Dwight's Speech - Production

Production

"Dwight's Speech" was directed by Charles McDougall, making it his second directing credit after the earlier second season episode "Christmas Party". "Dwight's Speech" was written by Paul Lieberstein, who plays human resources director Toby Flenderson. Lieberstein later revealed that Jim never went on his trip to Australia, noting "The whole Pam thing took him by surprise, he transferred and then wasn’t really up for vacation. Unless, of course, we find a good joke in his vacation.”

During the earlier scenes when Dwight is in Michael's office, Pam can be seen in the background talking to Meredith. According to actress Jenna Fischer, she and Kate Flannery stayed in character and acted out mundane talking scenes. Although they were not recorded, the dialogue was very detailed. In a guest post written for TV Guide, Fischer described several of the conversations, which ranged from Pam and Meredith discussing "the problems with the new quality-assurance computer-input program", the fact that the computers don't "accept both alpha and numeric characters", "backlog receipts dating to 2001", and that fact that Dunder Mifflin "changed to all-numeric product codes in 2004 and the computer system does not allow for the earlier records."

The speech scene employed over 500 extras, which is unusual for The Office, and was hectic for the crew to organize. Jim claims that he stole pieces of Dwight's speech from Mussolini. In fact, the first line of Dwight's speech, "Blood alone moves the wheels of history", is paraphrased from a speech Mussolini gave in Parma on December 13, 1914, advocating Italian entry into World War I. The actual quote is, "It is blood which moves the wheels of history!"

The Season Two DVD contains a number of deleted scenes from this episode. Notable cut scenes include Dwight coming to work wearing sunglasses, Michael criticizing Dwight's speaking skills, Dwight trying to tell another joke to the office, Ryan bringing the wrong type of stamps for Pam's wedding invitations, and an extended scene of Michael's unfunny and extremely awkward speech.