Production
This episode was the second episode of the series directed by Bryan Gordon. Gordon had previously directed the first season episode "The Alliance". "The Injury" was written by Mindy Kaling, who also acts for the show as customer service representative Kelly Kapoor. After the character development that had occurred in the previous episode, "Booze Cruise", Greg Daniels decided to create a more inane episode that involved "Michael's grilled foot." Writer and actor B. J. Novak said the idea for "Injury" started out as an idea in the writing room that just "spun out of control". The original plan was for Michael to have fallen asleep in the sun, while having sunblock all over him, except for his foot. According to BJ Novak, the episode was originally going to be called "My Grilled Foot", but writer Mindy Kaling thought it was "too weird for people to tune in and watch that". Novak has described "The Injury" as one of his favorite episodes, and said of it, "I don't think any other TV show would have made an episode from that starting point, and yet it was one of the funniest and most relatable episodes as it went on that we've ever had."
The episode guest starred Marcus York, as the "no-nonsense" building manager for the Scranton business park. York described his character as "just trying to do his job". York recalls being nervous during filming, and "drawing a blank" on his lines during the first 'run-through', because of his anxiousness around the cast members, but soon Marcus "smoothed-out". John Krasinski said that the van scene was his favorite to shoot, and that it "will go down in history as one of the most fun moments I’ve ever been a part of". After his portrayal of the character, York received several positive fan letters, who praised his performance as the straight man in a hectic work environment.
Read more about this topic: The Injury
Famous quotes containing the word production:
“From the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”
—Charles Darwin (1809–1882)
“Constant revolutionizing of production ... distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“An art whose limits depend on a moving image, mass audience, and industrial production is bound to differ from an art whose limits depend on language, a limited audience, and individual creation. In short, the filmed novel, in spite of certain resemblances, will inevitably become a different artistic entity from the novel on which it is based.”
—George Bluestone, U.S. educator, critic. “The Limits of the Novel and the Limits of the Film,” Novels Into Film, Johns Hopkins Press (1957)