If you’ve ever binged one of several popular television comedies of the last 15 or so years, you’ve likely come across Michael Schur’s name -- even if you may not have noticed it, hidden in the credits. He has nonetheless been integral in the development and creation of some of the most iconic sitcoms of our era, and has used his creative talents to become a hugely successful producer of televised content.
Michael Schur got his start, like many in the television industry, on Saturday Night Live as a writer, and he eventually took over running the news show-esque segment Weekend Update, then hosted by Tina Fey and Jimmy Fallon. From there he moved to LA (to be with his then girlfriend, now wife) and joined the writing team of the U.S. version of The Office. In addition to his behind-the-scenes roles on this show as a writer and producer, he also stepped in front of the camera on
So clearly with this much success in an entertainment industry with ever-increasing competition among different platforms and services, Michael Schur clearly has mastered a method to conquer the madness. One of the aspects of his creative process that has allowed him to be so successful is collaboration. This practice has been essential to Schur’s process essentially as long as he’s been writing professionally for television -- as an SNL writer, his best-known sketches were all co-written, according to an interview on the podcast, I Think You’re Interesting. In that same interview, Schur also credits co-writer and co-producer of The Office and Parks and Rec Greg Daniels for the fact that he “skipped all of the hard parts [in the television industry]...Greg held [his] hand and skipped them for [him]”. More recently, Schur partnered with Dan Goor to create Brooklyn 99 and worked with New Girl’s Josh Malmuth to produce Abby’s. Schur has also lauded the casting team helmed by Allison Jones responsible for finding suitable actors for these various collaborative endeavors, and talked about how much of a flexible team effort the conversation between himself as a creator and the team as casting directors always is.
Another strategy Schur employs in much of his creative processing is collecting. He is heavily influenced in his writing and producing by comedies from previous generations; this is evident in his references in interviews to significant sitcoms like Frasier, Friends, and especially Cheers, which undoubtedly guided his comedic development. He also talks in an interview with The Believer magazine about the personal importance of the writings of David Foster Wallace, in particular the book Infinite Jest. He goes so far as to say that “it’s influenced everything I’ve ever written”, and discusses how it made him realize the importance of embracing sincerity in his writing. This literary work and the lessons it imparts especially influenced the show Parks and Recreation, which celebrates the triumph of optimism over pessimism (a theme found in Wallace’s work), especially in the cynical world of politics.
Schur has definitely had to embrace divergent thinking in order to create content that remains unique, relevant, and relatable among today’s oversaturation of TV content options. He appeals to the general populace (and has gained much acclaim for this) by prioritizing characters over premise in his programs. In his words in the aforementioned podcast interview, “premises burn off,” but audiences invest their time and attention on relationships between realistic, engaging characters, which should always be the first priority. Schur has emphasized how he never begins developing ideas for a show with a grand premise in mind, but begins by thinking about a person or group of people, how they interact or how they address a challenge, and it grows and adapts from there. He talks in the podcast about that pattern of thinking when developing the concept for The Good Place: he began by thinking of the nature of being a good person, and how a person could be struggling to achieve this sort of goal, and he cycled through a number of possible premises that could suit this sort of personal obstacle before settling on the afterlife. Another way of appealing to the general public (aka, his audience) that Schur excels at is embracing diversity and inclusion in his casts and characters -- done through color-blind casting and the inclusion of multiple queer characters in his shows -- and addressing relevant and difficult themes while still being comedic. For example, Brooklyn 99 has had episodes discussing racial profiling among police officers, the processing of coming out and being accepted (or not accepted) by family and friends, and sexual assault and harassment (that episode was aptly titled, “He Said, She Said”). By confronting important current events and topics that matter to his audiences, Schur is earning greater attention and acclaim from his audiences and his field in general.
Schur also exhibits a great amount of creative problem solving through his tweaking of characters and plots of shows to make them more appealing to those audiences. This is especially prevalent in The Office, when the writing team made significant changes to the character of Michael Scott after the first season to make him slightly more likeable and relatable to viewers -- an alteration Schur acknowledges as the reason the sitcom was so successful and wasn’t cancelled after twelve episodes. Parks and Recreation underwent similar modifications after its first six episodes received a negative response. In a stroke of creative genius, Schur and his team did not entirely alter the character of Leslie Knope in the same way they had Michael Scott, but rather changed her fellow characters’ responses to her enthusiasm and dedication to her work. Instead of rolling their eyes at her plans, they would acknowledge that she had better ideas and strategies than anyone else in the office and go along with her thoughts, thus creating more of an “us versus the world” mentality, according to Schur’s interview. These sorts of subtle improvements to positively influence audience responses to protagonists demonstrate Schur’s skill at creatively solving these problems in entertainment, preventing his shows from early cancellations and instead allowing them to flourish into some of the most popular sitcoms in recent televised history. Or, to use Lehrer’s language, Schur learned from his failures and allowed those initial negative responses to drive his creative modifications to his characters and shows as a whole.
Through his extensive collaboration with other members of his domain, collecting of comedy and literature as creative influences, thinking in unique and divergent manners to find ways of connecting his audience to his characters, and learning from failures and creative problem solving, Schur has claimed a spot as king of comedy hill, and with this many great successes under his belt and his strategies to creatively process ideas and solve problems, I believe he has earned his crown.
References:
GARDNER: Gardner, H. (1993). Creating minds: An anatomy of creativity seen through the lives of Freud, Einstein, Picasso, Stravinsky, Eliot, Graham, and Gandhi. New York:Basic Books.
Lehrer, J. (2009). Accept defeat: The neuroscience of screwing up. Wired Magazine, 21.
I LOVE Michael Schur! (Not the hero we deserve, but the hero we need.) But I had never thought about his creative process before--your post definitely brought to light some things that I had never considered, such as being character-centered rather than premise. This totally makes sense why he and his collaborators changed the characters of Michael Scott and Leslie Knope to be more likable to audiences--and these two are strong characters so it worked. Also, the Good Place is changing premise ALL THE TIME, so what's really important are the relationships between characters and now I can see that that is a theme throughout Schur's creative works.
ReplyDeleteMichael Schur is an absolute genius. It's so awesome how he's able to keep making several hit shows in such a competitive field. I also find it very interesting how he collected other sitcoms which allowed him to forge his own.
ReplyDelete