This is the second and final installment of my round-table chat with the creative team behind Undeclared. In Part I, we talked about how the show went from pitch to pilot, which actors are winging their lines, and why Judd Apatow wants them to do it. Joining Apatow are: Kristofor Brown, writer/producer; Jenni Konner, writer; Lew Morton, co-executive producer; Joel Madison, writer/consulting producer, Ali Rushfield, writer; and Nick Stoller, writer. Check out their bios; there's photos and some funny, funny stuff
Heathen: I read that Jay basically is Steven.
Judd Apatow: There's literally no difference between him and Steven.
Lew Morton: He's a little less fidgety on television.
JA: He may be making out with more girls on TV than in real life.
Ali Rushfield: Steven dresses better, doesn't he?
[There's an emphatic "yes" from almost everyone.]
JA: Much better. He has professionals dressing him.
H: Poor Jay. He's getting killed on this one. Is he here or in Canada?
JA: He lives here, but he goes back to Montreal. I guess he tries to get jobs here while he's there, but I don't think he's looking to do theater in Montreal or anything.
Kristofor Brown: He likes to play music with his friends.
JA: Yeah, he plays in a band that he's created that sounds like Joy Division.
H: So nothing like Shaggy's sound at all? Where did that come from?
JA: We tried to make him sound like a bad Beck.
H: It worked. People were so startled. I stared at the screen in silence.
JA: We're not sure what anyone makes of that moment.
H: Timm's perfect, too. You really nailed it with casting. He's fun to watch. What else had he done?
JA: Um, a Bran Flakes commercial, an episode of Spin City, and an episode of Madigan Men.
Jenni Konner: And a "The Truth" commercial.
H: Ooh, what did he have to do for that?
JK: He had to pretend he was a non-smoker. So, have you found anything about the show people have reacted terribly to? Or that they love?
H: People love Eric.
JK: We love Eric, too.
H: People don't harshly criticize the show [on TWoP] that much, honestly. Many of them just found it and love it, and many are Freaks and Geeks loyalists who love this show because of Judd. Oh, and by the way? There's never enough Ron.
JA: There's a lot of Ron coming. It's an all-Ron Tuesday this week ["Truth or Dare"]. H: We're getting Ronned! But in a good way. JK: Did you tell her about "Eric's POV"? JA: Yeah, there's a whole episode that takes place in Eric's world. H: Oh my. Nick Stoller: It's a pilot for The Eric Show. H: [Under my breath, in case it's a total bomb] Or That Eric Show. Joel Madison: Eric and the Copy Guys. H: People like the copy guys, too. What they as actors have done before really helped their popularity when they came on -- like, "Oh, [Kyle Gass] is the guy from Tenacious D." I do think people found Lizzie hard to relate to. She seemed like kind of a soulless cow. I thought it was sweet [in "Jobs, Jobs, Jobs"] when she talks to Steven about Hal. It made her eminently more likable than the flaky stuff. JM: That was supposed to be episode four. JK: [Laughs] And [Shaggy]. It was going to be Steven talking to him. H: More Shaggy, more Ron. Not that we don't like anyone else, you understand. But they're just so fun to watch when they're on. JA: Carla always says, "People don't like me on the internet!" I tell her she's supposed to be the nightmare girl Steven falls in love with at school. But as we head into this run of shows, you get to know what her character really is, and she becomes less of a nemesis to Steven. H: Do you find that you've correctly predicted fan reaction to the show? JA: We had no idea at all what reaction would be to any of it. No idea what the show would be. Usually when people create a show, they say, "Okay, there's the sarcastic guy, the funny fat guy..." They're the generic types you have seen fifty times before. But there's no precedent for any of these characters, because they're based on the actors, so they play pumped-up version of themselves. We didn't know how anyone would feel about any of it. KB: The main thing is, we all liked what we were making and liked the characters, and so our fans seem to agree. JA: We're not getting any weird reaction we didn't expect. I would assume Lizzie would be someone people are irritated with. But that's kind of the point of the character in the beginning. She's the girl with who has a boyfriend at home who's screwing with her mind, who's a total nightmare, and that's what's so hilarious about it. But it's not like people will go, "Oh, my favorite character is the one that's screwing over Steven." That's what slowly pulls you in. You begin to relate to her problem, and things kind of go into another direction.
JK: Plus Carla would come in, and she's so good. Carla is so funny, with the way she'd read the lines when she did the phone conversations with Eric. When she was annoying, she was so hilarious that it all went in that direction, too. Like, "Awwww, baaaby." H: She's the nightmare girl with the hometown honey -- every floor had about four, I think. JK: Exactly, and what if it's your roommate? LM: Whoa, listening to this conversation, I'm thinking that everyone must've hated being in college. H: All the best stories are the bad ones. No one wants to know about the best class and the happy "A"s. Had any of you worked together before? JA: Joel and I worked together over the years in all sorts of different, weird capacities. We did stand-up comedy together. Kris and I had met before in the past, and Seth I knew from Freaks & Geeks. Many of the directors are also the same -- Jake Kasdan directed some of Freaks & Geeks and directed some of this show. Paul Feig [the F&G creator] directed an episode ["So You Have A Boyfriend"], and a bunch of the other Freaks & Geeks directors were scheduled to direct. H: Is that something you prefer doing -- bringing in people you worked with on other shows? JA: Well, mainly it's because if you find out somebody's good, it makes the show easier to work with them again. It's hard to keep trying out new directors and writers and actors, and I'm lazy that way. I'd like to keep going back to the same people every time, knowing it will work. H: A lot of people typed Undeclared as Freaks & Geeks Goes to College. JA: It's Geek Goes to College. There's no denying it's Geek Goes to College, and it's not set in 1980. That's probably the only difference between the two shows. Undeclared is meant to be more of a comedy than a drama, and Freaks & Geeks was definitely more of a drama than a comedy. But that is a really big difference when you're conceiving the stories. We never really cared if Freaks & Geeks was funny. It was funny when we thought it was appropriate, but we didn't start coming up with funny stories. H: It just evolved? JA: Yeah. We were writing a story about a kid who's embarrassed to get naked in gym class, and it kind of evolved into something funny, but we're really trying to track how you actually felt, and the funny would just fall into that. But we never tried to start with a hilarious idea.
H: Is there any hope of a Freaks & Geeks DVD? JA: The music is really expensive. That's been the problem. We'd have to go back to Pete Townshend and ask if we can get a good deal on one song. I think eventually we'll get a couple of them out there. I was trying to get all eighteen, but that seems impossible. I think if I pick a few, maybe my two favorites or something, and we have to lose a song or two and make an adjustment, we'll get them out that way. ["Later, I emailed Judd a question about whether he chooses his own music. He replied, 'We have a great music supervisor, but I choose a lot of the music. The writers pick a lot of the songs also. I try to pick songs that won't sound corny and out of date in ten years. Maybe it will all be corny and out of date in ten years. I'm sure the music is corny and out of date in It's A Wonderful Life. But, I try.'" -- Heathen] H: What are your two favorites? JA: I don't really have...well, obviously the pilot, the first one, I liked a lot. I don't really have favorites. I like "I'm With The Band," but that's a really brutally depressing episode. But I just like it because it captures crushed dreams perfectly. And I really like Bill making out with the girl in the closet at the make-out party. I like Bill's mom dating the gym teacher -- I think that story's pretty funny and accurately represents many facets of my childhood. H: Having watched two lauded shows falter like this, does it still feel good or mean anything to get good reviews from critics? JA: Well, yeah! JK: Yeah. JM: You can't predict whether viewers will make you a hit or a miss show. It's so unpredictable as to whether it's going to take off that if you get good reviews, that's a great thing. You can feel good about the work. The rest of it is just so, like, who knows. Shitty shows do good, shitty shows fail. Good shows do good, good shows fail. There's no predicting it. KB: We all believe we've made a good show. We really like it. Anyone who agrees with us -- hey, that helps. H: And you did The Larry Sanders Show too, right? What else? JA: Joel and I, we wrote for many puppeteers. Someone with an old-man puppet. [They laugh.]
JK: That one, and one coming up that Kris wrote, which is where Hal gets into a relationship with Amy Poehler. It's really, really great, and Steven gets into a war with Lucien because he's so jealous of Amy that he starts taking it out on Steven and starts punishing him. It's very big and very pranky. It's the Kris Brown Specialty. He's our guy who was in a frat, and worked on The Tom Green Show. H: Oh, so did you write "Rush and Pledge" and "Hell Week"? KB: I wrote first one; Joel and Seth wrote the second one. I love the pilot, too, I could watch the pilot over and over. LM: I have high hopes for "Eric POV," which I haven't actually seen yet. JM: I like "Sick in the Head." AR: "Eric Visits." NS: "Truth or Dare." JA: I like, uh, "Eric Visits" and "Eric Visits Again." I like the "Eric Visits" Trilogy. We can all go upstairs and watch "Eric POV." H: Do you watch much other TV? JA: Oh, just Buffy, Gilmore Girls, The Chair... [laughter] H: Yeah, while I've got you on the topic of that time slot...how about that time slot? JA: It's a hard time slot, because there's a lot of good shows on, other than The Chair. H: John McEnroe hosting a game show, in eyeliner? That's not a good show? JM: No, including The Chair. JA: It's a good time slot and a hard time slot. Like, when Freaks & Geeks was on, it was up against Cops, so we could always say, "Oh, fuck Cops." But we can't really say that about those shows because they are really good shows that we watched before Undeclared came on. H: Has there been any discussion of moving your show to a new time slot? JA: No, and I don't think that'll happen this year. Every year, everything's up for grabs. What do I watch? We all watch Project Greenlight every week. We watch exactly what you think we would watch. KB: A surprisingly large number of us still watch The Real World. JA: I watched Temptation Island the other night and I felt very dirty. They figured out how to cast that show because every single person except one is cheating.
JA: A&E Justice Files -- I find myself watching that a lot. LM: Judd watches a lot of porn. Does that count? H: Only if he buys it. AR: The Channel Channel [also the TV Guide Channel] with Katie Wagner. I like to keep it on all the time. JM: Iron Chef is good. H: [maniacally] YES! Did you see the one UPN made, where Shatner was the chairman? Lord. I heard it was awful. The panelists are so bad, one of them was on there based solely on like eight episodes of Young Americans. JA: Charlie Hunnam was on Young Americans. H: Yeah, but he's actually done other things. [At this point, Judd had to leave and the conversation turned toward Television Without Pity and how the site works; after some digression, Ali brought the talk back on-topic.] AR: [confused] So you named Timm "Shaggy"? H: Um. Yes. I guess I just thought he reminded me of the guy from Scooby Doo, and it just stuck. A couple of forum posters have said they don't like it, but I can't quite let it go. JK: [to Ali] Has ours aired yet, where we call Lloyd "Heath"? AR: No, I don't think it has. H: You call him "Heath"? JK: Yeah! Because of you. It's coming up. KB: Martin Starr calls him "Heath." Because we read it on [TWoP]. H: Oh my God, that's so exciting! Thanks! ["Inside, I was screaming. To them it may seem like such a minor little thing, but I'm incredibly touched and proud that the writers like Television Without Pity so much and made an effort to script a fun shout-out to us. Thanks again!" -- Heathen] JA: [Re-entering] Okay, let's run right now and watch some of this cut [of "Eric POV"]. And so it came to pass that I watched an episode of Undeclared with its creator and writers. It was a good episode that I'm excited to watch again when it airs, and will be a strong finish to the season. It was nifty to hear everyone laugh out loud at what they saw, and to watch them still enjoying the show and the writing and the performances and the whole process of turning out each episode. I expected a bittersweet environment, but it turns out they're all just happy to have worked together and made a show of which they're all very proud. As I left, Judd Apatow was strolling casually and strumming a ukulele given to him by Loudon Wainwright. He gave me copies of two episodes, picked up from boxes that look like they're being packed in preparation for the staff's eviction from Sunset-Gower Studios. I would have been very moved as I drove off the lot, if Lew Morton -- with Ali Rushfield sitting shotgun -- hadn't turned around in the seat of his swanky silver sports car and enthusiastically flipped me off.
Oh, but it's okay. I flipped him off twice in return and shook my fist at him, plus I know his middle name and I'm not afraid to use it. He won't be messing with this recapper again.