A Parks and Recreation Special (2020) on Netflix
During the COVID-19 quarantine, Leslie Knope keeps a daily phone tree going with her friends in Pawnee. Each call catches her up on how that friend is getting through the isolation.
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- Netflix4.2/5
- IMDb8.4/102,850 votes
- Rotten TomatoesNot available
Trailer
Plot summary
Leslie Knope, a regional director at the National Park Service, leads several committees she started in response to the pandemic and keeps a daily phone tree going with her friends in Pawnee. Ron Swanson, at his cabin, thinks the daily conversations are unnecessary. Ben Wyatt decides to make a claymation film out of his board game The Cones of Dunshire. April Ludgate draws five random items from a bag and wears them each day, Andy Dwyer locks himself in his shed, and Ann Perkins works as a nurse apart from Chris Traeger and their children. Tom Haverford uses a green screen for Bali after his book tour is canceled, and Garry Gergich, the mayor of Pawnee, describes the challenges he faces. Bobby Newport opens the special from a family fox hunting lodge in Switzerland, unaware of the pandemic.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about A Parks and Recreation Special (2020)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Late in production, the writers replaced the planned opening in which Amy Poehler and Nick Offerman appeared as themselves with Paul Rudd introducing the special as Bobby Newport. Rudd, on the East Coast, turned down a shipped camera rig, used his own equipment and completed filming within an hour of receiving the script.
- Director Morgan Sackett designed camera rigs so the cast could film themselves with proper lighting and frame rate, then drove around Los Angeles with crew members to deliver them; Aziz Ansari's rig had to be shipped to him in England.
- Universal Television executive Pearlena Igbokwe first asked Michael Schur to stage a remote table read of an existing episode; after the whole cast replied in under an hour, Schur decided to make a brand-new episode instead.
- The special was a fundraiser for Feeding America's COVID-19 Response Fund and had raised $2.8 million within a day of airing, reaching at least $3 million by May 2.
- Because pandemic isolation forced the writers to explain why the characters were all in separate locations, the only pair who could share scenes were Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally, who are married in real life.
- For the group rendition of "5,000 Candles in the Wind", some actors kept the correct pace by listening to the song through an earpiece, while others sang it from memory.
