Podcast Pontification

Mark Colomb, host of the Poor Choices Podcast, had me on his show recently.  Hear my radio-friendly voice pontificate on filmmaking, news and making money here.

Mark’s interviewed most of Chicago’s improv elite, so it’s worth your while to dig through his archives to hear tales of failure and success.  Why not subscribe on iTunes?

A Bad Show: The End of the World

Ever make eye contact with your teammates after a bad show?  It looks like everyone failed an audition while getting dumped by their lover and having their dog euthanized simultaneously.

Holy.  Fuck.

Psychology Today says disappointment is the third most-felt emotion, after love and regret.  Makes sense.  We love improv, we regret moves we made or didn’t make in a show, and we feel disappointed after a bad performance.

But damn, people, this is part of the gig.  Every performer has bombed.  Every performer.  You will bomb.  It’s natural.  It happens.  It’s part of an improviser’s life cycle.  I once spent a scene debating the merits of the Philadelphia Eagles receiving corps to a stone-silent audience.  And my scene partner was probably like, “What the hell just got into him?  And why are we five receivers deep right now?”

We are so relentlessly hard on ourselves in this business.  It would be easier to take if we were equally proud when we succeed.  In my experience, the success last a day at most.  The failures haunt you.

Here’s how I cope with a bad show…

1) Allow the disappointment and anger and blame to run rampant for just a moment.  Blame the audience.  Blame the burrito you ate right before the show.  Blame your team.  Blame your coach.  Blame the theater.  Blame the planet.  Blame yourself.

2) Slam the brakes on that nonsense.  It’s improv.  It’s gone.  Gone.  Your hissy fit can’t fix the past.  Exhale.  Inhale.  Exhale.

3) Look at your contribution.  How did this show feel, compared to those shows where you felt great?  Did you say or do something unusual that affected your subsequent performance?  Audiences will always forgive a weird line or a fumbled pronunciation or a nonsensical move.  If you let a “mistake” get in your head, you’re screwing yourself.

4) Get back to basics.  Most of the time, you failed because you missed something rudimentary.  Did you listen?  Were you present in the moment?  Did you make an emotional character choice?  Did you chase the show or let it come to you?  Remind yourself of the simple things.  You can do them.  You’ll do them again.  You’ll succeed.

5) Don’t give up.  I’ve played with hundreds (thousands?) of improvisers in classes.  All but a few dozen gave up at some point.  No one can make you quit except you.  And this bad show is not the end of your career.  I promise.

In the NBA playoffs, Michael Jordan made nine game winning or tying shots.  He also missed nine.  That’s 50%, baby.  If I told you that the success of all your shows rested on your shoulders, and you’d fail at half of them, would you perform?  People far smarter, funnier and more talented than you have left a bloody trail of failure on the same stages you’re on. And if you don’t want to take the shot, someone else will.

Stand up.  Dust yourself off.  Correct repeated mistakes.  Try again.  Remember why you love this.  There’s always another audience waiting.

Why Everything You’ve Learned Makes You a Worse Improviser

Adults are generally good at one thing: Repeating patterns.

We spend our whole lives learning what patterns “work.”  You learn that eating vegetables and exercising helps you lose weight.  You learn how to drive a car from Point A to Point B.  You can follow the directions of a recipe.  You can read a map.

Adults also repeat faulty patterns.  We date the same kinds of toxic people.  We develop unhealthy habits.  We fall back on things that feel good, but aren’t necessarily good for us.

To succeed in improv (whatever that means), there will be times we use that adult part of our brains.  We will follow a pattern because we’ve had success with that kind of scene before.  We will instinctively help lift a teammate trying to fly because that’s what we’re taught.  When two people sit down at a restaurant, it seems like some sort of improv law that a waiter will show up.  (Why does no restaurant scene begin in the middle or end of the meal?)

I’m convinced we’re shooting ourselves in the foot here.

Scope this article from LifeHacker about “Beginner’s Luck.”  It suggests that a novice can overtake a master because they haven’t been preconditioned to think a certain way.

In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.  – Badass Buddhist Monk

I know I walk into so many scenes thinking, “I’m going to play this kind of character or set up this kind of scenario.”  And so often, I walk off the stage thinking, “What the hell just happened?”  I’ve been studying improv for the better part of a decade.  Shouldn’t I be immune to that?  Or have I let myself take all the lessons too deeply to heart?  Am I now just a robot spitting back variations on clichéd scenes?

“You must unlearn what you have learned.” — Badass Yoda

Tell a kid to play.  What does he do?  Whatever he wants.  Now, tell an adult to play.  He’ll ask you why.  He’ll ask you what you want him to do.  He’ll ask you what the rules are.  That’s how we’ve been conditioned to think.  We’ve become so terrified of failure that we virtually eliminate the possibility of success.

Silly Putty was a mistake.  Potato chips were created as an act of revenge.  Post-It Notes were the result of a failure.  More than likely, our greatest inventions came from someone thinking, “What if…?”  But your bosses are more likely to stick you in a room and say, “Come up with a solution to this problem.”  Chances are, they’re not looking for an idea with no track record of success.  They’re ignoring that such an original idea also has no track record for failure.

Most businesses, despite being founded on a creative idea, are absolutely frightened of creativity.  It represents the possibility of loss.  It’s also the only way to survive, but that gets overlooked.

This article from “Psychology Today” talks about the childlike nature of genius, specifically Picasso.

“I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.” — Badass Pablo Picasso

Spend enough time around kids and you’ll hear the same question repeated over and over: “Why?”  Spend enough time around those kids’ parents and you’ll see them become exhausted with the question.  Eventually the answer becomes “Because.”  (In Spanish, the words for “why” and “because” are virtually the same – “Por qué” and “porque.”)

“Because” is not an answer to anything.  It’s a dead-end to thinking.  Ask a child why the sky is blue and no two children will answer the same way.  Ask an adult and they’ll either shrug their shoulders or toss off a scientific explanation.  Which is more fun to listen to?

I don’t argue about the necessity for classes in improv.  One should be well-versed in its history and forms and heroes.  But we don’t really take the next step until we strike out on our own path, think our own way and start behaving like children.

Hell, Del Close started teaching long-form improv on the notion that people would enjoy watching creation as much as a polished sketch show created using the same process.  What’s the next evolution of this artform?  Probably some kid who’s seen everything up until now and sees something the rest of us can’t.  Let’s hope he can ignore his training long enough to follow his heart.

Pre-Game Rituals

What do you do before a show?

Most improvisers chat and have a beer or two.  But some teams have specific rituals that lead up to a performance.  Turns out, those habits can put us in the proper mindset to succeed.

When you make something a habit, it moves from the conscious part of your brain (the pre-frontal cortex), to a less conscious part (the basil ganglia).

That less conscious part regulates stuff like breathing and swallowing.  It’s stuff you do without thinking.  Whether that’s smoking a cigarette after a meal or running five miles every morning or driving to work, the habit requires little thought.  You’ve drilled it so many times, you don’t think.

Ever wonder why you keep making the same kind of mistakes on stage?  They’ve become a habit.  To reverse that, you have to make the unconscious act conscious, change it, then make it a habit.

This article from “Psychology Today” talks more about how your brain acts when you make something a habit.  It also makes a compelling argument that our pre-show rituals can set us up to perform better on stage.

With Whiskey Rebellion, we huddled before every show and one person was designated the “Creedmaster.”  We’d close our eyes and listen to the Creedmaster as he spoke whatever words of encouragement or love or support or inspiration he had.  When the creed was finished, we’d be ready to play – unified in spirit.

I can also think of a particularly bad show one of my teams had at an improv festival.  Usually, a festival atmosphere heightens any team rituals you have.  The environment and stage are unfamiliar, so you cling more tightly to your friends.  But before one festival performance, we were backstage in some sort of carpentry workshop.  No matter how much I tried to get us to focus on one another, my friends were more concerned with doing bits with screwdrivers or hammers or saws.  We weren’t remotely close to our normal pre-show habits.  And the show was abysmal.  Maybe it’s too much to blame a bad show on scatterbrained pre-show hijinks, but I don’t think it’s that far-fetched.

If you’re lucky enough to catch a TJ & Dave show at iO Chicago, pay attention to what those guys do before a show.  TJ always stretches in the hallway.  Then Dave arrives.  They say something to each other and smile.  They take the stage to one of two songs (this or this).  They hit the stage before the song ends and they wait patiently for the song to finish.  TJ shields the light from his eyes and does a sweep of the audience, looking and smiling at the sell-out crowd.  They don’t bother getting a suggestion.  There’s a brief intro and then they say, “Trust us, this is all made up.”  The lights go down, and when they come up, they just look at each other, looking for a clue to start the show.  So it begins.  Week in, week out.

Because that show usually sells out, I haven’t seen it in a while, but when I do catch it, I notice those pre-show habits haven’t changed in years.  They are consistently one of the best shows available in Chicago.

This is not to say that getting your team to chant a thing or meditate or set a cat on fire each week will suddenly make you great.  But having team rituals and individual pre-show habits are things you can do without thinking.  That frees up the “thinking” part of your brain to play.

In time, you may get so good at improvising that your “habit” becomes excellent scenework.  Because those really good improvisers never really look like they’re trying, do they?  They’re not.  Habits take care of themselves.

Cleese on Creativity

John Cleese is a comedy god.  He’s also incredibly smart.  If he were writing this blog, we’d all be better off.  But we have the next best thing.  More than 30 minutes of Mr. Cleese discussing creativity.

This is all gold, but if you’re pressed for time, here are the highlights…

* The most creative people were able to generate a “childlike” mood of play (play for play’s sake).

* Creativity has nothing to do with IQ.

* When Alfred Hitchcock and his co-writer would hit a roadblock, Hitch would tell a random story.  This enraged his co-writer, but Hitchcock knew the alternative was working under pressure.  By alleviating the pressure, the solution presented itself.

* Once we’ve made a decision, we are only efficient when we go through with it decisively.  (Once you’ve made the discovery, act.  Don’t keep digging.)

* To be creative, you need five things:  1) Space.  2) Time.  3)  Time.  4)  Confidence.  5)  Humor.

* The most creative people are willing to play with a problem longer before trying to solve it.

* You cannot be playful if you’re frightened that moving in some direction (any direction) may be wrong.

* If you are in a group with someone who makes you feel defensive, you lose your ability to play.

* Always make sure your “play friends” are people you like and trust.

* When you’re being creative, nothing is wrong.  There’s no such thing as a mistake.

* It doesn’t matter if the steps you take are wrong.  If they help you arrive at the “right” conclusion, anything will work.

… and I had no idea I could be more in awe of John Cleese.  That dude has his game down tight.

Thank you, Hiccup

In a ButchMAX rehearsal last night, I was in the middle of a scene with Karisa Bruin.

She hiccuped.

Suddenly, everything I’d established in the scene didn’t matter.  All that mattered was that hiccup.  ”Are you drunk?” I asked.  Savvy improviser that she is, Karisa indeed played drunk while denying it.

After the scene, I kept thinking how my focus went from inward (“What am I going to say/do next?”) to outward (“What did my scene partner just do and how do I react to that?”).

And then I realized how much time I’ve been spending ignoring my fellow players.  This art form is so complicated if you make it.  It can also be simple.  Little kids don’t have trouble playing make-believe.  Adults do.

It took a hiccup to turn my attention completely toward my partner.

From now on, I hope I treat every line, every movement and every facial expression like a hiccup.

Got an improv question?  E-mail me at boilingpointimprov[at]gmail.com

When it Rains, it Pours

This week, I had a surge of creativity.  I don’t know that you can generate that out of nowhere.  Even the greats struggle with writer’s block or a lack of ideas.  I find I’m most creative when I’m exposed to things I feel strongly about.  Tapping into that emotional center triggers a natural response.  Then it’s a matter of harnessing the response to create something.

Improvisers have tons of ideas.  Tons.  But unless we’re performing, we often sit on them.  In some cases, even assigning a creative task to an improviser can shut down their brains.  What gives?

This week, I tried to remove the shackles from my brain.  When I had an idea, I’d execute it on video.  Added challenge: I’d have to film myself, and I had no other actors available, since I did this during free time at work.

I began by trying to ride a meme.  Last week, Marilyn Hagerty’s gushing review of the Olive Garden in the Grand Forks Herald became a viral sensation.  To turn it into a video, I stole this guy’s idea when he read “Where the Wild Things Are” as Christopher Walken.  I thought I’d try my Ian McKellen impression, reading the review.

I got 10,000 views in two days.  Clearly, I was on to something.  But the general consensus in the comments is that my impression is either “awful” or “annoying.”  Thanks, YouTube commenters.

The next day, I read an article about the psyche of internet trolls.  So I decided to make this short video summing it all up.

It seemed a more universal theme, but it proved far less popular.  Only 144 views so far.

The next day, the Discovery Channel fired Bear Grylls from “Man vs. Wild.”  I figured part of my Olive Garden video’s success was due to its combination of currency and a (fake) celebrity factor.  So I tried to recreate the success with this video.

It proved the second most popular video I’d create all week.  Nearly 1,000 views to date.  Celebrity and currency seemed to be the keys to YouTube success.

I happened to hear some dubstep music online, and I was reminded how much I hate it.  The stuff makes my clinch my fists.  It’s just awful.  So I tried portraying dubstep kingpin Skrillex, explaining his music to his mother.

Only 124 views so far.  Clearly, I’m not Skrillex.  His fans would see that from the thumbnail.  While this might be my favorite of the videos I did this week, it was more about scratching an itch than fishing for views.

So for my final video of the week, I tried copying the exact same formula from the first video.  A big viral story this week was about how a cameraman stepped on an earless baby bunny and killed it.  So I busted out an Owen Wilson impression and tried reading my way through that.

And it was my least popular video of the week.  Just 110 views.

What began as inspiration turned into an experiment to land views.  So now I can forgive SNL for going back to the well over and over and over again.  You want to recreate the magic of the first time that character appeared.  But it never happens.

Also this week, fellow Chicago improvisers The Katydids released a video about how to live like Beyonce.  It got picked up by the Huffington Post and MTV.com.  39,000 views so far.  My initial reaction?  Jealousy.  My secondary reaction?  Good for them.  They worked hard and there’s no finite amount of success in the world.  We can all share the good fortune.  And they bothered to… you know… get a cameraman and shoot in a bunch of locations.  Their effort was rewarded.

And my goofy ideas were seen by 15,000 people this week.  Probably a bigger audience than have seen my five years of improv performances combined.  I should celebrate that opportunity.  Ten people in Guam watched my videos.  Twenty-two in Pakistan.  Two views from Iraq.  You’re welcome, Planet Earth!

Back to the roundabout point of this entry.  When I did all this, it was a conscious effort to get the ideas out of my head and into the world.  It’s the real-life equivalent of a walk-on in a scene.  You have the impulse, you act on it.  No hesitation.  Why can we do that in shows, but not in other artistic pursuits?

Also, if you can strike a nerve, you can actually make money on YouTube.  For some completely inexplicable reason this jag-nozzle makes a million dollars a year through YouTube.  I want that job.  But I don’t want to be a jag-nozzle.

For the sheer amount of creativity bursting in Chicago, we don’t produce that much permanent media.  That’s what happens when you go to New York or LA.  I’m trying to change that.

If you have an idea, force yourself to follow through.  Yes, it will be difficult.  Yes, you will fail along the way.  Yes, you will have to get around obstacles.  But when it’s done, you have something to add to your resume.  No one will hire you based on an awesome idea you had and forgot.

Fight the impulse to be lazy.  Create.

Got an improv question?  E-mail me at boilingpointimprov[at]gmail.com