Parks and Recollection - Director Dean Holland: Greg Pikitis (S2E7)

Episode Date: December 7, 2021

Directions to Pawnee are simple! Today Rob Lowe and Alan Yang are visited by director Dean Holland as they review S2E7 (Dean's first episode!) On "Greg Pikitis" Leslie tries to stop a high school kid who vandalizes the park every Halloween, while Ann's party is a dud until Tom as T-Pain saves the day. Find out about behind the scenes Halloween parades, who was in the dinosaur costume, the Ron Swanson 1-10 scale, and what makes the funniest script—all on today's amazing episode! Got a question for the Pawnee Town Hall? Send us an email: [e-mail] Or leave a 30-Second voicemail at: [phone] The episode opens with Leslie confronting her peach-eating arch nemesis, teenaged Greg Pikitis, in the high school hallway about his past Halloween hi-jinx. Leslie enlists the help of her boyfriend PO Sanderson to tail Pikitis to make sure he doesn’t vandalize the Statue of Mayor Percy once again. Meanwhile, Ann reminds the Parks Dept. about her Halloween party and is disappointed to find out that in spite of her efforts to not invite Tom, Jerry has spilled the beans and Tom will attend. Ann’s party is off to a boring and awkward start until Tom arrives dressed as T-pain and turns the living room into a dance floor. A possible spark between Ron and Wendy is kindled when Wendy tells Ron her Green Card marriage could soon come to an end. Meanwhile, Leslie and PO Sanderson’s tailing of Pikitis turns up nothing and the two decide to go to Ann’s Halloween party. However, while stopping by Leslie’s office to pick up her Halloween costume, the two discover that the Parks Dept. has been TP’ed and vandalized, with the coup de grace being a peach pit left atop a pile of whip cream on Leslie’s desk.Despite the fact they’ve watched Pikitis all night, Leslie is sure Pikitis is the perpetrator. Leslie convinces PO Sanderson to bring in Greg for questioning and after getting no where with him, Leslie decides to have Andy take a crack at him. Andy goes in hot with the FBI persona Burt Macklin, but Pikitis is so mean to him, Andy ends up crying. The scene ends with Pikitis’ mom showing up and threatening to sue Leslie, PO Sanderson, and the FBI for holding a minor against his will. Andy helps Leslie clean up the Parks Dept. offices and after a few beers, the two decide to TP Greg Pikitis’ house.  PO Sanderson shows up saying he’s been called and an unfamiliar woman opens the front door and points to Leslie saying she’s the reason the police were called. Leslie fears she has the wrong house until it’s revealed that Greg goes on Craigslist to hire fake moms to get him out of trouble and the woman standing in front of them is actually Greg’s real mom. When Leslie realizes Greg’s not at home, she rushes to the statue of Mayor Percy and catches Pikitis in the act of vandalizing the statue.The episode ends with Leslie wondering how Greg could have gotten into the Parks Dept. to vandalize it and a flashback showing Greg pretending to be a janitor, hiding in the dumpster until everyone had left, and vandalizing the office. 

We're getting together to talk about all the things we used to do The laughs, the passions, the little Sebastians, the pets we fell into And we're putting it on in a podcast, then we'll send it up into the sky Then we'll send it up into the sky We're calling it Parks and Recollection Come on little podcast, spread your wings and fly Well, welcome to another very special episode of Parks and Recollection. We have a very important guest today. We don't always have guests, do we, Alan?

We have guests when we can trick people into coming on this podcast. And today we did. And it's an outstanding guest. It's Dean Holland, everybody. Dean Holland. Dean Holland, director extraordinaire, director of, I think, the most Parks and Rec episodes of any human being. Is that true, Dean? That would be correct. Yeah. By probably like fourfold, I think. What is the number? How many perks did you do? I officially directed, I believe, 27 of them.

Oh, my God. That's actually more than I even thought. That's more than a whole season. I know. And Dean started out as an editor a long time ago and then became such a great director. He became pretty much the go-to director for the show. Yeah. Very, very glad to have you.

Thanks for joining us. Thank you for the show. So, um, very, very glad to have you. Thanks for joining us. Thank you for having me. This is great. And to this episode, um, that we're doing today, um, is, was this your first episode you directed of parks? This was, this was my first episode of parks that I directed and my second episode of television. Wow. You did one of the office. Is that right? I did one at the office and then this was my first one at parks. Wow. You did one of The Office. Is that right? I did one at The Office and then this was my first one at Parks. Yeah. For The Office nerds, what was the title of your Office episode? The Duel. It's the one where people always remember Andy ran over Dwight with his car. They were battling over Angela. So you were kind of a baby director on this.

And I remember because you and I did a number of episodes together, including Sweetums, which is three episodes after this. And I remember being on set with you and we were like, we are the bosses right now. We looked around, who's supposed to tell us what to do? It's like, we're here. I remember looking at you and I'm like, there are no parents here. And I'm looking at Alan, who I think was 11 at the time. Yeah, something like that. And I looked, remember, I looked at you, I'm just like, did they really leave us in charge of all of this?

Are we supposed to be? It was a very strange feeling. It's an example of learn by doing, right? And I think, you know, watching this episode last night, I was like, I know, I'm not just blowing smoke, you know, up your ass, because it's like we probably truly had the best episode a couple minutes longer but it still worked out really well i love that spoken like an editor for real he's like oh the director's cut was better we should do some we should do some housekeeping rob and just let people know when this episode aired it was episode seven of season two aired october 29th 2009 um written by michael shore heard of him he's the creator of the show and directed by of course our guest dean holland

we got to do synopsis so people know what episode we're talking about okay so you'll have to sit through me explaining the episode here's the synopsis for my synopsisters and brothers the episode opens with leslie confronting her peach eating arch nemesis teenage greg pitis, the titular Greg Pekitis, in the high school hallway about his past Halloween hijinks. Leslie enlists the help of her boyfriend and local cop Dave to tail Pekitis to make sure he doesn't vandalize the statue of Mayor Percy once again. Meanwhile, Anne reminds the Parks Department about her Halloween party and is disappointed to find out that Jerry has spilled the beans to Tom.

Anne's party is off to a boring and awkward start until Tom arrives dressed as T-Pain and turns the living room into a dance floor. As the party continues, a possible spark between Ron and Wendy is kindled. The tailing of Pachydas turns up nothing and while on the way to Anne's Halloween party, Leslie and Dave stop by Leslie's office and the two discover a vandalized parks department. Leslie is sure Pachydas is the perpetrator and has Dave bring in Greg for questioning after getting nowhere with him. Andy goes in hot with the FBI persona, Burt Macklin.

Pekitis is so mean to him, Andy ends up crying. Soon, Pekitis' mom shows up and threatens to sue. After a few beers, we reach the conclusion of the episode. Andy and Leslie decide to TP Greg Pekitis' house. An unfamiliar woman opens the front door. Leslie fears she has

the wrong house until it's revealed that Greg goes on Craig's list to hire fake moms to get him out of trouble and the woman standing in front of them

is actually Greg's real mom. When Leslie realizes Greg's not at home, she rushes to the statue of Mayor Percy and catches Pakaitis in the act of vandalizing the statue.

A flashback in the tag shows Pakaitis pretending to be a janitor hiding in the dumpster vandalizing the statue. A flashback in the tag shows Pekitis pretending to be a janitor, hiding in the dumpster until everyone had left and vandalizing the office. A lot of plot in this one, and that's why it's like a Capert-style episode. So that's one of the longer synopses we've ever had. A lot of story to turn through.

That's why we said the best version was two minutes longer, according to Dean. It's like, why isn't it longer, man? But you know, by the way, if you go back and watch it, you can see that we shot, every scene that we shot that like that pachytis was in but you don't see him it's there and we made very specific edits that like as we're panning off something you see pachytis walking in but we cut instantly like it was all very true to the caper

and so that you could prove that pachytis actually got in there rob did you see him i saw him in the jerry scene where he gets caught in the cobweb but i've seen the episode enough times i think yeah i just remember i think i probably looked at the edit with you at some point but but you're there's a scene just like a nothing scene kind of but it's basically to get pachytis walking across the screen in disguise yeah but i unfortunately i thought it was david spade in a Halloween costume. Yeah, that kind of looked like it, right? Oh, very much so.

Equally likely. Yes, and watching it last night, I have a lot of thoughts. First of all, I think you may have only, this may have only been your second thing as a director, but you were the first guy smart enough to set a scene in Magic Hour. That was and I learned that the hard way. You know, you always just sit there and go, oh, it'll be right at dusk. We'll just do it there. And the DP will look at you and go, you're fucking nuts.

We don't do that. Yeah, we don't have time. We don't have time. No, we don't have time for that. But we did it and it was great. I mean, we had to be there during the day and we had to be there at night. And so we knew we could sneak in one moment right at that dusk hour. And you see it even though I have a talking head, I think, of Pratt. And it's like that sun's going down. We were really, I think we had to bring in lights as we were shooting the talking head because we couldn't see him. I think we had to bring in lights as we were shooting the talking head because we couldn't see him. There's a reason that magic hour is a thing. It looks flipping beautiful. It's gorgeous.

You know, it's that hour. It's that magic hour when the sun is right above the horizon or just below the horizon. It literally is an hour. Yeah. That's why they call it magic hour. And, you know, Terrence Malick movies, the entire movie is magic hour. Yeah. And technically, really, like, I think you have about a half hour, right? You have a half hour that you can shoot something where it looks consistent.

Otherwise, it's either too bright or too dark, you know? And it happens, depending on what time of the year it is, it happens a whole lot faster. On the list of priorities of Parks and Recreation, how low would you say lighting is? Because I, and this is no disrespect to Trim. No, none whatsoever. None, zero, right? I think it's probably how we all approached it as in to us, point the cameras at the actors and let the actors be funny. Let the script be funny. Like don't mess around with it. Don't try to do anything fancy. Get it now that. So, yes. So priority of lighting, you know, it's probably number four or five or six, you know, and but I think it's such a massive difference when we focused on the scripts and the and the actors being funny,

and no one thinks about the lighting then. For sure. I also think this episode might have the most amount of night shoots. Yeah. In any episode. How was it? Do you remember shooting it, Dean? Was it a lot of like, you know, so night shoots, you know,

you go obviously at sundown, and it's kind of a grind for the crew, you know? It is. We tried to do it more like splits you know we tried so we didn't shoot all night we you know each day would be like a call time around 12 and we went till 12 or 1 at night and that way we could maximize shoot during the day and the night and not have to have people working till six o'clock in the morning i like splits rob do you like splits i i'm not a super early morning person so splits i'm like yeah noon to noon to midnight yep that works for me too i i love splits yeah and hate hate night shoots one of the great i did a movie with ricky gervais that he directed and one of the things i i was

like you and i are gonna get along just fine he's like i'm going to take a pass in the script and the first thing he did was took out all single night shoot. Every single one just gone. That's like me and Aziz after we started shooting in cars. We're like, oh my God, shooting in a car is horrible. We're like, and every scene, every script where there was a car scene was like, why, how about they're walking instead of being in a car? How about they're walking? And you just shoot a steadicam.

Let's just steadicam walk. Let's not rig a car for six hours. Isn't that like a Carl Reiner thing? He says, how do you make every script funny? Let's just steadicam walk. Let's not rig a car for six hours. Isn't that like a Carl Reiner thing? He says, how do you make every script funny? The first thing you do, you go through the script and you cross out every night shoot and turn it into a day. And that's how you make it funny. Yeah.

Just everything should be during the day. That's what's funny. It truly is. You know, obviously, all the night shoots, you're staying up till six in the morning. A car is a pain in the ass because you're just rigging the car. You're putting a camera it's for safety there's a process trailer which is just really complicated and things go wrong all the time but also it's you can't plan normally for it like anything that you're doing with a car add an additional two hours of prep agreed like like before you start shooting it just takes forever something will go wrong and

and oftentimes again this is some inside baseball stuff but by the end of a week you might go later and later and that's what people call fratter day so if you're shooting on a friday it often just goes into the saturday because you're shooting later and later each day so but the thing is is if you notice on tv because it's such a grind and you're doing so many episodes and you're moving so quickly and it's not like a movie, it always makes me laugh. Most TV shows, traditionally network ones,

never take place at night because it's just too hard to do it. It's not pleasant. And so you never see network television ever. Like, the murderer's creeping around in the middle of a fucking day, always. It's the weirdest. We think there's a serial killer and he in the middle of fucking day. Always. It's the weirdest. Yeah.

We think there's a serial killer and he only comes out during the day. They call him the day killer. Yeah. The sunlight killer. He thrives off the sun. Yeah. He's like a plant. The reverse vampire.

Yeah. He's a reverse vampire. He can't see the moon. But there's a reason why nights as an audience member are great. They look beautiful. Yeah. Yeah. And they're evocative and there are all these things that i mean a night shoot gives you so much bang for your buck and they're so cinematic it's gorgeous seeing all of these nights in this episode they're just so satisfying as an audience but boy are they a nightmare to do yeah it was you know this episode was one of those ones that, Yang, you probably know this.

You know, it's like kind of like your first shot at it. So you prep like nobody has ever seen. I mean, I knew every single shot I was going to do. I might as well have storyboarded the entire thing because I knew every, even from the very first shot of Leslie standing in the middle of the, you know, the school, everything I pitched to Mike, everything was right there. It was like, we knew exactly how we were going to do everything. And then you still go through, you do the whole thing.

I remember I came back from the mix and I went straight to Mike and I was like, we're totally fucked fucked we got to go back and recut this thing it's not funny at all it doesn't work well but no I you're totally right you're totally I remember my first episode it was also like I went I not only shot listed everything I went to Steve Day our AD and just talked to him about blocking I was like what what what is the typical blocking on this show what do people generally do essentially like I wanted to shot list every single shot in the entire episode because i wanted to be prepared you just don't want to screw up your first one and no you didn't because you went on and did 26 more whatever you do you

have to prepare i did the same thing on the office when i did that one you prepare the hell to be honest with you i've now directed 90 episodes of television i kind kind of still do it. I kind of still do it. I, my weekend before I shoot, I work the entire weekend. I even go through a script and I write down how I'm going to direct the actors. Like I haven't even heard them do it yet. And I'll be like, maybe get them to do it like this and do it like that. Because as we all know, right, it's all about options. It's all about giving different performances, different things. And I'll, I'll have all of that prepared in my head. And then, and then when I get there, it all goes away and you just go off the cuff and make it up. But it's in your bones because you've done the work, right? And it actually brings up a good

point. A couple of things, you know, you came from editorial, you came from posts. So when you talk about the pieces, like coming from the writer's room, I didn't realize how much, you know, it's built, they say a film or TV show is built three times. It's built on the writing, built in the shooting, built in the editing. And the post department is so powerful because what you really are, you're putting together these different pieces of footage and fusing them into a whole that tells the story. And so Dean, having cut so many episodes of the office and parks knows exactly the pacing the sizes of shots he needs like all that stuff what works reaction you know line reaction line reaction all that stuff and then on the day there's so many parts of directing right it's

not just the look of it that's the performance by the actors it's the production design it's all of those things and all the block yeah so I mean there's so many so many elements there's so many ways to go down. People ask, people ask me advice all the time. Like, Hey, I'm directing my first episode. You know, have any advice? And I always give a very simple advice. I just say, have an answer for everything. Yeah. The job is kind of, you know, you're the expert on this story. You're the expert on this episode. And, you know, I think, Dean, if you can give like a tiny summary of your process when you do an episode, like, walk us through just briefly, if you could, your process. Okay, you get the script, then what

happens? It's a funny thing. Like, I remember reading Lord of the Rings series, right? And so when Lord of the Rings, the movies came out, I went, oh, my God, Peter Jackson saw exactly what I saw. You know what I mean? Like when you read something, you envision it in your head. Right. So as I read something, I envision it in my head and I said, OK, they're doing this and they're making this movement and they're walking over here. And then you go, all right, well, how do you cover that? How do you want to see that? So the first thing you do is figure out where they go and what they do, which is you're blocking. Right. So then you go, how do I cover that? Where do I put the cameras? And then then you sit there and go, well, that would take an entire day to shoot.

And I have four hours to shoot that. So how do I simplify that in a way where my coverage can serve more than one purpose? You know what I mean? That this camera here can shoot this, this, and this. So it gets three shots as opposed to one. So you kind of start to simplify. If I was doing a movie, I would take the time and I would, I would cover it exactly the way I wanted to block it. But with TV, you know, it's a little bit of that factory, you know, that you just kind of have to keep going and going and move things along more quickly. That's part of the job. So I do that. And then as I – I mean I write up so many notes on a script that you've seen my scripts.

I write up so many notes on a script that you've seen my scripts. Like you can't almost see the actual script anymore because I've written so many things on it. Some of them are blocking. Some of them are directional notes to the performance notes to the actors. All these different things, questions. Sometimes I just write down questions because sometimes I'll bring it up to either the writer or the actor or whatever and ask the question that no one has asked before. And that's one of the biggest things is ask those questions. People don't ask.

People just people get so nervous when they're directing that they kind of just go, I'm supposed to have all the answers, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They forget to ask the questions as well, because that's how you figure everything out. I love that you get to work with people in television. I love that you bounce ideas off people when, you know, if you're directing a movie, everyone just thinks you're a king with people in television. I love that you bounce ideas off people. If you're directing a movie, everyone just thinks you're a king and you have everything, but I love the collaboration. That's my favorite part. Well, this is why Dean is a successful television director

because so much of the job is working with other people. Like you're saying, you're not a king, you're not an emperor, you're not just dictating everything. And look, sometimes you get to make decisions and that's great, right? But ultimately, so Dean will do all that work as a director and say, I'm writing the episode or running the show or whatever. We'll have a production meeting where we talk to all of the departments. We go through all those notes. We get to ask those questions of all of our brilliant department heads. And we'll do a tone meeting, which is me and Dean and whoever else is relevant,

the line producer, whoever. And then we talk about, we go scene by scene and dissect every aspect, hopefully every aspect of the script before the day. So when you get on the day and there's so much chaos,

it's exactly like Dean said, you do as much preparation as you can. You go overboard with the preparation. And then on the day, you may have to change everything, right? You may have to change everything. I'll make shot lists. I make notes on my script.

I do everything. And usually, I never look at it again. I never look at it again. You have the binder, right? You got the binder. And most of the time, it's all in here. So then you play the audible and you figure out what you need to change and you just go with it, you know?

And then like one of my favorite things is the tone meeting, because as a director, you know, how you can make something work and the writer might not have written it that way. And if you have a great writer, you sit there and go, Hey, what if we did something like this? And then the writer can rewrite it to work for how you can shoot it, you know? And you have to do that. You have to rewrite things based on logistics, you know, camera movement, all that kind of stuff. And it's just, it's this evolving process that never ends. It's constant. It's constant. And so this one, look, this one was so fun because you got lucky with your first one. It's not only a caper, it's a Halloween episode. And me and Rob have talked about how much we like the holiday episodes of the show.

You got to do, you ended up doing Halloween episodes, right, Rob? Do you remember what Chris would wear for Halloween? I forget what you wore. Do you remember? Well, one time he was Sherlock Holmes. Oh, okay. That's right. And then one time he was himself as an old man.

Oh, wow. I remember. That's dark. I remember that. That's kind of funny. Really dark. Remember when Chris got really dark? Chris gets super dark towards the end.

And the other thing I remember at Halloween episodes, and this speaks to the camaraderie and just the good vibes on the set, was we would do a Halloween parade with everybody's kids. Oh, wasn't it the best? It was my favorite thing about being on Parks. Because my kids were at that point were just at the point where they'd stopped caring about Halloween and I missed it. So I would get to see everybody's younger kids come to the set. My kids were there. I have tons of pictures. They remember going to those still. I mean, they loved it. We had so many kids in our, you know, on our crew that would come in. It was fantastic.

But that was our show. Every Halloween, we would stop shooting by three o'clock so that we could do a Halloween for the next two or three hours. You guys want to feel old. Two of those kids are now Supreme Court justices. So it was a long time ago. I mean, it was a long time ago. Both sides of the aisle, though, you know, really.

Yeah, at least it's that. Yeah. You know, this is a classic sort of, it's really packed right it's like got the b-story at ann's house and then it's got the burt macklin cameo it's got the it's got right now hey yang was this was this not the first burt macklin this is the first burt macklin this is the first this is the birth of burt macklin yeah it's so funny when he pretends to throw the coffee in his face and just smashes the mug on the ground. Which we only did once. We only did that once.

Was that scripted? Nope. Okay. And believe it or not, I don't think it was scripted that. So we do this whole thing and Pratt goes in there like he's going to take him. He's going to destroy this kid. And then we cut away and we come back. Pratt's crying. That was also, I believe, not scripted. Oh, wow. That's a legendary move. I remember that moment because I feel like I maybe we saw it in

the cut, like we were watching the cut, like, oh, wow, that's really funny. You know, Pratt was an improvising machine. I mean, every you if you as a director, machine. I mean, every you if you as a director, I realized quickly I could never go back to Pratt and say, do what you did in the last take, because he was like, I have no idea what I did in the last take. Every take was completely different. And you just kind of had to grab on and hold on. And he just pulled you along for the ride. You know, it was great. great but yeah this this was a really as mike and i always used to say layered episode right it just had joke after joke and and storyline after storyline there were so many beats in this you cannot believe it's 21 minutes when i when i it's like these shows and they move really fast and and we'll talk about it you know in season three as

well how much faster it gets that season but but yeah i mean it you every character gets a little moment right it's like i i love seeing aubrey dressed as a clown you know tom is t-pain ron is a pirate he's like i'm a pirate and so in subsequent halloween episodes he's always a pirate in the same costume which is always really funny he He's like, I'm a pirate. This is what I am every year. I mean, think about the Halloween episode. I mean, the Halloween party, right? Anne's got a story of how she can't throw a party, right? Then you have Ron, who is kind of connecting with Wendy, right? You have Mark being tested by her nurse friends.

Yes, right. The subplot of that. And then Jerry, which got cut out right jerry's dressed in a huge dinosaur outfit the entire time and we reveal that at the end so we made him wear that costume for like a day and a half never seeing his face that's right because we we see him i remember that dinosaur because there's one prominent shot of ann being happy that tom has revived the party and you see a dinosaur guy like basically a giant dinosaur mascot dancing next to her that was jerry i didn't remember he's in the costume he's acting and you just don't even see his face you might have another episode

and then you have right then you have leslie, then you have Leslie and Pachitis, Leslie and Dave, Leslie and Andy, Andy and Pachitis, Dave and Pachitis, the parents. I know. And I would say when we broke the episode, it's ultimately in the A story kind of a Leslie-Andy episode, which we had never done before. I think that was really noticeable.

Yes, Yeah. Yes. That was like, oh, OK, they've decided to bring Pratt into the big leads. Yeah. Yes. He's got he's got his time in the spotlight with with the star. Let's see if this guy can hack it. They totally it was really because it was kind of progressing that way that, you know, first, basically, Andy's living in a pit. Then he gets a job. Then he's a shoeshine boy. And now he's kind of moving into being part of the parks department. A very smart move by the showrunners, I got to say, because he crushes in this episode. I forget he's not even like wearing the costume of the Burt Macklin costume or anything.

And man, he's so funny in that. Like, it's just this kid still wearing the same sneakers he wore all seven seasons. That's right. Same wore all seven seasons. That's right. Same sneakers all seven seasons. I feel like he wore that shirt in most episodes, too. There's that one. About 87%. Yeah, he's got like a kind of tan plaid shirt that he wears in most of the episodes.

Yep, yep. So let me ask you something about Burt Macklin. Was that, in this, it's very clear what it is. He's like he's doing a bit to crush this kid. And he say, I'm with the FBI. And he just makes up the name and uses that name. But that that actually became a character like Ron's character. Duke Silver is amazing. He really wasn't playing a character he was still dressed like andy he still clearly was andy and yet in subsequent episodes he's burt macklin with a fucking fbi jacket as a jacket but now technically technically it's an fbi jacket that he uses white paper tape and puts fbi on his back that's right because he dresses up the next time is in a halloween episode that's what it is that he dresses up the next time as in a Halloween episode. That's what it is. That he dresses up as Burt Macklin.

Yes. It all comes together. I believe he dresses up as Burt Macklin and Aubrey dresses up as Janet Snakehole. And then, yes.

And then correct me if I'm wrong, Yang, didn't you write Bus Tour? Yes. I think I co-wrote that with Aisha. Because that was one,

that was a huge Burt Macklin episode. The whole episode. This is how much a show that goes seven seasons spirals. It's like a thing that happens in one and a half scenes season two. It's like, okay, well, that's a character now. That game that he plays, he has his own story now. That's season six or something. And he basically got a TV show out of it and the

end a public access tv show out of it i forgot about that i mean like look when you when he's burt macklin he says i just remember in order to think like these guys you have to think like literally the same thing over and over again also when he walks just when he walks and he goes crappy halloween, that's hilarious. It's just a completely dry read, like not even, like just very serious about it. But I really felt,

and we've talked about this, but it felt like this was the one that unlocked Andy and we've, obviously he's grown and grown as a character, but putting him with a fun version of Leslie,

there's a fun version of Tom in the B story, like these characters were just becoming the lightest versions of themselves. Like I feel like, you know, and by the way, there was kind of new blood behind the camera too, right? I feel like, you know, and we went on and did an episode very soon after this and your second one, I think it was just getting energy up. We were so hungry. We just, we, we were so passionate, hungry, willing to please, We just we we were so passionate, hungry, willing to please.

You know, we wanted everything to be so good. We we would take our time. We would never rush off of anything. We would get something and we're like, great, that works. Now, what else can we do now? How else can we make it funnier? How can we up our game even more? We kind of never stopped. The shooting style allowed us to shoot more than we

needed. You know, there was always a thousand things that hit the editing room floor that were never seen that were spectacular. And that's why some of these episodes, we had these longer cuts. So, you know, we can talk a little bit, I think, about process where, you know, I don't think we've covered this in the show before. Basically, when we, you know, an episode gets shot, right? It's just generally a five day shoot or something like that. All the footage gets loaded in and then the assistant editor cuts some of the footage together. Then the editor of the episode puts together what's called an editor's assembly. You can take it from there, Dean, because you've done this more than I have.

Yeah, it's, you know, you'll shoot for five days. We come up with our first cut and our first cut was usually early on around this time. Our first cut was probably 35 minutes, maybe 40 minutes. And what people don't know when they hear a half hour show, they think a half hour. No, it was 21 and a half minutes. And you had almost a 30 second main title. So you basically had 21 minutes and that's a brutal to cut it's really basically you're cutting the show in half so that's how like mike and i got really good at pulling out words right and you would cut around and and every

edit that turned off to somebody else i would pull apart words and create new sentences to tighten it up and make it happen so much faster than it did happen you know and so anyway so we would come you'd have a long cut maybe 35 minutes and then um as as things went on the director does a cut and usually the directors didn't do much. They came in and they know they only have two days. They're usually on to another episode at that point. They would change a few things. So it basically stays the same.

And then I would take a cut and I would cut it down to probably about 23 minutes and give it to Mike. Then Mike would probably add another minute back in. And then together we would bring it back down to 23 minutes. And that's what would get sent to the network. Then the network would give our notes. And then Mike and I would squeeze it down to 2130. And that same process happens in every show, basically. Every single episode.

Every episode. But what it doesn't happen on are streamers. Every single episode. Every episode. But what it doesn't happen on are streamers. And this is my thing about why I think network television gets sort of a bad name. Like, go to the Emmys right now. There's nobody from network television nominated.

Nobody. And do you know how hard it is to make something good within the confines that we're talking about? Yeah. Like, you know, if you're making a show for a streamer, if you think it plays at 30 minutes, guess what? It's going to play at 30 minutes. Yeah. If you think it plays better at 21 minutes, you can do whatever the hell you want.

But with a network, you're a slave to the timing. And that is just the way it is. And you have to kill the babies if you have to kill the babies if you have to kill the babies to get there and that's what is so whenever i say if you see a network show you like it's even better than you think it is yes and and on top of that i add you have to have commercial breaks so for for a 21 minute show you're talking now in many cases four acts or something wild like that where you're writing in a scene has to end at a certain

point in time in the episode you're really cutting around that it is yeah and i feel really lucky to sort of have bridged the gap between network and streamer so i worked on some network shows i worked on parks obviously for a long time and then my first show that we got to create together was was a streamer and we couldn't dean we couldn't believe on this show editing, right? It's like, we can just, I mean, there's- The freedom. Yeah, it's like, we had seven minute long takes that we just put into an episode, right? That's what, you point out something else, Alan. Like, remember, they would say,

oh, your act one can't be any longer than this or any shorter than that. Act two can't be, you have to fit in these parameters. And not only that, but do they want a big story ending for each act? So you can't just end and move on. You have to like leave a cliffhanger at the end of every act. And then remember early on they added that fourth act, classic four-act structure.

When Mike came in, it looked like his dog had been shot because he came in and was like, we need to do four acts now, which is not traditional Aristotelian story structure. You don't hear about the four acts of stories. That's not a movie or a play. It's three act structure. It's beginning, middle, and end. But then you pop that fourth act in there. NBC's like, what about four acts? And by the way, just so everybody's clear, the only reason there are four acts is because they want four commercial breaks. They want more commercials on the show. This wasn't some clear the only reason there are four acts is because they want four commercial breaks yeah they want more commercials on the show this wasn't some this wasn't some dramaturge at nbc that went

oh i think everything would be better than four they just want more commercials you know it's a bean counter going yeah we can amortize this show better with four acts and they want your credits over the last like 35 seconds of your show and so you you don't want any important content happening because you have credits over it so it just has to be kind of 30 seconds of jokes that like it can't be an important storyline i remember sometimes we would go to that act four and we would move the credits to earlier because it was going to end on something important and we wanted people to watch it and then there's the fear that the people see the credits to earlier because it was going to end on something important and we wanted people to watch it. And then there's the fear

that the people see the credits coming up, they turn it off. That's right. It was hell. It was hell. It's tricky. Greg has a question. Producer Greg has a question for Dean.

What is it, Greg? Dean, I'm curious, since you were editing episodes that you were also directing, while you were directing them, did you think about the edits? Did you think about ways you were going directing while you were directing them did you think about the edits did you think about ways you were going to shoot it cut it and so on so that you were already ahead of the game i absolutely greg i mean i do that now you know what i mean it just even though i don't edit my own things now you as a director you have to be editing in your head

how does this cut to that how you know and if and if I want to cut this out and I don't like it, how can I bridge two moments? You have to think about all those things because you you try these things and then go, oh, I don't want to be in a one or with a joke that I'm unsure about in the middle of it because then I'm just screwed and I can't get out of it. So it's like that's what I've done. A lot of one years and I always cover myself. I always cover myself because if you're watching something and it's not good, you need the ability to cut it. So look, I was an editor for about, you know, 12 years, 12 to 15 years before I started, uh, directing. And so I couldn't help but always think about all of the editing. Yeah, and basically an editor with people skills can be a great director, because that's important.

Still working on those people skills. Well, to that point, you were always my favorite director. Well, thank you. Thank you. And I think, and I was curious to know, let's go cast member by cast member for a minute. Rate them out of 10? No. So, Rob. Yes, thank you. I mean, every actor requires a different style of directing.

Here's my favorite bad directing. When the director goes, so, yeah, so I was thinking, so you're sitting in this chair, and then, you know, when you say that line about, God damn it, this has to end. Like, I thought maybe you'd, like, walk over to the window, maybe you're sort of, you say it at the window,

and then you turn out, and I go, you just want a shot through the fucking window of me, right? Just tell me that. Just tell me I'd like to do a shot looking through the window and I will figure out a way to make that work. And there are some actors who would be so fucking offended

if you came to them and said that. Yeah. And so I get why some people do that, but every actor has to be handled differently. Yeah. Don't you think? Oh, absolutely. I mean, I feel like I probably gained a pretty with as many as I did a pretty great relationship with every single actor.

For example, you and I, Rob, right. We found that we definitely did the thing of like, here's what they want. So now how do we elevate it? Like we did all sorts of fun things. Right. I mean, we kind of went a little crazy. We you and I really dove into who Chris Traeger was. Right. I mean, we remember I had you doing pull ups in the middle of an entire scene the entire time. Right. Do you remember that? Without even knowing that visual effects would be able to pull this off. But it was like that was one of those things. And it wasn't like we do the pull-ups and then pan away. I was like, no, no, no. We need to do the pull-ups and stay there. Pull a whole scene with Rob in the background doing pull-ups.

And we had to do some that you had to do on your own own and then we were able to slip a little box in there and as long as you kept your feet the same they just they removed the box but like i think we found a lot of funny we dove into chris trager and made him a little crazier than he was but i every every thing that we did, we ended up using. We did a lot of crazy shit and ended up using it. Like Polar, Polar was, I never gave her a note for five takes because she was learning it. And then once she learned it, I'd go in and I'd be like, so Amy, I think what we should do here

is what Leslie Knope is thinking. And she's like, yeah, I know, like, so Amy, I think what we should do here is what Leslie Knope is thinking. And she's like, yeah, I know, faster, funnier. And that was like, so we really got into a thing where I was like, Amy, faster, funnier. And that's all I said. You know, Pratt was similar to you, Rob, where we would just try any funny thing we could think of. Nick, who I still work with today.

Nick, we had a Ron Swanson from a scale of one to 10. And that's all I ever said to him. I'm like, this is Ron at a 10. This is Ron at a one. This is a Ron at a four. And we knew. It just like, give me the extent of how Ron Swanson would be.

And it's like, we all found our ways. I mean, look, directing 27 episodes, you figure that out. But that was kind of the fun with it. I think like everyone just loved other people direct, but it was a similar thing where like someone like, uh, Rob or Pratt or whoever, like they'll, they'll do sort of different stuff every take, but, but certainly for Offerman, I literally did the same thing, talking to him, giving him notes, like, cause, because he's, again, he's theater. He's, he's, you can adjust him to any level. Like you could be like, you could, you could go to like a, you know know that was like a 46 out of 100 turn it to like a 67 out of 100 in terms of how angry you are like literally i would say 100 as a joke but also as a real thing he would do it like he did it he did 67 you're like

100 and by the way like with nick no one had thought about their performance more than nick i mean he knew he knew not only did he know every line of his memorized, he knew the entire script memorized. So there was nothing that you couldn't tell him that he hadn't already thought of. So that's why the number scale really became a good thing for him because it was like Ron Swanson was a very particular character, very specific. So if you just say how Ron Swanson do we want to be, he would give you that level. And when you said, give me a four and then said, give me a seven, there was that three point difference. You knew it. And he, and he was also such a, such a kind man. Like he literally like when, when he was asking, sometimes, you you know actor will have these lines that they

don't quite work or they're a little bit strange to say and so i i still remember him approaching me sometimes and you know it's like mr yankine sir uh do you mind if i changed this the to an an and i was like yeah you can do that like literally he would say like really really even small changes like that he was so respectful and what again i was eight years old right well you know whatever you said dean i was a very young person so it's always like anyone asking me a question i'm like yeah let's let's let's talk about it but yeah but uh he yeah he was he was so nice to work yeah he's extremely respectful when it comes to that and extremely respectful to the words that are written on the script and he wants to try that first and when he finds that it's not working you know

nick's also extremely intelligent and uh like you said classically trained but also grammar is a big thing for him and so it was always like you know this is grammatically correct how i would say this young young lad yeah you know. And I, and I also like, I think that's really, really smart what you're saying about just letting the actors get some takes in. Cause like, you know, sometimes a young director or a nervous director will, will fly in after one take and just like giving notes to everyone. It's like, look, we're under time constraints. Don't get me wrong.

Like we're, we're trying to finish the show and get it all done. But I do feel like I like to give the actors a little bit, get their legs under them you know sometimes look they might have been given seven new pages that day and they're learning all that stuff and i i remember seeing like this was in the outtakes one year but i remember rob doing this one line and i was on set and he would like the third or fourth take he was like and he would finish and be like that's an alan yang nightmare phrase like that is just like the total like it was just some kind of tongue twister, right? It was just some sort of weird one. And by the way, you know, they're all smart.

They know what they're doing. If you give them two or three takes, they usually fix all their mistakes by the time you get there. You know, I always, I never talk to an actor until the third take and sometimes more because those first two takes, you're kind of figuring out your cameras, their rehearsals, figure it out, let the actors figure out their

mistakes. And then hopefully from there on in, you're actually just giving notes that will make it better, that they've kind of fixed all the problems and we start moving forward of only making it better. I think I know the answer to this, Dean, but at the end of the episode, Pratt gets caught by the police TPing the house and then he jumps into the hedges. Was that him or was that a stunt person? It was him and it was my suggestion. I was like, Andy Dwyer would never wait for the cops. But I also thought that Andy Dwyer

would be really bad at hiding so it was just we we planned this thing where we just flash the lights on him he just bolts over and if you really look at it it's just one shrub there so it's like you can see him after he lands so it was uh yeah and we didn't have a stunt person because we just thought of it that night so he just dove over the bush there was any there was no matt there was no matt to jump onto you there was no nothing for it yeah i was like wow he really disappears in the edge we used to he gets air oh yeah he's like i mean it's a good frame by frame moment if you're interested and we had a lot of there was a lot of um it's ironically when we got

to tp'ing the house there were not a lot of people who knew how to tp a house that's sad and yeah it was so i had to do a little tutorial of how you get the the toilet paper to roll so it gives that strength and we did break a window toilet Toilet paper broke a window? An egg. He threw an egg right through a window. Oh, an egg. Oh, my God. Well, one of the most fun episodes, one of the things I talk about the show is how every episode almost has gifts, parties, or jobs. Like Parks and Rec has gifts, parties, and jobs in every episode.

This one, we got two. We got a Halloween party, and Leslie gives Andy a temporary job. Just one of the most fun episodes we had. Dean Holland, thank you so much for coming on. We're going to have you back on again because you've done a million of these episodes. But great to talk to you about this one, to pick your brain about the show. I loved this episode. I loved knowing that this was only your second episode of television. Well done, Mr. Terrence Malick.

There you go. Thank you very much. The second of 90. Thank you, Mr. Terrence Malick. There you go. Thank you very much. The second of 90. Thank you, Dean. Yeah. Well, what we got, Dean, here. Should we do a town hall? Should we take a trip to a town hall? I don't know what that is, but got Dean here. Should we do a town hall? Should we take a trip to a town hall?

I don't know what that is, but it sounds good. It's a question from a loyal listener. All right. Where should we do the town hall today? Scully's Bar. Scully's Bar, named after writer Mike Scully, legendary comedy writer, was on the show for a long time, pitched a lot of great jokes, and plays the character Pearl in the show. We're going to do it from Scully, legendary comedy writer, was on the show for a long time, pitched a lot of great jokes,

and plays the character Pearl in the show. We're going to do it from Scully's bar. The question today comes from Bobby K. in Brooklyn. And the question is, what's your favorite story that originated from a real life park, possibly from your hometown? For example, Central Park's Mandarin Duck going viral. That's a very specific example, Bobby K. I have one that's just, and is kind of not based on a park, but is based on a real thing, which is Lil Sebastian, which was based on a small horse that got emailed around the writer's room, I think, that we're like talking about kind of, it was a fun sort of harvest festival type thing. We're like, oh, what happens at these little festivals? And there was a horse,

I believe his name was Einstein. Einstein, the tiny horse. And we were obsessed with this horse and we were like, we should put something like Einstein in the show. And that was the origin of Lil Sebastian. So yeah, we always stole from sort of real life headlines and stuff like that. But, you know, hopefully that's a somewhat satisfactory answer. I'm sorry a duck was not involved. Bobby K from Brooklyn. But it would have been. If that damn whatever bird had been gone viral when we were making the show, you guys would have absolutely.

Oh, absolutely. The Mandarin duck is here. The Mandarin duck is here. You know, Leslie, the Mandarin duck is about to mate. Here's a question for you, which we were talking about before you came on was um the andy sandberg character after me so there's a there's a character named carl lorthner i believed who was a park ranger played by andy sandberg later the star of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, also directed by Dean in part. But he talks very loudly. And for those of you who can't tell over the airwaves, Dean Holland has one of the loudest voices known to man that I've ever heard in my life.

Way too loud. Often cannot modulate the sound of his voice. You're welcome. It's very effective for a director because you know in those old movies where you see the director with the bullhorn, Dean doesn't need one on set because he's audible in literally every room of the set. And I give myself a lot of headaches. Dean's all the way in Connecticut now, so we can hear him from there. He has no microphone.

No microphone. He can record it, yeah. So that was the Town Hall. Let's close up Scully's Bar and wrap up the episode, I think. This is it. I've been sated at Scully's Bar and wrap up the episode, I think. This is it. I've been sated at Scully's Bar. It's been a great talk. Dean, it's always great to have you.

We've got to get back on the golf course. But in the meantime, thank you all for listening to this cool episode of Parks and Recollection. Reckonpad is one of the classic episodes. Thank you, Dean. Thank you, producers Schulte and Greg. And goodbye from all me thank you parks and recollection is produced by greg levine and me rob schulte our coordinating producer is lisa berm podcast is executive produced by alan yang for Alan Yang Productions, Rob Lowe for Low Profile,

Jeff Ross, Adam Sachs, and Joanna Solitaroff at Team Coco, and Colin Anderson at Stitcher. Gina Batista, Paula Davis, and Britt Kahn are our talent bookers. The theme song is by Mouse Rat, a.k.a. Mark Rivers, with additional tracks composed by John Danek. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time on Parks and Recollection. This has been a Team Coco production in association with Stitcher.