An Interview With Michael Schur
Posted: April 8th, 2009 | Filed under: Baseball, Featured, Pop Culture | 39 Comments »
Michael Schur is my hero. He’s smart. He’s hilarious. He wrote for Saturday Night Live. He wrote for The Office. He wore a neck beard on The Office. He was Ken Tremendous on “Fire Joe Morgan.” He is Regis Philbin’s son-in-law. It is hard to watch someone else live the life you always wanted for yourself.
He is also the co-creator of what looks to be a hysterically funny show called “Parks and Recreation,” which debuts Thursday evening on NBC. It stars Amy Poehler, who is hysterical, and Rashida Jones, who in my mind is right there, neck and neck, with Tina Fey and Jenna Fischer as single most awesome person on television.
I did a little email Question-and-Answer session with Michael, and my only regret is that it wasn’t about four times longer. But I already felt like I was intruding on his time. You can read the shorter, edited version at Sports Illustrated, but as a special bonus, I’m giving you the whole messy thing here on the old blog.
I think I speak for Michael when I say: In return you should watch the show and buy this.
* * *
Q: You went off on an interesting discussion with Bill Simmons on his podcast about being a Boston Red Sox fan and how you love winning but you don’t want them to simply outspend everybody and become the Yankees. I find that to be a fascinating topic. How important is it for you that the Red Sox, now that they are ultra-successful, maintain some of the identity that you grew up with? Do you find — as more and more fans seem to find — that the Red Sox (and, to some extent, their fans) are not taking on some of that Yankees persona?
Schur: What is most important to me is that the Red Sox win the World Series, preferably every year, ideally three to five times per year. That being said, I do find it more satisfying to watch a team that has home-grown players, whose careers you can track through the minors and watch develop. If I were a Marlins fan, 2003 would mean more to me than 1997. Also, I would likely have magical powers, since Marlins fans are predominantly mythological.
Q: OK, some baseball questions. Do you think the Yankees — by buying Sabahia, Burnett, Teixeira, etc — will be significantly better in 2009?
Schur: Significantly? No. They won 89 games last year. They’ll probably win 93-95 this year. When the Angels got Teixeira last year, everyone wrote “Well, this makes them the definite frontrunner to win the World Series!” That may have been true, but the way the playoffs are structured, it probably increased their chances from 12.5% to 13.2%. The Yankees were already a very good team, and now they are a very good+ team. The pitchers will help more than anything, if they stay healthy, and their defense will be better without Giambi and Abreu, but they still have a lot of guys who are on the wrong side of 34 playing key positions.
Q: Will the Rays take a step back?
Schur: They almost have to. Their defense was insane last year, and they had no major pitching injuries. But I cannot BELIEVE they got Pat Burrell for so little money. Makes me sick to my stomach.
Q: Who wins that ridiculous American League Central?
Schur: Got me. I would like Cleveland to win.
Q: Do you like what Billy Beane is doing or are you, like me, confused by it all but certain that he must know better than we do?
Schur: The latter. I love Billy Beane. The only mistake he has ever made was writing that braggy book about himself, and how he’s so good at computers.
Q: Isn’t Vlad Guerrero just about the most fun non MannyBManny guy to watch hit?
Schur: There are so many things to love about Vlad Guerrero. I love that his name is half Russian, half Latino. I love that he can swing twice in a row at balls in the dirt and then hit a home run on a tailing fastball above his head. He is a delight.
Q: Cubs?
Schur: I don’t know. I picked them to win the World Series last year. And I was right! Congratulations, Chicago Cubs, on your 2008 World Championship. (I didn’t watch the playoffs — I just assume they won, right?)
Q: How do you feel watching MannyBManny play as a Dodger?
A: I like that he has energized this city, which as a whole doesn’t care too much about the Dodgers. I was a bit dismayed to find out, right after he was traded and hit like .760 for two months, that he had been phoning it in in Boston since about 2006.
Q: OK, on to other stuff: How much fun was it to do FireJoeMorgan? I have an idea how hard it is to maintain a blog, especially when it’s not what you actually do for a living: Did you ever get that feeling of “Oh man, I guess I better post again?” And being as busy as you are, do you find at all that you miss doing it now?
Schur: I do miss it, and people still send us email links to silly articles. It just took too much time away from our jobs and families. The thing I’m proudest of was that it was never a money-making enterprise. We just did it to do it. The other thing I was most proud of was: the cursing. There was some really creative cursing on that site.
Q: My wife Margo and I have seen all the previews we can find of Parks and Recreation, and I think I could give a pretty good intro to the show. But maybe you could give a quick synopsis.
Schur: Basically, it’s about a woman named Leslie Knope, played by Amy Poehler, who works in the Parks and Rec department in the (fictional) town of Pawnee, IN. She has very big dreams of a long political career, but not much skill in the business of politics. A citizen comes to her with a problem — there’s a giant abandoned construction pit near her house — and Leslie decides that if she can turn that eyesore into a park, it will launch her career. So she sets about trying to do it. And it goes totally smoothly and everything is fine! (That is not what happens.)
Q: I would love to get a sense of how Parks and Recreation came about … how does, as the Woody Allen line, a notion become a concept become an idea?
Schur: My partner Greg Daniels (who adapted The Office for American TV) and I were asked to develop a new show for NBC, and as we were discussing ideas the election was going on, and people were talking about how the government was likely going to be playing a larger role in people’s lives, like it did during the Great Depression. So we had the idea to follow one public works project from beginning to completion. As we did more and more research, the world of local government became more and more appealing to us — it affects everyone’s lives, but most people don’t really care about it too much. We like mundane settings — it allows the characters and events to shine.
Q: Obviously, I know nothing about your world, but like everyone I love-love-love-love Amy Poehler and Rashida Jones. Would love a sense of what they’re like to work with, if you can offer anything good there.
Schur: Amy is a real screamer. She screams all the time — her normal method of communication is an ear-splitting, curse-filled rant. They get very personal. Rashida is very timid and quiet, like a mouse. I think it’s because she is unattractive and has limited talent. (Because I am typing this and not saying it out-loud, and you cannot read the tone of my words: they are two of the most wonderful people I know, and are both extremely funny and talented. Though Amy does scream a lot. Angrily. Like a longshoreman.)
Q: OK, on to a couple of personal items. I love my father-in-law Cecil and, sadly, I also make fun of him all the time too. What can you tell us about your father in law?
Schur: My father-in-law is exactly the way you would imagine him: funny, kind, loving, a great storyteller, and primarily interested in Notre Dame football.
Q: Unless I got this wrong, you are a relatively new father. Getting a lot of sleep? What’s your best early fatherhood story?
Schur: Yes indeed, our first child, William, was born last year. I am not getting a lot of sleep, but that’s more due to the show than to the baby. I wake up before he does. As far as my best early fatherhood story…there was this amazing time when he cried a lot and then pooped. And there was this other time when he pooped and then started crying. We have fun.
Q: Here’s another good cliche question, but I really am curious: What surprises you about your life as a television writer? That is, what is it that you did not see coming? I’m writing this from a hotel room in Chicago after a nightmarish flight experience, so I would say at this moment that what surprises me about my job is how I would come to feel about travel.
Schur: I don’t think I truly understood how much work it entails. I used to write on SNL and I always thought that if everyone in the world could come see the show live, once, no one would ever complain about it, because they would understand what goes into making it. I feel the same way about primetime TV. Not that I’m complaining — I love my job, and it is the writers’/producers’ job to make an entertaining show. But the person-hours that get poured into every episode are mind-blowing.
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First Simmons had Schur on his podcast and now you have an interview with him. How many of my other favorite sports writers plan to interview my favorite TV(/sports/other) writer?
Love it.
Michael Schur is the Jon Brion of writing – you keep hearing things you like, and then one day you realize that the same name is attached to all of them. And that day is a good day.
Joe,
You always wanted to be Regis Philbin’s son-in-law?
Mose!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I miss FJM. I want a Fremulon Insurance t-shirt.
Wow, great interview! I’ll be watching Thurs.
Thanks, Joe.
Great interview Joe! I knew I started reading your blog for a reason.
Finding out that the writer of one of my favorite blogs was also a writer on my favorite show was a very cool moment.
Great interview Joe. I love The Office and am looking forward to Parks and Recreation. But I do miss FJM, and I really started missing it about 3 innings into the Sunday Night Baseball game.
I haven’t listened to the Simmons broadcast but I really hope Schur goes all Ken Tremendous on him.
I think that if I won the lottery, like a huge $250 million Powerball jackpot, the first thing I would do would be offer him a million bucks a year to just write FJM full-time.
It must have killed Simmons to interview him in the podcast. Schur is everything Bill wanted to be when he moved west: a successful tv writer and funny. And unlike Joe P, Simmons’ ego won’t let him simply admit it.
I actually bought one of their Fremulon Insurance t-shirts, because I work for an insurance company in Kansas (though, sadly, not in Partridge) and it struck me as a dual homage. I even had it modified to add a catch phrase – “We Concetrate (note spelling) on Consistency”. Sadly, I have received zero comments on it so far. I keep hoping to run into another former FJM fan who cackles out loud because he’s in on the joke. Everyone else thinks it’s a shirt from a real company.
I’ve said for a long time that the movie industry NEEDS Michael Schur to reinvigorate what is actual comedy.
I cannot tell if he’s being funny, and if so, then okay — but it appears he makes the same mistake about Moneyball that Joe Morgan does, namely that Michael Lewis wrote it and not Beane. sigh.
He’s being funny. That was a running joke on FJM.
When Jon Miller started to talk about OPS for the season opening game, I thought for sure FJM would have to come out of mothballs.
Bring it back!
Or, Joe start cursing more and poking fun at some of your “peers”. You know you want to dissect a good work of Plaschke or Hat Guy.
Just got leave another H/T for the interview, Joe. I’m a regular reader here, and was at FJM as well. RIP those guys, thank you for filling an F5 (no rss) void.
You mean he didn’t really name his child McCarver FRAA “Woody” Tremendous?? Yeah…and my real name isn’t Bellweather Johnson…
I have a feeling P&R, even if it’s super, won’t last. It might be the Chicago Hope to ER… P&R being Chicago Hope, ER being The Office.
Your real name isn’t Bellweather Johnson? That’s really disappointing. If I find out Old Man Duggan’s name really isn’t Old Man Duggan…
Paul White … that modification of the Fremulon shirt is AWESOME!!!!!!!
I still have FJM on my Links bar and check it once per week to see if KT, Dak and Junior have come back.
I wasn’t too interested in Parks and Recreation based on the ads I saw, but now that I know that it was created by Michael Ken Mose Tremendous Schur I will have to check it out. Awesome interview Joe.
Wait, realizing the effort going into SNL will make you think it’s funnier? It can take just as much work to make a nasty tasting beer as a good one. Believe me.
You’re not very funny and what you write about others being funny is not very funny either.
Ken Tremendous! SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!
I didn’t listen to that podcast. He should have billed it as a conversation with ken tremendous, then I would have listened
im a marlins fan… since 1993. i go to about 20 games a year. i didnt realize that i had magical powers.
we exist, trust me. there may only be three of us at the stadium, but those three are some of the most die hard baseball psychos you have ever met. you have to be to follow a team with as little hype as the marlins. anyone who follows a team only because “other people do it” is a pretty weak baseball fan.
other than that i enjoyed the intervew.
I write only because this is the best chance I may ever get to plead with the guys to bring back FJM. Other than emailing them personally, which seems a bit much.
Please, guys. You have no idea how much those of us who are subjected to the Woody Paiges of the world on a regular basis need you. Even if it’s just one post a week.
We’ll hold a Superbike rally in your honor.
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Bill Simmons on his podcast…
I wish he’d go back to writing columns full-time. How am I supposed to read the podcast on the john???
Michael Schur is one of the few writers who can literally make me “LOL.” I have spurted out liquid, nearly choked on food, and made my face hurt reading Fire Joe Morgan. It was just so delightfully absurd.
It took me a while to watch The Office (US) because I had seen The Office (UK) and didn’t want to see what a horrible mess they had made of it. It turned out to be awesome.
Finally, Parks & Recreation sounds cool, but I have a nagging fear that it will be all preachy and political (a certain kind of distasteful political). I hope not.
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John Peterson:
Based on the first episode of P&R, it’s about politics, but it’s not particularly political, if you can dig it. At least given one episode, it’s not a heavy-handed theme.
Billy Beane did not write the book that Schur refers to. Michael Lewis wrote Money Ball.
Hey Sanford,
If you had read the comments, someone mentioned earlier that Michael was fully aware who wrote Money Ball. It was a running joke on his old web site (RIP) that Joe Morgan refused to read the book while believing that Beane wrote it.
“Also, I would likely have magical powers, since Marlins fans are predominantly mythological.”
lmao
Joe Posnanski interviewing Michael Schur.
Perfect blog post? Dangerously close.