Chris Pratt was holding a little camera on the set of Parks and Recreation because, as he later explained, the people above him on the call sheet had already passed on the job. It was Season 2, and the assignment was backstage DVD-extra material filmed on “something called a Mini Flip.” Pratt said he was seventh on the call sheet, which meant the first six actors had said no before it reached him.[4]

So he made a bit out of being the available guy. In the clip, Pratt pretended his phone had interrupted him with a message from Steven Spielberg. “Sorry Steven, I was asked by Parks and Rec/NBC to do behind-the-scenes,” he said aloud, “which is to say, everyone else was asked and said no. But I have no shame as you know by the endless gift baskets. I'll have to get back to you later about Jurassic Park 4.”[6]

The line landed because it sounded ridiculous. In 2010, Pratt was still best known as Andy Dwyer, the sweet, shambling goof on a workplace sitcom. The image of him fielding personal messages from Spielberg about a major dinosaur franchise belonged to the joke. The distance between a sitcom bonus feature and the lead role in a revived Jurassic Park movie was the punchline.

The Throwaway Line That Aged Strangely Well

In 2015, the old footage resurfaced with a new context. Pratt had joked in 2010 about needing to get back to Spielberg about “Jurassic Park 4,” and five years later he was starring in Jurassic World, the fourth film in the franchise’s main line.[3]

RTÉ reported that the clip came from the Parks & Recreation Season 2 DVD bonus features, and that Pratt confirmed his casting in the fourth Jurassic Park installment in January 2014.[6] Jurassic World was released on June 11, 2015, and by early July had earned $1.259 billion worldwide, according to the same report.[6]

The coincidence was not perfect in every detail. E! noted that Pratt was “a bit off with the title,” since the finished movie was called Jurassic World, not Jurassic Park 4.[3] But the bones of the joke were uncomfortably close: Steven Spielberg, a fourth Jurassic movie, and Chris Pratt treating the whole thing as a fantasy so absurd that it could only be funny.

Why He Thought It Was Funny

In a later IMDb interview, Pratt described exactly why the joke amused him. “As I was doing it my phone rang and I pretended that I had gotten a text from Steven Spielberg that I was going to be in Jurassic Park 4,” he recalled.[4] The comic logic was simple. “There is no way Steven Spielberg is going to cast you in Jurassic Park 4. That’s funny!”[4]

Between the joke and the casting, Pratt’s screen identity changed. ComicBook.com described his 2014 role as Star-Lord in Guardians of the Galaxy as his breakout as a movie star, a role that helped make him one of the era’s popular performers.[4] After that, the idea of Pratt leading a giant studio adventure no longer sounded like the most impossible thing a sitcom actor could say into a camera.

Pratt later called the episode manifestation: “I manifested it.”[4] The cleaner reading is stranger and smaller. A performer doing the low-status task that others declined reached for the biggest fake name and the most unlikely fake job he could imagine. Years later, the footage came back with a blockbuster attached to it.

In the original clip, there are no raptors, no jungle, no billion-dollar poster. There is only Pratt on a sitcom set, pretending to text Steven Spielberg, making a joke out of being the guy who said yes when everyone else said no.

Sources

  1. Chris Pratt behind the scenes Parks and Recreation, YouTube
  2. Chris Pratt predicted starring role in Jurassic World five years before blockbuster film hit theaters, Daily Mail
  3. Chris Pratt Predicted Jurassic World Role in 2010, E! Online
  4. Jurassic World: Chris Pratt Explains How He “Manifested” His Role During Parks and Recreation, ComicBook.com
  5. Did You Know Chris Pratt Predicted His Jurassic World Role Years Before It Happened?, Koimoi
  6. Pratt predicted Jurassic World casting 5 years ago, RTÉ