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Brent | Tim | Gareth | Dawn | Finchy | Jennifer | The Oggmonster | Neil
The Oggmonster: Steve Merchant
About The Oggmonster:
One of Gareth’s mates, he’s onscreen for a couple of minutes, during which Brent offends him to the point that he simply walks away.
About
Steve Merchant:
Many of you will not be aware of Steve Merchant, even though he deserves almost equal credit as co-writer and co-director of the series with Ricky Gervais. And equal pay, but that’s life!
Steve first met Ricky Gervais working at XFM, a London radio station where they still present a show on Saturdays, when Gervais was hired there as head of speech. And because it always seems necessary to put in some useless boring info about people, I feel I should share the knowledge that Mr. Merchant is 6"7 and comes from Hanham, which is in the Bristol area.As much as Ricky Gervais is the inspiration behind the character of David Brent, Steve Merchant drew on his experiences in a series of dead-end office jobs to achieve the feel of the series, and it was while working as a BBC trainee needing to come up with a pilot that The Office was first truly born.
It’s interesting to note why the show was shot as a mock documentary, and not just filmed as a normal sitcom. Steve Merchant was given a day with a camera crew to film his pilot, and the quickest way to film the show was just to do it documentary style, which also led to the birth of the talking head sections of the show (it doesn’t get much easier than to set up a camera just filming someone sitting in a chair!).
The remaining history of the show can pretty much be guessed; on the strength of the pilot Ricky and Steve were allowed to film series 1, with Ricky starring without having much previous acting experience, and them both directing for the first time. A gamble which the BBC can be happy to have taken!
Steve has also mentioned people tippexing their names on stationary, a detail more important to the success of the show than you might think!
After the second series of The Office, Steve directed The Last Chancers, a one off half hour comedy about a crappy rock group, written by The Office’s Tony MacMurray, and with music by The Office’s Big George (and sons). Watching this show was very odd, as Merchant obviously made all the people act like some freaky combination of Brent/Tim and a bit of Dawn, with uncomfortable pauses, looks off screen and almost the same general feel The Office has. This is a good thing of course, as it shows Mr M developing a unique style as a director, but also bad, as it wasn’t really anything different to what he’s done before.
One more thing...
You can download a desktop pic I made for Steve, for the ladies, in both these sizes: 1024x768 640x480
Brent | Tim | Gareth | Dawn | Finchy | Jennifer | The Oggmonster | Neil