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
There's going to be a lot of people that don't like you, and there's nothing you can do about it. Instead of trying to win them over one by one, you need to do things that are getting huge swaths of votes [in the elections].
It's all about media culture and people on television, and that feeling comfortable, friendly, or warm toward a candidate [in the elections] is a reason people would emotionally attach themselves to that candidate. I get the mechanics of it, I just hate that it's true.
You can't achieve anything entirely by yourself. There's a support system that is a basic requirement of human existence. To be happy and successful on earth, you just have to have people that you rely on.
The news is a public service. It's a way to inform people of what's going on in their world. And when you make it about ratings and make it about ad dollars, there's no incentive to inform people. The incentive is to be sensationalistic and get as many people to watch as you can without any regard for truth or objectivity.
People do things with terrible motivations and those motivations are selfish and self-interested and financially driven.
People don't seem to make the connection between their tax money and the benefits that they get from their tax money, like free education, and the fire department, and police protection, and everything else. It drives me bonkers, because it's pretty straightforward to me.
My favorite TV show of all time is 'The Wire,' which has the feeling of a project-based show. You draw in people from disparate parts of the world, and they have to work together to achieve a goal.
For storytelling purposes, there has to be conflict, but that doesn't mean the people have to be mean. I've never liked mean-spirited comedy.
As a viewer of TV shows, I always like shows more when I just feel like the people in charge have a plan. You can just tell sometimes, 'Oh, there's a plan there. They have an idea for how this is going to unfold.'
Society is completely unreasonable. People want everything and want to pay for nothing. They panic if they think about their taxes being raised, but if their garbage collection is a day late they scream and yell.
If a show ever tries to be cool, then it's going to be doing something wrong.
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.
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.
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.