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John Krasinski Talks 'The Hollars,' an 'Office' Movie, and 'Hollars' Some More

How many times can two guys say the word “Hollars” in a 20-minute interview? The over-under was set at 65, and we’re still waiting for a volunteer to tally up the final total, but we’re pretty sure we made it.

John Krasinski, the director and star of the comedic drama The Hollars, joined Yahoo Movies for a Facebook Live Q&A Tuesday, which you can watch above. In his second directorial effort, after 2009’s Brief Interviews With Hideous Men, The Office alum plays John Hollar, a wannabe graphic artist in New York who returns to his small hometown after his mother (Margo Martindale) collapses and needs surgery. There, he finds his struggling father (Richard Jenkins) and loose-cannon brother (Sharlto Copley) ain’t in great shape, either.

Related: Watch John Krasinski and Charlie Day’s Awkward Encounter in an Exclusive Clip from ‘The Hollars’

You can watch the full live chat with Krasinski above, but here are a few highlights:

—Krasinski said he personally cast the movie, which co-stars Anna Kendrick, Charlie Day, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Josh Groban, Randall Park, and Mary Kay Place, by personally calling each. The very first person he hollared at, though, was Martindale, and Krasinski said he doesn’t know he would’ve directed the film had she not signed on to play the family’s ailing matriarch. Krasinski has a bit of history with Martindale: His first acting gig ever, as a “featured” extra in a 1999 commercial for the clothing retailer Marshall’s, starred Martindale.

—The Massachussetts native recalled the period in his life in between that 1999 gig and landing the Office pilot in 2004 when he was a struggling actor in New York. “I was a waiter for I think nine different places, that would tell how good of a waiter I was,” he laughed. “I did everything. I did real estate, I showed apartments. I think illegally… I cleaned the floors at a yoga studio because I couldn’t afford to take yoga classes. I did all these crazy things.”

—And then came The Office, the American spin-off of Ricky Gervais’s Brit-hit which came to a tearful close after nine beloved seasons in 2013. Expanding on what he’d told The Insider about the possibility of bringing the Dunder Mifflin crew to the big screen: “People have been asking me if I would do an reunion movie or The Office: The Movie, and my answer is 'Absolutely.’ The challenge will be, the show was so good and the stories were always so good, that I personally right off the top of my head can’t think why those people in Scranton would all be getting together again. So if there’s a good enough idea, if someone comes up with a real reason why we all had to get together again, I would totally do it.”

—And finally, Krasinski admitted that internet commenters are right when they say he “laughs like a little princess girl.” He explained: “When I try to hold back my laughter, I go so high-pitched, I don’t know where this comes from. It’s like a weird dolphin something.”

The Hollars opens in New York and Los Angeles on Aug. 26 before expanding nationally in September. Watch the trailer: