“In Japan, heart surgeon. Number one. Steady hand. One day, yakuza boss need new heart. I do operation. But, mistake! Yakuza boss die. Yakuza very mad. I hide in fishing boat, come to America. No English, no food, no money. Darryl give me job. Now I have house, American car, and new woman. Darryl save life. My big secret: I kill yakuza boss on purpose. I good surgeon. The best!”
The Office’s B.J. Novak was kind enough to provide some details about that amazingly hilarious tag from ‘The Office’ episode Happy Hour, starring Hide the warehouse worker:
It was a particular mission of mine to get that in the episode. We shot six versions — two entirely different backstories, and filmed each of them solo at the warehouse, solo at the bar, and at the bar with Darryl.
I liked the idea that Hide (played by Hidetoshi Imura) had a life story infinitely more dramatic than anyone else the documentary crew has been following, but that they had never thought to ask. He’s been a background player for years.
Hide improvised one piece of the monologue: the inclusion of “American car” among his good fortunes. I did not quite understand why someone from Japan would take such specific pride in owning an American car, but I enjoyed it and we went with it.
One of the best parts of the episode, or maybe even season!
This tag was so funny! Thank you B.J. for providing some details! I thought it was a very creative tag, and loved that Darryl was in the shot too!
That tag had me rolling! The whole episode was awesome!
haha, I just rewatched that scene… Darryl’s facial expressions are fantastic!
Fascinating! Thanks for sharing. :-)
“My big secret: I kill yakuza boss on purpose”… Still ROFL!!!!!!!!
Excellent!
Ha-Ha… a little Japanese car manufacturer called Toyota rings a bell. That end tag cracked me up, it’s even better now.
Brilliant BJ! I find it hilarious that the best heart surgeon in Japan doesn’t know English and came to Scranton/United States on a boat. Perhaps he was afraid of detection, but now he’s telling the documentary crew his ‘big secret’. Awesome, I loved this tag.
Now we need Yakuza to show up in Scranton looking for the doctor. Dwight defends his new hero, Hide, to the death in a heart-pounding car chase through Pennsylvania. Chinese throwing stars and every other bit of arsenal being used out of the trunk of Dwight’s Pontiac Firebird. Dwight gets shot in the chest while offing the last Yakuza soldier. Fortunately, Hide is there to perform emergency lifesaving surgery to repair the hole in his heart using farming equipment and beet thread.
[from tanster: love it!]
The best part of the season. Laughed like a crazy person. I hope to see Hide featured more often. Wouldn’t it be great if Mr. Novak developed him a little bit more and he got promoted to the actual office like Darryl. Anyway:
great character+great direction+great actor= HILARIOUS!