December 16th, 1996
Day Off
It's my only day off, why am I talking to you?
Hello
hello.
Done
There are two buzzers that go off in my head when I direct. One is "queer" and the other
is "done". Examples of queer moments are things like .......now it's hard to think of one.....
like a game show parody would probably be queer, or a sitcom style, or a commercial
parody, or when we use the audience in a "too much of a children's theatre" way.
It's just queer. Now strongly declared queer is o.k. by me......as long as the audience
knows that we know we're being that way.
Done is the other one. It's a bit more tricky. Only seven jokes, lemme tell ya. When one
is putting together a Revue format show, one has to take into account every other
sketch comedy show that has been on t.v., in the movies, at Second City itself, and
anywhere else in Chicago. Second City Monty Python Saturday Night Live The State
Mr. Show Your Show of Shows Laugh In Level 5 Carol Burnett Limbo Land Kids in the Hall
Dana Carvey Exit 57 Fridays National Lampoon Radio Hour The Lemmings Improv Olympic
The Annoyance Saturday Night Special and on and on and on and on and Jesus Christ.
I wish I had a penny for every time I've heard, "That was done on ........" Now given this
I have a problem. I haven't watched television, for the most part, in years. It just keeps
getting harder and harder because we keep getting more and more mediated. Thank God
for people in the cast that keep up on this shit. They usually have to tell me. Mitch Rouse
was good for that on Exit 57. Scot Adsit and Jim Zulevic are good at it with this show.
Saturday Night Live
So we're backstage Saturday Night between shows and someone has Saturday Night Live on.
There's two reasons why I haven't seen SNL in quite a few years.
I'm usually working and it feels like being at work (watching comedy scenes). One of the
reasons is not because I think the show is bad. I don't know if the show is bad.......I haven't
seen it. Well it's on the other night and we're getting ready to go on stage and high in the
first act of our show is a new scene called NPR. Right after Craig Taylor calls places
SNL's recurring scene NPR comes on and I hadn't heard about it 'til right then. I didn't even
have time to actually watch it but Rachel taped it so we can see if we're doing the same
stuff. I'll find out tommorrow at rehearsal.....if it's too close, I'll cut it. Sometimes
it's not even a particular scene that's been done, but a type of scene or a genre. I wouldn't want to do a talk show parody or a song parody or a celebrity parody at this point....(or even
ten years ago, to be honest). It's too easy and not challenging and way too done. That was
part of Exit 57's credo, and I was happy for that.
Christmas Party
So tonight is Second City's Christmas Party and I'm looking forward to that. I'll probably
leave it and go do Armando Diaz Experience. It's a chance to improvise. If you watch a million
improv scenes a week and don't have an opportunity to improvise one yourself, it's a drag.
That's why I like doing Armando. I also want to let my students see me fuck up or succeed,
just as they do. I can point to myself as an example when I teach.
So we have 5 new scenes in the show, one of them shaky. I feel fine but just a tad bit
behind.
Go to.....
