Office proposal could have been ‘artier,’ less chatty, says Greg Daniels
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- October
- 27
Did you like the “Jim-proposes-to-Pam” scene near the end of the season premiere?
I did, but it turns out the writers were divided pretty sharply on it. One faction favored going for true 
documentary effect by omitting the audio of the dialogue so all you’d hear was the passing traffic.
What’s more, as showrunner Greg Daniels tells The Washington Post, the original plan was to shoot the scene at an actual rest stop on Connecticut Merritt Parkway (which seems completely random, partly because it doesn’t run anywhere near Scranton, Pa.). That was deemed too costly, but the Hollywood reproduction ended up costing more than twice as much. And there’s more…
One of the things that we decided at the last minute was to leave the sound in; we also had one version where it’s the exact same visuals, but you weren’t able to hear their dialogue. And that’s a very poetic way of doing it. The staff was completely divided down the middle, and I lost sleep over which way to go on that.Ultimately, I felt that Jenna Fischer and John Krasinski had done this work, and their performances deserved to be seen. It was kind of artier to remove their voices, but I felt like after this length of time, you deserve to see what was going on and hear it.
I, for one, completely disagree. But before you decide for yourself, check out this amazing adaptation. And then rewatch the original…
In other news, check out the deleted scenes from “Crime Aid” if you haven’t already.
“Crime Aid” Deleted Scene #1
“Crime Aid” Deleted Scene #2
This entry was posted
on Monday, October 27th, 2008 at 12:39 pm by Brian Howard.
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