Episode 5 – Andrew Guest

• Before Community, Andrew was on the first two seasons of 30 Rock as a writer’s assistant.
• Oddly enough at the time of the Pilot, Dan was not given the role of showrunner.
• The first few weeks of Pre Production was character camp
  • Writers would discuss things such as what’s Jeff’s relationship with Troy, vs Gillian
• Andrew knew Donald from 30 Rock.
• Donald was so young at 30 Rock that on his first week of Pre-Production, he had to leave to fulfill his obligations as RA in his dorm at NYU.
• After a Pilot is made, writers get together and start figuring things out such as what happens in Episode 2
  • Scenes are whiteboarded
  • Dan’s famous story circle is used
  • episodes are assigned to writers, who then break off for a week to write out the episode.
• Dan famously would take so long to write a draft that for the Pilot the Russo brothers went to his house and sit with him to get the draft completed.
• 30 Rock’s writer room tended to push for jokes, vs Community which would push for story
• Andrew wrote Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, despite never having played D&D
• Britta’s character was initially very underdeveloped, with just a sketch of “stereotypical hot cool girl.” The network really wanted to recast Gillian but Dan fought for her.
• Early on not knowing how to drive home Britta’s comedy a lot of editing was done to make her more comedic. Later on Andrew says they figured out how to make her a lot more fun to write for to make her funny.
• Andrew wrote Advanced Criminal Law, which is the focus of this pod.
• This episode featured Britta crying, which got to show off Gillian’s dramatic acting chops.
• Writing Chevy’s song, one of the first things Andrew did was use a rhyming dictionary on Greendale which is where slop pail came from.
• Writing for Chang was tricky, in that his humor was very cartoonish, and it proved to be difficult to have a character arc for a very cartoonish character, but at this point they just enjoyed the cartoon.
• This was the first appearance of Starburns and Leonard in speaking roles, and as such Andrew would get character payments each time those characters reappeared later on.
• Andrew worked on the first two seasons, then came back for the series finale.
• At 10am on Monday morning when the episode was set to shoot – there was no story, it was not even broken.
• Regarding Season 4 – it does feel like an imposter season. Some shows can swap out the show runner, but Community’s vision was so much of Dan’s voice Andrew feels that it didn’t work.
• A season of tv is about 9-10 months.
• During pre-production nothing but writing is happening, but once production starts you’re shooting.
• You shoot for three weeks, you take one off, each of those weeks is shooting an episode.
• As a writer, once your last episode is done, you’re done, so you might go out and help on set.
• Community writers would typically do at least one all-nighter a week, and a lot of weekends.
• Andrew really related to the Troy/Abed friendship, if not either character individually.
• Also Britta – his favorite character to write for by the middle of season 1.
  • some of the politics
  • the self-defeating nature
  • getting in your own way
  • clumsiness

Thanks to MinotaurMan for the research

Fun Facts from the interview with Joel McHale

• People got mad at Joel for asking if the Tiger King should be in jail, which was never meant to be a hard hitting question. In fact all of the guests thought he should be in jail.
• The Darkest Timeline Podcast began when Joel and Ken had a lot of time with all of their gigs cancelled due to COVID-19.
• Monty Python, Sanford and Son, Flipper, Manimal, Sesame Street, Star Trek the Next Generation, MST3K, Cheers, Family Ties, Fawlty Towers, and The Cosby Show were all big influences on Joel.
• Friends from Catholic school led Joel down a path of doing plays which got him into acting.
• Joel’s friend Nick from that time was Mankini on The Soup.
• Joel graduated with his MFA from University of Washington, then was on a television show in Seattle called Almost Five, where Bill Nye also came out of.
• Joel did a showcase in 2000 in LA with no response. He did another in NY and had some good responses there, but still moved to LA with his wife because he wanted to be in TV and movies.
• He booked The Soup without an agent.
• He then moved into doing pilots and booked the IT Crowd.
• Giants of Radio was another pilot, which got huge reception, and also starred Danny Pudi.
• IT Crowd got picked up, but didn’t make it. Then Joel did The Informant. And then finally, Community.
• Community was actually one of many pilots that Joel read for that year, but he knew it was special at the time and something he really wanted to land.
• He read for The Russos, then Dan, who started championing him. Joel read for the network, who them promptly rejected him. Dan had Joel read again on tape, and only at that point did the network agree to cast him.
• On GI Jeff – Joel grew up with GI Joe, and loved it.
• Joel would be very excited to make the movie.
• After the table read, Donald said he would do the movie. and Alison.
• Joel would be a 10/10 to do a movie.
• Jim Rash lived in Joel’s guest house for almost nine months, so by Community standards Jeff ends up with Dean, not with Britta or Annie.
• Joel is very thankful for all of the wonderful guest stars they managed to get, just a few: Malcolm McDowell, Mitch Hurwitz, Nathan Fillon, Nick Kroll, Tim and Eric.
• Trending on Netflix for a few weeks really did change Joel’s perspective on the show, after so many years of living on the edge of cancellation.
• Only guest stars Joel can think of he wishes had been on the show was Samuel L Jackson.
• Of favorite Winger speeches – Joel goes to defending Chang. He remembers NBC removing a line where Jeff says “He’s Chinese, but he seems Korean.”
• Joel also really remembers the Pilot Winger speech since he had to rehearse it so many times to land the role.
• Joel relates to Jeff in the skepticism, sarcasm and insecurity – but has been married for a long time and has kids, so diverges significantly there.
• Joel’s Chevy story – first time he met Chevy, he said “Hi my name is Joel” and they shook hands. And Chevy didn’t say a word and that was that.
• On a possible quarantine-style episode for Community, Joel thinks that is unlikely, since unlike Mythic Quest, Community is no longer a show in production. But given a funding source anything is possible.
• What’s next for Joel?
  • Guest stars on Stargirl
  • A movie called Becky with Kevin James and Lulu Wilson
  • The game show Card Sharks
  • An unnamed pilot with writers Joel knows well
  • A movie called Happily
  • The Twilight Zone

Research Thanks To: MinotaurMan

Part two of the interview with Megan Ganz

• Cooperative Calligraphy is the first episode of Community that Megan has a “written by” credit for.
• Season 2 always intended to contain a bottle episode. Megan had wanted to write one and was scheduled to write the 8th episode.
• In discussing potential plots for a bottle episode, Dan casually threw out “just have a mcguffin that people have to care about, like, I don’t know, someone stole a pen.” Of course when your boss suggests something, why not run with it?
• Annie was picked to be the driving force since it was decided that her character would be most likely to care about a pen from the very beginning.
• Bringing Britta in further establishes that the fight becomes about principle, not the pen.
• The monkey being the root cause of the pen disappearance was chosen very late.
• Original it was a breeze from the air-conditioner setting off a Rube Goldberg like setup resulting in the pen going missing.
• Dan later on had the idea about Annie’s Boobs stealing the pen.
• Unlike many episodes, this episode was shot in order.
• Chris McKenna came up with the Abed tracking the menstrual cycles gag based on a documentary he had seen about a kid with autism who had tracked his mother’s moods, and had unknowingly tracked her menstrual cycles.
• The Beetlejuice gag continues here, but only in Season 3 did the writers retro-actively realize they were going to do the Beetlejuice joke.
• It was not planned from the beginning, but in season 3 a line was written referencing Beetlejuice, Megan joked “you know what happens when you say Beetlejuice three times.” Dan did not remember referencing Beetlejuice so much, but Megan had such intimate knowledge of the show she could remember the exact episodes. That led to the famous Beetlejuice conjuring in the Halloween episode.
• The writers knew that at this point, Jeff and Britta were sleeping together. “Gwennifer” was Jeff’s codename for her and the fake call was to let her know they had to stay for the bottle episode.
• Crystal the monkey was so good, she grabbed the pen on the second take.
• On Britta’s character change over time, Megan attributes that to the goofy energy Gillian brought to the part, which all of the writers fell in love with.
• While Megan has no info on whether or not a movie is happening, she would love to see it.

Research Thanks To: MinotaurMan

Fun fact from part one of the interview with Megan Ganz

• Megan’s journey into comedy started with watching shows such as Married With Children, SNL, or Letterman with her dad.
• Molly Shannon, Cheri Oteri, and Kaitlin Olson were all big influences on Megan.
• Megan’s first job for television was writing on the Dimitri Martin show.
• Megan was such a fan of Community after Season 1 it was the only show she applied for following Dimitri Martin.
• Dan Harmon employs a technique called the story circle when breaking down stories.
• Regarding Season 4, Megan stayed for that season, and is grateful that it exists, since without Season 4, there is no Season 5 nor Season 6.
• Part of the writing process on Community was creating what was called a spit draft – a rough version of the script where characters will say the sloppiest version of their dialog. For example, during a fight a character might say “I am in a fight with you.” This would function as an outline as rewriting a bad script is easier than writing from scratch.

Research Thanks To: MinotaurMan

Fun Facts from the interview with Actor/Writer Jordan Black – Dean Spreck

• Jordan wanted to become an actor from his love of The Fonz on Happy Days
• Jordan and Community writer Andy Bobrow both started at the improv troupe Groundlings
• Both also started writing for the sketch comedy show Hype on the WB
• Together they had written a sketch called Kid Rook, about a “badboy” of chess
• Jordan himself is actually in the Pistol Patty costume for the entirety of A Fistful of Paintballs
• At the time of this recording, Jordan had still not watched all of Community, a fact that was embarrassing at a convention
• Jordan (and thus Dean Spreck) was supposed to be in season 6, however scheduling conflicts did not allow this to happen
• Jordan would be very excited to be in a future Community movie. His dream plot involves Greendale and City College merging, with Dean Spreck in charge, and Dean Pelton under him. The conflict would be free-ing Greendale from the Evil Dean and restoring Pelton.
• Jordan knew Jim Rash before Community from Groundlings
• Jordan had also worked with Joel McHale and Danny Pudi previously on a TV pilot called “Giants of Radio” that was never picked up
• Jordan is currently working on the Punky Brewster reboot for the Peacock streaming service

Research Thanks To: MinotaurMan

Facts and Tidbits from the interview with Prop Maker Chris Branan

• In “Digital Exploration of Interior Design” and “Pillows and Blankets” the geodesic dome cushion fort was constructed from a kit intended for Burning Man. Because it was meant to be assembled in the desert, the blueprints were printed on a t-shirt.
• The pillow fort was so comfortable the crew would take naps inside.
• Chris makes several appearances in “Conventions of Space and Time”. Once sitting in the audience in front of actor Matt Lucas. Then again in the posters as the Space Viking Villain Ümlaütsøn the Terrible.
• In study room F, over Britta’s shoulder is a trap door, which was used as a camera port, or left open so the Director could observe the scenes being filmed.
• The fire escape outside of Troy and Abed’s apartment was made from fence material from Home Depot, and could be wheeled in and out.
• Paint from paintballs do not always appear well on camera. Vinyl decals were often used to depict paint splats.
• At the end of Season 2, it was not apparent if Community was to be renewed. Almost as the final episodes depict, the Greendale set was mostly trashed to film the paintball episodes. With just a few days remaining, the show was renewed and the crew had to rapidly reconstruct the set.
• Chris and Ken Jeong share common friends through a comedy troupe in New Orleans, and became friends on-set through this connection.
• Chevy Chase once gave the whole crew urine detectors (blacklight flashlights) for Christmas.
• Chevy also once hijacked a tour bus that was visiting the studio, and began to give fake tours to passengers.
• When running out of time, the crew would use the term “Greendale Good” to call a set piece suitable quality for a college like Greendale.

Research Thanks To: MinotaurMan

Facts and Tidbits from this episode:

• Notable Dan Harmon quote “I think if God hands you an anus flag you have to fly it.”
• The first print of the Greendale flag in “Basic Rocket Science” was missing the gradient. Rhonda Robinson, the prop person, managed to get the new one silk screened within the day, and the shooting schedule was altered to rush the right flag to the set.
• The Bar in “Mixology Certification” was built for Happy Endings, another Sony show.
• Cooperative Calligraphy and Pillows and Blankets were conceived as money-saving episodes.
• The British show “Spaced” was an influence for Dan and the writers.
• Andy wrote Sound Engineer Robbie Sherman’s favorite episode of Malcom in the Middle “Reece’s Party”.

Research Thanks To: MinotaurMan