Paddle Your Own Canoe: One Man's Fundamentals for Delicious Living

by Nick Offerman

  A whip-smart friend of mine from the Chicago days named David Cromer, who has since become a very successful Broadway director, had a musical called Adding Machine at the Minetta Lane Theatre downtown. It was a great show, and I ended up replacing a guy (the handsome Jeff Still) for a couple of months. It was such a savory musical, easily the best thing I saw during my time in New York besides Young Frankenstein. It boasted incredibly original music by Joshua Schmidt as well as a succinctly scripted book, adapted by Schmidt and Jason Loewith from the 1923 play by Elmer Rice. Once again, my Chicago theater community was paying dividends, this time in the form of an exceptional musical in New York City! (Especially exciting because I had been given to understand that if one can make it there, then one can make it anywhere.)

  Right before New York, I had been cast in another indie movie called Patriotville, a fine title later changed to the terrifically generic Taking Chances. Rob Corddry was the main bad guy—he played the mayor of this town, and I was his sheriff. I was a HUGE fan of Rob’s from The Daily Show and I was really quite starstruck to meet him and subsequently work with him. We had so much fun together, we two white jackasses. It was really the first time I learned that I could substantially improvise, as it was the first project I had worked on where they wanted us to make up funny stuff to augment the script. Rob and I did, along with the rest of the cast, including the resplendent Justin Long and Missi Pyle, and oh my god, he made me break (crack up) so hard. That guy is so wickedly smart and funny (which is now even more common knowledge since he’s brought Childrens Hospital into our lives). I really hit it off with Rob and we became good friends.

  Later on, when I was in New York, he sent me the first scripts for Childrens Hospital and was hinting pretty heavily that he wanted to see if Megan would be interested in playing the role of Chief, which of course she did. She read it—at the time it was a web series, like five or ten episodes. She said, “I don’t care what it is, this is the funniest thing I’ve read in years. I want to do this next.” So, thank providence, we both got involved with Childrens Hospital.

  * * *

  Casting directors, after George Lopez, had begun to say to me, “I saw you on George Lopez. I didn’t know that you do comedy.” Again, it’s as though they were saying, “I didn’t know you specialized in identifying precious gemstones.” I said, “Yeah, I perform entertainment. That’s what I do. Comedy is included in that.” Even Megan wasn’t always considered a person who “does comedy,” even after Will & Grace, because she was from the theater and not a sketch or improv background. It was unbelievable.

  I had known Amy Poehler way back in the early nineties in Chicago, and we had remained friends across the years. Through Amy and Rob Corddry I knew of the Upright Citizens Brigade, or “UCB,” Theatre in New York. I called up Amy and said, “Where do I start? What class do I take? What do I do?” and she said, “There’s a couple of shows we do that are specially designed for actors to play in, and you don’t need to know the ways of improv. Come on down.”

  The percentage of comedy talent that comes to light today through the pipeline of the UCB is staggering. My first performance of a show they call ASSSSCAT included an improv cast that will blow the mind of any comedy nerd reading this today. The show was hosted by Amy, Seth Meyers, and Horatio Sanz, who then played in the scenes with Jessica St. Clair, Jason Mantzoukas, Rob Huebel, Lennon Parham, Scott Adsit, John Lutz, Tami Sagher, Brian Stack, Miriam Tolan, Paul Scheer, Christina Gausas, Tim Meadows, Chris Gethard, Bobby Moynihan, and Jack McBrayer, for cryin’ out loud, and I’m sure I’m forgetting a couple!

  So, during my time in New York in 2007, I started doing these shows with this insane bunch of talents and that was it. Megan came around as well, and suddenly—poof!—we both “did” comedy! Between the UCB and Corddry and Childrens Hospital, both Megan and I were suddenly welcomed into this community of “comedy” people. They hailed from the UCB Theatre and also from a show from the nineties called The State, as well as tried and true institutions like Second City, ImprovOlympic, and the Groundlings. All of these people with whom I had done comedy shows in New York moved out to LA at the same time that Megan and I moved back home, so suddenly everything funny was being cast from this pool of chuckle-smiths that we had sort of stumbled into. Fortunately, they welcomed us with open arms. It’s a very nurturing community, unlike other artistic cliques (lookin’ at you, Oscar winners). There’s not a lot of competition happening so much as people stating, “I’m going to do a show and I’m going to need eight of you. I’m thankful I know this circle of the best, funniest, filthiest people, because I always have the best quality to choose from.”

  In 2008, I’d just gotten back from New York and my first audition was for a one-line part in some movie George Clooney was producing. I’d worked with him on that live ER and he was super friendly to me. He had wanted to cast me in a small role in his movie Leatherheads but I had had a conflict. He’s known for, among other obvious things, this crazily heroic talent for remembering everybody—I saw him at a party seven or eight years after ER, and he remembered that we had stood around a big pot of soup backstage singing “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” together. It had been chilly and breezy in the soundstage, because they had the enormous “elephant doors” open, and a bunch of actors and crew standing around a steaming kettle of chowder had just felt very maritime to us. When I saw him at the party years later, he pointed at me and said, “‘Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.’” And I said, “Well, do I blow you now, or should we step into a more private chamber?”

  Although George denied me the opportunity to provide him with an oral pleasuring upon that particular occasion, I decided I’d go read for this new film anyway, as I’d found out Grant Heslov was directing, and I knew he was an ace. I went in to read for this one-line part, and it was just the fucking casting hallway from hell. The role was small and not great, so the assembled talent was not the finest crop of produce one might have hoped to assemble. I had prepared a “bit” with a pair of glasses that I was planning to impishly remove before pronouncing my one line. It was just on tape for the casting lady, and it wasn’t even the lady, actually, it was the lady’s assistant. Unimpressed by my terrific “bit,” she said, “Are you going to do that with your glasses? Don’t do that.” To which I said, “You know what, I’ve got this one line. This is the bit I prepared. I’m just going to do my bit.” So I did my bit. I stood my meager ground and pulled my glasses off to say the line, and I went away and I never heard anything further from them.

  A couple of months later, Megan and I were vacationing up in Calistoga in the Napa Valley wine country. Out of the blue, I got a call from my agent: “Hey, you got that Clooney job, and your first scene is in Puerto Rico night after tomorrow.” I said, “Oh, the one-line thing? Jesus, okay.” They said, “But the good thing is that George Clooney is playing the lead. He’ll be in your scene with your one line.” That was sounding better.

  The film business can be hilarious in that one day you’re totally unemployed, on vacation in a remote California town, and the next, a production can send a car for you to scoot you over to San Francisco so you can fly to Puerto Rico at the drop of a hat. So I flew to Puerto Rico and I got hustled right into a trailer to be dolled up. There was kind of a buzz around the base camp, like something extra exciting was going on. I finished hair and makeup and put on my eighties army fatigues, and I went into the room in a school where we were shooting, and would you looky here. My scene was with George Clooney, and also these two other guys, Kevin Spacey and Jeff Bridges. And me. Just the four of us. I thought, “Well, shit. I’m glad I went to that stupid one-line audition. If I ever write ‘a book,’ this’ll make a good story.”

  The film was The Men Who Stare at Goats, and I ended up in a good portion of the movie as a private in a platoon of psychic soldiers. Mainly, I got to stand there at attention while Jeff Bridges talked to us a whole bunch, then we improvised a session of explora
tory dance with him. If you enjoy the man’s voice and demeanor half as much as I do, then you can understand how I was about as jubilant as a pig in effluvia to find myself in this freak-out of a job. I felt like a valued scout in a troop being led by George, Jeff, and director Grant Heslov. Clearly, the moral in this story was to always remember, before turning my nose up at a one-liner, that it could result in the unsurpassable delight of dancing with Jeff Bridges.

  * * *

  Right about then, in the fall of 2008, the word was going around town that they were making a spin-off of The Office and Amy Poehler was set to play the lead. Megan and I were major fans of The Office and watched it religiously. I would often remark, “If I’m going to make it, if I’m ever going to get my shot, it’s going to be on a show like this, in a part like Rainn’s.” I had known Rainn Wilson for several years. We met in the late nineties, reading against each other for “weird guy in the basement” parts. I had always liked him, as he’s such a smart, funny, sweet guy, not to mention he also comes from the theater. We had become buddies just from seeing each other at auditions so much, when he got a great part on Six Feet Under for a string of episodes. I believe this was when the world in general really noticed him and I thought, as we all do when such a thing occurs, “Excellent. Well thrown, Wilson. Score one for the good guys.” Then, not long after that, he won his role on The Office. The mighty, transcendent role of Dwight Schrute, a portrayal which I am certain nudged the earth at least a quarter degree farther off her axis. My adoration blossomed even more when Rainn commissioned an oak trestle table from me in the style of Gustav Stickley and then insisted on paying me 50 percent more on top of my suggested price, a number which had been, admittedly, too “friendly.” A scholar, a sweetheart, a gentleman, and a clown of the highest order.

  Hence, when the word came down about Amy’s new show starting up, I thought, “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. I’ve got to get on this show.” Allison Jones, one of LA’s most top-drawer casting directors—her IMDb page is gob-smacking, especially for comedy—had originally called me in years earlier to audition for the role of Michael Scott, the lead of The Office, among many other things over the years. She brought me in for Parks and Rec.

  The creators of the show, Greg Daniels and Mike Schur, were initially reading me for a different role, named Josh, and the material was just so funny and so right on the money for my sense of humor. Megan was coaching me in our kitchen, as was our habit, and we were saying, “This is it. This writing. Oh my god, this is it. Don’t fuck this up, fat boy.”(We don’t pull any punches in the kitchen.) I had been in to read with the producers and some writers, and we were getting along great, when we arrived at a hilarious day, in hindsight—they had two guys come in to shoot scenes with Rashida Jones (a “chemistry read” to determine how well two actors play together). The two guys were me and Adam Scott. I had known Adam for about eight years and was a big fan, and I thought, “Oh great. Me and Adam Scott up for the guy who gets to kiss Rashida. He’s devilishly handsome and charming and funny. I’m . . . dry? Husky? Even I—even my mom—would cast him over me.”

  I knew the producers liked me—I could tell they somehow thought I was special, and the feeling was powerfully mutual. A couple of weeks went by before I got the inevitable call. Sure enough, NBC had literally said to Mike and Greg, “We asked you for someone in the neighborhood of Aaron Eckhart [a very attractive neighborhood], we asked you for handsome, and you hand us Nick Offerman? Um, no.” And Greg and Mike said, “Okay. You’re right, you’re right, he’s really unattractive. But we really want Nick on the show. We have this other part we wrote, the part of Amy’s boss, so we’d like to put Nick in that part. His name is Ron Swanson.”

  Greg and Mike had called my agent and told us about the Aaron Eckhart news, which was not unexpected but still crushing. I tried not to let it get to me. I had gone to Big 5 Sports to buy a jockstrap, as I have been known to do of a Tuesday, and I was in their parking lot when I got the call that it was over with Josh. I went inside and glumly bought a pack of athletic supporters. When I returned to the parking lot twenty minutes later, I got the next call: “But we’re trying to put you in this other part of Amy’s boss.” Okay. Crisis averted for the moment. Now, let’s get these jockstraps home to Megan.

  NBC said to Mike and Greg, “Look, we love Nick. Historically, we love to test him for pilots and then not cast him; I mean, let’s be real, he’s not handsome—but anyway, that boss guy should be older.”

  They then ended up putting me through four more months of sporadic auditions along with every other guy in town. They looked at old guys, fat guys, skinny guys, even handsome guys. You name it. Everybody and their dad read for that part. NBC expanded the search as wide as they possibly could and then slowly narrowed it again until it was finally back down to just me and Mike O’Malley—a splendorous actor, hilarious comedian, and fantastic guy.

  I didn’t know he was going to be there, as I had only received a call from my agent saying, “Okay, Amy has moved here from New York. They want you to come in tomorrow and go on tape for the network one last time, improvising with Amy, and this will be the last time.” As you may have surmised . . . I went. I stepped out of the elevator and there sat O’Malley. My heart sank, to see a hilarious and charming proven comedy veteran sitting there. They put both of us on tape with Amy, improvising a couple of Ron and Leslie scenarios, and we went home to wait. After all that, five months total, I found out the next day that I had gotten the job, and not only had I gotten the job, but they hadn’t even turned in O’Malley’s tape to NBC. At the end of all that network hand-wringing, Mike and Greg had obstinately only turned in my tape, which is what I believe the kids today would call a “baller move.”

  It was Mike Schur who called me with the news, and I’m not ashamed to admit that I cried. I cried like a little baby boy who has just dropped his bacon slice in a pile of cow shit. I said, “Listen, Mike. Please keep talking to me, and I am so happy, but I’m just going to cry while we’re talking.” And I just openly sobbed for, like, twenty minutes while he told me this story.

  Three years earlier I had auditioned for a small guest-star part on The Office. He was one of the five people in the room that day and I didn’t even know it. I didn’t even know that I’d met him. He had wanted me for that role, but I’d had a scheduling conflict and couldn’t do it. Well, he liked something about me, so he went home and wrote my name on a yellow Post-it note and adhered it to the bottom of his computer monitor, where it remained for three years until they were creating Parks and Rec, and he said, among other things, “I want this guy on the show.” I mean, come on, after reading this fucking interminable chapter about casting in Hollywood, all of the bullshit, to then have that happen to me after twelve years in town? Megan immediately hit the nail on the head when she said, “If you’d gotten any of that other less perfect stuff, you never would have gotten this. Everything happened for the reason that you were meant to get this job.”

  All I can say is that I’m glad I stuck it out without getting sour, and I am so grateful for the opportunity to work with a collection of the nicest and smartest and funniest people I have come across. And also Jim O’Heir, who plays Jerry Gergich on the program. Having borne the pain of so many ugly casting stories firsthand, and having heard secondhand of so many more traumatic, soul-crumbling rejections, I am left with no choice now but to turn squarely into the bright sun, take a deep breath, and mind my manners as hard as I can.

  Let Your Freak Flag Fly

  When a director, producer, or casting director reads a script, he or she then imagines their ideal actor for each role, just like anybody does when reading a book. You imagine Aragorn for yourself, and maybe yours looks like Viggo Mortensen, or maybe yours looks like your dad, or Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, or Gregory Peck. When anyone reads any paginated material containing characters, then that person is required to envision the characters in some way. In casting, then, on
e is invariably going to develop an idea of what’s “right,” as in “What are the right attributes?” or “What is the right look?” or “Mark Wahlberg is so not right for this,” or “You know who’s right for the role of ‘Susan’? Molly Shannon!” When you are auditioning for a role, you’re essentially presenting your own opinion of the character’s attributes, your “choices,” as rendered through the presentation of your own body and voice, through performance, to some people who will almost certainly have differing opinions from your own, and that’s before you can even begin to address the matter of your skill level and your ability to communicate your opinion effectively.

  When I first got to Chicago I was immediately confronted with the harsher side of “the business.” I got hooked up with a sweet but tough agent named Marla Garlin, who undertook the gentle guidance of my fledgling efforts. I started out auditioning for plays, commercials, and the very occasional TV show or film, and almost immediately, casting people started pigeonholing me: “You’re a farmer. You’re a plumber. You’re going to play a lot of blue-collar stuff.” I was fresh out of college, all bright eyed, bushy tailed, and full of piss and vinegar, so I thought, “A plumber? Go fuck yourself. I am amazing, I am going to play an old lady, then an opium-addicted elf, then I am going to play a stick and shove it up your ass, bitch.” (Apparently I used to engage in some pretty tough thinking.)