USC alum David Stassen finds success on FOX show
From frat parties to minimum-security prisons, The Mindy Project has pried open the tight bounds of basic cable television. The person to thank for the quick quips and classic histrionics is one of the show’s producers (at times, writer and director), David Stassen, who graduated with an MFA from USC in 2004. In his late 30s, the new father might be expected to look worried, as The Mindy Project has still not been renewed for a fourth season, but he is far from that. Stassen is a passionate Chicago native with an optimism and love for television that is almost contagious.
Prior to Mindy and post-graduation, Stassen began his career editing for ESPN to pay off student loans. After his 9-to-5 day, he would get together with childhood pal and Mindy co-writer Ike Barinholtz to write scripts. Stassen and Barinholtz were hoping to make it big. They met at summer camp at the tender age of 7, went to high school together and became best friends. Stassen attended Northwestern University and Barinholtz attended Boston University for a year before moving to Los Angeles.
“I’ve known him for 30 years. We just have the same sense of humor. All of our comedy experiences were pretty much together. We saw every movie together, every TV show together,” Stassen said.
In 2009, the pair caught a break by selling a movie. Stassen quit his ESPN day job and fully committed to writing. They worked on multiple projects, including a couple television scripts — one of which, an animated sitcom about the Wild West, was piloted by the television network Spike. Mindy Kaling read this script and hired the duo as writers on her show. Soon after, Barinholtz was cast as Morgan, a nurse with a “subservient, but assuming friendship” with Kaling’s character, Mindy Lahiri.
At The Mindy Project, when he’s not in the writer’s room, Stassen serves as an on-set writer during the production of every episode. This concept has been present in other successful comedies such as 30 Rock.
“When production starts, I get set for a shooting day, which is usually 7 a.m. on a Monday until 8 p.m. I’ll watch the rehearsal for every scene and work with the director and actors to have them figure out blocking,” Stassen said. “I’ll try and add physical comedy to scenes if the scene feels kind of flat. You never know from the page [of the script] to shooting how a scene is going actually feel.”
Stassen appreciates this hands-on approach to writing due to the close relationships he has formed with the show’s director of photography, actors and crew. Many shows choose to only have the writer of the episode present to watch the production; however, Stassen believes his presence creates a necessary continuity for the making of each episode.
“Sometimes there’s a bigger problem in the scene where the relationship between two characters might have changed, so the scene doesn’t feel right anymore. We might have to rewrite the scene on the fly in the moment. Being on set, you’re there everyday. It’s your last shot to get it right,” he said.
Though his Second City improv background has groomed him to throw out hilarious lines during shooting, Stassen did admit that Barinholtz and Kaling do improvise much of their dialogue.
“[Barinholtz and Kaling] have really strong improv backgrounds. We’ll open it up after a few takes. We always like to get it scripted first, so we’ll know the story will make sense,” he said. “But then we’ll improvise at the beginning of the scene or the end of the scene, and that’s really fun. Sometimes, the actors start improvising and that will inspire me to think of new jokes.”
The show is most notable for its eccentric characters, one of the standouts is Morgan.One of his most comedic scenes is in season one, when the Shulman and Associates gang heads to a nightclub to let off steam. While the others are working the dance floor, Morgan, after handing a fellow club-goer a towel in the bathroom, is mistaken as a bathroom attendant. He then slyly slides an empty cup to collect a tip from this stranger. Though an event like this may seem out of the ordinary to a viewer, the idea was taken directly from Stassen’s life.
“I was in New Orleans and handed someone a towel in the bathroom of a bar. And just for kicks, I put a cup out and handed a couple more towels out. People started putting money in there, and I made 30 bucks in 10 minutes,” Stassen said.
Most stories are pitched as a combination of different personal experiences and vast extrapolations. The writing team will take something ordinary like a music festival or birthday party and turn it into an unusual event.
After working long hours, it seems natural that the writers might get sick of one another, but at The Mindy Project, they’ve managed to avoid this through a shared love of snacks.
“Being a comedy writer, food is really important. Every day we want to know, where are we having lunch from? What are the snacks?” Stassen said. “Did somebody send us cupcakes? If anything happens, like Mindy has a blurb in a tiny magazine, somebody sends us cupcakes. That kind of stuff is really fun.”