B. Cavini        Well, thank you so much for your time.  I appreciate it.

R. Gervais      Thank you.

Moderator      Thank you.  We’ll next go to the line of Mike McDaniel with the Houston Chronicle.  Please go ahead.

M. McDaniel   I believe we might have exhausted all of The Simpson’s questions.  May I ask you one Extra’s question?

R. Gervais      That’s right.  I’m just realizing now that everyone can hear everything, so I don’t know whether I’m repeating myself or I can’t remember what I’ve said or what I haven’t.

M. McDaniel   You’re not repeating yourself.  I’m just wondering, how has Extra’s been received as far as you’re concerned and has the show been renewed?

R. Gervais      Oh, immediately.  It was renewed I think after episode one in England, and I think HBO followed suit, which was very nice and flattering.  It went down very, very well.  I didn’t see all the press from America, but you’d know better than me.  In England, it went down amazingly well.  I think it performed just about exactly the same as The Office.  I think it’s doing okay in America; I’m not sure.

M. McDaniel   Thank you very much.

R. Gervais      Cheers.

Moderator      Now go to the line of Rick Porter with the Tribune Media Service.  Please go ahead.

R. Porter        Hello, Ricky.  How are you?

R. Gervais      Hello.  How’s it going?

R. Porter        Good, thanks.  I’m curious having been a fan of The Simpson’s for so long, what the experience was like putting words into Homer’s and Marge’s and all the other characters mouths?

R. Gervais      As I said, it was like I’d won a competition.  I’m genuinely worried that Hollywood got together and they know something I don’t know.  I think they’ve spoken to my doctor and I have a few months to live.  And they said, “Just let him do what he wants.  If he wants to write The Simpson’s, let him write The Simpson’s.  He won’t get to see it.”  Because it’s mad, it’s ridiculous the offers I’m getting. 

I’ve turned just about everything down for the past few years, the film roles and everything, and I have to the point now where I’ve jumped straight to cameos.  I was thinking, “Well, I haven’t even done a film yet.  How have I jumped to cameos?”  It’s bizarre. 

I couldn’t turn down The Simpson’s; it would have been a sin.  It would have been a sin to turn down The Simpson’s.  As I said, I’m doing two things this year that aren’t my own project, and The Simpson’s is one and Chris Guest’s new movie is the other.

R. Porter        And in terms of just the writing process, did they leave you alone to do it on your own?  Did they …

R. Gervais      They left me alone to do it on my own, but then, of course, it goes through their mill and comes out better.  We wrote it via e-mail, just back and forth to Al Jean.  Me going, “I have another thing.”  He goes, “Great, we’ll stick it in.”  He did all the hard work.  I just literally gave him a big bag of ideas and the few scenes and then, he sent it back to me like, “Do you mean this?”  I said, “Yes, and what about this?”  Somehow with his help and everyone’s help, we got it into a nice 22-minute form.  I made sure I put in my favorite characters.  I made sure I could write a song for The Simpson’s.  Again, like it was my special day.

R. Porter        Which are your favorite characters aside from the family?

R. Gervais      Homer is the greatest comedy character of all time.  It’s as simple as that.  And I love Lenny and Carl and Mo, but the family unit is absolutely where it’s at.  The other characters will come in and provide the jokes and satire, but the family unit is obviously the heart and spirit of The Simpson’s. 

It’s stunning.  It’s stunning what they’ve done with a cartoon.  It was essentially for kids and they made one of the most important programs, I think, of the 20th Century.

R. Porter        You and Steven are also going to be writing an episode of The Office for—

R. Gervais      We’ve just about done it.  It was remarkably fast.  I suppose it’s because we’ve been away from those characters for two or three years.  It’s one of our favorite shows, the American Office.  I think it may be our favorite sitcom at the moment.  It’s so good.  Steve Corelli is remarkable, I mean remarkable.  I watch his performance and I’m thinking, “He’s working so hard.  He’s working on so many levels.  He’s such a good actor.  He’s so likeable.”  I saw 40-Year-Old Virgin for the first time and just some of the funniest scenes in modern comedy.  The Jim and Pam story I think hits the ground running better than we did with Tim and Dawn.  Dwight just keeps growing on me. 

They’ve done so well, the writing is so clever, it’s audacious.  For network, American TV, it’s a really uncompromising, cult comedy going out primetime on network television.  I have to say, I want to say well done for NBC for not panicking and not watering it down, so it was actually a joy to write for it. 

And the strange thing was when I think of it, writing for those characters, I don’t think of David Brent and Tim and Dawn, I think of Michael, Scott and Jim and Pam.  It just flowed. 

The other thing is that the pressure was off for us, of course, because we didn’t have to do nine drafts like we did for our own that was a finished product.  We can hand over the first, sort of second draft and know that they’re going to make it theirs.  Also it’s one of 22, as opposed to being one of six.  It’s also much more of a series than ours was.  You can sort of put out the American version in just about any order, but you couldn’t do that with ours.  You have to really watch them in sequence to some sort of … and stuff.  It was great.  It was just fantastic.

R. Porter        And that will be for next fall?

R. Gervais      Yes, season three.  I think it’s gone over 50 episodes now, which is remarkable.

R. Porter        Thanks a lot.

R. Gervais      Thanks.

Moderator      Thank you.  And now representing the Las Vegas Review Journal we’ll go to the line of Christopher Lawrence.  Please go ahead.

C. Lawrence   Hello, Ricky.

R. Gervais      Hello.

C. Lawrence   You’re obviously a Simpson’s fan and you’re watching The Office now; but is there any other American TV that you’re really into right now?

R. Gervais      I’m still in mourning over Arrested Development.  That was, along with Curb Your Enthusiasm, one of my favorite new comedies.  I think it’s so audacious, so complex and clever and I just love Jason Bateman.  He’s just so watchable.  I mean all the characters are great, so I absolutely love Arrested Development, Curb Your Enthusiasm, of course.  I’ve just seen a couple of My Name is Earl.  I really enjoy that; it’s nice, it’s somewhat retro about it.  It was like the shows I used to love when I was growing up.

C. Lawrence   And that translates okay?

R. Gervais      Yes, of course.  I’m such a fan about Americana anyway, so yes, it translates easy for me.  But it’s like, I don’t know it’s like The Rockford Files or something.  It’s such a clean premise and it’s light and fluffy and some great gags in there, so I really like that.  I love the Daley Show, I love Letterman.  What else is new?  I don’t know what’s new and what isn’t because we get it late, so I’m probably naming shows that you’ve grown out of.

C. Lawrence   Not at all.  How involved are you, other than the episode that you’ve done for NBC’s The Office, how involved are you in that?  Do they send you ideas or is it pretty much just, “Hey, good luck.”?

R. Gervais      Well, after the end of the first year, hardly at all.  We did the set up of course, we tried it, we chose the team, Greg Daniels, we looked at the script and the casting.  But after that after that first involvement, they’ve done it all themselves and that’s why I can say such wonderful things about it, because it’s their work.  They’re brilliant, they’re just brilliant.  They keep us informed and I pop in whenever I can when I’m over here and we write, once in season three.  But it’s all their work, I must stress that—it’s really all their work.

C. Lawrence   And how difficult, now I’m sure it’s getting easier, but how difficult was it in the beginning seeing a new cast, watching that sort of unfold?

R. Gervais      Remarkably easy.  I never thought of it as watching our show against, because one, the scripts were all original apart from episode one.  If we’d have said, “Now the documentary team go to an office in America,” that would have probably been easier for people to swallow.  But because they knew it was sort of based on our characters, there was always going to be comparison, which is, you know.  There is no comparison; they’ve made it their own.  It’s different.  I can watch it without thinking, “That’s David Brent.”  It’s a completely different office that has the same themes; it’s just a parallel universe.  I don’t even look at it as a remake now.  I watch it as my favorite new sitcom.

C. Lawrence   Earlier in the beginning of this, you said The Simpson’s shouldn’t be redone because why mess with perfection.  What does that say about The Office?  Are you saying The Office wasn’t perfect when you did it?

R. Gervais      That would be a quote, wouldn’t it?  “Ricky Gervais says, ‘The Office I did was perfect.’”  That’s the headline.  I don’t know.  The Simpson’s is a phenomenon.  I’m very proud of The Office.  It’s pretty good, we did our best and left it I think on a peak.  But The Simpson’s is somewhat different.  The Simpson’s is Cadillac; The Simpson’s is just Americana.  It’s George Washington to me.  Do you know what I mean?  It’s something more, it’s just something bigger. 

The difference is I think American TV is the best in the world.  I knew The Office wouldn’t be ruined by these people, but I know American shows would be ruined by English television.  We’re not as good as you.  We’re not as good as you.  You beat us in everything.  You beat us on drama, you have The Soprano’s, you have 24.  On comedy you have The Simpson’s, Seinfeld, Larry Sanders, Arrested Development.  We’ve got Monty Python and Faulty Towers.  I can’t think of anything that competes with you in the last 40 years.  Maybe documentary, we’re good at documentary, but American television for me, as Randy Jackson would say, is da bomb.

C. Lawrence   Thanks, Ricky.

R. Gervais      Cheers.

A. Lester       We have time for about one more question.

R. Gervais      Great.

Moderator      Thank you.  That question will come from the line of Roger Catlin with the Hartford Current.  Please go ahead.

R. Catlin        Hello, Ricky.  I’m glad I got in.

R. Gervais      Hello.

R. Catlin        You talked a little bit about your writing process.  It has to be a lot different than first of all writing for your own shows and writing for characters you created.  And also animation, you have to have it all kind of nailed down before you get into the production booth to record it, I imagine.

R. Gervais      No, no, no, no.  Other way around.

R. Caitlin        Really?

R. Gervais      Yes, you get the script right, you record it.  You get that script down to 22 minutes before you even do the animation.  You have this sort of storyboard, but those actors are finished a year before the show.

R. Catlin        But you can’t improvise in the booth, can you?  You have to that script …

R. Gervais      Oh, no, no, no.  You can improvise, that’s what I’m saying because that comes first.  You improvise.

R. Catlin        But not before the microphones, though.

R. Gervais      Then that becomes the script and then they draw the picture.  What you can’t do is improvise the picture when that comes back.  Either side of editing it a little bit, what you can’t do then is think of another joke and then send it all the way back, so, no, the script is pretty much nailed down and then the arduous process of bringing that to life, rendering that with teams of animators and computers that take to nine months.  You could write a script for The Simpson’s, in theory I could come up with an idea get the actors together, do it that day and then it would take nine months. 

R. Catlin        So you were done with this how long ago?

R. Gervais      May.  I wrote it in a few weeks end of 2004 beginning 2005.  Recorded it over a weekend with a crew, including the sort of table read, and then recorded the song, recorded all the dialog and then we’ve just been waiting to see the finished result.

R. Catlin        Is the song going to be released at all?

R. Gervais      Oh, no.  I don’t think so.  Well, I don’t know it may be on a Simpson’s compilation.  When you hear it, you’ll realize why it couldn’t be released.

R. Catlin        Is there talk of doing another thing with The Simpson’s?

R. Gervais      Yes.

R. Catlin        Do you have some ideas?

R. Gervais      Yes, they said, “Do you want to pop up again?  It might be nice for this character to come back as a little cameo.”  I don’t think I have time to write another one and I want to get out while the going’s good.

R. Catlin        Now you’re part of The Simpson’s pantheon of characters, too.

R. Gervais      Amazing, isn’t it?

R. Catlin        Congratulations to you.

R. Gervais      Oh, well it’s incredible.  And I have a song.  I mean, The Simpson’s songs are the best comedy songs.  It’s not as good as “See My Vest.”

R. Catlin        When can we expect to see the Extra’s again here?

R. Gervais      I’m right in the middle of it now; that’s why I have to have fast and furious trips to America to take care of business as I already said.  And I get back and do what I consider my day job, which is writing and directing Extra’s at the moment.  So recording it June/July, out in autumn/fall in U.K. and I assume thereabouts on HBO as well.  I don’t know.

R. Catlin        Thanks a lot.

R. Gervais      Cheers.