Parks and Recollection - The Camel (S2E9)

Episode Date: December 21, 2021

Come one come all to Pawnee! Today Rob and Alan congregate to watch the ninth episode of season 2! In “The Camel” Leslie and the Parks Department compete to come up with a new mural design. On today’s episode you’ll hear about the unearned confidence of Sewage Joe, the difference between bottle-episodes and a story-driven arc, and how the B story came about from a delirious night of writing!Got a question for the Pawnee Town Hall? Send us an email: [e-mail] Or leave a 30-Second voicemail at: [phone] The Pawnee council decides it will replace the town hall's "Spirit of Pawnee" mural, due to its racist overtones. When each Pawnee department is asked to propose a new mural, Leslie becomes determined for the parks department to win. Everyone in the parks department is told to come up with a possible mural, and they each vote for their own artwork. As a compromise, Leslie creates a mural using pieces of everybody's artwork, but the result is a confusing mess. While all of this is happening Ron starts visiting Andy who is now the Pawnee shoe-shiner. Ron is impressed when Andy eases the pain from his bunion, and after a couple visits, makes an involuntary sexual moan. They both decide to pretend it never happened. Mark draws a boring sketch of an old man feeding pigeons in the park—knowing it will have mass appeal. Nobody in the parks department likes it except Ron, but Leslie insists on entering it so they will win. Leslie sees how much fun other departments had in making their mural, and she decides to enter the parks department's original mural after all. The town decides not to spend any money on a new mural and simply renames the old one "The Diversity Express". The parks department, proud of their work, hang their mural in the conference room; and Ron hangs Mark's sketch in his office.

We're getting together to talk about all the things we used to do The laughs, the passions, the little Sebastian's, the pits 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 Hello, welcome Parks and Recollection And I have recollections, I got a lot of recollections And I am here to share them with my co-host and partner Alan Yang. How are you Alan? I'm good. How are you Rolo? Baseball trading deadline today. Wow.

I'm super duper excited. Not to date the podcast and put a time stamp on it but let's face it the Dodgers got Max Scherzer today. Yeah that totally dates it. But today we're going to Pawnee. See how I did that? I'm not a big, like, smooth transition guy. I think if transitions are too smooth, it feels a little too, I don't know, local small town cable access. But no, they don't really transition well. Why don't I, I don't know. I love abrupt, jarring transitions that leave the audience confused.

Yes, me too. That's the goal. Just to keep them on their heels. Just don't know what's happening. Stay with us because this is a, I found this episode particularly funny. I made a note that this is, and I should probably start doing this of like favorite episodes. This one was a real favorite of mine. It's The Camel.

Yes, The Camel. Yes, The Camel, episode nine, season two, aired November 12th, 2009, written by Rachel Axler of The Daily Show and Veep, directed by Millicent Shelton. Let's roll right in the synopsis, shall we, Rob?

Let's do it. All right, synopsisters and brothers, here we go. The Pawnee Council decides it will replace the town hall's spirit of Pawnee mural due to its extremely racist overtones. When the Pawnee council decides it will replace the town hall's spirit of Pawnee mural due to its extremely racist overtones when each Pawnee department is asked to propose a new mural Leslie becomes determined for the parks department to win everyone in the parks department is told

to come up with a possible mural and they each vote for their own artwork so it's a tie as a compromise Leslie creates a mural using pieces of everybody's artwork, but the result is a confusing mess. While all this is happening, Ron starts visiting Andy, who is now the Pawnee shoeshiner. Ron is impressed when Andy eases the pain from his bunion and after a couple visits, makes an involuntary, almost sexual moan. They both decide to pretend it never happened. Mark draws a boring sketch of an old man feeding pigeons in the park knowing it will have mass appeal no one in the parks department likes it except ron but leslie insists on entering it so that they'll win leslie sees how much fun the other departments had in making their murals and she decides to enter the parks department's original mural after all the town decides not to spend any money on a new mural and simply renamed the old one the diversity

express the parks department proud of their work hang their mural in the conference room and ron hangs mark sketch in his office and that's the camel i loved it i loved everything about this episode first of all i think probably because it started with the murals and you know it's well established how blown away i always was by the murals on the set i I know the murals are generally offensive, but this one is outlandishly so. This is like one of the most offensive things I've ever seen. This is like, honestly, we just had, you know, so all this stuff is changing. Like the Cleveland Indians just changed their name, the Cleveland Guardians. But man, you look at this, you go back and watch this episode on Peacock,

Peacock Premium, whatever you have. this is a disastrously offensive mural. It has racist Native American and racist Chinese caricatures on it. They're building a railroad on it. It's very racist. It's just as wrong as wrong can be. And the notion that the fix was just to call it the diversity express.

I mean, trenchant commentary from Parks and Rec back in 2009. But yeah, it definitely like, it's also funny in the beginning because you think of leslie nope as such this do-gooder and sort of morally upright and and and and sort of correct in so many ways when she does the talking heads about the mural in the very beginning of the episode she she's like yeah we're gonna fix it and stuff she makes no commentary on the horrific images behind her it's really jarringarring. She's literally in the same shot.

She's standing in front of what is very offensive. She just makes no note of the content of the mural. I just noticed that watching it. It's also maybe the first appearance of one of my favorite Pawnee citizens, Joe Sewage. Yes, played by Kirk Fox, stand-up comedian. This is the first appearance of Sewage Joe. This is early on in the run of shows, it's like you get to see. And Sewage Joe is totally formed.

He's exactly the same disgusting character that, you know, you see in ongoing episodes and seasons. And just so much unearned confidence. He literally runs the sewage department. He's just so proud and just really just like throwing it in other people's faces. Not that you can't be proud of working in sewage. I'm just saying he is really, really confident and rubs it in the face of the Parks Department. This episode also contains, I think per capita,

the most hilarious celebrity name check jokes. Yes. And this is just, this is not a complete list, but there's a great OJ, a a really funny O.J. Simpson joke. O.J. Simpson's surprisingly famous for two things, they say. One is being a football player, and the other is the naked gun. The element of surprise in comedy, right? There's a Gina Gershon reference.

That's right. Amy's, I think it's Amy, has had a dream and she's talking about the dream and then she goes, and Gina Gershon was there, weirdly. Yeah, that's right. That made me laugh.

Love a good Gina Gershon reference. And then, of course, I was, couldn't believe there was a reference to my dearly departed best friend, Bill Paxton.

That was very sweet. Yeah, that's right. There's a little Bill Paxton reference in was very sweet. Yeah, that's right. There's a little Bill Paxton reference in there. And Greg Kinnear, man. It's got it all. It's got it all. Not just Greg Kinnear, baby Jesus Greg Kinnear,

which may be one of my favorite things ever. Oh, listen, who is that? That's baby Jesus. Well, who's his face? That's Greg Kinnear. Oh, he was so great on ER. Everybody just stops and he goes he wasn't on er and just who am i thinking who am i thinking of which made me laugh just the who am

i thinking of then like i want to know who was she thinking yes i'm also like is she thinking of noah wiley like what's going on here would you think of john stamos he was on he was on at the end guys i wanted to spend just a little more time talking about this moment of Donna presenting her art piece because it's such a brilliantly written little scene that in the script from Rachel Axler. I have the script actually open in front of me. And so it starts with Donna presenting her Last Supper, but with famous people from Indiana. And then there's this lovely action line. People are generally positive about this idea. So then she goes into her list, John Mellencamp, Larry Bird, Michael Jackson, David

Letterman, Vivica A. Fox, and then says that here's where it gets a little dicey because there's not that many celebrities from Indiana. So we have a NASCAR. And then the action line from Rachel, one of the people is a car, which I love. And then we have the run of the scene, which we've seen and just talked about her friend, Becky, Ron Swanson, we have baby Jesus, Greg Kinnear, and then the mistake of him when they're not he's on ER or not. And then the scene kind of ends where Leslie's thinking, Oh, I, who was I thinking of? And then it says, beat, the enthusiasm has waned. It's just a lovely little turn. It's just all you really need to convey what should be happening in the scene. And our actors nail it incredibly. And so I just love this moment.

I love this moment from Rachel. Like baby Jesus. Great. That's a kind of like, like a Parks and Rec swag. I want, I want somebody to do just that baby Jesus, Greg Kinnear. And on the back of the shirt, say baby Jesus, Greg Kinnear.

I would love that. It'd be a bestseller immediately. We should get podcast swag for sure. Right. Put that on a shirt. There's a great Martin Landau joke that made me laugh out loud. Oh, yeah. There was an old man.

And I think Andy goes, do you look like Martin Landau? I think it's just a total like non sequitur reference. Somebody is talking about an old man. You know, every old man looks like Martin Landau. Clearly to this person. I didn't realize how many pop culture references are in this. We generally tried to limit it at least to a few. But man, this has got,

this got loaded up with them. I pretty sure that this season parks and rec coincided with Martin Landau being on entourage. Like, I think it's right between his two seasons and we were talking about it a lot. And so I feel like maybe that's why it was in the world. Maybe it was thrown in during a rewrite, just because we're talking about ent's why he was in the world maybe he was thrown in uh during a

rewrite just because we're talking about entourage he's in the episode and there's a joke formed that's the magic of joke writing yeah now now it makes sense oh you guys ran wild on this one this whole episode gotta say felt like a late night cram session a little bit it felt like we were we were uh kind of running on, not running on fumes necessarily, but just like anything was just like put in. Cause that B story, the Ron and Andy B story is one of the weirdest things the show has ever done. The idea that Ron has a bunion on his foot and then gets to the shoeshine stand and, and has an almost erotic reaction to getting his shoeshine is something that you cannot believe gets put in a network show. You're like, what is this? It's one of my favorite things I've seen. I mean, it's an

absolute because it's so bizarre. It's so unexpected. It's so random. But the performances, what these guys, what these two actors are doing in that storyline where they're looking at each other, all those looks and did I just hear what i did all of that like underneath stuff that actors have to give these guys are putting on a clinic in this it's just proud and nick nick off it's all beneath the surface it's comedy without words right it's reactions and it's so delicious i mean it's like it's just like, it's just, first of all, Nick's noise he makes. It's so, think of it, just think of it for a minute. Okay. If I said to you, make a noise that somebody, you would make if somebody was rubbing your foot and it felt extra good and maybe sounded a little sexual and a little gross, but not really, what would you do? What would that, is that all sounds fine,

but what would that actually sound like? And man, it's the perfect. I feel like we need someone from Post in here because I want to say this could be a false memory, but I want to say that at some point they tried playing with the noise in Post and seeing if they wanted to amend it in any way. I don't think they ended up doing it, but I really, yeah. Just like making it a little slower, a little longer or whatever. Loop it backwards. No. Yeah, exactly.

Right. Just to really get some weird production in there. But yeah. You know, there's a joke in this episode that actually didn't make it in that always made me giggle. It's that Ron named his bunion Paul after Paul Bunul bunion and i get it i get part of the reason this didn't make it in it's a little obvious perhaps but i also love the fact that it's obvious and simple yeah it's true i mean you know they meet up in the hallway and agree to not

ever mention it again is particularly good it's like like a weird seventies movie or something, but they're talking about a sexual sound that he made during a shoe shine. It's like weirdly serious. You know, the other thing this episode does, you know, one of the things that really helps when you're making an ensemble show like this is just getting everyone in the same room. And,

and so when they make this mural together, you know, it's a lot of the characters working together and there's like one prompt, right? And it's something that Greg Daniels kind of brought over from The Office, which is something he called a killing field scene, which is there's sort of a setup and then every character gets to express or get a joke off about how they feel. And it's ideally perfectly in character and not only is funny, but enriches your understanding and confirms your understanding of who that character is. And so in this case, it's almost a killing field writ large because

each of them gets to make a piece of art that kind of like, not just hopefully is funny, but also describes their character. And so this is, again, pretty early on in the run. So I think this was an opportunity to take these characters and show who they are to the audience you know and i think you know that's kind of a something that we're doing without hopefully without the audience consciously knowing it you know yeah as they all go to try to make their own murals and um tom of course just goes and pays a graphic artist to make one and doesn't really give a shit yes and then him falling in love with the art that was one of my favorite things in the episode for sure is super super sweet yeah and like it's like one of those moments that parks

was able to do not all not all the time but like when they did it i think it's what the reason why parks is the show that it is is because you like feel something you feel like it's like a re it's almost like um it's it it makes it all of a sudden you you i don't know you just feel something it's not just funny although it is funny yeah the notion of tom falling in love with with abstract expressionism yeah and it was like the perfect level also by the way i want to point out usually rob you're the one who points out celebrity lookalikes the art student that that tom goes to to commission this painting to me looks a lot like jim caviezel star of passion of the christ you gotta look at this guy he looks a lot like him it's a kind of a deep cut

but he looks like a younger time traveling jim caviezel so check that out the game i mean it's very fun it's very fun i was like that's, I, he really did look like him anyway. So yeah, so, so that's Tom, right? So he doesn't want to do it. He cheats out and doesn't have creative talent. So she just takes a collage of magazine stuff. April has a piece made of garbage, includes an iPhone taped to the paper with a close-up of knee surgery and a human size hamster wheel.

Donna is very pop culture savvy. So, you know, and so everyone has a thing that basically represents who they are. And then, of course, Jerry has his thing, right? Which I think is a kind of a legendary Jerry bit, which encapsulates his relationship with the rest of the staff. And he mistakenly pronounced it a Murinel? Yeah, Murinel being pronounced as Murinel became a big, you know, that was a big writer's room bit, I think, that we were cares, yells at him.

It's so mean. It's unrelenting. I think ultimately at a certain point with the Jerry bit, we had to course correct and talk about how we had to give him a loving home life or something, because it was like, man, I think the show is a good hearted show. Now they're, they're just straight up becoming bullies.

We can't, we can't show this stuff. He got so ruckus in this episode. I mean, truly ruckus. And, and I also think that Jim as an actor, Jim O'Hare,

who's so good, uh, I've been noticing he hasn't developed into that gear yet that he does where he just kind of goes you guys yes like like that's where it got to where there was a part of him that almost understood that bad attention for him is almost as good as no attention. But early on in these episodes, he's irked. He's legitimately aggravated. There's real pain there. And that's why I think it feels meaner than in later episodes where it's like you see it's his reaction. It's actually instructive, right? How important the reaction is as opposed to just the lines themselves, right? That's

something like I felt like I learned early on, which is as a writer, when you come from that side, you're always like lines, lines, lines, lines, lines. But in the edit, and I'm sure as an actor, you know this, it's like a lot of the game is the reaction. It's not the line, right? And in this case, he's pained. He's like insulted.

And not to say he's not later in the season or in the series, but I think you're right. He kind of knows he's loved by everyone by the end in the season but or in the series but i think you're right he kind of knows he's loved by everyone by the end of the series you know and there's less there's less overt pain but yeah i think we definitely have to temper how much bullying of of jerry there was because it's a very kind-hearted show so it was always a little bit antithetical the spirit of the show they were making fun of this one guy and it never stopped no it never stopped and jim was always like totally cool but he didn't come into the writer's room ever and go

hey you know i wonder if maybe someday my character might stand up to he could not have been more overjoyed to be on the show and just always had fun. I don't think I ever heard Jim complain about anything. Jim was like, oh, he was the nicest guy. Like that was also what I loved about Jim and Retta. He and Retta developed this friendship that I found very sweet. And they kind of had this camaraderie themselves. And they became huge integral parts of the show. You know, by the end, you see them, you see their families, you see Retta get married to Keegan-Michael Key. I mean, it's, it's pretty wild how, how, how important to the show they became. And I'm really happy about that. It's funny because I think Alan, because you know, the, the, the pride of what you guys do

is building a world and building stories and building arcs and building seasons that work you know i always find that you are justifiably interested in the architecture of the storytelling and i'm just a big stupid comedy goof so i'm just like this episode made me laugh and that's that's that's why why i don't care if anybody was real i don't care if i don't care about april's arc or any of that bullshit yeah i just want to laugh and it made me laugh and but i think ultimately a great show has the balance of both right you know if if a show has characters you don't care about it's just funny it's like okay well that it doesn't feel like as as nutritious a meal for you but then of course if it's all story character, then you had a drama on your hands.

Right. So I think it's that. Yeah. I think this feels, this feels like very much like a one-off, right? It's a one-off that's like a glimpse into the world and it's kind of fun. You know,

some of my favorite episodes are the one-offs. There are episodes that they're either, but what they call bottle episodes, which are written specifically for a budget. You're not out and about on location. And so they inevitably are very self-contained they they don't have any cliffhangers or through lines you know it could easily be in his uh season one as it is in season two or season three so it doesn't matter sometimes those one-offs are like

they're like little you know what they are they're one little one-hit wonders yeah and it actually takes advantage of the form not to get too sort of, you know, on a soapbox about television in general, but we've actually seen a sort of turn back towards one-offs in the half-hour world in just a different way, right? Some of the most ambitious episodes from half-hour series in the last five years have been not part of an overall arc because people can just flip this one on and it's like, oh, maybe you see the world through the eyes of a different character on the show, or there's a different concept, or as these shows have become more and more ambitious. I know we started tackling that in Mastered None about five years ago. Season one,

we did the parents episodes. Season two, we did the Thanksgiving episode. And those were one-offs. I mean, those are just kind of separate stories you can watch on their own. And you see Atlanta do it with Teddy Perkins or whatever these episodes are. It's taking that ambition. And the one-off has kind of become, it went from all one-offs. Remember when sitcoms were all one-offs? Then it was like, oh, now they're serialized. There's arcs. It's like, this is more sophisticated. And now we've kind of doubled back. And obviously, there's still serialization. But some of the most ambitious episodes there are, are the one-offs. And that's kind of cool. You can just watch one episode. You're like, oh, this is, this is what

the show is. And, and a lot of times you though, that's, that's not just a function of the writers having the ambition or the will or wherewithal to do it. It's, it's the, whoever you're is paying to make your show will demand, like, like we're not we want it to be an anthology or we want them all to be one-offs or or you know i'm working with netflix and they're very much about uh as you know you know they want now they want you know when that episode ends you they want a reason for you to stay watching that next episode yeah like it's got to be a cliffhanger cliffhanger it's like every every episode's like one act and a long story. So there's pros and cons to that. You know, there's pros and cons to that.

I like a mix. I like a mix, which is kind of what this show is, you know? This one is like, okay, it's, you know, this is like one of the least archy episodes of the show, you know? It's not like, some of them are kind of soap opera-y and they kind of continue these relationships. But this one is really like, oh, there's a premise. And then, you know, it kind of gets resolved in this episode. Another thing this episode does is kind of, we talked about world building a little bit and this one really does that, you know, even more so, right? Because we meet the library episode in the previous episode. And in this one, we meet Joe Sewage,

we meet the fire department and we meet the police department, you know, and it's kind of building these rivalries. And so this takes that to the extreme and it becomes almost like an animated show where you're meeting all these different characters the fireman's collage made me laugh it was like a it was like a nascar with a half-naked girl and they go it's just you know it's just things we it's just stuff we stuff we like. Oh, yeah, that was the policeman's ones, because the fireman one was just like almost like a patriotic one, but the police one was like, yeah, just kind of stuff. There was like a donut on there.

I don't know what else was on there. Yeah, it's just stuff we like. It's just stuff we like, and then you see the policeman is yucking it up. Sometimes what would happen, just to give you a look into the process of, you know, when we weren't so ahead of it, so usually we try to be ahead and have the scripts on time. And, but sometimes you would do a table

read on Wednesday for an episode that was shooting the next week. And maybe that table read didn't go so well, or the story didn't quite work. It didn't quite coalesce or cohere. And so you talk to the network afterwards, and then you kind of talk it over as a writing staff. And in the most extreme cases, you might have to rewrite the whole thing, right? So then you're suddenly rewriting an episode Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. And sometimes we would do what we call Frankensteining it, which is like you would break the story in the room, you figure out what the general story was. And then you would take each scene and give it to different writers. So you'd have, say you have 10 writers on the staff, everyone would write one or two scenes. And then in a day or two, you have a new draft. Now, that draft needs to be

smoothed over, right? Because it's totally it's 10 different people writing it. And it's kind of all hands on deck. I think this one was written pretty quickly. I think this one was like, we maybe had a table read that had some issues. And then the only reason I kind of remember that was I kind of remember the irony of this episode called The Camel about many people pitching in and kind of, you know, stitching together a piece of art. And the making of The Camel script was essentially a camel because it was a lot of people like when it come to you and that i remember the irony of that i think in the writer's room late one night i was like we're doing we're doing what the characters in this

show are doing we're all just kind of pitching it and we had a good time doing it and it's like you know i think it came out well but it was it was it was just kind of us kind of staying up late and maybe that's why the ron and annie story is so wild and so wacky and the and I don't know I mean I feel like that was all part of it and suddenly Monday morning it's like you have the script and you're shooting it you know so I just remember some of those nights when the table read didn't go as smoothly as it always did and then you're kind of in a rush to write it and then of course the great news is if you get that script in time Monday morning you have another table read in a day and a half or something so you gotta get the next one done and that's the grind yeah i remember um the first tv series i ever worked on uh was the west wing and uh john wells who you know is one

of the great tv producers was like you know we're gonna do 24 of these. And he goes, yeah. And he goes, and they can't, they just cannot all be great. By the way, I think they were because we had Aaron Sorkin. Aaron Sorkin can be great 24 times in a row. But he said, but, you know, broadly speaking, in any given season of network television, you're going to have a certain number that are fantastic, a certain number that are good, most of them fine, and a couple of them are awful.

And like John, you know, John Wells is one of the best in the world. He openly was like, this is what it is. Yeah. What's going to be. And just to give you an idea, like, it's like, oh, is John Wells being lazy? He's like, no, that's if you calculate it out, that's 1400 pages of writing 1500 is it's such

an ungodly amount of pages that you're writing in seven or eight months. It's like, I challenge anyone to write that many episodes and have them all be even good, much, much less great. And I think that he's just being realistic. It's certainly, you know, you're doing that many episodes. Look, when you're on episode 17, 18, it is a grind. You've done, you've already written, you know, a thousand pages of it. And then you get that final push, right? That last chunk where you're like, oh my God, I see the light at the end of the tunnel. I'm writing towards the finale of this show, or the season at least. And that usually gives you that little energy at the end. But man, that's sort of two thirds of the way of the show and I, or the season at least. And that usually gives you that little energy at the end, but man, that sort of two thirds of the way through the season. I feel like that's, that's a really tough zone. John Wells, by the way, I took a,

a showrunner training class at the writer's guild when I was a young writer and John Wells taught some of it. So I, I learned some stuff from him. So did he, did he hit you with that little nugget? His, I honestly, I'll, I'll spoil some of the course. And it was very simple. He was like, there's a lot of things to learn about being a showrunner. I'm going to write down four words on this whiteboard. And if you obey these four words, you'll be fine. All the other stuff be damned. And he went to the whiteboard and just wrote down quality scripts on time. Quality scripts on time. Everything else will fall into place. There's a ton of other things to do, right? You got to hire the entire,

all the department heads. You got to cast a show. You got to deal with business affairs. You got to deal with the network, the studio, all that stuff. If you write good scripts and they're on time and you shoot them, you're so far ahead of the game. And I know that sounds very simple, like almost overly so, but, but that is that he was like, that's your number one priority as a showrunner. So I got my best writing advice from John Wells too. This is crazy. My first job was working for John Wells productions.

I actually worked on the West wing just after you left Robbins. One of my deep disappointments. I didn't get to meet you then. But he, he told me to measure your writing in feet, not in inches. And it's very similar to what you're talking about. Like, don't look at your writing. Don't look at the stack of scripts you just printed and say, look at this. Look at these pages I wrote. No, you have to write a lot because similarly, there's going to be some bad stuff or you're going to discover your own writing in the process of writing yeah it's it's just the idea of this is you know it's in some ways it's a marathon not a

sprint right and the people come out the other side you just keep doing it every day you just keep doing it every day if you're relentless like i think it's good advice for kind of any industry right it's like you just do it every day and you unless you're incredibly bad you will get somewhat better that's what i found so for sure and it's also the same in terms of i think artists choosing projects and what they want to work on next and what's the next thing to do is i just think i think work in and of itself has value and not only because it makes you better um it there something about getting back up on the horse, whether you're coming off of a big success or a big failure, it should be equally as irrelevant. There's real value in consistent work.

I think the longer you work, and Rob, you've been working a little bit longer than I have, but you totally realize that. I've now been working long enough where you think about it, you think about the ups and downs, the high, the incredible highs, right? You, you, you can, you can attain so much, but ultimately you, I think about this all the time. You wake up the next day, you've won an Oscar, you won an Emmy, you won a Grammy, whatever your business is, whatever. You got that blank page the same way. Paul Thomas Anderson, after he makes an incredible movie, wakes up the next day and has a blank page. It's like, I'm just going to write, he's just got to write, this, it's a high school teacher who's aspiring to be a jazz musician and his dreams kind of come true in the sense that he plays this gig and it goes really well. And he gets to play with someone he really respects and loves. And then he kind of gets, you know,

he gets hugs from his family, all that stuff. And he gets on the subway and guess who he is. He's the same person he was before he played the gig, right? He's the same person. Like, no matter what your level of success is, you wake up, you're the same person. And, you know, the work, again, it's a cliche, but the work is the reward, right? The work is ultimately what you have. And hopefully you find some joy in that because the other stuff, you know, ultimately often comes and goes. It's also why some actors don't watch their movie, I mean, movies or TV shows. And some of it's like it makes them uncomfortable or whatever. But I've never been that way. In fact, sometimes I would watch dailies. Sometimes when I'm playing a certain character, I want to see if what I think I'm doing is registering.

So I need to see it. But I've gotten to the point now where I don't need to watch anything really at all ever because it's the doing of it that is the thing. Like, you know, there are episodes of Parks and Rec that I will be seeing for the first time doing this podcast because I shot it. I know what it was. It was hilarious. We had a blast.

I need to see it. I know what you mean. I know what you mean. It's almost strange for me to go back and watch something like it's fun like for this podcast has been really fun because it's also been a long time and it's a you know specific period of my life but right yeah I tend to not go back and like agonize over stuff and then try to like dissect it's like no I'm working on another thing that I'm really excited about and you know that's that's that's kind of again that's the joy of it yeah exactly i'm learning your taste i'm learning your taste well you know what it is that there are a lot more um absurdist jokes you like that

hard comedy you like that hard hard comedy hard comedy absurdist jokes um when when amy is proposing the bread factory fire mural she's saying this is our holocaust movie which always wins this is our english patient i mean it's yeah yeah that's true and and and greg's pointed on the chat that rachel axler the the writer of the episode has should take some credit for the comedy in it because brilliant writer, very quiet voice, but extremely large brain. She wrote on The Daily Show for years before joining Parks and Rec and then went on to write for Veep. So she has between 100 and 200 Emmys from those shows combined. And yeah, she was really fun to have on staff and she's credited with this draft. So I think a lot of those jokes probably came from her.

100 to 200 Emmys. It's in that. Look, if you work for the daily show and or Veep, you have a lot. She worked for both. So that's a lot of Emmys, man.

I'd have to look it up, but yeah. Should we take a trip to the town hall? What do you think? Town hall, and I think we need to do it in the charred remains of the bread factory. Yes, the charred remains. Some say if you walk over there, you still smell some toasted gingerbread. So this is the bread factory. I love it. Smells good. A lot of people died. The question from listener Scott M. this show, Chris Pratt, who could be, who could be the biggest movie star in the world. And they were like, what, Chris who? Rep Fat? Chris Fat?

What, who? Because he didn't really have like a big agent or any of that stuff. And I always like to turn my people on to people that I think are great. And I made that call. And, you know, it doesn't mean it's going to happen, but the answer is yes, I did see that.

And I even had a conversation with Chris when things were starting to happen. He was trying to get Guardians. He hadn't gotten Guardians yet, but he'd been in Moneyball. And I was like, you need to figure out if you want to be the funny fat guy, fourth guy through the door for the rest of your career, or whether you want it you know, we had very, very long in-depth talks about that. And he figured it out, man. It was really interesting watching his, some would say meteoric rise, but he'd been working for a while. You know, he'd been putting the work in and he'd been getting reps and working on shows and so talented and so naturally charismatic. I mean, it's, and by the way, like in person,

just the nicest guy, just like, like, like pre all of this stuff, everyone loved hanging out with Pratt. He was so fun at the table reads ever since season one, you know, just such a, such a nice guy and, and yeah, watching him get Jurassic world and guardians and all those movies, it was really, it was, I don't know. It was just really fun to watch because, you know, we were all rooting for him. And, you know, I don't know. Like he was always great on the show. I personally did not tell my agents

he would become a massive movie star. So I can't take credit for it in that way. But I certainly remember. And to be clear, I'm not, A, I'm not taking credit for it. Oh, no, no. And I wouldn't lead with it. But for the fact that-

You knew. It's about pratt's so clearly having the goods yeah yeah and he was and he was able to do it i remember we we we shot an episode of parks in chicago so me and him and naziz flew to chicago and did some scenes there and it was it i think jurassic world had come out or or i forget what she came out first but when we got to the airport there were a bunch of screaming fans and he had never dealt with it before he had like and it was like very rarely and he was trying to sign all the autographs and aziz was talking to him about it because aziz had

dealt with it more because he has been a successful stand-up for a long time and so he's like yeah i mean you you should sign some and then tell people really politely like i can't sign them all i have to get to work etc etc and i et cetera. And I remember him, I remember Pratt in the car calling his wife at the time and just being like, hey, man, Aziz just told me this amazing thing. It's like, you don't have to sign all the autographs.

Like, it was like, you know, it was like, he's so nice. He's just such a nice guy. And I was just, yeah, I was literally just picking his brain about the difference between shooting that Marvel movie and then shooting Jurassic World.

It was so fun. So I do this a bit when we, you know, cause you always have to have your picture taken for the ad campaigns or whatever the hell it is. It's part of what we do. And I have a bit where I, I have like three faces I do and it's, I have, uh, and I named them. I have, I have man of the people presidential and, um, blue, you know, blue steel. And then I give the looks. So, and we used to just laugh about it, whatever. I forgot it. Forget all about it.

We're on a hiatus. I get a phone call. It's Pratt. He's like, dude, I'm in the limo. I'm on my way to the red carpet for Jurassic World. What are the three faces again? That's great. That's so, well, that's the other great thing, right?

Is being able to call people who've been there, who've been leads of movies, who've done gigantic things. And just, I'm not even saying it's a mentorship. I'm just saying someone you can call and just chat about it with. And, and cause it's very few people have been there and, and, and that's great. And I, I love that you guys have become such great friends and it's, and post parks, during parks, all of it, like, and, and you know, that Pratt's the best man. When my movie was coming out, during parks all of it like and and you know that pratt's the best man when my movie was coming out we were texting about that you know i was when i was meeting over at marvel to direct a movie for them we were talking you know he was like yeah i'll put in a word with kevin feige all that stuff like just such a sweet guy and um uh yeah really really really happy to see him succeed well thank you all for listening this was a really fun one

for uh for all of us and um don't forget to give us the five-star ratings. I mean, I don't want to ask for five stars if you don't feel like giving us five stars. Give us however many stars you want. But if they're five stars, do it on the Apple boards. It'd be very important to us. And download, download, download, download the whole series because, trust me, there's good stuff coming. Wouldn't you say, Alan? Wouldn't you say that's truthful?

I agree. I think there's tons of good stuff coming down the pipeline. I wouldn't lie to you. All right. Well, goodbye from Pawnee and we'll see you next week. Yes. Thank you, Producer Schulte, Producer Greg. Bye from Pawnee.

parks and recollection is produced by greg 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 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 MouseRat, 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. And we'll see you next time on Parks and Recollection. This has been a Team Coco production in association with Stitcher.