When comedian, writer and filmmaker Mark Malkoff decided to move into IKEA for a week and film the results. Sophie Pollitt-Cohen ’09 followed along as his assistant on the production.

The idea for “Mark Lives in IKEA” began when Malkoff needed a place to stay while his New York City apartment was being fumigated. He decided to move into the IKEA store in nearby Paramus, N.J. from Jan. 7 through Jan. 12 of this year.

Pollitt-Cohen does not know why Malkoff chose IKEA specifically, but she did not seem surprised by the unique nature of the project, given his established penchant for personal challenges based around corporate chains. Though Malkoff works primarily as the audience coordinator for Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report,” he organized a similar project last summer, in which he visited and purchased items from 171 Manhattan Starbucks in one day.

“I can’t answer for certain how Mark got the idea [for the IKEA project], but I know that he did have to move out of his apartment for a little while, which is 80 percent IKEA anyway,” she said. “It’s one of those things that people always think of but would never actually do—except Mark actually did it.”

Pollitt-Cohen met Malkoff when she interned at “The Colbert Report” last summer, a position that involved sitting in on production meetings, organizing the audience and buying Stephen Colbert lunch. They stayed in touch, and while she was abroad in Italy last semester, Malkoff told her about his new project.

Pollitt-Cohen was initially hired as the production assistant, but was soon promoted to producer’s assistant. She emphasized the amount of disciplined coordination necessary to help keep the production running.

“I take organization of my day very seriously,” she said. “I had to go through his e-mails and decide who was a legitimate news source and set up interviews. There were people working with a lot of experience, but they were busy doing their jobs and things come up.”

Writing and comedy have always been a part of Pollitt-Cohen’s life. Her mother, Katha Pollitt, writes for “The Nation,” while her father, Randy Cohen, writes for “The New York Times Magazine” and has written for David Letterman in the past. Her freshman year at the University, Pollitt-Cohen and her high school friends published a diary they had kept about growing up in New York City, called “The Notebook Girls.” Last month, she and her friend James Rosenthal ’08, who also worked as a production assistant for “Mark Lives in IKEA,” started a blog entitled
“Monocles Galore” (http://monoclesgalore.blogspot.com).

Yet despite her life-long affinity for writing, Pollitt-Cohen initially balked at becoming an English major.

“It seemed unspecific and a cop-out, and thus lame,” she said. “Sometimes I just decide I don’t like things. But I had to be an English major. Books can change your life.”

Pollitt-Cohen said that the series of episodes, which can be viewed on YouTube and on Malkoff’s website, marklivesinIKEA.com, were a success.

“It became a big news story,” she said. “Mark got a lot of positive feedback on the videos.”

Despite this, there were undoubtedly a few drawbacks to living in the store.

“Mark had pretty much no privacy,” Pollitt-Cohen said. “People even watched him when he napped. He spent a lot of the day doing interviews, filming bits, looking over the most recent edits, eating IKEA food and working on new ideas for possible bits.”

Pollitt-Cohen was not paid for her work in IKEA, but spending time in the store resulted in some unique experiences. Pollitt-Cohen said she enjoyed getting to know the people who worked there, and even got to learn how to drive a forklift on the last day of filming.

“The producer said he needed to talk to me and brought me to the warehouse,” she said. “He introduced me to this guy who taught me how to use a forklift. It was one of my best moments. If I had been paid, I would have had to pay to have forklift driving lessons.”

She also got to be quite the connoisseur of IKEA food products.

“I would recommend the salmon without the sauce, the meatballs are excellent, the French fries are divine and the desserts, apple and almond cake,” she said.