KEY EPISODE 10

“Threat Level Midnight”

In the second-season episode “The Client,” Pam finds a script that Michael wrote in his desk drawer entitled Threat Level Midnight. It’s about Michael Scarn, a James Bond–like spy who battles a deformed foe named Goldenface. When Michael steps out to pursue a new client, a meeting is called in the conference room, where the script is read aloud by everyone in the office. At Steve Carell’s urging, B. J. Novak penned an episode near the end of Michael’s time at Dunder Mifflin where he screens the movie, which he’s been filming slowly over the past seven years using the entire office as his cast. It meant not only bringing back old characters like Karen, Roy, and Jan, but carefully de-aging the main cast so they’d look period appropriate. It was an enormous undertaking.

B. J. Novak: We did a greatest hits of Steve Carell before he left. “What do we want to see?” And this was one of them.

Amelie Gillette: That was a dragon the writers wanted to slay for a long time, doing Threat Level Midnight as an episode, and we finally got the push to do it because it was Michael’s last season.

Peter Ocko: You knew that you weren’t going to have him around much more and we wanted to check that box of, “God, if I could do one more thing with Michael Scott, what would it be?” And being able to do that in particular was a lot of fun.

Steve Burgess: We brought everybody back for one day or a half a day to do their little pieces as if Michael Scott had been doing this throughout the whole thing. B. J. wrote the script.

Halsted Sullivan: That was really B. J.’s baby.

Randy Cordray: Hair and makeup and costume had to match the look from earlier seasons. We had a lot of research time where we would go to editing with the department heads and we would print off stills so that they had matching stills to match from for hair and makeup. We tried to maintain the integrity of the joke that this had been shot during the previous seven seasons.

B. J. Novak: They glued sideburns on me and put Pam in old outfits and Jim in his old hair.

Initially they thought about just showing the movie without any scenes at the actual office.

Amelie Gillette: That was a big discussion for a while. It would have been very cool to have it that way, but it’s hard to do something that breaks the form so much in a network television show.

B. J. Novak: I think it’s a very entertaining and substantial work on its own, as Michael Scott’s film, but it simply felt out of context to simply air that the way we normally air The Office, without including any background reactions, or consequences to the characters.

Tucker Gates: I wanted to ground it in the world.

Rashida Jones, Melora Hardin, David Denman, and all the old warehouse workers came back for tiny roles.

Randy Cordray: We tried to get Amy Adams [who played Jim’s girlfriend Katy in seasons one and two]. I worked with Allison Jones on this and we were even willing to shoot her stuff completely out of order, on another week if necessary, but we just couldn’t make it work. Her feature schedule was just too busy. And she sent a very nice note thanking everyone and wishing that she could participate.

B. J. Novak: I had scripted a scene in which she is a “floozy” in bed with Michael Scarn before Dwight wakes him up with a mission from the president. In the scene, Michael is unsatisfied from their empty lovemaking because no one is as good as his wife was, and Michael explains to her what love feels like. Then, in a talking head, Katy explained with embarrassment how she had some interest in acting back then, and we catch up with where she is in the present day.

The basic plot of the movie is that Michael Scarn is trying to stop Goldenface from blowing up the NHL All-Star Game.

B. J. Novak: I always liked that he saved all-star games, which to Michael Scott would be more important than championship games but most sports fans know are kind of irrelevant.

One challenge was making a watchable movie that could conceivably have been made by Michael Scott.

Tucker Gates: Some people said, “Well, the production values were too good for a Michael thing. He would’ve shot on a phone.” But I really looked at it like it was his life’s project. He watched all these James Bond films and he would have wanted to try and re-create those things. He may not have had a dolly, but he would have made something that could have given him a dolly feel. I really wanted to see the aspiration and the heart that he put into it and the homage that he was trying to play with however awkward or amateurish it was. Michael had an aspiration to make something great. This was his opus.

B. J. Novak: We didn’t want the joke of the episode to be how bad he was at filmmaking, which would be a little too easy and actually a little out of character; we wanted it to be more about how he actually did a heartbreakingly good and diligent job on doing something completely ridiculous.

Perhaps the greatest scene takes place at a bar, where Michael Scarn meets a bartender with a ridiculous Boston accent played by Ed Helms and does a line dance called “the Scarn” with Karen, Phyllis, Meredith, Angela, and the entire warehouse staff.

Steve Burgess: Mary Ann Kellogg, who started working with us on the “Cafe Disco” episode, and did the wedding dance and the lip dub that began season seven, choreographed it. A big problem was people laughing when they weren’t supposed to be because it was just so funny.

B. J. Novak: [That] would have been filmed right after Karen transferred to Scranton, so she would have been a brand-new employee in a new city, eager to fit in; you can even see her going the extra mile to play along pretending to “learn” the Scarn dance the first time Michael demonstrates it.

Tucker Gates: I was so nervous about that scene because I can’t dance to save my life, but it’s Michael’s choreography, so we’re not doing something too technical.

Calvin Tenner (Lester/Calvin/Glenn, Seasons 2–9): We rented the next building over and we choreographed this whole dance. It probably took maybe thirty minutes to learn.

For no clear reason, a little boy in overalls that looks like he just wandered over from a farm joins them.

Tucker Gates: It’s an Opie character [from Andy Griffith]. I think it’s a reference to probably some older movie that he saw. We just wanted to make everything as referential as possible. The bar scene has a Cheers element to it. When he works out, it’s shot like Rocky III even though he’s using a Bowflex. Then there’s the noirish moment when he’s out in the rain. Michael has seen a lot of movies, but not necessarily good ones.

Throughout the episode, we return to the conference room at Dunder Mifflin, where everyone is watching the movie and trying to hold back their laughter. Michael is initially very offended, but after a talk with Holly he’s able to see the ludicrous nature of his own film and laughs along with everyone else.

B. J. Novak: This was Paul’s idea, that Michael has a very active fantasy life and as his reality becomes more fulfilling, he has to let go of it.

Kate Flannery: That whole episode was odd and could have been so mishandled, but it wasn’t. B. J. is just such an amazing writer and I feel like he’s so wise beyond his years. I never ever questioned any of his choices, ever.