by Chuck Salter
IT’S LIKE JOE PESCI’S SCENE IN GOODFELLAS
“It’s similar to what happens in Goodfellas, when Joe Pesci says, ‘What’s so funny about me?’ Marty and I experimented for a very long time in exactly how long to hold on Ray Liotta. He knows he’s in trouble, and he knows that if he says the wrong thing he’s going to get killed. He’s sitting there waiting to try and desperately come up with something. And finally he says, ‘Oh, come on, Tommy,’ you know, and breaks the mood. Otherwise he would’ve been shot. So how long we waited—and we screened it four or five different ways. We waited nine seconds, or we waited six seconds.”
EDITING ON THE SET
“Do you use a close-up or do you use a medium shot? Do you use a wide shot with both of them in the frame? All those decisions are very critical in how you create someone’s performance. In fact, in the scene ‘What’s so funny about me?’ Marty deliberately did not shoot any close-ups. He [knew] he wouldn’t use them. He wanted to show the people around Ray Liotta and around Joe Pesci. They’re laughing at the beginning, and gradually they fall silent, and then they get very worried. So he didn’t even shoot them. Until the owner of the nightclub comes over and asks Joe Pesci to pay his bill—and then we had a close-up and we cut in. You have to know as a director how to use your tools. Everything doesn’t have to be handheld or have a snap zoom in it, which is the way things are done today.”
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Co.Create, February 2012
HOW TO TWEET LIKE A STAR (STARRING MINDY KALING)
By Ari Karpel
THE OFFICE WAS, until he left, Steve Carell’s show. And he maintains an A-list career. Mindy Kaling, who writes for the show and plays Kelly, may not have the same star power—but on Twitter, where she’s far more active than Carell, she’s rewarded in kind: She has triple the followers (1.8 million versus Carell’s 650,000 in July) and actively engages others (76% of her tweets include an @mention, versus 17% for Carell). Not that it’s a competition. But as networks weigh actors’ social potential, it’s no wonder she’s been given her own Fox vehicle, The Mindy Project.
The network hasn’t assigned her social marching orders yet, but she heaps praise on Joe Earley, its head of marketing and communications. “He was the one who made New Girl available for download a week before it aired,” she says. “It was extremely smart. He knows the power of social media and how it can help a show.”
Kaling didn’t join Twitter to hawk her stuff; she was just coming up with jokes and too lazy to grab a notebook. And she’s since decided that the best promotion is no promotion. “People don’t want to listen to a celebrity tweeting about their charities and shows,” she says. “That’s why comedy writers do well—we put out little funny ideas.” She took us through a day (Thursday, June 21, 2012) of @MindyKaling.
7:35 A.M.
Seeking a Movie For The End Of The World. So excited to see @SteveCarell in brilliant @LoreneScafaria’s new movie.
Kaling was lying on the floor in her gym clothes, procrastinating. Then she remembered her friends’ movie. “I never tweet about something if I really don’t like it,” she says. “I’d rather have a friend annoyed at me than do that, because it just feels like a lie.”
7:58 A.M.
It’s a jog-to-Drake’s-Best-I-Ever-Had 11 times in a row kinda morning I guess
After going on a run, she tweeted a nod to fans who read her book, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns). It had a bit about exercising with one song on repeat. “When you listen to one song 12 times in a row you seem like you’re getting pumped up to, like, murder the president or something,” she says.
9:04 A.M.
Did you hear about the awesome new Aaron Sorkin/Rihanna collaboration? it’s called “Walk That Talk” and it is amazing you guys
Twitter followers love recognizing celebs’ interests: It’s like a formula to what makes someone tick. Kaling says this joke hit two big, recurring topics for her: TV writing and urban music. “I was almost trembling with how excited I was for this incredibly stupid pun,” she says. And bonus: Brooklyn Decker retweeted it. “That made me feel cool,” she says.
7:18 P.M.
@KenTremendous @sepinwall and Mike’s impression of the kid in Amish in the City made us retrofit a character for him to play on the show!
Office producer Mike Schur and TV critic Alan Sepinwall had been tweeting at each other, and brought in Kaling. “Then I got into a little sentimental journey,” she says. (This is from that exchange.) As celebrities know, fans aren’t the only ones who appreciate access.
9:16 P.M.
Hey @JeremyBronson sorry I screamed so much on the Transformers ride.
The writers’ computers at The Mindy Project went down for 45 minutes, so the team went next door to Universal Studios. After, Kaling sent this to a fellow writer. She prefers Twitter to just about any medium, even for personal notes. “When Jimmy Fallon had released his head monologue writer [Bronson] to come and work on this show, I thanked Jimmy on Twitter. A note sent personally is very classy, but to say it in front of a lot of people, I think, has an even nicer meaning because I’m acknowledging it publicly.”
9:17 P.M.
“@sethmeyers21: @mindykaling You’ve learned Hollywood’s most important lesson—Don’t let @ikebarinholtz order pizza.” Matt and I fired him
Every TV show has characters, and Kaling’s Twitter feed needs characters as well. Her writers—especially Ike Barinholtz (best known as Ivan Dochenko from Eastbound and Down)—fill that role, because she’s mostly tweeting from the writer’s room. In this case, she says, “Fast food is hugely important in the life of a comedy writer. All we do is order in, and what we’re going to eat is hotly debated.”
9:31 P.M.
Don’t worry @davidstassen your job is safe. Wanna be writing partners with Josh Meyers?
It’s late on Thursday—pretty much the cliff for Twitter, which a Bitly study finds is most trafficked from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Monday through Thursday, and sinks especially hard after 8 p.m. So Kaling is free to get really insider-ish here, joking with one of her writers and Seth Meyers’s brother (and Ike Barinholtz’s onetime comedy partner—really insider-ish!). “It’s a really good medium for teasing people,” she says, “and comedy writers love to tease people.”
MINDY KALING’S SOCIAL MEDIA WISDOM (IN 140 CHARACTERS, NATURALLY)
“Twitter is so short, it’s safe. I don’t want my bosses to be like, Hey, your script is due and we saw you wrote four blog pages.”
“People take things at face value on social media. Earnestness is the assumption.”
“I don’t know—maybe two-thirds of my followers are spambots.”
“Twitter is basically a more playful way to text a friend.”
“I don’t actually know if any people care about a specific tweet of mine, but I have fun.”
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Fast Company, September 2012
JOHN HODGMAN’S CAREER ADVICE
John Hodgman is a contributor on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart and the author of a trilogy of satirical almanacs, Complete World Knowledge. The following is adapted from an interview with Joe Berkowitz.
I have generally followed a prefect in life, which is:
Put out the best work you can, whether that is writing for the Internet or just telling jokes to your friends.
Meet interesting people.
Align yourself with the people who are doing the work you find interesting, so that they may inspire you to do equal or better work.
Destroy those people and erase them from history.
If you are asked to do something, say yes. Wait to be asked to do something more often than you ask to do something, but when you are asked, say yes.
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Co.Create, October 2012
About the Authors
Joe Berkowitz is a staff writer at Fast Company’s Co.Create. He has also written for The Awl, Rolling Stone, Mc
Sweeney’s, and Salon.
Jessica Grose writes about culture and creativity for Co.Create and is the author of the novel Sad Desk Salad. Her work has also appeared in The New York Times, New York, The New Republic, and Bloomberg Businessweek.
Ari Karpel writes about creativity, culture, and celebrity (not necessarily in that order) for Fast Company, The New York Times, AwardsLine, and KCRW.
Scott Kirsner writes the weekly “Innovation Economy” column for the Boston Globe. A former contributing writer at Fast Company, he has also written for The New York Times, Wired, and BusinessWeek.
David Kushner has written for publications including The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, New York, and GQ. His latest book, Jacked: The Outlaw Story of Grand Theft Auto, was published in 2012.
Polly LaBarre is the cofounder and editorial director of MIX (Management Information exchange). A former senior editor at Fast Company, she’s the coauthor of the New York Times best seller Mavericks at Work and a former correspondent for CNN.
Nicole LaPorte is a contributing writer at Fast Company. Previously, she wrote the “Prototype” column in The New York Times and worked as a senior reporter at The Daily Beast and as a film reporter at Variety.
Chuck Salter is a senior writer at Fast Company. His work has also appeared on This American Life and in The New York Times Magazine and Sports Illustrated.
Rick Tetzeli is the executive editor of Fast Company. Previously, he was editor-at-large at Time Inc., managing editor at Entertainment Weekly, and deputy managing editor at Fortune. He’s the coauthor, with Brent Schlender, of an upcoming book about Steve Jobs.
About Fast Company
Fast Company is the world’s leading progressive business media brand, with a unique editorial focus on innovation in technology, ethonomics (ethical economics), leadership, and design. Written for, by, and about the most progressive business leaders, Fast Company and FastCompany.com inspire readers and users to think beyond traditional boundaries, lead new conversations, and create the future of business.
Launched in November 1995 by Alan Webber and Bill Taylor, two former Harvard Business Review editors, Fast Company magazine was founded on a single premise: A global revolution was changing business, and business was changing the world. Discarding the old rules of business, Fast Company set out to chronicle how changing companies create and compete, to highlight new business practices, and to showcase the teams and individuals who are inventing the future and reinventing business.
Fast Company magazine publishes 10 issues a year. To subscribe, go to fastcompany.com/customercare or call 800-542-6029.
Co.Create chronicles the converging worlds of advertising, entertainment, and technology.
Co.Design covers inspiring stories about innovation and business through the lens of design.
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