And, you know, you've had this amazing career and it sounds like you're just having so much fun, which that's what it's all about, right? How do you recommend our filmmakers that are making the jump into the studio system build those repertoires and those networks of people?

You find your trusted people.

I mean, it takes a long time.

I mean, obviously, you know, it took me forever to find the costumer that I love, my wardrobe person, you know, and it wasn't until the first simple favor that... that she came into my life and now we've done everything since then.

And before that I was working with good people, but I never, nobody, I was like, Oh my God, this is my person, you know? And, and so, and same with my AD and my editor, well, my editor I've been with since freaks and geeks.

So, um, so that's a long-term thing.

thing but you know you just find people so just being open and really you know casting the net wide and you know interviewing people that you wouldn't normally think you would interview you know and just for whatever reason they don't seem like the projects they did were ones that you liked or whatever but just you know talked a lot of people too because to find interesting new voices like that the way i got into the studio system you know as a tv director uh and um the only thing you could get as a TV director, especially back in the two thousands was a family film.

Mm hmm.

Oh,

yeah, I mean, it was like the biggest thing that ever happened to me.

I just couldn't believe it, because a year prior, I was a struggling actor who really, I'd really hit the rocks right before I wrote Freaks and Geeks, because when I was coming off of my first season, first and only season, on Sabrina the Teenage Witch, again, it was a hit, so I had money, and I'd written this feature-length independent film that I wanted to shoot, that I could shoot for just the amount of money that I'd made that year.

So I took all that money and I invested it in this movie, made this movie, and then they called me up after I'd spent all my money and said they wanted to bring me back to the show.

So then I had bankrupted the family, basically, and then proceeded to not be able to get that movie to any film festivals, into anything.

So Literally that year, I was going like, I'm going to have to just quit the business and just get a real job and work at a bookstore or something.

And then fortunately, when I wrote that pilot, it got picked up.

So thanks, Ryan O'Neill.

And I just wonder when you knew what were the bits that were just like, oh, hang on, this this is clicking in a way I wanted or hadn't foreseen or something.

Well, there were several moments of that.

I mean, one when we were just in production, just like the cast was so good, you know, like, wow, this is this is working.

But then you never know, you know, it's till you get the editing room and if it all adds up.

But then when we started doing the test screenings.

The reaction from the audience was, we're like, oh, wow, people are really, like, getting this.

Because that's always my fear of something that's not a straight-up comedy is how do I even judge our people into it? Like, what are they doing? You know, are they just, if they're not laughing, then I don't know, are they interested or are they not? But that's what we do when we do our test screenings now.

I just mean in the way that you present information to us, I guess.

Right.

You know? But, but you go past that, and you just start to feel like, wow, there's something happening here.

But I gotta really credit the Lionsgate marketing team because they did so many brilliant stunts.

We did this one stunt at The Grove that went everywhere where we gave out plates, these breakable plates, and I made an announcement at the beginning, like, you know, "You can scream when, you know, scream when, uh, Nina screams, and then when, when, uh, Millie says, 'I fucking love gravy,' everybody break your plates." And so we had this crazy screen, they filmed it all with night vision, of all these people breaking plates, screaming, having the greatest time, and this stuff went everywhere.

And I, you know, growing up in the '70s, I remember, I think it was When a Stranger Calls, seeing, for the first time, an ad where they filmed the audience, and these people, like, gasping and all this stuff.

And I was like, that, that makes me wanna see that movie.

Mm-hmm.

Whatever it is.

[laughs]

Yeah.

I would, I was just, you know, look, I couldn't get undressed in gym class, you know? So, uh, the thought of like exposing yourself that emotionally and physically to any other person was abhorrent to me even though, you know, I wished I could.

But, you know, it's weird when you're, especially in the, I mean, I guess it's probably this way now, but in the '70s everybody was so kind of, you know, disco and all this.

So I was, I was in high school from '76 to '80, and it was all, you know, people going nuts.

So all my classmates were having sex, clearly.

And I remember once I walked out of a, out of my class and this kid who I hated, he was like a bully and stuff, he goes like, "Hey," he yelled to his friend like, um, "If she's not gonna kiss, she's not gonna fuck." And I was just like, "Gah." So I mean, all these things would happen and you go like, it's so unattractive, everything about this.

I, I mean, do you think there is a connection between what you just described and the fact that you have built a career being a great director of great female comedians? That there's some, like is this, is that connected to you at all?

Well, when we reached out to him, he told us how this came about.

I had been brought on...

I, I directed a lot of episodes of The, The Office, but in that season, I had been given Survivor Man, which I was really excited about and actually am very, very proud of that episode.

But I remember reading the script for The Dinner Party, and, uh, it was given to some other director, and I was so jealous 'cause I thought, like, "If only I could do this episode.

This is, like, everything I wanna do.

It's so uncomfortable and cringey and hilarious." But another director was assigned to it, but then the writers' strike happened, and so it all fell apart, 'cause I did Survivor Man, then the writers' strike stopped everything.

And so we were off for months and months and months, for however long the writers' strike went.

Here it is

Yeah.

... kind of the same vibe.

And they're, they were very, they were tightly scripted, but then once you got to set, Greg Daniels was cool if you just kinda played.

And so, um, like, we did a, a Halloween episode once and, uh, there, we had, Greg allowed us to cut out a whole storyline because we got on this whole tear with, um, Dwight talking to, talking to Michael and Dwight was wearing the, like, the hood from the H- the Star Wars, the Emperor.

See ya.

See ya.

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[laughs] Thank you.

I mean, there, there's old directors that I really was a fan of.

Uh, Howard Hawks was an old director from the '30s and '40s, and he did a lot of screwball comedies, but he also did, like, gangster movies, and did Westerns.

And I was like, "That's cool." Like, I like the idea of not getting stuck in one genre.

So I really loved him.

I loved Blake Edwards, who did, like, the Pink Panther movies and all those comedies.

Um, yeah, and just, uh, I don't know, I had a lot of influences and it...

[laughs]

Oh, yeah.

Exactly.

Um, no, I, I just, I, I have always loved adult culture and, uh, growing up as a Christian Scientist, it was kinda like, "Well, that's kind of a buzzkill on the stuff I think I wanna do when I get older." 'Cause when I was kid, um, I got taken by my parents to Las Vegas to, they went to see a Mu- Muhammad Ali fight.

I was only, like, five, and I thought I was going to go with them, and of course I was immediately deposited into a nursery, but the nursery was at th- the, uh, the Dunes hotel.

(laughs)

And she had a band.

And so I was a guitar player, and a drummer, but I was a guitar player.

And so I w-...

I know what I'm doing.

Yeah, I felt pretty good about it because it was – I was allowed through Judd especially who had kind of been doing it on his – with his movies to have – a loose not i would say a looseness that that that that is but a lot of my movies get criticized by people who don't like my movies of saying oh they just show up in the improv we don't ever do that you don't ever do that you're going with a great script that you work really hard on and you just have alternate jokes you want to try or and you let people like oh try this so you surprise me with that but you know we don't make stuff up and i just knew i was more nervous going into it pre-production because I knew we had to get the script right.

And we were really hard on the script and we were doing all this stuff.

And then casting was really like, there was so many great people and you're just like, how do I make sure I get the right group? So once we had the kind of the super group, that came from just seeing everybody in town, mixing and matching people, you know, doing kind of chemistry reads with groups of three and seeing how they get along and all that stuff and how they play off each other.

Once we had that, it was kind of like, oh, this is going to be fun.

You know, you're always nervous going into a movie.

I mean, the night before is always, you can't imagine the movie existing and you can't imagine being on the set.

you think you

[laughs]

But then, um, but then I just saw the potential of The Office Olympics was just, was just gonna be such a, such a blast.

I mean, it was, it was just, that was just such a fun thing to kinda put together.

Uh, you know, I remember just what an interesting, I don't know, what an interesting feeling it was on the set for that because, I mean, y- if you remember, that was sort of, you know, aside from the, the O- Olympics part of it, that was the, the episode that kind of started to turn everything because that's where w- you know, Steve's character started to become slightly more sympathetic.

And I don't know if you remember or not, we really, that kind of got found on the set.

'Cause remember we were doing the whole thing where we were presenting, you guys were presenting Michael with the, you know, the, with the, the medal, and Steve just made this decision to kind of start crying-

Reid says, "When filming a mockumentary, do you storyboard or do you have a shot plan?"

Neither.