: There was a little horse in Will's sitcom.
AMY POEHLER: Yeah. It's been a good year.
(Laughter.)
QUESTION: It's not the same horse?
UNIDENTIFIED PANELIST: They got a deal.
MICHAEL SCHUR: Will and Amy own a smallhorse farm.
(Laughter.)
They lease the horse out to shows.
QUESTION: It was the same horse.
MICHAEL SCHUR: Not the same horse.
AMY POEHLER: It's not the same horse.
(Laughter.)
I have no idea.
NICK OFFERMAN: Clearly East Coast.
GREG DANIELS: This was a lot smaller than
QUESTION: Can you talk about the evolution, Greg and Mike, of Jerry and how he became so, so very despised. And, Jim, what do you think about what they've done with that character?
(Laughter.)
JIM O'HEIR: Despised? Whoa.
AMY POEHLER: Despised.
GREG DANIELS: Do we have to answer that one?
MICHAEL SCHUR: Well, Nick has a Ron has a talking head in the episode where the character really came to light where he says a schmiel is the guy who spills soup at a party, and a schmozzle is a guy he spills soup on and that Jerry is both the schmiel and the schmozzle.
(Laughter.)
And the whole thing which I think is accurate -- I don't think they despite him. I think that Jerry is just always doing things that are a tiny bit off, and he's the every office has one of those people who you just take all of your frustrations out on. In my office, it's me.
(Laughter.)
It's the genesis of it was the episode where they were all digging up dirt on each other, and someone wrote a joke it might have been Dan Goor wrote a joke, where Mark Brendanawicz said or Jerry said, "Mark, I found out you have an unpaid parking ticket," and Mark said, "I just found out that your adoptive mother was arrested for marijuana possession."