Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky visit the OTCR

Many thanks to The Office writers Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky for visiting the OfficeTally Chat Room tonight!

Oh sure, there were some disparaging remarks made about our last OTCR guests, and the conversation turned raunchy around minute 33, but what’s an OfficeTally Chat without a little insanity?

Full transcript available after the jump. Thank you, Lee and Gene! We miss you guys and we miss the show!

P.S. In the following transcript, “leeeisenberg” refers to both Lee and Gene. They are one.

21:58:44 leeeisenberg: hello?
21:58:49 tanster: Hi Lee!
21:58:58 leeeisenberg: oh good, it worked!
21:59:17 tanster: Welcome to the OfficeTally Chat Room! Lots of people here to see you tonight :)
21:59:41 tanster: Will Gene be joining us?
21:59:44 leeeisenberg: cool. could be fun…
22:00:09 leeeisenberg: gene’s having technical difficulties…
22:00:14 tanster: uh oh
22:00:17 leeeisenberg: he’ll be in shortly.
22:00:28 leeeisenberg: we’re in the same location so there’s some ip issue or something.
22:00:39 tanster: alrighty. should we wait or do you want to get started?
22:00:45 leeeisenberg: let’s start.
22:00:53 leeeisenberg: he’ll help me construct very funny, concise answers
22:01:02 tanster: lol
22:01:38 tanster: First a welcome to The Office writers Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky! Tallyheads, if you have questions, please enter them to submit them into the queue. Let’s get started with the first question:
22:01:49 jamfan84: How is the Cast/Crew coping with the strike?
22:02:42 leeeisenberg: i’ve only spoken to a couple of members (matt sohn, who operates one of the camera, and our writer’s assistants)… i think the general feeling is that people really miss working on the show…
22:03:06 leeeisenberg: matt was working on ‘american gladiators’ and i don’t want to speak for him, but i think he preferred our show more.
22:03:23 leeeisenberg: it’s a very tight-knit group. at least the writers get to picket together.
22:03:43 tanster: are you guys still picketing now? or will there be a break for the holidays?
22:03:47 leeeisenberg: gene couldn’t log in by the way, so these answers are from both of us-ish.
22:04:01 tanster: hi gene!
22:04:02 leeeisenberg: we stopped picketing on monday and we’ll start back up on the 7th.
22:04:10 leeeisenberg: hi, gang (that was gene)!
22:04:24 tanster: that must mean lee is the better typer
22:04:37 leeeisenberg: i do actually do most of the typing
22:04:48 leeeisenberg: even when there aren’t ip issues
22:05:01 TwirlingGrace: If the strike does continue and the show has to go on a hiatus, what would be the plan of action to explaining all of the time between The Deposition and the new episode?
22:05:18 leeeisenberg: that’s a good question
22:06:42 leeeisenberg: if the strike ends tomorrow, we would be back up in a month so we could probably side-step the time lapse issue. if it goes longer that, we (the writers) will have to decide if we want to acknowledge it.
22:07:36 tanster: hmmm. and the chances of the strike ending tomorrow …
22:07:55 leeeisenberg: about the same as it snowing in l.a.
22:07:55 tanster: a question along the same lines:
22:08:01 tanster: yesh
22:08:03 leeeisenberg: (it happened once in 1947)
22:08:11 tanster: lol
22:08:16 attackwithnorth: Is there any chance of a close-to-complete season if things somehow resolve themselves soon
22:09:14 leeeisenberg: the hour-longs gave us a leg up, so if the strike ended soon, we would have a shot at having close to a complete season…
22:09:52 saraadx3: Since we didn’t get a Christmas episode this season, can you tell us anything you had planned for writing?
22:10:24 leeeisenberg: justin spitzer, one of the funniest writers around, wrote a great script.
22:10:53 saraadx3: can you send it to me? haha
22:11:15 leeeisenberg: we’re not sure what we’re still going to use from it in future episode (or in future christmas episodes), but we can say that dwight had a costume that has never before been on network tv
22:11:28 tanster: ooooh
22:11:38 officelover: *awesome*
22:11:57 tanster: by the way lee and gene, hope you have your speakers turned on
22:12:05 leeeisenberg: they are now
22:12:22 tanster: hey tallyheads, give us some sounds!
22:12:36 ellyisamazing: *ziplid*
22:12:41 DestroyPhone: *boobs*
22:12:50 Tori_Weber: *jinx*
22:12:52 leeeisenberg: cool feature
22:12:57 tanster: alrighty
22:13:08 Tori_Weber: When you write together, do you each take sections of the episode, or do you write each part as a team?
22:14:19 leeeisenberg: we outline extensively together and then we write scenes individually and then we come back together and rewrite the whole thing. in the end, 75% is probably written together.