Scrubs: No Lines in the Script for the Janitor
In an interview, Neil Flynn revealed that creator Bill Lawrence often gave him and Zach Braff quite a bit of freedom with their dialogue: “We agreed pretty early on to change the dialogue a little bit. Bill Lawrence, the creator, was okay with that. He joked that if it was funnier, he would take the credit.” However, the character of the Janitor seems to have developed such a life of its own that at certain points, the script simply lacked dialogue, stating only “whatever the Janitor would say here.”
The fact that the character was given so much freedom that they even omitted prescribed lines is truly rare. Flynn recalls: “I think that only happened twice. Since they knew the scene had an open ending and we had been in the show for so long, they knew we would come up with something on set.”
Perhaps it is precisely this spontaneity that contributed to the unique humor of “Scrubs.”
