Then there's the issue of freestyle. On some shows, ad-libbing is verboten: "We're putting on a play, and the rules of the road for plays are the writers do their jobs and make sure the material works," Lorre says. "It's not up to the actors to fix the material. If we can't fix it, it ain't fixable."
Tina Fey, who runs NBC's "30 Rock," has a more laissez-faire attitude toward script alterations, noting, "Every now and then we ad-lib, usually at the tops and tails of scenes. Sometimes the actors will pitch alternate jokes on the floor, but we always cover the scripted material and a few alternates. We still shoot the show on film, so there's not a lot of time to rewrite on the floor."
Ah, yes, the constant ruler of any sitcom: time. Says Lorre, "The shows seem to get shorter every year, in terms of the airtime you have. But your writing has to accommodate that -- it has to be to the point, there's not a lot of room for letting the scene ramble a bit."
It's something Fey has had to get used to. "This is my first experience in half-hour, so dealing with act breaks and stuff, this is the only way I've known it. But the running time of the show is a real challenge. If there were a way to get one more minute, that would be great."
Thanks to having fewer lighting setups than most shows, "The Office" has extra time to do more takes -- up to a dozen for each scene, with six devoted strictly to the script and six that are looser. Says Lieberstein, "Often, some really brilliant stuff emerges."
That's the goal for any comedy assembly line -- not to just make it funny but to make it memorable and maybe even brilliant. "Our hope is to do things that feel real and not, not sitcom-y," Celotta says. "There are a lot of fantastic sitcoms on the air, but this is half sitcom and half documentary. After five seasons, I've been able to notice these characters grow -- they change and evolve, which is the advantage of the documentary format. That just makes it more interesting."
And hopefully funny.
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