Brent F: How 'The Simpsons' and 'The Office US' Were Really Written

0:00I pitch a joke and it bombs. I'll be out of here. I knew I didn't have talent the way the other people in the room did. And I just tried to outwork people. Hello and welcome back to What's the Trick? I am your host, Ben Hanlon. And this is the podcast where I sit down with the world's most creative people and try and understand their creative process. And today's guest is an Emmy Award winning US TV writer, Brent Forrester. So let me bring you up to speed about Brent. This is a really interesting guest. He's had an amazing career. So long story short, he grew up in Malibu, just outside of L.A.

0:37He loved writing and books as a kid. He studied writing at Columbia University in New York. And in the early 90s, he got himself a mentor, which I think was key to his success. It was his friend's mom who was a TV writer called Suzanne Harris, who is an absolute legend in the industry. And she's one of the creators of the Golden Girls, which was a huge sitcom. And he basically said, how do I become a sitcom writer? She gave him the blueprint and the tools to do that. He got himself a job on the show. It was called the Ben Stiller Show, working with Stiller and Judd Apatow. Then off the back of that, he got loads of jobs.

1:12But this is the ones I want to talk to him about. Well, he became a writer on The Simpsons. After that, he then went to King of the Hill. And then he became one of the main writers on The Office US or the American Office, or as they call it, The Office. And he eventually became an exec producer and he ran the entire writing room at The Office. So I really wanted to get into that. And I wanted to understand how did shows like The Simpsons and The Office, how are they actually made? How do you stand out in a hugely competitive environment? Because a writer's room is so competitive. Everyone's trying to get their jokes on the page.

1:45How do you get noticed, really? I thought I was quite interested in creatively and also how to brainstorm, especially on shows like The Office or The Simpsons. They've done so many episodes. How do you keep coming up with new ideas? And he tells us everything. We have a really great conversation. It's a really well, I think you'll learn a lot. I learned a lot from this and there's definitely some things that I have been thinking about since. I'm going to stop yapping because this is What's the Trick with Brent Forrester.

2:17hello welcome to what thank you good morning for you um let's just jump straight in brent i want to start with what is the trick to getting a job on the simpsons so let's start with how did you get the job to begin with yeah and then we're going to pick things up step by step from there if that's okay. Yeah, for sure. When I got a job on the Simpsons, this was back in the nineties. And the way writers got jobs then was you had a spec script. It was your writing sample. And you tried to get that to other writers. Typically in LA, there was kind of an underground of people trying to get jobs on TV shows and you would meet them and run into them and try to impress them that you were smart and funny.

3:03And then, Hey, will you read my spec? And, and so there was a kind of exchange of, of, uh, written material going around that still goes on today. And, uh, the hiring process for a TV staff still principally involves reading your material and deciding to hire you. So I, at the time was lucky because I had a writer that liked me who had a good reputation. And that was Bob Odenkirk, Bob, you may know him as Saul from better call saw Bob before he was a famous great actor he was a famous great writer amongst other writers he was a legendary sketch writer who had come out of Chicago he'd been on Saturday Night Live he was the head writer for a sketch show called the Ben Stiller show featuring an unknown actor named Ben Stiller and you know I had gotten on that show with my little spec script and Bob liked my work and basically he endorsed me to the other writers he knew, Conan O 'Brien, Robert Smigel.

4:06And it was Conan who read my material and said, I'll hire you on my new talk show. And as soon as he wanted to hire me on his new talk show, The Simpsons, where Conan had just left, he had been a writer there, The Simpsons heard about me. Hey, who are you hiring, Conan O? Who's this kid, Brent Forrester? Well, we want him for The Simpsons. So it was a massive overpromotion basically is what happened. I was a very inexperienced sketch writer that Bob Odenkirk liked. Next thing you know, I'm a staff writer on the best staff, you know, in existence at that time. And so you walk in, it's day one, right?

4:42Can you, because this is it, this is a show that we've all grown up with and we all love, but not, you know, no one knows what's happening behind the scenes. So this is what is what is the writer's room at The Simpsons? How many people? What's the day to day? Go. Well, when I got there in season five, it was a well-established show and they had a big writing staff. I mean, they had something like 18 writers when I was there. And the writer's room was like a like a living room that you would hang out in, you know, couches, chairs. and then one big desk in the middle where the head writer sat facing the other writers.

5:24And he would have a computer there. Now, this was before the internet. So we would all have a printed copy of the script holding the script. And what is that script? You know, each of the writers in turn is leaving for four weeks to write a script. And when that thing's written, it comes back to the room. So we've all now got a printed version of, you know, the next one on the assembly line. And the head writer would say, turn to page three. we need a better line for Homer here. And then the entire room would just go into silence as, you know, a dozen geniuses tried to think of a original comedy line.

6:01And that room was, was very intimidating. There wasn't a sense of like, let's talk about it. Hey, what would be a good idea? I don't know. Hey, you know what? He had a good idea. What if we, there was no trial and error. It was just like sit in silence, pronounce great comedy line. So you're stuck there going, I hope one in every now and my jokes, you know, I can I can essentially beat the other people in the room fastest fingers first. Right. Essentially. Oh, it's even worse than than than we're making it here, because there's also a sense of risk. If I try a joke and it isn't good and it is met with silence, my stock goes down.

6:36I mean, you just sort of felt like this is my career. If I pitch a joke and people laugh, maybe I'll stay in the job. If I pitch a joke and it gets in the script, you know, maybe I've got a career. But if I pitch a joke and it bombs, I'll be out of here. There was a kid that was hired the same year I was. He sat next to me. I don't want to say his name because of the story. Talented kid. And he knew his job was to pitch jokes. But he felt like I did. If I pitch a bad one in front of these legendary writers, for three months, he just said nothing. He said nothing. His job was to pitch. and he just was like better to just not risk it and of course they fired him but but he was like better to go out that way than in a hail storm of shame with a bad pitch it was a terrible environment for writing comedy and also i could imagine nobody in that room wants to laugh at your joke either like if i'm sat next to you i'm gonna try my best to go that was that was bad wasn't it yeah yeah yeah and no that kind of competition is is self-defeating you know young writers sometimes say to me, hey, I just got a job on a staff.

7:42What should I know? First thing I say is laugh at everybody's jokes, laugh, enjoy, say, oh, Ben had one. Nobody heard that one. Ben, Ben has a good one, right? If you're that person, then when you pitch, people will give you a little extra, you know, chuckle. Okay. So yeah, pay it forward type thing. So, okay. So how did you stand out? You're this guy, relatively newish, and you're looking around the room. How do you even stand out and get your stuff on the page? Well, you know, I used a trick, which was I would try to anticipate what jokes we were going to punch up. I would read the script beforehand and go, oh, that one from Bart.

8:21I bet you we're going to punch that one up. It's not working great. And I would before work literally try to write new jokes. I would do that before work at lunch and after work. All I had was work ethic at that time. I knew I didn't have talent the way the other people in the room did. And I just tried to outwork people. And then, you know, when we would be in the room and the head writer would go, turn to page five, we need a new joke for Bart. I would pretend to be making up the joke that I had written in the morning just to be like, you know, just thinking about it now, what if, and then I would do like a fully fleshed out, you know, backflip of a clever joke.

8:59And just through that, it seemed like I got a reputation, if for nothing else, hard work. The veteran writers were like, the guy's working hard. And eventually it did work. I started to get jokes in the script. And interestingly, after two years there, I was only there for two full seasons. And I felt by the end of two years, I fully went from novice to I know how to do this. That's an interesting look at the way a learning curve can go. So I'm a magician. You've basically just described my entire career. You're creating miracles out of nothing because you've essentially prepped it beforehand, which is really clever.

9:37Yes, Ben. And I think that the arts in general are that magic trick. If you look at a comedian on stage, you know, look at Taylor Tomlinson, you'll be like, this is the funniest human. Every single thing she says is funny. That's the illusion that's created. You know, she spent three years saying 99 not as funny things and one great one. and she just takes those. It's all a magic trick. And writers as well. We know writer is as clever as what you are reading, which is the distilled genius of, you know, a year. So you do this session, you punch up an episode. Just take us through the beats of how a show gets made.

10:19So that then, is that locked in and done? Or is there like another phase to this? A great question. You know, the writing of television episodes is basically replicating a writer's process at high speed with a group. So, you know, when I teach writers, I walk them through six steps. Typically, the first step is an oral storytelling phase. And I found even on TV shows, it's really, really valuable. You start by going, OK, I think this is what the story is. And you just try to tell it out loud. And you do that over and over again. If you can entertain people and keep their attention and not confuse them in the oral storytelling phase, it somehow works when you write it down on the page.

11:05Even though you're translating like, OK, so Bart wants to have a birthday party at the amusement park. OK, this is the oral storytelling. But his dad wants to go to a golf game instead. it if i talk that through translating it now into scenes somehow because of the experience of telling it out loud the structure of the writing works out and then in tv shows we typically do this thing which we call cards where we take three by five cards and we write like you know a few words to describe the action of that scene and then we post them on a cork board and so it's like card card, card, card, card.

11:44And these represent the scenes. And that process has been used for, I don't know, as long as there's been television and probably playwrights used it. I love it. It's like this very low tech thing that we still do. And this allows you to kind of figure out what your scenes are going to be. You can rearrange them a little bit so fast. You know, that week is like, go out on a Friday, come back the following Monday. So you have like nine days to write a script, but it's a very fast process. It's one of the crazy things about, you know, television typically is you're going for quality as fast as you can and the two things are are you know incompatible right speed and quality don't go together but you have to find that um that connection in the schedule of you know television production well let's talk about that because speak so that i would imagine and you were obviously there in the slightly earlier days i guess because the simpson went on went on for decades um towards the end of this or you know when you've done a show that's done hundreds and hundreds of episodes you've got and you've got essentially the same characters and okay i know you're in springfield you've got different you can kind of do anything with them but at what point does the ideas start to run dry or when they run dry what is the technique that you all did to create new scenarios great question you You know, there's a few things in there where you say, how do you know when you've run out of ideas?

13:08Like I was there in season seven and I felt like this show is going to wrap up pretty soon. We've done everything. And, you know, the characters don't age. So there's still the same age all the time. It's an incredible thing that that show has gone on. I don't know how they come up with new ideas, but I can tell you that generically speaking, when I was a writer on the show, where I would look for stories was in combinations of characters. I noticed that the way the head writer would choose stories was he would say, okay, we had Homer and Bart in a conflict in episode one. And then in the B story, it was Marge versus Lisa.

13:47And then in episode two, it was grandpa versus Lisa and Marge versus Krusty the clown. Do we have any like Homer versus grandpa? Who's got a story that has Bart and the teacher? So it was all combinations of characters. and the first episode that I pitched that the head writer said oh let's do that one it was a combination that had never been done before there had never been a story of Homer versus Patty and Selma his uh uh in-laws his wife's sisters who essentially functioned as one character they were always seen together and I thought aha this versus this has never been done I pitched it and they gave me an episode.

14:28So it vindicated my belief that it was all about combos. The second episode that I did was another combo that I hadn't seen done where I said, what about town versus town? There's never been a Springfield versus Shelbyville, the neighboring town, another original conflict. Again, they gave me a story because I figured out something that hadn't been done. So, so fundamentally at the core was something versus something is our starting point somewhere right for most of the episodes which is something i've never thought about yes well in stories you know as i went on to like the office and other shows always when we had a story problem i would say to the writers who are the two people that this story is about who are the two people in conflict it's astonishing how frequently a confusing story is confusing because you haven't figured out who are the two people at the center it's always the solution to to storytelling in tv do you know what they also say if you want to change this angle slightly and look at um branding or companies it's as a brand as a company or as a person selling a service who you're the hero who is the villain you're vanquishing so there's this theory of like that's cool we are the company that hates this that's the enemy we are here to kill it we're the era that's that's the versus that and if we don't have that then it's harder for customers to get on board with us i like it i like it okay now here's a simple question of all of the jokes and all of the bits or even full episodes you wrote for the simpsons what's your favorite one or two you know it's funny there's there's jokes which are clever and there are jokes which are observational i'm noticing and and we writers take a pride in in both of them um there's a joke in homer palooza where homer goes to this music festival and um and initially the band that he runs into is uh is courtney love's band uh hole and so courtney love and homer meet on stage but homer has been doing this this uh stunt on stage where he gets hit in the stomach with a cannonball okay i still remember this and i probably haven't seen this for 20 years and it's still in my memory as a kid currently if you watch the episode okay if you watch the episode uh we didn't we didn't get courtney love um uh we got billy corrigan from smashing pumpkins so so billy corrigan walks up to homer and goes uh hi uh billy corrigan smashing pumpkins and homer says homer simpson smiling politely okay so that's the joke that's in the episode uh the the joke that was in the script was when I had written it for Courtney Love and she says, Hey, cannonball guy.

17:15I saw your act, Courtney Love. And Homer says, thank you, Homer, grateful. So Courtney Love, Homer, grateful. I thought it was a funny joke. The other, the other category of joke, which is the one, which is observational in Lament of Troy. this is the one where the kids from Springfield go into the other town because their lemon tree has been kidnapped. There's a joke in there where Bart is looking with binoculars at the bad kids. He's observing them. And Milhouse says, I thought you said you could read lips. Okay. Bart's looking at the bad kids, you know, apparently reading. I thought you said you could read lips.

18:00And Bart it says, I assumed I could. Now that made me laugh at the time because it's this observational joke. When you're a kid, I don't know, Ben, I, when I first heard about lip reading, I was like, yeah, I'm pretty sure I can do that. Okay. So this is just an observation of the way a kid thinks some people like that joke. That's as good as it gets for me. Great. And, and, uh, I tell you what, let's take it out a step what we've talked about the longevity a little bit but in your opinion as somebody who's been behind the scenes or sees things in a different way as opposed to to a normal tv watcher why do you think the simpsons has lasted as long as it has what's the secret formula yeah it's it's better in its uh bones than a lot of comparable animated shows uh like um Family Guy or South Park.

19:01Those shows are successful and funny and great, but I would argue that The Simpsons has something deeper going on. The Simpsons was initially a fairly realistic family show that happens to be animated. Now we remember it for all the crazy stuff they've done in the animation, but if you look at the first few episodes, they're very influenced by James L. Brooks, who was one of the executive producers. James L. Brooks, famous from Taxi, Mary Tyler Moore, and then the movies he did, Broadcast News and Terms of Endearment in particular. James L. Brooks is like the king of the emotionally grounded comedy.

19:41And so even in this animated show, he insisted that the emotional relationships between the characters be real and mature. And for that reason, it has that in the DNA. That's why it's lasted as long as it has. And I've heard you talk about this. And can you share this a little bit about comedy? If comedy is too silly, it almost doesn't what you need in a core emotion underneath it. My first mentor in comedy, Susan Harris, who created the Golden Girls, self-taught genius of the art form. She said to me, after reading my first terrible spec script, I'd written an awful version of Murphy Brown, already a pretty mediocre show at the time.

20:24Susan read my script and she said, silly isn't funny. Okay. Devastating to hear that. And then she said, write about what is difficult for you, even painful and trust that it will come out funny. It's the most miraculous piece of advice. Start with the beginning. Write about what's difficult for you, even painful. if you just go after the challenging material everything works out it's like suddenly when your friends read it they don't sit there and go why are you doing this they go i understand that you're going after something serious so you you've pulled in the the serious interest of the viewer now trust that it will come out funny anytime you share a vulnerability you'll connect with the audience and what do i mean by vulnerability well you know you share the things that that you risk, you know, seeming ridiculous, seeming like a failure, seeming like, you know, to risk embarrassment.

21:22You know, most of what comedians are doing on stage is going, let me share something that if you said it would be very embarrassing to you. Okay.

21:30Brent Forrester: Yeah. You know, and, and just doing that, A, it's an act of courage. B, it relaxes the audience because they go, hey, you're not dead. you're sharing this and you're fine you still have high self-esteem apparently you know even though you're telling this embarrassing thing and then you know finally that feeling of connection i'm starting to feel that the way we connect as artists with uh with the audience is that we show um the things that we've struggled with and the audience goes i've struggled there too and and that's the beautiful thing about the arts that's why i say that you know it feels to me like ai can never replace the artists the artists are very worried about being replaced everybody's worried about being replaced by ai but i feel like it's impossible to replace that experience that a human being has when they go another human being has been through this if you found out that ai had created the work of art that gave you that feeling it would immediately invalidate that work of art because you'd say oh it was a machine pretending that that happened right so uh it makes me feel there's still a place for people in the arts let's talk about the office yeah so again um and and obviously what i really like about your journey here is obviously how your role changed through this process as well so we'll talk about that but let's talk about again because i think this is really tell us the scene again try and paint us the picture when you walked into that again your day one it's nine o 'clock in the morning you got your cup of coffee how many seasons in are they how big's the writer's room what's the What's it all looking like at this point?

23:09Well, you know, the first day for me at the office, the show had had gone through two seasons of work. They had done, I don't know, 20 episodes or something more, more, 35 episodes. So a season and a half, basically. And the show was established. The writers room had gelled. They were a team who had created this thing that was now getting plaudits. and I came in from the outside because I was friends with the creator, Greg Daniels. I had known him from The Simpsons. So he brought me in as his guy from the outside. That's always a fricking social disaster, especially in a room, in an environment that can be as competitive as a writer's room.

23:50So, you know, day one, I'm brought into this room. They're talking about stories for season three. My job is to contribute to the conversation, pitch ideas for comedy. and it's a subjective medium. I'm going to have to pitch ideas for comedy and the room is either going to laugh or not laugh. And social dynamics can definitely come into play. I'll tell you what I did going into that room. I could sense that it was going to be a competitive first day. and I brought a manual, an army manual called army survival manual. And I brought it as a prop. I just thought at some point I'm going to like, I'm going to just make fun of the distress.

24:40I'm feeling like, Oh, this is a tough day. Let me get out the manual, you know, and, you know, I don't know if I would do that again today, but it was literally my instinct that i was going to respond to the hazing of these comedy writers by doing comedy with a prop uh and yeah because you've got to i suppose establish to the rest of the room i deserve to be here right so i think so yeah either you have to come in and within the first few hours or days go hey i've got a line bang and everyone goes okay fine whenever you put together like a punch-up room. I've been in so many punch up rooms for movies.

25:20And there is that sense of like, fuck, my reputation depends on me being able to write funny punchlines. How do I do that? And there's a sense, honestly, at the end of a day, you will, in your mind, rank every writer in that room in terms of how effective they were at pitching comedy that got in the script, as we say. So, you know, there's that competitive element, but, uh, the, the good news is anybody can, can write comedy. It's really a matter of trial and error. You know, uh, nobody's going to be funny every time. And the best environments for writing comedy are highly collaborative. So that if I'm running the room, I try to eliminate a sense of competition.

26:03I say, we're a team. Anybody got any idea here that's at all funny? Oh, good pitch, Ben. I write it down immediately and then somebody will will go can i pitch a pitch on ben's thing and now we're working together so let's talk about this so we're going to fast forward so where this i suppose is different to the conversation we had about the simpsons is after a bit of time you then became running the room which is uh again for people i i mean it's pretty self-explanatory you were the boss of the writer's room then so now you're in control now it's your it's your space it's your party how did What did you go into that role?

26:36How did you want to do things differently? What did you implement to create a collaborative atmosphere where you get the best out of everyone and everyone doesn't walk away at the end of the day going, oh my gosh, I've had a horrible day at work being beaten up by my mates, that kind of thing. I love this question. I first got to run a writer's room at King of the Hill, an animated show that was a hit out here. And I ran that writer's room in season two and I discovered it's a whole different set of skills. Writers, typically we came up as individuals. We work on our scripts alone. Now we've got a writer's room where the head writer is like the leader of a group of artists who typically worked alone.

27:17So you have to foster collaboration for sure from the start. I actually learned, you know, from team sports in high school, playing soccer in Santa Monica, you know, with an incredible, completely diverse, you know, group of teammates, you know, we would rally together to try to win. I always love that. And I try to import that sense of team whenever I would lead writers. The other thing that I do as a leader is positive reinforcement leadership. It's very simple and it's exactly what it sounds like, is you don't motivate people by going, guys we're in big trouble here if we don't get this rewrite done which you know oh my god well that you know i hope i hear some more pitches here because you know that nobody you know you can make people work if you do that they will you know do it but it's unsustainable and it's not good for creativity the opposite is what you want is you start with a very low bar i don't make writers write they are intimidated by writing i say let's noodle in people let's noodle noodling what is a noodle?

28:24It's wet, it's soft, it's mushy. You know, it's a noodle. Okay. So we start by noodling. Anybody got anything? And no matter what you pitch, I'm like, that's good. And I write it down and it appears on a big screen behind me. I love to have a big screen facing the room. So I've got my keyboard, but you see everything that I type. So any pitch, I write it down, boom, it appears behind me. Already, you've got a little pat on the back. And if you just do that pretty soon everybody's pitching something and I'm writing down everything. And within 10 minutes, I'll have 10 pitches for a line, right? Now, if we're starting to cool off, if the pitches start to, you know, become less frequent, let's look at the ones we've got.

29:03Is there anyone that we can punch up there? You know, for all you writers looking for a comedy tip for punch up, once you've Pitch the line, a way to punch it up is use CBS, clear, brief, specific. Look at that attempted joke. Is it kind of long and bloated? Briefer. Make it cut words out of it. Is it vague? Use specific language. If it's not clear, it's not going to work at all. It's got to be coherent. So, you know, we do that kind of punch up. And, you know, if you just do that, start the shit rolling, you know, you'll write comedy. but that okay what you've just people biggest companies in the world spend millions of dollars on training to get their team to be more collaborative and innovative and you've summed it up in about two minutes so what you've basically said there is phase one there's no such thing as a no every idea at this phase is a good idea and then phase two even if you know when someone suggests it it's never going to make phase two they still get a pat on the back they're still part of the process yeah it will be self-filtering in a minute and then phase two is okay now let's start looking at the reality of what actually is jumping out of us right and you can't see what jumps out you unless you've surrounded by other stuff that's weaker anyway so it's there's all that but what's really interesting about that i'm going to two things first of all we had a guy called owen cuts on here who's a music producer and he produces for grime rap artists soul artists in the uk and he said in the writing of music they do exactly that people just throw lines out so it's this idea of oh what if it was this or what if it was that and the other thing i would say have you heard of the whole walt disney thing with the three rooms so walt disney apparently had these three rooms of creativity and the first room was dreamer and in the dreamer room anything was possible and all of these ideas were possible and then in the second room is when he had the refinement which you've just done you've just done those two rooms you've gone room one and then room two is refinement and then he'd apply logic and reality to room two and then room three was like feasibility so but that dreamer thing most people don't do that do they most people don't allow themselves just to throw stuff at a wall for half an hour, an hour and see what comes out.

31:20Absolutely. You know, I always say that there's two qualities, the generative and the critical is how I describe it. And anybody who writes can relate to this. The generative is when you're thinking of ideas, when you're in flow state, when you're brainstorming. And that's when I say, set the bar low. We're noodling in any pitch is good. All I want is generation and you get a reward. Anybody who has the courage to say anything gets an attaboy, you know, pat on the back, you're up on the screen. Generative. And then the critical is when you go, okay, of these 10, which one's best? Which one, you got to use your critical mind.

31:55And within that one that we think is best, is it too long? Is it specific enough? Is it clear enough? Or is it offensive? Has it been done before? These are critical faculties. If you apply, is it offensive to the generative process? You cannot generate. You can't do both at the same time. The generative power is like a genie. It's magically powerful, the imagination. But like a genie, it can be sent back in the bottle with criticism. Criticism is like the magic words, like, and it's done. So don't do both at the same time. The critical mind is essential. Don't do it while you're generating. I love that.

32:34It's like trying to drive a car as fast as you can, and then you keep slamming the brakes on every like 10 yards, isn't it? It's that kind of. But I've never heard it explained like that, that you're, yeah, it goes back in the bottle. That's a lovely way of thinking about it. And you mentioned very briefly that how you got into the industry. Do you think, say anybody's listening here, they might be thinking, hey, I write things. I want to maybe get into the industry, whether it's in the UK or US. Would you say that? Is it the same starting point today? Get scripts written. Find a mentor. Get them to tell you why it's bad.

33:05Get better. and then get in the room with people and then shove your scripts in front of people? No, I think the whole thing has evolved. That still is part of it for sure. And here in LA, there's countless young talents writing spec scripts, networking, and trying to get on staff. So that will always exist. But what's lovely is there's another path to a career as an artist in the entertainment business. Now, keep in mind that a career in the arts is actually more like a series of gigs, each of which ends and then you got to hustle to get the next one. So this is why, you know, whenever you meet an artist or a writer or an actor, hug them, you know, and if you are one, I'm sending you hugs.

33:53We get through this by admitting to each other how difficult it is. but the path into it now has evolved significantly because in my lifetime, something changed. You could not make a film when I was a young person trying to break in because you couldn't afford a camera, let alone film. And God knows where you would get editing equipment. You had to go to film school to make films. That's why people went to film school was just to make stuff. Now the camera in your phone is good enough to make a feature and no one should ever wait for permission to make stuff ever again. If you are funny, if you love writing, write stuff and just shoot it.

34:35Shoot it on your phone, figure out how to edit it. It's very simple. All the technology is designed for third graders. You can figure out how to do it. Make stuff, show it to your friends, platform it and have the thrill of making stuff now. Don't wait for your validation. uh also go make stuff and put it on stage the number of people i know who were burst into the entertainment industry by just putting up uh small stage productions i mentioned bob odenkirk that's how he broke in mindy kaling broke in with a two-woman play that she put on in new york make stuff uh make it live uh and it will develop and become cool shoot it and you can platform it go ahead ben i can see you want to ask a question no it's just no i was gonna add to that there's a woman over here phoebe waller bridge does that name ring a bell she wrote an amazing amazing show called fleabag and then she ended up writing on the latest james bond but fleabag started as an edinburgh show in the edinburgh fringe festival and it was a one hour female only show and then it ended up propelling her so yeah she got on stage essentially and there's something very specific that's happening right now in the world of of like network television so this is a convo you and I were having before you hit record, it's the most fascinating thing to me is to observe how here in the States, and I think globally, the development process that we used to rely on, where NBC, CBS, ABC, and Fox would take hundreds of pitches from writers, buy hundreds of scripts, develop those, look at the best ones, choose 15 to shoot as pilots, put six of those on the air.

36:12that whole process is broken down they're just not taking as many pitches they're not buying as many pitches i mean they seem to buy a fraction five percent of the of the number that they bought at their heyday okay so this has put you know all the creators into a bit of a crisis but with crisis comes opportunity for sure because where is development going to come from where is netflix going to find this next new thing where is peacock going to discover its its next great uh show i firmly believe it's going to come from places like YouTube where people are making essentially proof of concept material.

36:49Now the proof of concept will replace the spec script as the path of development is my prediction. And look, my prediction is already coming true. Look at back rooms, look at obsession, these feature films that started on YouTube and became the top grossing films globally in the last month. The same will happen in comedy. It is already happening in comedy. Look up something called Mountainistic Rangers. This is some young people just shot their own TV pilot and put it on YouTube. A company called Amplify bought their$25 ,000 pilot and said, we'll remake it for$200 ,000. In fact, we'll make 10 of these at$200 ,000 each and then try to upsell them to YouTube.

37:33This is the new path of development, I believe. With that in mind, if you want to watch an experiment in real time, I pitched a show to Fox last season, which I called Historic Friedenberg. Historic Friedenberg is a workplace show set in a tourist site where they reenact American history and pretend like they're George Washington. You know, it's an idea for a workplace show that I've had for a long time. I can't believe nobody's made it. I pitched it to Fox. It was a great pitch. Everybody laughed. Nobody bought it. I decided, why don't I just make it? Why don't I just put my own budget together and find actors that I think are funny and just shoot it?

38:12So I did. Last Saturday, I shot three episodes of Historic Friedenberg. Now as episodes, I'm translating it into like four minute sketches to be a YouTube series, but it's essentially the same thing. It's a workplace comedy that I'm going to launch as a YouTube show. Let's see what happens. And this is my, I'm modeling something for all of you artists. Okay. Here's the model. Step one, you invest, make content, platform it on YouTube. Step two, get brands to sponsor your content. And now they're paying for you to produce more. Now you're sitting pretty. You have a brand covering your production of IP.

38:56You are making proof of content material sponsored by somebody else. You do not need much sponsorship money to make content. Okay. Once you start making content now, Fox and come and look and go, shit, that pilot we passed on is funnier than we realize when we see it and we see that people are watching it. So I believe that's going to be the future development. I encourage you to watch me do it on my YouTube channel that I'm launching literally July 4th. Well, this will be after July 4th. So what is the YouTube channel then, Brent? It's called, okay, it's called Professor Befo, just at Professor Befo.

39:36When I started teaching comedy, I started signing my emails instead of Brent Forrester, B-F-O, you know, like B Forrester. And Befo became my nickname amongst my students. they refer to the community of people who take my classes known as the BFO fam and and Professor BFO is what they call me. So go to at Professor BFO to find my content. What I'm what I'm noticing is I'm going to drop a comedy series and also videos about what I learned making it. So the Professor Befo channel is this place where you will see me teaching, making, and then teaching about making. I hope you find it interesting.

40:21It's certainly the most fascinating thing I've done in a long time. And it's interesting that everybody needs to pivot now, don't they? No one can stand still. And, you know, someone with the career, like whether you're starting out or whether you've had a long, successful career, it's that ability to go, well, this is it. Let's get on board let's do it yeah yeah for sure you know it's fun innovation is fun and and when people are wringing their hands about the way the industry is going it means there's opportunities for people on the outside to break in and that is you if you're listening to this uh follow my lead i will show you exactly how to do it anyone can do it hello it's ben this is a very short commercial break and normally regular listeners know that i say it's not really commercial break because we got any sponsors but that has changed because we've got our first ever sponsor and that is the podcast room so the podcast room are a podcast company up and down the country they've got studios in london birmingham leeds brighton and they're always expanding and it's where we're not recording this episode in the podcast room because we're doing it remotely but whenever i'm recording physically from now on i'm trying to be in their studios and i'll be honest this has come from because I genuinely love what they're doing.

41:34I love their studios and I love the quality. It's genuinely great service, people that really care, great quality, both video-wise and audio-wise. And it's a really, I think, great price. So if you are looking for any type of studios for content, whether it's corporate videos or podcast studios, have a look at the podcast room. And before we dive back into the episode, let's just quickly chat about Brent. He's amazing. It was really lovely for him to give up his time. So if you are enjoying his company, you could just drop him a DM on Instagram, maybe let him know, give him a little follow. If you search Brent Forrester on Instagram, you'll find him.

42:07And on YouTube, he's making a few more videos on YouTube now, Professor BFO. So BFO, Professor BFO on YouTube, and you'll find him as well. And this episode reminds me slightly of an older episode we did with another writer, Matt Barry, who ended up writing BBC dramas and also works in America. So if you're enjoying this topic, we've got another one for you there. and over the last few weeks by the way any new listeners thank you for the dms i've had a few messages of people who've been finding the pod and now they've been going back over the back catalog especially the derren brown episode people are still finding that and dropping messages so if you are relatively new thank you for all those messages i am reading i am replying to them and uh what do i need to tell you oh a couple of things uh what's the trick podcast now has its own Instagram page I think we've got our own TikTok page as well but you can find us on whatsthetrickpod on Instagram the reason I've done that as well is I can put more clips from more episodes if you like this particular type of content you'll see more of it in your Instagram feed so there we go if you can hit a little follow on that that'd be lovely and as always what am I going to ask if you're enjoying this show and you want to hear more of it you don't want to miss out next week's episode then hit subscribe and then you'll make sure you get that every Friday and um the my big big ask is if you've got any friends that love comedy that you think would love this conversation that love the office whatever it is or the Simpsons you could just share this episode with them and go give this a listen and all of a sudden we've got a new listener to the pod that might be how you've heard about it if you're on a whatsapp group with people that are into this kind of stuff then you can send it to them as well and my goal is if every week we can recruit a couple new listeners and everyone shares and tells somebody else we're gonna have this lovely community of people that want to get more inspired more creative and it's going to keep growing which is going to be just a lovely thing to do so that's what i'm asking for this week and as always if you've never dropped me a message yet do drop me a message because i'd love to hear from you and tell me what you think of the show so far and what i'm going to do is next week's guest i'm going to tell you at the end of this episode so we're going to jump back in to brent forrester and I'll see you at the end.

44:20This is What's the Trick with, I'll say his name again, Brent Forrester.

44:25Brent Forrester: Let's talk about The Office then. So Steve Carell, how did you, what was that like? Well, how was that? Feel free to go in this direction wherever you want to go with this, essentially. What would you like to work with on set? Did you write for him and did he stick to the script? How do you write for him? Just that experience of working with him, if you can. Well, Steve Carell is one of those performers who, before he became famous to the world, was famous amongst comedy writers and performers. He was known to be one of the greatest improv comedy actors of his generation. And he was starting to explode.

45:05He had been on The Daily Show, but it was in Bruce Almighty. I think he famously sort of stole the movie from Jim Carrey in the eyes of comedy writers who just said, did you see Steve Carell in that movie? Wow. And so he's a super talent in in the office. You know, he started flexing this other talent, which is his talent as a serious actor. I mean, the guy is so, so good, as you can see through his his body of work. I found myself to be intimidated by by Carell when when I got to the show you know keep in mind he's one of the nicest human beings in the world I mean he's just profoundly decent and generous as a person and as a performer but his standard was so high for for scripts and it was difficult for the writers to know whether we had nailed it on the page for him I didn't feel that way about any other character i felt like i can write for jim i can write for dwight i can write for andy bernard uh but with with uh michael scott you would deliver the scripts a little bit like does this work if it doesn't you know we were all very tentative like handing food to gordon ramsey yeah it was kind of like that and it was legitimately though a feeling that steve understood that correct that character at a depth that we the writers did not and so we were like does this work we don't i don't want to tell you that i don't fully understand how you're doing this you know so you felt almost fraudulent working with corral because of the depth of his understanding of the character right and i can't be here in the uk and not ask you the question you well i'm not going to say us versus uk office because i think they're two different shows but how much of the uk office did you consume and watch yeah during this experience well the the uk version of the office the ricky gervais steven merchant version of it just exploded in the hipster comedy community of the united states you know nobody in the general public knew about it but everybody in comedy knew about it they would you would go out and people say have you seen the show the office though you know and and you'd watch it and go wow It was just riveting.

47:26And it's largely because of the style of it was very bold and daring relative to everything else out there. Specifically, it was naturalism. It felt like this is real. It was mockumentary, and mockumentary is the most naturalistic of the cinema art forms. It tries to imitate documentary, which is the most realistic of the movie forms. So the naturalism of it was really, really noticeable. The other thing that I think people did not articulate, but I get now, is that British comedy, UK comedy in general, there's an appetite and a comfort with what we would call anti-hero comedy. And anti-hero is a bit of a misleading term.

48:14It's not the antagonist. It's the protagonist. this. It's the star of the show, the hero of the show who does not have heroic characteristics. So the antihero is the star who you're laughing at, not with. And that is not done in American TV. 100 % of the time you try to pitch a show to an American TV network and they'll go, your show lead, how is he likable? And if you say, he's not, he's a buffoon. They'll be like, we don't do that okay so so yeah because we have a character over here alan partridge who's massive i don't know if he's yes but again it's exactly that same dynamic yeah exactly yeah alan partridge is worshipped by you know comedy writers over here and again because it's an anti-hero comedy so the fact that the greg daniels and steve correll the creators of the american office were able to do a show with an anti-hero at the center was itself very unusual and it it almost resulted in the show being canceled after season two.

49:16The network famously, NBC had a meeting with Greg and Steve Carell and said, this show ain't going to last if you don't warm it up, if you don't make it more of an American show. And it was one of the most brilliant pivots in the history of the medium. Somehow Steve Carell in performing Michael Scott kept him as annoying as he was, made him the guy who's still leveraging his authority to get people to hang out with him but they made him coming from a place of profound love for the people in the office that he is a guy who has no family and wants the office to be his family that subconscious importing of warmth is why the show stayed on the air and is what makes an american show and not a british show at the end of the day oh wow i didn't realize that that he had to pivot the character like that but it makes sense now when you watch it which is really interesting um and then yeah you you can feel him warm up in season three there's something happens you know uh and i think it it it made the show a better show and from your point of view again you can be totally selfish in this similar question to the simpsons what is your favorite joke or bit that you've written for the office oh my god i'd have to go back and watch you know there's so many scenes that uh i contributed to it's a very collaborative process um i i remember recently a joke that i wrote for uh craig robinson who played uh daryl on the office boy the setup for this is such a long setup but you know you asked for this okay so the setup is that the the warehouse workers uh won uh all went in on a lottery ticket and they won.

50:59And so like, you know, 14 office workers retired. And then one of them comes back and it's a character, the Japanese guy on the workforce there. Gosh, I'm forgetting his name. It was like Hiroto or something. Okay, so Hiroto is asked by Daryl, you know, what have you been doing with your time? What'd you do with your money? Okay, God, the setup is so long. We had a writer on the staff, a gay writer who told us a story about a friend of his who had won a lottery payout and had used all the money to create a gay energy drink called gay fuel. Okay. So we gave this, this backstory to our Japanese worker.

51:46And, and so when Daryl says, what have you, what'd you do with your, with your money? And he said, I created a gay energy drink. Okay. So that's the setup. Now, Daryl takes a sip of the gay energy drink. This is the joke I wrote. He takes a sip. It's a very strong reaction to the flavor. He says, what is this flavor? And the Japanese guy says, coconut penis. And Daryl says, the coconut is very subtle. That's the joke.

52:24a 20-minute setup for a vaguely homophobic punchline. God, I've canceled myself. Oh, well, bye. See you. Thanks, Brent. You were being very loved by listening to that point. But I'd say what – Oh, okay. Quick question, and we're going to start rounding things up. What – if you could have been in the writer's room of another sitcom ever, what would you have wanted to be involved in? oh my god so many i mean mash would have been incredible i think run by larry gelbart but you know the one they always point to is um the sid caesar show uh your show of shows i think it was called the the writing staff there was phenomenal it was sid caesar who was a great writer performer his little buddy mel brooks uh was a writer in that in that room uh also in that room and forgive me because the chorus is all uh white dudes for the most part uh neil simon was in that room he wrote uh barefoot in the park um the odd couple etc one of the greatest comedy writers of his era uh woody allen was also in that room before he was correctly uh canceled for being what appears to be a weird pedophile um he was the most talented comedy writer of his generation he was in that room uh and larry gilbert who went on to create uh mash was in that room i mean it's it's never been equaled in terms of of heavy hitters it would have been something to watch those uh creators do their thing great thank you brent right we're going to wrap things up it's my fast five i'm also conscious of your time so tell you what we'll do uh i'm going to zip through question one brent is my highlander question i'm sure you're familiar with the film highlander more or less yeah more or less in the film highlander they chop off other people's heads to kill them and in doing so they steal their skills and expertise brent you don't have to kill anyone that's not happening but you do get to steal the skills and expertise of anyone dead or alive who would it be oh you know as a young person i grew up surfing in uh what's known as north malibu the hinterland between los angeles and ventura and uh if i could have the skills of tom curran uh as a surfer done fine that's a happy life i mean us british listeners have no idea who that is but i'm sure that's a surfer so well done it's yours fine moving on uh time capsule a week we are going to create a time capsule we can only put one thing you've ever done It could be a project, an episode, a joke, whatever you want.

55:05It's one thing's going in the time capsule. The rest of your work is gone forever. What are we sticking in there, Brent? Well, I wrote two sketches for a show called Mr. Show with Bob and Dave, Bob Odenkirk and Dave Cross. One of them is called The Pre-Taped Call-In Show, which is very funny and you can see on YouTube. But there's another one that is less famous called Two Young People and Their Companions. It's one of the most strange and original things I've ever written. It just starts out with a newscaster saying, hello. Last night, two young people and their companions went hiking in the Altadena Forest outside of Pasadena.

55:46This morning, two of the young people were missing. Their companions also are not to be found. And this distinction between young people and their companions begins to dominate the sketch. It's an arbitrary distinction that becomes larger and larger. Watch that and I'll be happy. Done. It's in there. Culture vulture. What is the one film, book, TV show, anything, music, whatever you want, you've seen or experienced recently that you want to tell everybody else to check out? Okay, I'll give you two. One to make me seem smart and the other because it's great and new. I've been reading Madame Bovary by Flaubert.

56:23Still holds up. It's just great observational character work. But what I've watched recently is DTF St. Louis. I think it's on HBO. It's great. It's a series with Jason Bateman. I'm forgetting the name of the other actors. They're all freaking amazing. And... It's an American actor.

56:48Brent Forrester: He's known for his roles as Michael Bluth in the Fox Netflix. My Alexa just wanted to tell me everything about Jason Bateman in the background.

56:59DTF St. Louis is really worth watching. I had dinner with a bunch of comedy writers two nights ago, and secretly everyone there had watched it without telling each other. It's awesome, sophisticated comedy. What's the idea of the show? Just sum it up. It's two couples who meet and have affairs with each other. It's a buddy comedy at the center. What really redeems it is it seems like it's going to kind of go into challenging, kind of naughty, edgy sexual behavior. And yet the tone of it is the opposite. it it's about very very sensitive people in um in deep caring relationships it's a kind of a miraculous thing that they pulled off well worth checking out done okay we're watching that i'm going to give you my magic wand brent with this wand you've got great responsibility you can make one thing vanish from the world of comedy tv entertainment use it wisely what you're going to make vanish well it would be the censorship there it would be the censorship of of uh you know stephen colbert and the elimination of of uh real journalism in 60 minutes um you know it's it's not it's stuff that's happening in comedy that i want to see go it's the people in power trying to censor comedy and effectively doing it you know um the larry ellison who's the new head of paramount It seems to have a cultural agenda and it is suppress the voices of dissent that are bubbling up through shows like Colbert or, you know, the journalism in 60 Minutes.

58:47It's despicable and it's cynical and it's risky to talk about. You'll notice that most people do not want to talk about it because if, for example, Kash Patel is forwarded this podcast interview, the chances that the FBI decides to investigate me or I get audited by IRS or, frankly, the risk that ICE will simply accidentally put me in a van and deport me to a gulag in El Salvador. It has been done. And people risk all of that by speaking up against this fascist administration. I'm doing it only to model courage for my fellow artists. And that's my answer to your magic wand question. I mean I'm not gonna lie Brent that's probably the most political one we've ever had I mean nor I was expecting tiktok dances or those kind of things but no that's good you've taken it you've taken it where you want to take it it's been great look Brent I really really appreciate you uh coming on the podcast we've covered so much and it's been lovely to hear how you know what you do in your life in those writers rooms etc but we're going to wrap things up final question what is the trick to having a long successful career as a comedy writer well like i say a career in the arts is a curious one because it does look sometimes like a series of gigs and to have that uh that character to go wow i'm back to square zero again i've got to hustle my way into something.

1:00:27It really is a magical trait that some people have. I think that teaming up and collaborating with others is probably the best way to get through it because inevitably, no matter who you are, you're going to be demoralized in the arts. If you have a writing partner, if you have an improv team, if you have a little production company that you created with your friends, the chances are you will not all be demoralized on the same day. So someone will go, hey, come on, everybody, we got this. And so I think teamwork and collaboration is how you get through it. Surround yourself with people that can pick you up and you can pick them up and keep going.

1:01:10Yeah, for sure. And if you're ever feeling super down, email me. I'm the easiest to find person out there. If you go to my website, brentforrester.com, It's easy to email me. I answer every email. And I swear to God, 25 % of the emails I get are people who say, Professor Bifo, I have an idea for a show that I want to write. But I just feel like, you know, probably no one's going to buy it. I just wonder, you know, can you encourage me? And I'm like, do it. You got this. So if you ever need wind in your sails, email me and I will give that to you. Fantastic. Brent, it's been an absolute pleasure.

1:01:44Thank you very much. So there you go.

1:01:48Brent Forrester: that was brent forrester i'll be honest i loved that conversation i've never spoken to anyone that's worked on a huge american show like that the office the simpson shows that i loved and i just loved hearing about the behind the scenes a few things that resonated with me i thought it was really interesting on his brainstorming technique it's something i've talked about with sometimes i give keynotes about creativity and we talk about brainstorming but the way he did that phrase of letting the genie out of the bottle i think was really interesting and how everyone gets a pat on the back everyone's going to get a pat on the back just say something i thought was really cool and just in general how in the simpsons it was a character versus another character i'd never thought of that before so just a really fun episode and as usual if you know anyone that loves the simpsons loves the office loves these comments kind of conversations or just into podcasts and you're like hey here's a new podcast for the summer you can share it to them there we go i said to you earlier on i will tell you who's next week's guest is and i will so thank you for sticking around this long the next week's guest is legend tv legend here in the uk brian connelly not billy connelly the scottish comedian brian connelly this is the guy that had his own saturday night show the brian connelly show he's done loads of things over the years he's now in west end um and he's had a brilliant brilliant career he's an old school entertainer So he does comedy, music, et cetera.

1:03:12And it's really a snapshot into what it was like being one of the biggest things on TV in the 90s as well. So it's been a great conversation. That's out next week. You don't want to miss it. Hit subscribe. I'll see you all next Friday. Have a lovely, lovely week.