Welcome to Wheels Off, a show about the messy reality of the creative life.

I'm Rhett Miller.

Jack Burdett is a screener up and we ain't going to starve. Jack Birdett is a screenwriter.

If I knew more about it, I might be able to confidently say, Jack Birdett is a screenwriter's screenwriter.

But I can't imagine any screenwriter in the world who wouldn't trade places with him.

He's written for, well, most notably 30 Rock, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Frazier.

He won multiple Emmys for Frazier, the Mindy Project, Modern Family, and on and on. He is decades into a career as a showrunner, headwriter,

writer in the room. He's lived a life in TV writing. He's incredibly funny. And he's the

kind of funny, too, unlike people like me or the stand-up

comedians that I know where we need approval and, you know, ha, come on, laugh at us and clap

for us and all that stuff. Jack is not built that way. He's a writer. He's in the room. He's creating something and letting it live in his

head and then figuring out how to make it go onto a piece of paper where someone else can

execute it in such a way that the whole world laughs at it. But he doesn't have to, you know,

stand up on stage and take in the adulation. But, oh, my goodness, does he deserve adulation?

Jack Birdett is gifted and generous and hilarious.

I spoke to him from his home in California.

He's now kind of taking it easy, although, as you'll hear, he's been hard at work in his own way.

Stick around if you're a 30 Rock fan.

I mean, I'm sure you'll stick around for the whole thing, but especially the last 10 minutes or so of the interview.

We remember the season three season finale of 30 Rock, where the Kidney Now episode,

where I got to be a part of this We are the World type spoof that featured 30 plus musicians,

all crowded into the 30 rock soundstage and such insanity that day. It was really

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