Office talk with the TV writer and sitcom creator
When I posted my podcast on Monday with sitcom writer/creator/showrunner Justin Spitzer, I included a screengrab from Superstore, the NBC sitcom that Spitzer not only created, but also made a masked cameo in during the series finale.
But that’s not the only time Spitzer stepped in front of the camera, nor his most infamous turn…
That would be this moment from the season-four opener of The Office, “Fun Run.”
Look at him there! Such a kid still!
He’s all grown up now, with his second showrunning creation on the air this past month with the debut of American Auto, and Spitzer sat down with me over Zoom to talk about his career as a sitcom writer and how the game has changed, both for sitcoms, and for writing about the car industry…
And without further ado, here’s an edited transcript of our conversation!
Sean L. McCarthy: Congratulations on getting another show on broadcast network television! That’s quite an achievement for anybody, especially for all of the aspiring writers and comedians out there. Just getting a development deal is sometimes a career highlight for people so congratulations.
Justin Spitzer: One last deal before the sunset of network television? I don’t know. Is that what we should be putting out there?
I wanted to name-drop Nikki Finke but I think people are getting young enough that they won’t even get that reference anymore.
Nah. Their grandmothers used to read Nikki Finke.
So last things first, what was your last workplace that you encountered before you made it into a writers room?
Wow. If you also don’t include general production… because I’ve worked on shows in like the art department and stuff. I worked for this dot com that was trying to stream media back in like 2000, called Centerseat, that was not successful. Turns out you couldn’t stream much programming, so even if you had a show with a guy’s face in this frame it would buffer for 20 minutes. But that felt like actually a normal office.
What about other odd jobs that you had growing up?
Oh, yeah, I mean, I would temp most summers, so in retrospect, it was a great way to see a lot of different workplaces. So I worked on assembly lines a couple of times. I worked in offices. I worked in the mailroom of places. So a couple weeks here, a couple of weeks there. I did telephone polling.
So before there were robo calls, back when there were regular human people calling, that was something you had to do?
It was terrible. Because at least if you’re trying to sell someone something, if they hang up, they hang up and you move on, but this was calling businesses. I think it was a survey about like the business-to-business Yellow Pages or something, but the problem with polling is you can’t accept no for an answer, because if you do, you’re selecting the group as these are only people that enjoy doing the polls, so you have to like schmooze people and con them, and people are busy, and you’re like no but just a little let me ask you a few questions more. And if you don’t do that, you’re making it a bias group. And it was just awful. It was the worst couple of weeks.
Have you seen that Boots Riley movie about customer service (Sorry To Bother You)?
No
Anyhow, so were you one of those people who knew early on that you wanted to be a screenwriter?
No, I mean, I went to Northwestern. They have a good theater and film program, and I was leaning towards something in the industry — whether acting, writing, directing, I didn’t really know. I always thought being a lawyer would be a good backup. And if anything, sometimes I think oh, well, it would have been really, really fun. I really wouldn’t have enjoyed that. But and then for a couple years after college, I kind of did this ‘n that. Oh, I was a strolling Actor at the Jekyll & Hyde theme restaurant in Chicago. I guess that was my last other job before.
It’s that or Second City?!
I did Second City classes, but I don’t think I could have made it onto the stage there. Yeah, and then finally, I think I wanted to be a screenwriter. And somehow I thought that being TV writer would be like an easy fallback to being a movie writer knowing nothing about the industry. So I started writing specs and kind of landed in it that way.
Did anything at Northwestern prepare you for writing spec scripts and showing up in Hollywood?
Not really. I mean, I took the basic writing class they have. they have this cool Writing for the Media program that I applied to and got rejected from. I thought that was the end of my career there. I kind of think a lot of this classes are just about doing it over and over and getting experience through practice so I think, in writing my specs I think that taught me how to write a spec.
How many specs did you write before you sold “My Butterfly” for Scrubs?
Wow, wow, you’ve done research. Wow. That was my fifth spec, my second Scrubs. Before that I wrote a Frasier, I wrote a Will and Grace, a Malcolm in the Middle, a Scrubs and then that Scrubs and that was it.
Why did you pick those shows to write specs for? Was it because you love those shows or because you felt like you could figure out those characters?
I liked the shows, definitely. And I felt like they were you know, back then, in 2000, there weren’t as many shows out there. So you just had to pick a show that a lot of people watched and so there were only really a handful you could choose from. And I liked them. I felt like it’s so bad to say. I’m sure they’re very difficult, but I somehow I thought I could fake my way through a Frasier and a Will and Grace. You know, I think early on it was like, I thought if I could just fool people into thinking I could be a writer, maybe someone would give me a job. So even those, like I just watched a bunch, I wrote a bunch of jokes sort of randomly that felt like they could be in that kind of show and then I constructed a plot around it. It ended up working out OK, but I really kind of did it backwards. I think there’s some value to that, like fake it till you make it — and I really felt like I was faking it for those. And then Scrubs actually was one of my favorite shows at the time. So I kind of built to that.
That might have been why that’s the one that worked, right? Because you actually intuitively felt in your bones, the relationships and how it should work.
The story with that was my agent used to played basketball with Bill Lawrence and he knew from like 10 years before that, on Spin City, there was one incident where he actually bought a spec someone wrote. And normally that’s never the case. You know, you write it as a sample. But he said, ‘Bill did this once before, and so if you can write a Scrubs that stands out enough that feels like you know, an out of the box idea, I could maybe get it in front of him.’
Here’s the opening to Spitzer’s big break, the “My Butterfly” episode of Scrubs!
Were you already working as a writer’s assistant at that point?
Yeah, I was my first job with that title was was Queer As Folk, the American version, even though I was really more just as assistant to the executives. They didn’t really need a writer’s assistant. That’s when I wrote it. And then I was a writer’s assistant on Grounded For Life. And that was the year that they made that episode. I had a weird week, of getting to go set on Scrubs in the morning and then driving over to Radford to be assistant, then go back to Scrubs. It was a crazy week of where I’m like, ‘I’m living my dream!’ And then you know, being a peon again.
Not to date, either of us but those early experiences were coming up on 20 years ago, right? How is it different for someone trying to break into a writers room now, than it was when you were first trying to get those writer assistant jobs at Queer As Folk and Grounded For Life? Or is not different at all?
I think it’s probably very different. I mean, the industry has changed so much. Everything from what samples you write. The fact that we don’t have those few shows everybody watches and is talking about. Plus now people don’t write specs of existing shows. They write pilots, and sometimes those get made, and they jump to being, not showrunners, but like a high-level writer from someone with no experience, which I always have a hard time with when it comes to reading writers because, you know, every voice is distinct. But if you’re reading someone who writes a pilot that’s not like your show at all, it’s hard to know how they are as a writer. And then in terms of those writer’s assistant jobs. I mean, being a good writer’s assistant is being a good writer’s assistant, I don’t think that’s changed. But I think there’s just just like this expectation now that everybody has to be have a web series, like everyone I know is also working on a web series. And it’s really hard. They’re having to like, you know, my assistant was talking to me about how, the difficulty she’s facing, and thinking that I sort of knew how I would do it, and I was saying like, no in my job running a writers room, it’s hard to run a show, but I have a line producer. I’m not having to call in favors and having to essentially be my own producer of the show. In that respect, I guess it’s good. But sometimes I wish writer’s assistants could just sit back and get the full room experience without having to feel like they also had to be aspiring entrepreneurs.
And, you know, everything kind of changed for you with The Office, right?
I mean, I’d been on a couple of shows beforehand, but you know, little jobs that go away on shows that go away. The Office was the thing that absolutely made my career
What did you take from that experience, other than piles of money? What did you take from that experience of seven seasons, that you then took with you to both Superstore and now American Auto?
I wonder sometimes how I would be as a writer if I hadn’t been through that, and again, aside from the money, but also the credits. That show, that credit opened a lot of doors for me. But I think it also taught me how to be a writer. I mean, Greg Daniels, he’s brilliant in so many ways, but one great thing that he did, that I wish I would do, is teaching us how to write. When he would sort of almost give us lessons it felt like going through grad school. And to a certain extent, we were learning what he valued, so that we could be better writers on his shows. But so many of those lessons I take going forward. I think about all the time. I think that takes a lot of confidence. I would feel insecure about telling people on my staff how to write when I don’t feel like I know the answers, but Greg had that level of experience where he could do that. So yeah, I think he looked for writers that had a level of talent and would bring something to the table, but then he took them and he molded all of us into becoming much better writers.
What about in terms of…in all of the shows, you’ve been working on for the last decade plus have been workplaces, so obviously that’s something that still resonates with you. The framing device, though, has changed. Like you’re not wedded to the conceit of the documentary?
Yeah, I do think about going back and doing a mockumentary at some point. There’s a lot of benefits to doing it. You get pipe-out super easy when a character can tell the camera what’s happening, and I’m always surprised there’s not a little more of them. So I do have some ideas in mind for it. But even though Superstore and American Auto aren’t strictly mockumentary, I’m still using a lot of those conceits. Camerawork camera is a little shaky, and shows across the board are doing that. I kind of attribute that partially to reality television. You know, we watch so much, sort of that’s how we expect. We want things a little less staged and artificial and you’re sort of aware there’s a cameraman, so it’s like, who are we fooling? There’s a camera in there, the camera moves. But then other things like, you know, in The Office, we do these spy shots. So like, they’re aware of the camera, but then if there’s a private moment, they would be behind a closed door and then the camera would shoot through blinds or shoot around the corner and the frame would be obscured. And even though our characters in these shows are unconscious of cameras, I try when there’s a very private moment to construct it so that the camera is further away, and the frame is constructed. So you have that sense that we’re catching a moment that they wouldn’t want seen so publicly,
Right. There’s a scene where, after the factory guy gets promoted, and then his love interest brings him into her office.
That’s in episode one, in fact, but that’s a perfect example.
Your wife also has bumped up the ranks from writer to creator/showrunner. As as you two both like the ranks, and took control over your own voices and ambitions, and what kind of shows you wanted to put on the air… How has that teamwork worked in terms of like, feeding off of each other in terms of like, dealing with NBCUniversal for instance?
(NOTE: Justin Spitzer is married to Jenna Bans, creator of NBC’s Good Girls. She previously worked on some of Shonda Rhimes’s series, including Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal)
She spent a lot of her career at ABC, and moved over to Universal fairly recently. I’ve been at Universal just about my whole career. I would say early on, we worked together a lot and showed each other things, and you know, even had times where we wrote scenes for each other if we were behind, and it was much more collaborative. I think now, just because when we have shows, we have our own staffs and also we have kids and stuff. I mean, the biggest way we use each other is to say ‘Go home and watch the kids because I have to have to work late.’ So sometimes we talk about working on something again, we’ve had this screenplay that we wrote, years and years ago. We’re talking about trying to do a rewrite and see if there’s interest, but we haven’t talked about collaborating any more than that.
Oh, I meant just in terms of working in the industry, because being a writer can be so solitary, even though you work in a writers room when you’re trying to pitch your ideas. It can be a very solitary experience, and then you’re trying to find producers to team up with and getting into the room to pitch. So before you had Superstore, before she had Good Girls. Was there any sort of like back and forth in terms of like, morale boosting or insight or where the shop talk is really more teamwork-driven in terms of like, you both want to succeed?
Yeah. I mean, it was in so many ways, you know, you go home, you talk about your day with your spouse, and it’s helpful when they can understand what you’re going through a little more. At the same time, sometimes it’s almost harder. It’s like, you know, my friends who aren’t married to another writer, they can come home and say like, oh, man, I just are going to be late tonight I’ve got a mix to do, so for I don’t know what time I’ll be home and I say that to her and she’s like a mix should only take three hours. So she’s not impressed by me at all.
So you’re saying it’s not as beneficial sometimes as being married to a doctor or a real estate agent or what have you.
Now at least they can tell you stuff about another industry, and that’s helpful. But I think there probably is value of how do you navigate this and my wife is much more social than I am, outgoing. So she’s always been able to help me navigate that into things. Back early on in my career, when I would take these general meetings, I would just sit there and have no idea what to say at beginning of the meeting. Like they’d say, ‘How are you?’ and I would just like fall to pieces, and she would just like go over, here’s small talk you can make like, teach me how to like be a person.
Who was that person for you early on? Was it Jenna? Was there someone before that who was like a mentor for you?
I mean, we came out here together. She was ready to go to law school. So we were the people for each other, and then our agent, we have the same agent. We linked up with him very early on. He’s a good friend. So in terms of a mentor, he sort of like helped us navigate a lot of that.
Now of course with American Auto, which is your newest, brightest star, in the NBC Universal Peacock galaxy. You originally pitched this, what, nine years ago?
2013 was when the original pitch document was.
So much has changed in those years. When you went back to it, how did you perceive it differently?
Well, it’s a very different show than it would have been. I did that after I left The Office. I fot a pilot that got picked up but didn’t go. And then I was trying to think of what I wanted to do and I decided what about a workplace show more on the corporate side of things because every now and then they would refer to corporate. But that show, it had certain similarities and truthfully once it didn’t go, the following year I had Superstore. And I took certain characters and relationships from that show into Superstore. Because American Auto was a dead pilot at that point. So the currently the Jack/Sadie (dynamic), I think they were a little more similar to Jonah/Amy in the original American Auto. And then every now and then I would talk with Tracey Pakosta, who was at the studio at the time I did American Auto and then joined the network and since has gone on to Netflix. I would talk her about bringing back show. So when I did, I had to now come up with new relationships and new characters, because I used them already in Superstore. So, you know, that pilot was about developing a hybrid electric car for Red America. Why does that only appeal to Blue America? So it still had I guess a little bit of a social and political bent, but certainly not about self-driving cars or anything like that. I think the show is very different. Having been through Superstore, you know Superstore, so much of it was about dealing with these seemingly arbitrary or cruel decisions from corporate. So a lot of this season has been about now understanding how those decisions get made. So the show would be very different had I not gone through Superstore first.
Well, the car industry is also so much different. You know, you just mentioned that we’ve gone from trying to introduce the idea of a hybrid car to self-driving cars.
Yeah, very different. And I mean, like, the auto industry was always sort of like, just, it wasn’t arbitrary, but it was almost. I didn’t set out to do a show about the car industry. I chose to do a show about a corporate office and chose the car industry to tell that through. Because I’m not especially a car person. That’s that’s something I’m trying to research as much as possible in the telling of this.
Why would you pick the car industry then? What was it that intrigued you about it? Especially if you’re if you’re not like a gearhead?
I’m not any kind of person. But I just wanted it to be a giant corporation that could kind of give as many opportunities for stories as possible. So you know, a corporation where there’s lobbying. We don’t this season have them go to like D.C. to lobby, but that’s something they can do. Or international travel. Have as many opportunities for different kinds of stories as I could. And there’s not really that many industries for that. I thought about pharmaceuticals early on. Both of my parents were in the pharmaceutical industry. But that felt like it could potentially get a little jokey in different respects. It felt like that would then really feel like it was all about pharmaceuticals. Those stories would be too appealing to tell anything else, you know, and this felt like OK, you can tell stories about cars, but it’s really more about stuff in general. It’s about earnings calls and where to open a factory and stuff that any number of industries might deal.
Although Ana Gasteyer’s character does come from pharma.
I kept that aspect, that little piece of it.
What about in terms of passing relative unknowns versus casting people? With Superstore, you had America Ferrara, Mark McKinney — even Ben Feldman had some face-name recognition. Whereas American Auto, aside from Gasteyer, it’s really more filled with fresh faces.
I mean, it was sort of just you see who’s interested in the show and you go from there. There was no thought behind it. You know, even the beginning of Superstore. It’s not like we were right away, like it needs to be America and no one else. It’s good to have. at least one name as a central role. It helps a little. Early on that show when Mark McKinney read, I was thrilled but like we hadn’t gone out to him. I just saw his name on the sheet and it was a nice surprise. And so for this show that sort of just the way it played out. Humphrey (Ker), actually worked with. He was actually in the first pilot I ever shot, so I’d known him for years and he’s amazing. Yeah, John (Barinholtz), that part I originally thought of as a very different type of part. And then I was talking to John on set and he had read it, he liked it and he’s just a dream to work with. People just read and we found the people that fit the parts, or changed the parts to fit people. So X Mayo came in for Dori. Dori was written as a very different part. But she was great.
OK, because with creators/showrunners, I’m never sure how much you write parts with specific people in mind, or how much you’re kind of angling for the chemistry of the cast.
I think I come up with an actor or two as like, a general feel, just so I can write, hear some voices in my head, but it’s very rare that I mean, you don’t even necessarily want those people for real. You really just want that kind of voice. I mean, there’s so many things out there the idea that you could write someone and have an actor in mind and actually be that person, unless if you’ve got someone that you already have an existing relationship with, it seems like it’s pretty rare.
As a journalist who’s outside the business but covers the business, there’s kind of a conventional wisdom that definitely with sitcoms, perhaps even more than with dramas, that a sitcom in season two can be very different from what the sitcom was in season one. What has been your experience with that? How’s that translating to how you approach American Auto right now?
Certainly, The Office season two, everyone would always talk about how that’s where the show came into its own. People say — we’d always laugh about this — The Office fans would point out that season two was where The Office started doing its own stories, which wasn’t true at all. The pilot is nothing like The BBC and season one is totally original. But you know, and super short, too. And I think the thought is, you sort of start to find what the show really is, what what the actors do well, and you kind of like, you start Season One, you’re kind of like flailing and you’re trying to figure out what the show is. And then Season Two, you know what the show is, and you have all those big juicy, low-hanging fruit ideas to do and then over time you do those you start to go up the tree. But it’s not conscious. It’s not like I’m thinking through season one, OK, this is just experiment phase, and we’ll see what works and who knows? And then, you know, right now, I couldn’t tell you if the show’s gonna change. I imagine if we come back for a second season, the show will feel different and if we’re lucky enough to be on for years, fans will all say that season one was terrible and season two was where we found ourselves. But I wish I knew what that was going to be. But I don’t yet know. I don’t know what our show is, that I’ve learned at this point that I didn’t know anyone but maybe we’ll touch finish airing, I will.
As we’re talking right now, there are two episodes on Peacock. Where are you now, how many more have you planned?
There’s 10 episodes, including those two.
Have you shot them all?
Yep. Shot. Edited. Sound, I’ll be able to mix a few of them, we have some VFX to do left, but it’s basically done.
Well, a mix should really only take three hours.
Yeah, so yeah, no, it’s done. That’s the other thing is, you know, if people start to like the show more. Anyone who says oh, they saw what was working or they read Twitter and they took it to heart and he changed the show… the (season) is done at this point.
Has streaming changed the way you approached a show as a showrunner/writer? Because I know we talked about how the streaming has changed the viewing experience — that people are always trained now to binge instead of watching it week to week. Has that impacted how you approach the show from the front end?
No, I wouldn’t say it really has for me. I think maybe for this show, we were a little more serialized, than Superstore was season one, not tremendously so. And I think maybe that was because we’re aware that more and more people are binging, and probably going to watch it in order. But I don’t know if that was conscious or just sort of the way that unfolded. Yeah, I don’t think there’s more. No, I think the network has been great and willing to take chances, let us try things, and that could be because I had enough success with Superstore that they’re trusting me a little bit more. But I also think maybe the fact that people watch on so many different platforms, that it doesn’t feel like this one thing has to appeal to 40% of the population. So I think maybe network is willing to take more chances now than than they would have been 10 or 20 years ago.
How has writing and producing American Auto changed your own perceptions of the auto industry?
I had no perceptions because I knew nothing about it. Now I have a subscription to Automotive News and learning as much as I can.
A guy like Elon Musk, is he someone who can fit into the world of American Auto?
Is he too much of a trope?
Or a cartoon character. The kind people talk about, well, you can’t make fun of Trump because Trump already is ridiculous.
Yeah, I wouldn’t be surprised if he or some version of him were to come to the show in the future. But I would never want the show to be about that character. That’s not the show. Silicon Valley had characters like that. So yeah, we might deal with that some way. I think so many people who hear about the show talk about Elon Musk right away. It’s a very high bar to clear, because people already have their ideas of what’s going to make that character funny. And like, I think he is very funny. At the same time, ‘I’m in awe of him. I mean, people to like to shoot him down and shit on him, but like he’s pretty amazing no matter what you think of him personally.
Sounds like he is going to appear then.
If I can get him on, Elon has an open invitation.
Well, you heard it here first! Thank you so much, Justin. I appreciate your time.
It was great talking to you. Any time.
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