Parks and Recollection - Sweetums (S2E15)

Starting point is 00:00:00 We're getting together to talk about all the things we used to do The laughs, the passions, the little Sebastian's, the pets we fell into And we're putting it on in a podcast, 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 Welcome, welcome to Parks and Recollection on a Saturday recorded session. I don't know when you're listening to this,

Starting point is 00:00:42 but just so you know, we're doing this on a Saturday. That's how into it Alan Yang and I are. That's how much we love you. That's how much we love the listener. Anyway, I am one of your hosts, Rob Lowe. Happy Saturday. Happy Saturday, Rob Lowe. How are you? I'm so good. It's Saturday, so I'm moving a little slow, but hopefully nobody will be able to notice that when they listen to this. Yeah, I just housed some breakfast tacos from Homestate. So, apologize if I'm sluggish. I just ate a bunch of breakfast tacos. We're going to get to do a scientific experiment then because I did not eat anything.

Starting point is 00:01:18 Okay, great. And my wife was like, you can't do that. You can't just run out of the house. We're going to see the dynamic between a hungry man and a very full man on this episode. Let's see how that works. It's going to be riveting. What do we got today? We got a good one, right? Well, speaking of food, we got one called Sweetums.

Starting point is 00:01:37 Classic app. Classic middle of season two episode 15 of season 2 aired February 4th, 2010. Written by Alan Yang, that's me. Directed by Dean Holland. This was the third episode of Parks I ever wrote. And it felt like it was in some ways the first normal one, normal-ish one, because the first one was first season and the second one was a very, very wild one. Guest starringred armisen called

Starting point is 00:02:06 sister city which uh you know we've talked about previously um which was a very very weird episode and this one was like oh this is about leslie and ron and it's kind of a wheelhouse parks and rec standard season two episode so let me just describe it right now with the synopsis how about that please do oh wait just are you going to put extra sauce on this because you actually wrote this episode? Extra sweetener for Sweetums, for sure. Good. Here we go. The Pawnee Parks and Recreation Department, heard of it, considers a potential sponsorship

Starting point is 00:02:35 deal with Sweetums, a local candy manufacturer hoping to market nutritious snack bars to park visitors. Nutritious is in quotes, so you know they're not nutritious. Ron supports the deal as he emphasizes consumer choice over public safety. Leslie supports the deal as well until Ann informs her they are filled with unhealthy corn syrup. Leslie arranges a public forum so they can make an informed choice about Sweetums products. During the forum, Sweetums representatives screen propaganda films highlighting consumer satisfaction,

Starting point is 00:03:05 while Leslie responds by screening a 30-year-old Sweetums film which discusses how corn syrup and other snack bar ingredients make cattle unhealthy. At the end of Leslie's screening, Sweetums brings in the company's dashingly handsome CEO Nick Newport Jr. and his kids. The forum audience cheers with excitement when the Newports give them free candy and ultimately votes in favor of the sponsorship deal. All the while, Leslie comments on Ron's unhealthy food choices like drinking too much and ordering the Turfin Turf, which is two steaks. Ron later apologizes to Leslie for having, quote, been a horse's ass. For the B plot, Tom attempts to move out of his home after his divorce from Wendy. Mark reluctantly helps Tom with his pickup truck. The parks department also helps with theantly helps Tom with his pickup truck.

Starting point is 00:03:47 The Parks Department also helps with the move, while Tom himself works very little. At the end of the episode, Tom learns that his new home has a gas leak and that he's unable to move in until Monday. Tom asks the gang to take the boxes into their own homes, but they ultimately bring in the possessions and leave them in the Parks Department office. That is the episode's synopsis.

Starting point is 00:04:03 A lot going on. Yeah. I knew corn syrup was bad, but I didn't know why. And I learned why it's bad in this episode when it's something that was made because it's sweeter than sugar, which is obviously great if you can figure that out, and it's cheaper than sugar, hence why it's in almost everything that's bad for you it's a very educational episode actually everything in the world is like made in made of corn like everything america makes is made like every product is basically corn like bread is part corn like everything's corn things that you don't think are corn are corn it's like it's like the cheapest thing to make so one of the things I loved was the Sweetums commercial launching the Healthy Bar. It was, I think, you tell me, it looks like a frame-for-frame parody of a Coors commercial.

Starting point is 00:04:58 Yeah, and it was lit up all bright. I remember shooting that. I think that was up at Disney Ranch along with some of the other stuff we shot. But we took a trip up there and it was really funny. The guy in his vest and with his dog. On the vest. Like splashing water in his face from a cool mountain spring. Like it was very, that was really fun to shoot.

Starting point is 00:05:15 And this one you got to shoot like some educational film stuff. And it was, we were all over the place. And, you know, we mentioned this in our episode with Dean Holland. But we felt like we were kind of kids running the store. Because, you know, we mentioned this in our episode with Dean Holland, but we felt like we were kind of kids running the store because, you know, again, I was a fairly young writer and this was his second episode ever directing. And again, there was no parental supervision. It was just the two of us on site.

Starting point is 00:05:36 I distinctly remember the feeling. I believe we were shooting the public forum scene and we had some questions, like we weren't sure how to shoot, like literally weren't sure how to shoot it. We were like, should we do it this way? Should we do that? I was like, it's just us, man. We're just, there's no one else here. We're just, we're just doing it. And it all worked out. Dean became a terrific director. So it was fun to learn with him. I love, I mean, I was obsessed with the Newport family and this is before we meet Paul Rudd, who plays, he must be the brother of these people, right?

Starting point is 00:06:08 Yeah, another good looking kind of dummy. Paul Rudd playing a dummy in the show. Oh, he's so funny. So Bobby Newport comes in later. Yeah, he did a ton of episodes, man. He did more than you think. And it was really fun. I directed an episode he was in.

Starting point is 00:06:22 And the guy is just, he's a machine. He's so funny. Like, I remember giving him notes. And he was like, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh so funny. Like I remember giving him notes and he was like, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh. Like just very friendly listening. I was like, did he even listen to anything? And then the next take, he did it perfectly, like better than I could have pitched it to him. He was just a, he was a machine, just a comedy machine. The red vest got this puffy red vest. I have a thing about vests. I, I, I do. There's, they say something, um, I don't know. And I don't want to, I mean, I'm sure there's a lot something um i don't know and i don't want to i mean i'm sure there's a lot of people right now this is a saturday and they're in their vests and they're

Starting point is 00:06:50 like taking a walk and they got us on their you know fucking headphones or whatever and now i'm gonna shit all over their vest i i don't want to do that but i it says something very specific there's something very, very specific about. Now, granted, it could have been worse. It could have been a fleece vest. Yes. You know, that sort of. A tech vest.

Starting point is 00:07:18 The tech, yeah, that Jeff Bezos, you know, conference up in the mountains vest. Zippered pockets. I'm going to Aspen for a business conference. Yes. By the way, right now, again, tons of people are definitely wearing vests and taking hikes and listening to this podcast. You know, you're in San Francisco. I don't want to color a whole city, but

Starting point is 00:07:33 you see a lot of vests in San Francisco in the Bay Area, just walking around. In fact, if they were making the streets of San Francisco TV show today, it would be the vests of San Francisco. There's no question about it. And also the kids running in with vests that's happening in this episode like the kids run in with the kids it was it was it the the episode was pretty much built around the concept of making fun of people wearing vests and then we built it from there well i would go even further

Starting point is 00:07:59 i would say that the episode is built under the concept of making fun of the general public because the people of pawnee are complete idiots. And it makes me laugh that they're just like, yay, candy. They're just so funny that like, that Leslie lays out this beautifully articulated, you know,

Starting point is 00:08:17 reason why this is a bad thing. And, and then the Newports go, I don't know, look under your seats and there's candy under the seats. And they just go, yeah. And they just, it's so great.

Starting point is 00:08:27 It's so funny because it really is kind of a seminal episode in terms of, you know, determining what these town halls are going to be. You know, we had done them previously, but this one we started to go further and further. And the way Dean cut it also was like, you know, just jump cuts between different people in the public. And we're like, oh, every one of these can just be a wild joke. And it doesn't really matter, right? It was just there's no continuity or anything like that. So it was fun. And it was fun to write those. We would just write, you know, as a writing staff, we would just pitch a ton of them and then decide kind of what to do on the day and kind of give them to random people. And then we brought back our favorite actors from these public forums, because it would make sense that the same weirdos would come to all of them.

Starting point is 00:09:04 So that was really fun too yeah i was going to ask how you cast the the you know regular folks of of pony and that makes perfect sense because you know you're giving one line to somebody and you never know how they're gonna whether they're gonna have game or not to get on the set yes and and eventually we had some guys kind of recur like we had this guy mel callan who would come in and he was he would scream i mean he came back again and again it's like he was a really really fun and also sometimes the writers would come and do it so mike scully uh one of the writers started appearing in episodes as just a weird townsperson and his name was pearl for some reason so he would come back and do do stuff but uh yeah public forum was really fun in this one. The discussion, just the political discussion of Ron Swanson's thing. And if he's like an individual should have

Starting point is 00:09:51 the right to consume whatever they want in their own bodies and the government should not be involved in that conversation. You know, the elements of Ron Swanson, obviously people think about the manly stuff, the woodworking, the meat, all that stuff. But ultimately, originally, he was conceived as a libertarian. That was a really important part of his character. And so this was kind of focusing on that side of him where he was like, yeah, I hate government. I hate government. I work in government, but I hate government and they shouldn't tell me what to do. And that was, you know, that was one of the challenges in breaking this episode was we knew that the framework was this kind of theoretical, ideological disagreement between Leslie and Ron. But then it's like, how do you make that emotional?

Starting point is 00:10:32 How do you make that a personal story? Because, you know, look, there have been great works of art made that are just appealing to the head, but we generally wanted to make episodes that appeal to the heart. So it was kind of combining that into the idea that she was trying to manage his business about his personal life. And so it wasn't just government, it was Leslie trying to micromanage Ron. And that was kind of a metaphor for government micromanaging citizens' lives. So that was kind of how we broke it open. Yeah, it felt really timely. Yeah, it still is. Still is. I laughed when I turned it on. The first thing was this cold open where Tom is trying on outfits for Justin. And it really took me back because some of those outfits,

Starting point is 00:11:12 Aziz and I had taken a trip to Universal Studios, and we walked around Universal CityWalk. And for those of you who know, it's kind of like a nightmare mall. It's like a Buca di Beppo and like, you know, Bubba Gump Shrimp Company and like a Margaritaville or whatever. And so there's these street vendors and a couple of street vendors, they included a shirt with a sort of, that lights up when you talk that. So it has little like sound level bars.

Starting point is 00:11:42 And then there was also another vendor that had a belt buckle that had messages you could program on it digitally. And so we're like, these are so dumb. We've got to buy these and put them in the show. And so we had the prop department buy a bunch and then we just put them in the show. I think you made them up. And this is early on in the show, right? This is season two. So yeah, a belt buckle that says what's cracking.

Starting point is 00:12:03 A perfect accessory for Tom Haverford. What's cracking? Yeah, you use your personal experiences and put it into the show. It made me laugh. It's so perfect. I thought you couldn't have made it up. It turns out you didn't. Life is always, life is always, real stuff is always the best.

Starting point is 00:12:20 It's always, that was also like, this is very minor, but the Newport's dog, there's a golden retriever, we named him Shoelace because that was the name of my friend Reed's dog. And Shoelace would come over. I was living in a house in Hancock Park with like five other riders. It was like a rider flop house. And we had this pool in the backyard and Reed and Shoelace, his dog would come over and Shoelace would immediately jump into the pool every time. So, in honor of Shoelace, we named the golden retriever in this

Starting point is 00:12:48 episode after him. I'm a big believer in, like, people should spend more time on the names of their pets. Yeah. I think. Or they should either spend more time or less time. Yes. I also like when the pet has, sometimes I like it when the pet has a human name, right? It's like. Oh, that's me. Really? It's like, oh, this dog's named Gregreg it's like well i'll do one better um you know john lovitz right of course yeah yeah so john lovitz likes to name his dogs after people who he knows and he has a dog named after the great producer jerry brheimer's wife Linda Bruckheimer so he his dog will be like so in and he says it so I can say oh my god there's Linda Bruckheimer taking a shit in the backyard again pretty funny that's

Starting point is 00:13:33 pretty fun I once dated a woman who's who named her cat after her dad so it's very confusing I was like do you want Dominion over your does that what's going on here like you need to you're working out some issues with your cat I also like really stupid names Like I had a dog once named Ed Ed Chocolatehead cause he had An actual head That was chocolate covered

Starting point is 00:13:55 He was a German Shorthaired Pointer and their heads Are always a different color so I Just loved it was so dumb Ed Ed Chocolatehead come here and people are like What's wrong with you? It's a very long name for a dog, too. It is a long name. You put it on its collar, he needs four collars to fit the name on it.

Starting point is 00:14:11 But yeah. Oh, man. Again, this example of people using their personal lives we used uh some of nick's woodworking knowledge because i mean he brings in that harp and he says i used a bandsaw spoke shave and an oscillating spindle sander to make this harp and it's like yeah he just we didn't write that we just like we put like yeah nick make up some woodworking shit and took a trip to his actual wood shop and that's why we we kind of incorporated and then we ended up shooting there for a different episode so that's coming up um there's also a trip to the library which i think we used we later did whole episodes but there's a little journey to the library in

Starting point is 00:14:54 this one i didn't know you could check out archaic super 8 movies at the library i learned that in this episode i always love in a movie like old movies where the characters go to the library and like looking in card catalogs and then i really love microfiche and joanna just put in the chat but it is the because i remember like this is how old i am like i remember going to the library and like looking at microfiche of old newspapers to do research for a project and it's like for for anyone under the age of like 30, 30, microfiches, you load these things into a magazine that magnifies the image, like, really greatly. So, you can store a lot of newspapers on small, you know, little, little, I don't even know what they're called. Wasn't there a crank on it that would go brrrr?

Starting point is 00:15:37 I mean, it sounds like we were born in the 1800s. Like, anyone listening to this? It does. We're speaking in a very modern medium, the medium of and people are probably listening on airpods with their fucking phone but like we're talking about like the dewey decimal system yes microfiche which is uh but but it's real man that with the struggle was real and wasn't that long ago anytime you're saying the word microfiche it's so good it makes you feel both like it's a clown word, but it also is very like, you know, like you're in the CIA at the same time. I just think of like a John Grisham.

Starting point is 00:16:13 Like I, I always felt like I was in the library of Congress and it was going to zoom out and there's like large concentric circles in that room where you're studying and like, I'm going to crack this case. But in reality, I was just writing like a history paper or something. It's very, all the president's men yeah man pelican brief like all that shit man you gotta have the chanting guys stand up and yell that in the town yeah micro fish is a never forget it never forget it uh another classic first appearance of djomba in this episode. I mean. One of the weirdest things I ever got into the show. I wrote that in my first draft,

Starting point is 00:16:53 and Roombas were a little newer, right? So this was back when Roombas were new. And by the way, it's not a phone on top of the Roomba. It's an iPod. So it was like, you know, this is a decade ago. It was like an iPod. And I remember Mike reading the writer's draft, my draft of the script. And he was like, I don't understand what this is at all, but I'm trying to trust you on this. And so he's like,

Starting point is 00:17:16 let's, he asked the other writers and they were like, yeah, it's funny. So we built it and it worked. It was like a Roomba with an iPod on it. And he was like, well, I don't understand it, but people seem to think it's funny so it got in the episode it's one of my favorite things in the history of the show it just is it's one of my all-time favorite things it makes me so happy i don't know what it is it's like seeing a dolphin in the wild it just releases pheromones when i see dj roomumba that's the way i feel it's whimsical it's very whimsical it's also funny when it's it's he's so sad when jerry breaks it it's like he was like a child to me yeah he's like a son what are you doing you killed dj rumba

Starting point is 00:17:58 and then the ultimate really the true mark of insanity is in the tag of the episode when we did the ghost of DJ Roomba. And he's playing black eyed peas on a nonstop loop. And that's like, it goes to credits. But that is when you know the lunatics have taken over the asylum is when we allowed that to happen in the episode. You know, as we do this, like you said the other day, you're discovering my taste. Yeah, that's your favorite shit. Dude, that ghost DJ Roombumba thing is it for me it is the it's

Starting point is 00:18:27 the most genius thing ever i mean first of all the way he looked it's so cute the way the little ghost looks it's really cute it lived up to exactly what i was picturing i was like it's gonna have a little sheet and it's gonna have a little two little eyes and then i i think dean also mentioned this when he was on but he we did a shot from between Jerry's legs, and that was when we realized the concept of this being a documentary was out the window. And we're like, we're just going to shoot this regular. We're just going to shoot this regular.

Starting point is 00:18:57 So the ghost of DJ Rumba broke the documentary. Yeah, which is interesting. That's an interesting thing out there. At what point have we crossed the Rubicon to just going for it? And now we know what it was. It was the between said, we mentioned The Office at the beginning of this episode. You know, it just became more and more different from The Office. And I thought, you know, I think that's a good thing. You know, it became its own show. Would you say that the talking heads not only decreased, but they went from more story driven, albeit comedic, to just flat out jokes? Because for me, by the time I got on the show, it felt like the talking heads were an amazing opportunity pretty much just to be funny. Yeah, and I always kind of felt, this is just my own personal taste, but I always felt like using them for exposition

Starting point is 00:19:52 or to give information out, or in the writer's room, we call that laying pipe, just like get the pipe out of the story. It's just a little lazy, you know? Part of the artfulness of writing is trying to get exposition across in scenes but in this format you can just have a character say to camera what's happening which is you know like like you can always do we look we did it trust me we did it a lot but ultimately we we had kind of rules where we didn't love to do that and we also tried to not necessarily have a character just say how

Starting point is 00:20:23 they're feeling in the talking head because that also feels like a little bit of a cheat and we always thought it was a little more elegant to have them you know first of all just do a joke or second of all say something that hides how they feel but implies the opposite or something you know i always felt like and that goes that i think that's fairly decent advice for scenes in general right like have characters be a little bit cagey about how they feel so they're not just well they're just saying how they feel of course the network will always tell you like can you just have them say how they feel it's like that's not that's not good writing man it's that's the it's a it's a network notey type thing but yeah i always wish and look i don't

Starting point is 00:20:59 mean it's such it's just an easy target to bash networks and their creative people. Because, you know, actually, I always feel like whenever you get a network note, however bad, for the most part, there's some germ of issue. I don't know if it's truth, but there is some reason that they're bumping on something. Now, nine times out of ten, they've given you the wrong fix. Right. And it's a little bit for me, like going to a chiropractor where you go, God, my shoulder, it's my shoulder. My problem is my shoulder. And the chiropractor goes, actually, it all stems from this. And it's your hip that is putting pressure on your shoulder. And the network never knows it. They always go right to the shoulder, but the problem may be something else in the script and they just don't have the

Starting point is 00:21:49 sophistication or the, or the ability to understand what they're actually bumping up against. I think that's pretty savvy. And I can tell you've been in the business for a while because, because I feel the same way, you know, it like, you know. I don't really have an adversarial or antagonistic relationship with any executives I've ever worked with, quite frankly. I think, honestly, I've had a ton of good executives. I think I've had a lot of executives who ultimately, look, it's been my experience, and this is just me speaking, but they're smart people generally who want to support the show and make it great. The same as you do. Right. And to me, it's just another set of eyes. It's just hopefully a smart, experienced person who's read a lot of scripts and they just give you their thoughts. Right. And that's okay. Like that's totally okay. And I feel like I've been fortunate in the sense that it's always been a conversation. It's always been like, well, let's talk about it. And I agree with you. I, every script needs to be rewritten a million times, quite frankly, like you should be rewriting it a ton of times before the network even sees it and be prepared to rewrite it after they see it. Because I, I totally think if they

Starting point is 00:22:54 diagnose something again, look, it's all taste and they may be right. They may be wrong. But if there's, if they say 10 things about a script, I usually am like, oh yeah, these three or four are right. And let's fix it. And I don't, you know, look, it's my job to rewrite. It's not like, oh, it's gold, and let's shoot it, right? I never feel that way. So, no, I mean, I know there's some writers out there who despise executives, despise them. And look, I mean, maybe there, I'm sure there are bad ones out there, but I don't put myself in that category. It's like, yeah, it's just a smart person reading it, hopefully. And, you know, you can agree and disagree. By the way, the other thing is like, I've been fortunate in the sense that it's not like absolute. You fix these things, you do them the way we tell you to. I've never had executives do that to me. So I feel lucky in that sense.

Starting point is 00:23:38 Has there been a difference in working on a network show and then going into a place like Netflix or Hulu or streaming? Or that's really where you work at the most for the most point now a little bit yeah I mean well I feel like again I keep saying this over again and over and over again because I do feel this way I feel like I've been lucky like so on Parks and Rec for instance you know obviously it was mainly Mike dealing with the network but I've you know I got to sit in on some of these sessions later on in the run of the show. And our exec on Parks, Lauren Anderson, was phenomenal. And she was really smart and just supportive of the show. And and had smart ideas and suggestions and was like well what if this is a two-parter what if so that was great and then but you're right once you get once you get in the streaming world i mean we felt i mean i've now worked with netflix and amazon and

Starting point is 00:24:35 apple and all these networks it's kind of really fun like when we did master none netflix was like six employees i mean i'm exaggerating but they literally had two shows when we sold we When we sold Master of None to Netflix, they had made House of Cards and Origins of the New Black, and that was it. And so, it was a very nascent company. I remember pitching to Ted Sarandos and City Hall in like a small conference room, and they bought the show. And it's like, now Ted Sarandos is worth like a billion dollars or something. So, but you got the kind of Wild West feeling, right? It's like they kind of gave you some freedom. And by the way, our executive on Master, Andy Wheel, who's a great executive, has great taste,

Starting point is 00:25:15 he came over from Universal. He had worked with us at Universal and was our Universal exec. So it's kind of the same kind of guy. So yeah, I feel lucky in that sense. Yeah, it's good when, you know, I did I did a show called the grinder, which I love. I love the grinder. It's one of my favorite things I've, it's one of the things I've ever done. I mean, I, I, I put it up there against any comedy, but you know, it, it, on one hand,

Starting point is 00:25:37 I was grateful for Fox for putting it on because it was like stunningly weird show that I couldn't believe a network put on TV so i you know without them we don't even have a show but then i don't think they really ever understood i know they didn't understand it um and one of the things i loved about the grinder it was that it would open with a cold open that was the tv show within the show and their big thing is we do we have to do those i think we should just start the show and i was like they we hate do we have to do those i think we should just start the show and i was like they're the most funny part they go yeah but we think that the audience thinks that's the show you know at that moment you're you're you're kind of on life

Starting point is 00:26:16 support because they they intrinsically either don't understand the show or don't like it yeah and then it's always an uphill battle and and to me, that note smacks of, you know, you and the creative auspices of the show want to trust the audience and respect them. You know, it's like, no, we trust that they're smart and they can watch a two minute cold open and understand that's the fictional show within a show and it's funny and they can enjoy it and they understand that. And I think, you know, respecting the audience's intelligence is one of you know the most important things to me it's really uh really fundamental to making good stuff we say that as we're talking about an episode where the people are idiots the entire

Starting point is 00:26:56 public no show has shown more disdain towards the american public than parks and recreation if you're not a main character in the show you're an absolute moron exactly you're loud you you're barely capable of rational thought from from how they're portrayed in this show but but the but the main characters are lovely they're very intelligent smart empathetic people. But yeah. Sometimes some jokes I just wanted to shout out. I really just liked when Leslie says she's already written a eulogy for Ron. It's called Oh, Captain, My Captain, Ron Swanson, A Swan Song, which is a phenomenal joke. I believe it was Harris Whittles. You know, it's just like you do the rewrite and you get a little gem like that, which is really funny.

Starting point is 00:27:47 It feels very true. It feels like that's probably not even a joke. There's a world where I could see, sadly, someone actually delivering that eulogy. Yeah. I mean, that might happen many, many decades from now. But yeah yeah very funny tom talks to his landlord on the phone and i think it's mike schur's voice it sounds a lot like him so i think i don't know if he tempted in they just left it in and like yeah whatever because

Starting point is 00:28:16 that happens sometimes right it's like you you know you're in the edit and you need some you need the voice on the other end so you just record yourself. You just set up a mic and then you just record it. But I think he just left it in. I think that's just him. So listen in. I mean, Mike, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that's right. I think he just wanted his Screen Actors Guild health and pension insurance. I know.

Starting point is 00:28:36 He just had to get his dental, keep his dental insurance. Exactly. He's no fool. That's a big thing. It's a big thing. But yeah, the ending of this episode is pretty touching too i thought what ron swanson apologizing to to leslie is you know we're building this relationship which i think originally we weren't sure if this was going to kind of be the fundamental

Starting point is 00:28:55 relationship in the show but it ended up being such a spine for us and so this is this is a one you know one of the seminal leslie and ron episodes as well it was kind of like oh we we get it right we get their relationship and this is what we're kind of building on in the future so agreed Do we want to do a town hall? I think the answer is yes. The answer is always yes. I think the answer is yes. Are we ever going to have a show where we go,

Starting point is 00:29:32 do we want to do a town hall? And you go, no. Yeah. I don't want to do that. You know what? I just want to get out here and put on my vest and go for a hike, Rob. So fuck the town hall. Just the vests.

Starting point is 00:29:44 Oh, man. We're so done. We're never going to get, hall Just the vests Oh man We're so done we're never gonna get People in the vests are gonna spit on us People in the vest community We're a protected class and the show is The show is oppressing us By the way I keep swearing in this episode I'm like why am I swearing so much

Starting point is 00:29:59 It's a weekend Yeah it's a weekend vibe It's the breakfast tacos on the Saturdays So apologies for swearing in this one. Maybe Sheldon can bleep some of the swears. This is the 13 and over podcast this episode. Yeah, because 12-year-olds never swear. I know, right?

Starting point is 00:30:16 That's like their favorite thing. All right, let's do the town hall. I was looking over a list of locations because I was like, oh, we got to figure out where this town hall is. And I noticed a park that we would use sometimes, just a name. It was called Harvey James Park. Not, again, on the theme of using, you know, your personal experiences. We just had a friend named James Harvey, like me and Aisha, one of the writers. And so, we just made it Harvey James Park, inverted the name. He was like, he went to college with us and he became a professional football player in Finland. And he was like this kind of

Starting point is 00:30:49 handsome strapping guy. And at some point we were like, there's an episode where Rashida, you know, Anne dates a lot of guys. And we're like, I think James Harvey should just be in the show. So we cast him in the show. This is so wild. We'll get to that episode. But I think I might have written that one. But yeah, he's just one of the guys she dates. He has like two lines. We're like, I don't know how that happened.

Starting point is 00:31:14 Because he's not an actor. He's just a guy. Anyway, we'll do it in Harvey James Park in honor of James Harvey, a friend of mine from college. And this question comes from sheila in new york did the cast ever engage in actual parks and rec type activities as a team building exercise did they prune trees or pick weeds ever and or did the writers have any team building activities likewise yeah the only time i've i've done anything like that would have been community service, you know, as court mandated. You know, that's, you know, wearing an orange jumpsuit, you know, for, you know, public intoxication with the Brat Pack. You know, I think there was a time when Judd Nelson and Andrew McCarthy and I had to dig a trench in Sylmar.

Starting point is 00:32:02 Many years ago. You put on your orange vest to do that. Yeah, I did. I did. And listen, no one can trench like uh mccarthy jesus he's a trenching fool sometimes i think about the stuff you guys gotta because it's a different era you think about like i i feel like there was a michael jordan quote recently that was like oh i don't think i could have survived in this era of social media and stuff because because of the the hijinks he was getting into or worse. I mean, the stuff that you guys were doing in the 80s, it's unfathomable.

Starting point is 00:32:31 It's unfathomable. No, it's literally unfathomable. And that's why you see people who are in that position today are just hidden out. You don't see Leonardo DiCaprio partying every friday at the hard rock cafe by the way how funny is it that the hard rock cafe was like the cat's meow i mean it is so funny it was though like legit it's like it's like one step away from an applebee's it sounds like i mean there's a hard rock cafe there was a hard rock cafe at universal city walk that i was kind of making fun of earlier it was like a right next to the buca di beppo or whatever it's like across from the movie theater

Starting point is 00:33:08 like that's a hard rock cafe is that now it is essentially yeah but that was the cool spot that's so funny yeah i mean it's it's embarrassing to say but but it but it really was but yeah no we didn't do any team building on on parks and rec in that way we should have yeah that sounds fun that sounds fun yeah we didn't do any like parks activities that the writers would go on a writer's retreat before every season. So we would go stay in a hotel in Laguna Niguel by the beach

Starting point is 00:33:34 and we would be there for a few days and just try to break stories and come up with arcs for the upcoming season. So it was fun. It was a fun time. We'd do some writing. We'd have some meals together and we'd play some like gay we play like celebrity together and stuff at night so we did a little bit of that and then later on you know uh we took some trips like the the

Starting point is 00:33:55 parks and rec writing staff went to vegas together that was fun so it was a very tight-knit staff we would do um the cast would do dinners together although quite a lot we would do that um we would do an indian food night and um i remember that in particular but uh yeah we it was a really close cast i mean everybody was friends everybody parks and rec was the first show i was ever on where every single cast member organically was on a text thread and that text thread is still exists. It survives to this day, yes. I've heard about this group chat with the cast.

Starting point is 00:34:30 That's kind of fun. That's kind of a fun thing. Group chats are like the lifeblood of maintaining relationships now. I find a lot of my good friends are on different chats, and we just communicate that way. Yeah, it was good. Well, way, you know? Yeah. Yeah. It was good. Well, Alan, congratulations on this episode.

Starting point is 00:34:51 I mean, it's got your name on it and it's fantastic. How many credits do you have on the show as a writer? I think it's something like 14 or 15. Some of them are co-writes, but yeah, it's a lot of episodes. Jesus. So good. DJ Roomba. So satisfying satisfying i don't know what to tell you we got vests we got dj roomba we have microfiche well actually we don't have microfiche we wish we had microfiche we'll go back and shoot another parks episode all centered around microfiche leslie would love it leslie would love microfiche ben white would love it

Starting point is 00:35:22 ben white would love i would and traeger traeger would be down to clown would love microfiche because he loves almost everything probably loves a lot just his body is a microchip and his brain loves microfiche so there you go there it is that's why you got the big bucks my body is a microchip but my brain is a microfiche it works it just kind of works well thanks for tuning in y'all um tuning in that is not a good phrase there was no tuning involved downloading but that's not so corporate thanks for what what should we say thanks for listening well there you go thanks for subscribing even better if you subscribe yes yes like and subscribe and review five stars

Starting point is 00:36:02 which we do need you to do. Subscribe and review. Five stars. At Apple. I guess that's the place where everybody wants to do it. Thank you. We'll see you next week. Thank you, Producer Schulte. And bye for punny. Parks and Recollection is produced by Greg Lev levine and me rob schulte our coordinating producer is lisa berm the podcast is executive produced by alan yang for alan yang productions rob low for low profile jeff ross adam sacks and joanna solitaroff at team coco and colin anderson at stitcher gina batista paula davis and Britt Kahn are our talent bookers.

Starting point is 00:36:48 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.

Parks and Recollection - Sweetums (S2E15)

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