B.J. Novak reflects on his career from comedy to directing his debut film “Vengeance”

The Business

KCRW

Tv & Film

4.6 • 676 Ratings

🗓️ 22 July 2022

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

B.J. Novak knows a thing or two about comedic writing. He spent a lot of time in the writers’ room and starred as Ryan Howard on NBC’s hit series “The Office.” Now, he’s taking his writing skills to the big screen, debuting as a director in the comedy-thriller, “Vengeance.” “When you realize someone has a little regret in their eyes… you could be very careful with an actor and see how you could capture that in a shot,” he says. For him, it’s all the same, but “being able to learn how to write directorially is a very special and exciting opportunity.” On this episode of The Business, Novak discusses “The Office” origins, his standup comedy career and first acting job on MTV, and how he teamed up with Blumhouse producer Jason Blum to write and direct “Vengeance.” But first, Kim Masters and Matt Belloni banter about Netflix’s Q2 numbers. Netflix was projected to lose 2 million subscribers, but only lost nearly 1 million, which its CEO believes it’s “less bad” than feared. Is the streaming service really over the hump?

Transcript

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0:00.0	From KCRW, I'm Kim Masters, and this is The Business.
0:05.5	BJ Novak has just written and directed his first feature film.
0:09.0	But for millions, he'll always be that guy who once set off the smoke detectors at Dunder Mifflin.
0:14.2	Ryan started the fire!
0:16.9	It was always burned.
0:18.5	Everybody!
0:19.1	I can't believe I started the fire.
0:24.3	Novak says the office co-creator Mike Scher told him at the time he'd be living with that moment for years to come.
0:30.2	And he is.
0:31.4	BJ Novak on what it was really like to work on the office and how he directed himself in the new movie Vengeance.
0:38.9	But first we banter.
0:45.4	Stick around. It's the business from KCRW. I am joined by my partner in banter. Matt Bellany.
0:51.3	Hello, Matt. Hi there. So the topic is Netflix, of course. Netflix announced results. And the takeaway, I guess, was Reed Hastings saying the results were
0:55.9	less bad than feared. There had been so much attention paid because as goes Netflix right now,
1:02.4	so goes the stock of other studios that have jumped headlong into the streaming game just
1:07.6	before Netflix hit a very rough patch. So, you know, they had set the bar
1:12.8	pretty low by saying they expected to lose two million subscribers in this quarter, and they only
1:17.3	lost one million. So that's less bad, as Reid Hastings put it. He seemed to be, you know,
1:24.2	we're over the worst. We're good now. Wall Street, very mixed in their response to this
1:29.4	as to whether they believe that or not.
1:30.9	The stock did tick up, though.
1:32.7	Yeah, it's up, as we are taping,
	...

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