Michael Schur
Michael Schur
Michael Herbert Schuris an American television producer and writer, best known for his work on the NBC comedy series The Office and Parks and Recreation, the latter of which he co-created along with Greg Daniels. He also co-created the FOX comedy series Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Schur is also known for his small role on The Office as Mose Schrute, the cousin of Dwight Schrute...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScreenwriter
Date of Birth29 October 1975
CityAnn Arbor, MI
CountryUnited States of America
real character cutting
With mockumentaries, the conceit is that the characters are being interviewed, so you can start a scene and cut to a character looking at the camera and saying, "I'm working on this project," instead of having to figure out ways for people to talk naturally about what they're doing. You see this problem in pilots - people end up explaining things to each other that they'd never explain in real life.
writing character trying
It's so much easier to write for an actor than for an imaginary character and then try to fit that character to an actor. It doesn't work very often in my experience.
character stories care
I care more about making sure the story is correct and the characters are behaving in character than I do about the individual jokes.
character lows shows
The best shows are always the ones that are very, very low-concept and just about great characters.
cool
If a show ever tries to be cool, then it's going to be doing something wrong.
imagine joke line pitches snap sound table
When someone pitches a joke for a character that is just perfect, and you can imagine that actor reading that line at your table read or on the set, it's like the sound of a snap snapping into place.
best dealt episodes figure middle policy solve trying west
The best episodes of 'The West Wing' that dealt with policy and stuff, in my opinion, were the ones where they were in the middle of a crisis, and they were trying to figure out how to solve problems.
best burn comedies concepts episode high hopefully movies personally pitches sell shows stuck talking tv
I personally think the best ideas for TV shows - at least comedies - are very low-fi ideas. High concepts often sell pitches in movies and TV, but, especially in TV when you're talking about hopefully a 100 or 150 episode proposition, those concepts just burn off, and then you're stuck with nothing.
believe goofy importance sincerity
I believe in the importance of sincerity and emotion and honesty in TV, even when it's goofy comedy.
life-changing games important
What's important on a comedy show, or any show, is that some stories have to go somewhere. There have to be ends to the beginnings and middles you create. But sometimes it's like a way station on the highway, then the actual thing doesn't have to be this giant, climactic, life-changing, game-changing thing.
writing laughing long
Topical-sketch writing were incredibly rational and well reasoned: don't do a joke if the subject doesn't deserve it. An ad hominem attack on someone might get you a cheap laugh, but it doesn't earn you any long-term trust. The biggest rule was: you attack whoever's in power. Don't bring your personal bias to the table.
world way different
In a weird way, it's not different from any other kind of joke-telling. You make those calculations about jokes about celebrities: is this a fair hit or not? The stakes were higher because the whole world was crumbling around us, but in terms of joke-telling, it's all about feel.
running animal air
The first joke I got on the air I remember clearly. Dennis McNicholas and Robert Carlock wrote a sketch where they were evacuating the Titanic, and the last two guys on the entire ship were the two black guys, Samuel L. Jackson and Tracy Morgan. So Will Ferrell was running back and forth, saying, "All first-class passengers get in the lifeboat. All second-class passengers and third-class passengers get in the lifeboat. Let's get all the animals in the lifeboat. Let's put all the empty luggage in the lifeboat."
brother couple school
In high school, my friend and I discovered that your cable-access station had to let you do whatever you wanted - it was like the Wild West. We made a couple weird things, like a tribute to the Zucker brothers, where we had a panel discussion about the Naked Gun movies. We wrote a script and made jokes that I'm sure were terrible and showed clips of The Naked Gun without permission.