Bob Dassie 4/13/06 Part 1
Bob Dassie has been part of some of the most celebrated shows in the past few years: WeirDass, Dasariski, Trio, Quartet, Baby Wants Candy and more. He is a teacher and actor in Los Angeles, where he moved in 2001 after approximately a decade of doing long-form improv in Chicago.
JF: Where were you born?
BD: I was born in Elgin, IL, about twenty minutes outside Streamwood, IL, where I grew up.
JF: Is that a small town, or a larger town?
BD: It was a small town, but because of sprawl it’s become big. It’s about 45 minutes outside of Chicago. In the time of my parents, that was in the outskirts, but now it’s in the middle of [development].
JF: What were some influences on your sense of humor?
BD: It’s funny, because I was talking a little bit about this a little while ago with my wife. They started playing Benny Hill again on BBC America. I realized that I took a lot of bits from Benny Hill. Before that was the 3 Stooges. My brother and I used to emulate the 3 Stooges. The Marx Brothers were huge as well. Old albums. My Dad would play old Bill Cosby albums, and we had a comedy tape that had all kind of bits from Rodney Dangerfield and Buddy Hackett.
JF: You and your brother are known for being really good physical improvisers. Do you think acting out 3 Stooges bits effected that at all?
BD: Totally. Totally. When my brother and I started together, we were very physical, because that’s how we were outside of the theater. We would tackle each other and wrestle. We knew how to beat each up, or make it look like we were beating each other up without really hurting each other. It was kind of like self-trained stage combat.
JF: [laughs] Right.
BD: From there it just kept going to more object work stuff and all of that, but it was definitely emulating the 3 Stooges bits and slapping each other in the face, poking each other in the eye and what not that kept us physical.
JF: When did you know that you wanted to be a performer?
BD: I did my first improv thing in high school years ago. It was actually 6 years before I started taking classes. So, I guess I always had an attraction to it, but I guess it was probably after my first Second City class show in 1992 that I wanted to be a performer.
JF: How did you get involved with improv?
BD: There was the small incident in high school, but that was just an introduction to it. But what really got me back into it, or really into it, was my brother went to see Second City Northwest, which was the suburban Second City off-shoot, that was in Rolling Meadows for a while. Now it’s somewhere else.
I was in college in the time. He would tell me that after the improv sessions, they would say that ‘they teach classes. We should take a class.’ He said that several times over a year, so I said ‘alright, how about classes. If you have one on Saturdays, [I’ll do it.]’ I was going to school at DeKalb, so I would drive in for about two and a half hours to take classes on Saturdays, so that’s how my brother got me back into it.
JF: What were you majoring in at DeKalb, and what were some of your other interests?
BD: I was a Computer Science major and an Art minor. I had originally intended to go into computer graphics, but I got more into computer design actually, which is more like drafting on computers. The art was my creative outlet, I guess, my art minor.
JF: Were you painting or were you doing something else?
BD: Mostly drawing. The classes I took were shading and color pencils and charcoal, design classes, which is really cool. I did some painting, but not as much as drawing.
JF: What kind of impact did your classes at Second City make on you? Who taught them? Were there any people who you continued to work with later?
BD: Well, my brother and I were in the same improv group for 3 years. Second City Northwest was in the suburbs, so I didn’t see a lot of those people a lot later. There’s a guy named Jay Sukow who still around, who I took classes with and was in a group with called Wakamalaka. The suburbs were usually just a lot of people who thought they were funny who would take classes. It wasn’t until went downtown to Second City, but mostly Improv Olympic classes that I met a lot of people who are still in it today.
[Note from Bob: You asked about people that I started with at Second City Northwest. I forgot to mention that one of the first people I met was Liz Allen, who is a phenomenal person and a great improv teacher who has a book coming out soon co-written with Jimmy Carrane. I've known her since the beginning so I hate that I left her out.]
As far as the classes go, I had some good classes. My first improv teacher was Steven Colbert.
JF: Wow.
BD: Then I had Dave Razowski, Steve Carrell was my Level 3 teacher, and Level 4 was a guy named John Holston, who actually kind of drilled the idea of being an artist into my head. …Scratch that, John taught me the value of the art form in certain ways, I suppose.
That was at Second City Northwest. The Northwest classes were all great. I had great teachers, and I enjoyed them. My downtown experience was ok. I had some great teachers like Michael Gellman, then I had some teachers who weren’t …as great, let’s say. [laughs]
JF: What were Steven Colbert and Steve Carrell like as teachers?
BD: They were great. Steven Colbert put a lot of energy into this level 1 class of suburban kids, and he was incredibly patient with us. In hindsight, now that I teach, to see what he went through with us, he was incredibly patient, and tried to push us in the right direction.
Steve Carrell, I remember him as being very respectful of what we did on stage. He was our Level 3 teacher. I can’t remember what the emphasis was at that time, but he was really great. He was always on time and kept us at it. So, I guess the short answer would be: he kept our passion for it, or helped build our passion for it. They both did. They all did.
JF: What were some memorable moments from your classes during Second City and what were some lessons that stuck with you?
BD: Ok, I’ll tell this one, because it’s a very bad example. One teacher at Second City downtown, I don’t know where she is, she or he is [laughs] now, had us run around the room, play follow the leader through Piper’s Alley, then we came back, got into the class, and we were told to lay down on the floor. The lights were dimmed and the door was shut, and we all basically passed out and meditated. That was an improv class. There might have been some sort of lesson there, but all I could think was ‘I can’t believe I’m paying for this.’
But memorable stuff, John Holson in Second City Northwest pushed me to write a bunch of Second City skits. And we did a show at Second City Northwest with this group called Wakamalaka. I like to think we stayed around long enough our with our Monday night show to be allowed to do a Second City Northwest show. We did a Best of Second City Northwest. We were not Second City performers, but we were a student group doing a Best of Second City show, which was incredibly flattering that we were given that responsibility and also incredibly rewarding. When I first started classes, they were doing ‘Klu Klux Clam Bake’ with Steven Colbert, Amy Sidaris, Mitch Rouse, I think was in that one, and Paul Dinello, and Ian Gomez. I don’t know if they were all in Klu Klux Clam Bake, but they were all onstage when we were taking classes. So, we would go see them perform, then a year later we were doing some of their material, which like I said was incredibly challenging and rewarding and a blast, a blast.
JF: When did you move to Chicago?
BD: I moved to Chicago in 93, I think. The year after I got out of college, and I was taking classes at the IO and Second City downtown at the time.
JF: When did you start performing on a regular basis?
BD: Well, back then there were so few nights to perform. I guess when we were doing the Second City Northwest show with Wakamalaka. We did that every Monday night for like 6 months, then we did our student show for about 4 months. …You know what, I’ll just give you a date. How about in 93 I think I was performing regularly.
JF: Was that on an IO Harold team?
BD: Yeah, the first Harold team I was on was called the Lost Yetis.
JF: That was the first one you were on? I’ve heard about that team. My impression was the first team you got on, people got mixed up a lot, then you’re put on 5 or 6 teams before you’re put on one that lasts.
BD: You know, there were two reasons why that didn’t happen to us. I think our team gelled really quickly, because the original members were two roommates, me and my brother, and a couple other people. So, we just really gelled together and Charna didn’t break us up. We did go through some transitions over time. We added Katie Roberts and Stephanie Weir later. But I think Lost Yetis was around 3 years to the day, so I was on the same Harold team for 3 years. At that time, 3 years seemed to be a long time, but now I know Harold teams in Chicago have been around a lot longer than that, for better or worse or whatever.
JF: What was it like being on the Lost Yetis at that time in Chicago?
BD: It was really cool. This was when the Family was performing upstairs at the Wrigleyside, so we were watching [Matt] Besser, Ian Roberts, and who else, Adam McKay, Ali Faranakian. That’s four, who else was on the Family…
JF: Neil Flynn.
BD: Oh yeah, Neil Flynn. Thank you. There was one more, wasn’t there?
JF: Miles Stroth.
BD: Thank you. [laughs] How could I forget Miles? Anyways, so we watched them all the time. They were a great inspiration, doing this wonderful thing called long-form. That was one of the reasons we started doing IO. John Holson from Second City was like ‘if you like this sketch stuff we’re doing, you should check out Del Close at the IO.’ So, we saw a show there and we didn’t understand. I remember my first Harold because I was so confused. They did callbacks and stuff. It was like ‘I guess I like it, but what is it?’ So, we saw the Family do this thing called the Harold and they were doing 3 Mad Rituals at the time. It was just awesome. They were also doing the Deconstruction and the Movie, so that was very inspirational.
Meanwhile, the theater was so small there were only 6 or 9 teams on the schedule, as opposed to the 40 now. We were performing like once a month on Thursday. The way it was, was there was an older team, [who would perform with us] called Mr. Blonde, that my buddy Craig Cackowski was on. That wasn’t his first team. That was a team he had stepped onto. It was intimidating because the older generation, well lets say the kids that were there earlier than us, would watch our shows and we would then watch their shows. So, there was a nice friendly competition at the time.
JF: Where were you born?
BD: I was born in Elgin, IL, about twenty minutes outside Streamwood, IL, where I grew up.
JF: Is that a small town, or a larger town?
BD: It was a small town, but because of sprawl it’s become big. It’s about 45 minutes outside of Chicago. In the time of my parents, that was in the outskirts, but now it’s in the middle of [development].
JF: What were some influences on your sense of humor?
BD: It’s funny, because I was talking a little bit about this a little while ago with my wife. They started playing Benny Hill again on BBC America. I realized that I took a lot of bits from Benny Hill. Before that was the 3 Stooges. My brother and I used to emulate the 3 Stooges. The Marx Brothers were huge as well. Old albums. My Dad would play old Bill Cosby albums, and we had a comedy tape that had all kind of bits from Rodney Dangerfield and Buddy Hackett.
JF: You and your brother are known for being really good physical improvisers. Do you think acting out 3 Stooges bits effected that at all?
BD: Totally. Totally. When my brother and I started together, we were very physical, because that’s how we were outside of the theater. We would tackle each other and wrestle. We knew how to beat each up, or make it look like we were beating each other up without really hurting each other. It was kind of like self-trained stage combat.
JF: [laughs] Right.
BD: From there it just kept going to more object work stuff and all of that, but it was definitely emulating the 3 Stooges bits and slapping each other in the face, poking each other in the eye and what not that kept us physical.
JF: When did you know that you wanted to be a performer?
BD: I did my first improv thing in high school years ago. It was actually 6 years before I started taking classes. So, I guess I always had an attraction to it, but I guess it was probably after my first Second City class show in 1992 that I wanted to be a performer.
JF: How did you get involved with improv?
BD: There was the small incident in high school, but that was just an introduction to it. But what really got me back into it, or really into it, was my brother went to see Second City Northwest, which was the suburban Second City off-shoot, that was in Rolling Meadows for a while. Now it’s somewhere else.
I was in college in the time. He would tell me that after the improv sessions, they would say that ‘they teach classes. We should take a class.’ He said that several times over a year, so I said ‘alright, how about classes. If you have one on Saturdays, [I’ll do it.]’ I was going to school at DeKalb, so I would drive in for about two and a half hours to take classes on Saturdays, so that’s how my brother got me back into it.
JF: What were you majoring in at DeKalb, and what were some of your other interests?
BD: I was a Computer Science major and an Art minor. I had originally intended to go into computer graphics, but I got more into computer design actually, which is more like drafting on computers. The art was my creative outlet, I guess, my art minor.
JF: Were you painting or were you doing something else?
BD: Mostly drawing. The classes I took were shading and color pencils and charcoal, design classes, which is really cool. I did some painting, but not as much as drawing.
JF: What kind of impact did your classes at Second City make on you? Who taught them? Were there any people who you continued to work with later?
BD: Well, my brother and I were in the same improv group for 3 years. Second City Northwest was in the suburbs, so I didn’t see a lot of those people a lot later. There’s a guy named Jay Sukow who still around, who I took classes with and was in a group with called Wakamalaka. The suburbs were usually just a lot of people who thought they were funny who would take classes. It wasn’t until went downtown to Second City, but mostly Improv Olympic classes that I met a lot of people who are still in it today.
[Note from Bob: You asked about people that I started with at Second City Northwest. I forgot to mention that one of the first people I met was Liz Allen, who is a phenomenal person and a great improv teacher who has a book coming out soon co-written with Jimmy Carrane. I've known her since the beginning so I hate that I left her out.]
As far as the classes go, I had some good classes. My first improv teacher was Steven Colbert.
JF: Wow.
BD: Then I had Dave Razowski, Steve Carrell was my Level 3 teacher, and Level 4 was a guy named John Holston, who actually kind of drilled the idea of being an artist into my head. …Scratch that, John taught me the value of the art form in certain ways, I suppose.
That was at Second City Northwest. The Northwest classes were all great. I had great teachers, and I enjoyed them. My downtown experience was ok. I had some great teachers like Michael Gellman, then I had some teachers who weren’t …as great, let’s say. [laughs]
JF: What were Steven Colbert and Steve Carrell like as teachers?
BD: They were great. Steven Colbert put a lot of energy into this level 1 class of suburban kids, and he was incredibly patient with us. In hindsight, now that I teach, to see what he went through with us, he was incredibly patient, and tried to push us in the right direction.
Steve Carrell, I remember him as being very respectful of what we did on stage. He was our Level 3 teacher. I can’t remember what the emphasis was at that time, but he was really great. He was always on time and kept us at it. So, I guess the short answer would be: he kept our passion for it, or helped build our passion for it. They both did. They all did.
JF: What were some memorable moments from your classes during Second City and what were some lessons that stuck with you?
BD: Ok, I’ll tell this one, because it’s a very bad example. One teacher at Second City downtown, I don’t know where she is, she or he is [laughs] now, had us run around the room, play follow the leader through Piper’s Alley, then we came back, got into the class, and we were told to lay down on the floor. The lights were dimmed and the door was shut, and we all basically passed out and meditated. That was an improv class. There might have been some sort of lesson there, but all I could think was ‘I can’t believe I’m paying for this.’
But memorable stuff, John Holson in Second City Northwest pushed me to write a bunch of Second City skits. And we did a show at Second City Northwest with this group called Wakamalaka. I like to think we stayed around long enough our with our Monday night show to be allowed to do a Second City Northwest show. We did a Best of Second City Northwest. We were not Second City performers, but we were a student group doing a Best of Second City show, which was incredibly flattering that we were given that responsibility and also incredibly rewarding. When I first started classes, they were doing ‘Klu Klux Clam Bake’ with Steven Colbert, Amy Sidaris, Mitch Rouse, I think was in that one, and Paul Dinello, and Ian Gomez. I don’t know if they were all in Klu Klux Clam Bake, but they were all onstage when we were taking classes. So, we would go see them perform, then a year later we were doing some of their material, which like I said was incredibly challenging and rewarding and a blast, a blast.
JF: When did you move to Chicago?
BD: I moved to Chicago in 93, I think. The year after I got out of college, and I was taking classes at the IO and Second City downtown at the time.
JF: When did you start performing on a regular basis?
BD: Well, back then there were so few nights to perform. I guess when we were doing the Second City Northwest show with Wakamalaka. We did that every Monday night for like 6 months, then we did our student show for about 4 months. …You know what, I’ll just give you a date. How about in 93 I think I was performing regularly.
JF: Was that on an IO Harold team?
BD: Yeah, the first Harold team I was on was called the Lost Yetis.
JF: That was the first one you were on? I’ve heard about that team. My impression was the first team you got on, people got mixed up a lot, then you’re put on 5 or 6 teams before you’re put on one that lasts.
BD: You know, there were two reasons why that didn’t happen to us. I think our team gelled really quickly, because the original members were two roommates, me and my brother, and a couple other people. So, we just really gelled together and Charna didn’t break us up. We did go through some transitions over time. We added Katie Roberts and Stephanie Weir later. But I think Lost Yetis was around 3 years to the day, so I was on the same Harold team for 3 years. At that time, 3 years seemed to be a long time, but now I know Harold teams in Chicago have been around a lot longer than that, for better or worse or whatever.
JF: What was it like being on the Lost Yetis at that time in Chicago?
BD: It was really cool. This was when the Family was performing upstairs at the Wrigleyside, so we were watching [Matt] Besser, Ian Roberts, and who else, Adam McKay, Ali Faranakian. That’s four, who else was on the Family…
JF: Neil Flynn.
BD: Oh yeah, Neil Flynn. Thank you. There was one more, wasn’t there?
JF: Miles Stroth.
BD: Thank you. [laughs] How could I forget Miles? Anyways, so we watched them all the time. They were a great inspiration, doing this wonderful thing called long-form. That was one of the reasons we started doing IO. John Holson from Second City was like ‘if you like this sketch stuff we’re doing, you should check out Del Close at the IO.’ So, we saw a show there and we didn’t understand. I remember my first Harold because I was so confused. They did callbacks and stuff. It was like ‘I guess I like it, but what is it?’ So, we saw the Family do this thing called the Harold and they were doing 3 Mad Rituals at the time. It was just awesome. They were also doing the Deconstruction and the Movie, so that was very inspirational.
Meanwhile, the theater was so small there were only 6 or 9 teams on the schedule, as opposed to the 40 now. We were performing like once a month on Thursday. The way it was, was there was an older team, [who would perform with us] called Mr. Blonde, that my buddy Craig Cackowski was on. That wasn’t his first team. That was a team he had stepped onto. It was intimidating because the older generation, well lets say the kids that were there earlier than us, would watch our shows and we would then watch their shows. So, there was a nice friendly competition at the time.
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