You’ve mastered the comedy of bad communication. Where does that come from?
Well, one of the big things with The Office was that I wanted to make it very natural because it was a fake documentary. We were slaves to the realism. I think that the biggest crime in TV is the way people talk to each other: they stand sideways, they get close and do their line and then somebody else smoothly does their line. That’s not the case in life. We mess up, we digress, we fluff our lines, we do all that. So we put that in and I think that makes it a more pleasing piece of voyeurism. It’s like you’re eavesdropping on something that really happened. And I think the emotional payback is so much greater the more real it is, even if it’s against the fantasy backdrop of ghosts. Was it a natural progression for you to go from television to making movies? No, it wasn’t actually. It’s almost like a parallel career. What I see myself as is someone who writes and directs comedy or drama and writes and performs stand-up. Being a hired actor is very nice and flattering and all those thin
