The Do’s and Don’ts of Improv Comedy with Liam Neeson, Ricky Gervais, Tina Fey, and Del Close

in Comedy, Film, Television | June 29th, 2013

Atten­tion, all strug­gling come­di­ans! There’s big mon­ey in teach­ing cor­po­rate exec­u­tives the rules of impro­vi­sa­tion. Not to pre­pare them for a high­ly lucra­tive sec­ond career on some late night, black box stage, but rather to hone their lis­ten­ing skills, teach them how to work col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly, and give them prac­tice com­mu­ni­cat­ing in a flexible—and there­fore effective—manner.

The above clip from Ricky Ger­vais and Stephen Mer­chan­t’s Life’s Too Short, sug­gests that actor Liam Nee­son might ben­e­fit from sim­i­lar train­ing.

Or are Ger­vais and Mer­chant guilty of fail­ing to embrace the Rules of Improv, when Nee­son, hav­ing solicit­ed a sug­ges­tion of “hypochon­dri­ac at the doc­tor’s office” from series star War­wick Davis, announces that he’s con­tract­ed full blown AIDS from a starv­ing African pros­ti­tute?

Even though it’s obvi­ous that the supreme­ly gift­ed Nee­son is hav­ing a laugh, let’s see if we can deter­mine who’s break­ing the car­di­nal rules of improv in this scene.

Come­di­an Tina Fey has Four Rules of Improv that res­onate with both busi­ness and fun­ny peo­ple:

  1. The first rule of impro­vi­sa­tion is to AGREE. 
  2. The sec­ond rule of improv is to not only say YES, say YES, AND.
  3. The next rule is MAKE STATEMENTS. (Nee­son does great in this depart­ment)
  4. THERE ARE NO MISTAKES only OPPORTUNITIES. 

Hmm. One thing’s clear. A bad impro­vis­er can drag the most gift­ed prac­ti­tion­ers of the form down with him.

The bril­liance of the script­ed scene recalls late improv guru Del Close’s Eleven Com­mand­ments:

  1. You are all sup­port­ing actors.
  2. Always check your impuls­es.
  3. Nev­er enter a scene unless you are NEEDED.
  4. Save your fel­low actor, don’t wor­ry about the piece.
  5. Your prime respon­si­bil­i­ty is to sup­port.
  6. Work at the top of your brains at all times.
  7. Nev­er under­es­ti­mate or con­de­scend to your audi­ence.
  8. No jokes (unless it is tipped in front that it is a joke.)
  9. Trust… trust your fel­low actors to sup­port you; trust them to come through if you lay some­thing heavy on them; trust your­self.
  10. Avoid judg­ing what is going down except in terms of whether it needs help (either by enter­ing or cut­ting), what can best fol­low, or how you can sup­port it imag­i­na­tive­ly if your sup­port is called for.
  11. LISTEN

That’s like­ly ample rules, though it’s tempt­ing to add:

Nev­er (or per­haps always) pre­tend to knock on a door by say­ing “knock knock.”

Nev­er (or per­haps always) pre­tend to open a shop door by say­ing “tring.”

Nev­er (or per­haps always) iden­ti­fy a “well known homo­sex­u­al actor” by name.

And if any cor­po­rate clients—or Ricky Ger­vais—need lessons in how to keep from “corps­ing” while deliv­er­ing fun­ny mate­r­i­al, Liam Nee­son is for sure the man for the job.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ricky Ger­vais Presents “Learn Gui­tar with David Brent”

“Learn Eng­lish With Ricky Ger­vais,” A New Pod­cast Debuts (NSFW)

Tina Fey Brings Bossy­pants Tour to Google

Ayun Hal­l­i­day was a found­ing mem­ber of The No Fun Mud Pira­nhas, North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty’s Improv Olympic Team. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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The Beatles Perform in a Spoof of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 1964

in Comedy, Television | June 27th, 2013

In late April of 1964, Eng­land was cel­e­brat­ing the 400th birth­day of William Shake­speare. At the same time, “Beat­le­ma­nia” was in full swing. And for a brief moment, two of Britain’s cul­tur­al trea­sures inter­sect­ed when the Bea­t­les per­formed in a play­ful send-up of A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream.

The sketch was record­ed in Lon­don on April 28, 1964. Only the month before, the Bea­t­les had made their Amer­i­can debut on the Ed Sul­li­van Show. The Shake­speare­an spoof was part of a one-hour British TV spe­cial called “Around the Bea­t­les.” It’s from the play-with­in-a-play in Act 5, Scene 1 of A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream, in which a group of actors make a mess of the clas­sic Pyra­mus and This­be sto­ry from Ovid’s Meta­mor­phoses.

Pyra­mus and This­be, a source of inspi­ra­tion for Shake­speare’s Romeo and Juli­et, are a pair of star-crossed lovers whose feud­ing par­ents for­bid them from see­ing one anoth­er. They live next-door to each oth­er but are sep­a­rat­ed by walls. Through a crack in one wall they whis­per their love and make plans to meet on a moon­lit night under a mul­ber­ry tree. This­be arrives first, only to see a lion with blood drip­ping from its mouth after eat­ing its prey. Ter­ri­fied, she drops her veil and runs. Pyra­mus arrives soon after­ward and sees both the blood and the veil. He assumes the lion has killed This­be, so he falls on his sword and dies. This­be returns and finds Pyra­mus dead. She takes his sword and kills her­self.

In the sil­ly Bea­t­les sketch, Paul McCart­ney plays Pyra­mus, John Lennon plays This­be, Ringo Starr plays the Lion and George Har­ri­son plays Moon­shine. When Lennon was asked why he took the role of the maid­en, he said, “Because if any­one likes dress­ing up more stu­pid than the rest, I enjoy it, you know. I was asked to do it because they thought I had the deep­er voice.”

via Brain­Pick­ings

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Peter Sell­ers Per­forms The Bea­t­les “A Hard Day’s Night” in Shake­speare­an Mode

Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour Sings Shakespeare’s Son­net 18

Shakespeare’s Satir­i­cal Son­net 130, As Read By Stephen Fry

Find Shake­speare’s Col­lect­ed Works in our Free eBooks and Free Audio Books Col­lec­tions

Down­load Shake­speare Cours­es from our Col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es

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The World’s Best Commercials from 2012–2013 Named at Cannes

in Television | June 26th, 2013

Grow­ing up, I used to watch those com­pi­la­tions of com­mer­cials tele­vi­sion net­works would throw togeth­er to cheap­ly fill air­time: Amer­i­ca’s Fun­ni­est Com­mer­cials, Coolest Com­mer­cials of the Year, The Most Inex­plic­a­ble For­eign Com­mer­cials You’ve Ever Seen. This speaks not only to how bor­ing a child­hood I must oth­er­wise have had, but to how many adver­tise­ments real­ly do, if looked at from the right angle, con­tain a ker­nel of cre­ative val­ue. The Cannes Lions Inter­na­tion­al Fes­ti­val of Cre­ativ­i­ty, the world adver­tis­ing indus­try’s biggest gath­er­ing, recent­ly anoint­ed a few of 2012–13’s com­mer­cials as worth watch­ing on pur­pose. You can watch 21 of them on Adweek’s web­site (though be warned that they unfor­giv­ably put each video on a sep­a­rate page). At the top you’ll find the first, Mel­bourne Metro’s train-safe­ty spot “Dumb Ways to Die.”

You may have encoun­tered it before, when it went mild­ly viral due to not only its sheer macabre cute­ness, but pre­sum­ably pub­lic shock at see­ing a tran­sit agency com­mis­sion some­thing enter­tain­ing. I’ve cer­tain­ly seen many a tin-eared pitch by the Metro in my own city, Los Ange­les. I’ve also seen stub­by Smart Fort­wos sprout up like mobile mush­rooms here, and the ad just above by Big­fish Film­pro­duc­tion tells me why by label­ing it “the ulti­mate city car” — and under­scor­ing the point by show­ing just how poor­ly it fares out in the wilder­ness. Below, you’ll find a com­mer­cial for a brand that hard­ly needs adver­tise­ment: Leica. It trades on the rich his­to­ry of the Leica cam­era, but tells it from the point of view of the cam­era itself, shoot­ing in the style of a clas­sic World War II film. (If it stirs you to learn more, con­sid­er read­ing “Can­did Cam­era,” Antho­ny Lane’s med­i­ta­tion on the Leica for the New York­er.)

H/T Kim L.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Lynch’s Sur­re­al Com­mer­cials

Fellini’s Fan­tas­tic TV Com­mer­cials

Sal­vador Dalí Goes Com­mer­cial: Three Strange Tele­vi­sion Ads

Dig­i­tal Archive of Vin­tage Tele­vi­sion Com­mer­cials

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Watch Monty Python’s “Summarize Proust Competition” on the 100th Anniversary of Swann’s Way

in Comedy, Literature, Television | June 25th, 2013

Mar­cel Proust’s Swan­n’s Way, the first vol­ume of In Search of Lost Time, appeared in 1913. This year, exact­ly a cen­tu­ry lat­er, Proust enthu­si­asts, both indi­vid­u­al­ly and insti­tu­tion­al­ly, have found all man­ner of ways to cel­e­brate. The Mor­gan Library and Muse­um, for instance, put on an exhi­bi­tion of “a fas­ci­nat­ing selec­tion of the author’s note­books, pre­lim­i­nary drafts, gal­ley-proofs, and oth­er doc­u­ments from the col­lec­tion of the Bib­lio­thèque nationale de France” — lit­er­ar­i­ly seri­ous stuff. For a Proust cen­ten­ni­al expe­ri­ence equal­ly lit­er­ary but far less seri­ous, why not watch the Mon­ty Python sketch above depict­ing the “All-Eng­land Sum­ma­rize Proust Com­pe­ti­tion”?

The sit­u­a­tion presents the chal­lenge you’d expect: con­tes­tants must relate, in fif­teen sec­onds, the entire­ty of Proust’s sev­en-vol­ume mas­ter­work, “once in a swim­suit, and once in evening dress.” The attempt of one hap­less par­tic­i­pant, por­trayed by Gra­ham Chap­man, runs as fol­lows: “Proust’s nov­el osten­si­bly tells of the irrev­o­ca­bil­i­ty of time lost, the for­fei­ture of inno­cence through expe­ri­ence, the rein­stall­ment of extra-tem­po­ral val­ues of time regained. Ulti­mate­ly, the nov­el is both opti­mistic and set with­in the con­text of a humane reli­gious expe­ri­ence, re-stat­ing as it does the con­cept of atem­po­ral­i­ty. In the first vol­ume, Swann, the fam­i­ly friend, vis­its…” But ah, too long. Watch the whole thing and find out if Michael Pal­in’s char­ac­ter fares any bet­ter at sum­ma­riz­ing the unsum­ma­riz­able, and, this hap­pen­ing in Mon­ty Python’s real­i­ty, how quick­ly it will all cease to mat­ter any­way.

Works by Proust can be found in our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

New Ani­mat­ed Film Tells the Life Sto­ry of Mon­ty Python’s Gra­ham Chap­man

John Cleese’s Eulo­gy for Gra­ham Chap­man: ‘Good Rid­dance, the Free-Load­ing Bas­tard, I Hope He Fries’

Mon­ty Python’s Best Phi­los­o­phy Sketch­es

Mon­ty Python Chan­nel Launch­es on Youtube

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Serge Gainsbourg & Brigitte Bardot Perform Outlaw-Inspired Love Song, ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ (1968)

in Music, Television | June 24th, 2013

In 1967, two icons of French pop­u­lar cul­ture went out on a date. It did­n’t go well. The usu­al­ly cool Serge Gains­bourg was so intim­i­dat­ed by Brigitte Bar­dot’s beau­ty that his noto­ri­ous charm failed him. Believ­ing he had blown his chance, Gains­bourg was sur­prised when Bar­dot tele­phoned and said he could make amends by writ­ing her “the most beau­ti­ful love song you can imag­ine.”

Gains­bourg respond­ed by writ­ing two songs. One was called “Bon­nie and Clyde.” It was inspired by that year’s hit film of the same name by Arthur Penn, star­ring Faye Dun­away and War­ren Beat­ty as the noto­ri­ous 1930s out­laws Bon­nie Park­er and Clyde Bar­row.

Gains­bourg com­posed the song around a French trans­la­tion of a poem Park­er wrote a few weeks before she and Bar­row were gunned down by law­men. (See footage from the scene of their death here.) It begins:

You’ve read the sto­ry of Jesse James
of how he lived and died.
If you’re still in need;
of some­thing to read,
here’s the sto­ry of Bon­nie and Clyde.

Now Bon­nie and Clyde are the Bar­row gang
I’m sure you all have read.
how they rob and steal;
and those who squeal,
are usu­al­ly found dying or dead.

There’s lots of untruths to these write-ups;
they’re not as ruth­less as that.
their nature is raw;
they hate all the law,
the stool pigeons, spot­ters and rats.

They call them cold-blood­ed killers
they say they are heart­less and mean.
But I say this with pride
that I once knew Clyde,
when he was hon­est and upright and clean.

But the law fooled around;
kept tak­ing him down,
and lock­ing him up in a cell.
Till he said to me;
“I’ll nev­er be free,
so I’ll meet a few of them in hell.”

The scene above, with Gains­bourg and Bar­dot per­form­ing the song, was broad­cast on The Brigitte Bar­dot Show in ear­ly 1968. The song was released lat­er that year on two albums: Ini­tials B.B. and Bon­nie and Clyde. The romance between Gains­bourg and Bar­dot was short. She returned to her sec­ond hus­band and he met actress Jane Birkin, with whom he record­ed the sec­ond song he wrote for Bar­dot: “Je t’aime…mois non plus,” which means “I Love You…Me Nei­ther.”

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James Gandolfini Shows Kinder, Softer, Gentler Side on Sesame Street (2002)

in Life, Television | June 23rd, 2013

When James Gan­dolfi­ni first broke into film, he played Vir­gil, a bru­tal woman-beat­ing mafioso (view­er beware), in the 1993 thriller, True Romance, writ­ten by Quentin Taran­ti­no. In Ter­mi­nal Veloc­i­ty, he was back at it again, play­ing a Russ­ian mob­ster. By the 1999, when The Sopra­nos first aired on HBO, Gan­dolfi­ni had per­fect­ed the mob­ster role. The explo­sive anger, the raw vio­lence, the col­or­ful lan­guage — he had it all down. Of course, this con­tributed to a good gag when Gan­dolfi­ni appeared on Sesame Street in 2002. Now the world had the chance to see the actor as it had­n’t seen him before. Meek, timid, and death­ly afraid of giant talk­ing veg­eta­bles. It’s an endear­ing lit­tle scene.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

See Ste­vie Won­der Play “Super­sti­tion” and Ban­ter with Grover on Sesame Street in 1973

Philip Glass Com­pos­es for Sesame Street (1979)

Mor­gan Free­man Teach­es Kids to Read in Vin­tage Elec­tric Com­pa­ny Footage from 1971

 

 

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The Late James Gandolfini, Star of The Sopranos, Appears on Inside the Actors Studio (2004)

in Life, Television | June 19th, 2013

We often write about the cur­rent “gold­en age” of high­ly craft­ed, the­mat­i­cal­ly lay­ered, tonal­ly var­ied tele­vi­sion dra­ma, espe­cial­ly its well-known recent high water marks in series like The Wire, Mad Men, and Break­ing Bad. But if you believe many tele­vi­sion crit­ics, this long and cap­ti­vat­ing wave first rose back in 1999 with David Chase’s ultra­mod­ern mob show The Sopra­nos. Noth­ing onscreen drove its six sea­sons quite so dynam­i­cal­ly as the star­ring per­for­mance from James Gan­dolfi­ni as put-upon mafia boss Tony Sopra­no. The actor’s sud­den pass­ing yes­ter­day will sure­ly prompt count­less Sopra­nos fans to watch the entire series again, and as many soon-to-be Sopra­nos fans to final­ly catch up with the tele­vi­sion mas­ter­piece they’d missed. Before you launch into either of those extend­ed view­ing ses­sions, though (or their nine-minute com­pres­sion), con­sid­er watch­ing Gan­dolfini’s 2004 appear­ance on Inside the Actors Stu­dio at the top of the post (with Span­ish sub­ti­tles).

Gan­dolfini’s con­ver­sa­tion with host James Lip­ton cov­ers his Ital­ian fam­i­ly, his ear­ly work on the stage, his first turn as a mob­ster in True Romance (which includ­ed an appear­ance in what Lip­ton calls the most vio­lent scene Quentin Taran­ti­no ever wrote), which oth­er big star’s father his own father bought tires from, the praise Roger Ebert gave him, how he sees point of view as cen­tral to the craft of act­ing, and how Tony Sopra­no first entered his life. Lip­ton asks Gan­dolfi­ni what he saw in the char­ac­ter that he felt he could play. “It’s a man in strug­gle,” the actor replies. “He does­n’t have a reli­gion. He does­n’t believe in the gov­ern­ment. He does­n’t believe in any­thing except his code of hon­or, and his code of hon­or’s all going to shit. He has noth­ing left, so he’s look­ing around — that search­ing I think a lot of Amer­i­ca does half the time.” Just above, you can watch one of many intense moments in the life of Tony Sopra­no, this one a domes­tic one-on-one with his wife Carmela, played by the also-acclaimed Edie Fal­co.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

James Gan­dolfi­ni Reads from Mau­rice Sendak’s Sto­ry Book “In The Night Kitchen”

The Nine Minute Sopra­nos

David Chase Speaks

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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See Stevie Wonder Play “Superstition” and Banter with Grover on Sesame Street in 1973

in Education, K-12, Music, Television | June 19th, 2013

In 1969, Sesame Street debuted and intro­duced America’s children—growing up in the midst of intense dis­putes over integration—to its urban sen­si­bil­i­ties and mul­ti­cul­tur­al cast, all dri­ven by the lat­est in child­hood devel­op­ment research and Jim Hen­son wiz­ardry. Despite the racial­ly frac­tious times of its ori­gin, the show was a suc­cess (although the state of Mis­sis­sip­pi briefly banned it in 1970), and its list of celebri­ty guests from every con­ceiv­able domain reflect­ed the diver­si­ty of its cast and hip­ness of its tone. With cer­tain excep­tions (par­tic­u­lar­ly in lat­er per­mu­ta­tions), it’s always been a show that knew how to gauge the tenor of the times and appeal broad­ly to both chil­dren and their weary, cap­tive guardians.

Being one of those weary cap­tives, I can’t say enough how grate­ful I’ve been when a rec­og­niz­able face inter­rupts Elmo’s bab­bling to sing a song or do a lit­tle com­e­dy bit, wink­ing at the par­ents all the while. These moments are few­er and far­ther between in the lat­er ages of the show, but in the sev­en­ties, Sesame Street had musi­cal rou­tines wor­thy of Sat­ur­day Night Live. Take, for exam­ple, the 1973 appear­ance of Ste­vie Won­der on the show. While I was born too late to catch this when it aired, there’s no doubt that the child me would find Won­der and his band as funky as the grown-up par­ent does. Check them out above doing “Super­sti­tion.”

Like most musi­cal artists who vis­it the show, Ste­vie also cooked some­thing espe­cial­ly for the kids. In the clip above, watch him do a lit­tle num­ber called “123 Sesame Street.” Won­der breaks out the talk box, a favorite gad­get of his (he turned Framp­ton on to it). The band gets so into it, you’d think this was a cut off their lat­est album, and the kids (the show nev­er used child actors) rock out like only sev­en­ties kids can. The show’s orig­i­nal theme song had its charm, but why the pro­duc­ers didn’t imme­di­ate­ly change it to this is beyond me. I’d pay vin­tage vinyl prices to get it on record.

Final­ly, in our last clip from Stevie’s won­der­ful guest spot, he takes a break from full-on funk and roll to give Grover a lit­tle scat les­son and show off his pipes. The great Frank Oz as the voice of Grover is, as always, a per­fect com­ic foil.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Philip Glass Com­pos­es for Sesame Street (1979)

Mon­ster­piece The­ater Presents Wait­ing for Elmo, Calls BS on Samuel Beck­ett

Jim Hen­son Pilots The Mup­pet Show with Adult Episode, “Sex and Vio­lence” (1975)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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