Matt Besser 11/16/06 Part 1
Matt Besser studied long-form improvisation at the Improv Olympic in Chicago, where he performed with the heralded team The Family. He is a founding member of the Upright Citizens Brigade, with whom he has established improv theaters and training centers in New York and Los Angeles. He has appeared on Comedy Central as a writer and performer on the Upright Citizens Brigade television show, as an improviser on Bravo's ASSSSSCAT special, and on many other programs. He currently lives in Los Angeles.
JF: Where were you born?
MB: I was born and raised in Little Rock, AK.
JF: What were some early influences on your sense of humor?
MB: Early ones? There was a disc jockey called Craig O'Neil in our town who did prank calls, just very simple prank calls, but I was blown away by the fact that adults could do prank calls, that was how someone made their living. I guess as I started to learn more about comedy, just all the ones that everyone else says: Lenny Bruce, Andy Kaulifman, Steven Martin.
JF: Lenny Bruce and Andy Kaulifman are kind of people who tried to break boundaries or instigate people a bit. Is that something that has cropped up in your own comedy?
MB: Maybe those two in particular, they're a little off the mainstream, instead of something ubiquietous like Steve Martin or Woody Allen. So, learning and discovering their work is more like finding out about punk rock. Not only is it a cool thing, but not a lot of people know about it, so it feels more special. It used to be really hard to find Andy Kaulifman stuff, so when you found it in a video store somehow it was a really neat thing to have. Lenny Bruce was next to impossible to find.
But your question was does it crop up in my own work. Yeah, definitely. When we started UCB, we liked that Andy Kaulifman thing of screwing with the audience. We enjoyed it when a good part of the audience wasn't in on the joke, and we hoped that the other part of the audience, who was in on the joke, would notice that the other part of the audience wasn't in on the joke and would enjoy that aspect of the performance as well. Now, we're old men and doing it. I just got off stage from doing that. Did you see the show in the [Del Close 2006] marathon?
JF: Yeah.
MB: We just screwed around on a mobile scooter cooler, and had chugging contests. It didn't look like improv at all. I'm sure a lot of people out there hated it, and were going 'This isn't improv. These people are just screwing around,' but I think we enjoy those people walking out and being perturbed by it, as much as we're looking to make people laugh by jokes or scenes. It might be immature, but I think that's a thing we all have in common. We all gain enjoyment from fucking with people beyond the comedy.
JF: How did you get involved with improv?
MB: [laughs] Well, I read Walsh's interview, so people are going to know this from Walsh's, but I went to Improv Olympic and saw Chris Farley and who else? Tim Meadows was in that group. They just put on an amazing show. There was a group called Blue Velveeta that did a perfect Harold. I couldn't believe stuff that people could make up stuff, that they were saying on the spot. I actually thought they were cheating. I wanted to know how they did what they did. It really seemed like magic happening. After seeing that show, I wanted to get involved and I did.
JF: What were the early classes like?
MB: At Improv Olympic?
JF: Yeah.
MB: I took from many different schools. In fact, I took from every different school in Chicago, Player's Workshop, Improv Olympic, The Annoyance, Second City, but I didn't learn very much in years of years of classes except for from a very few people, like Mick Napier from the Annoyance. The biggest thing I learned from him was getting out of your head. I think that's a big hurdle for a lot of improvisers, especially ones that come from another backround like stand-up, like I did, where you're used to getting on stage with all the jokes ready, and not used to working with other people. It's a whole different process with your brain. It definitely took me a while. I did have a few other good teachers. A lot of teachers were a waste of time.
Eventually, everyone would get to Del and that was eye opening. He gave us techniques for improvising that were tangible, not just philosophical. I got so much stuff that was philosophical. You would do scenes and someone would be like 'that was that good' or 'that wasn't good.' I didn't have anything to latch onto until I got to Improv Olympic, and Del in particular. Once we understood these methods, it was obvious that he had given us a great gift. There's nothing like that in stand-up, not that I've ever found, no methods of making it easier, like I found in improv.
JF: What were some of the methods that you focused in on for improv?
MB: It's the same thing said in every one of your interviews. They sound simple to say, but they can take years to learn: listening, heightening and exploring, playing at the top of your intelligence, playing the game. I can say all those things very quickly, but it takes a long time to understand how to do those things. You can't just describe it in a short answer, that's why you have classes. You need to really have to get up on your feet, walk people through things, show them examples, show them what works what doesn't work. A lot of thing are easy to say, 'heighten and explore,' that's easy to say, but what does that really mean? I think a lot of people say that and they don't really think about exactly what it means. They're really saying heightening. They don't really take in what the exploring means. It takes a while for improvisers, students of improv, to understand the difference between heightening and exploring. What it takes to explore isn't the same thing that it takes to heighten. You find the philosophy behind the crazy thing that you're heightening. You're not just being silly and heightening, which may even get laughs from an audience. If you're don't explore, you're either going to heighten yourself out of the scene or your going to become so silly that the audience isn't interested in the scene anymore. That's the kind of thing that takes a long time to get. You write it down in your notebook and go 'ok, I get it. 'Heighten and Explore,'' but everybody has to have their personal epiphany on stage when all of the sudden they get that. They do a scene where they do that, and go 'oh, that's what it feels like.'
I think the same thing is true of listening. It's easy to hear it and go 'ok, I'm listening.' That doesn't mean just hearing the words coming out of their mouth. It means hearing their intentions, where they're trying to go with their words, finding the usual thing. If you're not really listening, you're not going to hear them when they say that unusual thing that could become the game. It just looks like you're a bunch of crazy people on stage, and who cares what happens to you.
JF: What was your experience like performing at Improv Olympic at first? How did you start to grow at a performer?
MB: Improv Olympic, when Matt Walsh and I joined, was very competitive, that's when Blue Velveeta was the best Harold team. A some point I think they even had referees. It was like ComedySportz, but it was like the Olympics. It was set up like it was a sport. That competition was very real off stage. You did not support the group that was on stage at the time. You wanted to do better than them, because if you did better than them you got more stage time and eventually you'd become the house team. It was very cut throat. Teams were broken up very quickly. I was on a team that performed once and Charna broke us up.
But I enjoyed that. I didn't mind that at all. I'm a competitive person. I find that fun. I think it made everyone work hard, because it wasn't 'Everyone gets to be on stage the same amount of time.' It wasn't being communist like that. It was like sports. It was the team that performs the best will get the most time. It was fair. It made us all rehearse and really work like a team, not be casual about it at all. It was like sports in that people would get not traded, or moved from one team to another. That would be a huge deal. The team that got left would be pissed off at that person. That's just how shit happens. That's how my group formed, The Family.
I was on a group called Corky's Callback with Jon Faverau and Pete Hulne. Adam McKay and some other people were on Victim's Family at the time. We were already friends, Adam, Ian and myself. We wanted to be on the same team, so that happened. Corky's Callback all got mad at me for a while. Long story short, we had a guy on the team, Rick Roman, who passed away, and that was the day we changed our name to The Family. That was pretty much the number that it stood. Neil Flynn came in a little bit later. A few people dropped out, bringing us to six. That's how our team formed. It was like a sports team. You got recruited. Different groups tried to get different people, and were actively recruited.
JF: How long had you been doing improv by the time you went on The Family? Because it seems like people formed these groups that are now legendary in a short amount of time.
MB: It didn't seem like a short amount of time to me. I'm not very good with numbers like that, but The Family took a couple years to form. I was on a couple of improv groups before that. Definitely, it wasn't less than a year. I want to say it was at least two years, if not three. I don't know. I'm sure someone has some better numbers than that.
JF: What was your experience like on The Family? How was it different than other teams and how did it challenge you?
MB: We all hung out all the time, so it seemed very natural that we would be good improvisers together. Whereas on other teams, you're not necessarily best friends with everybody when you start, so getting together for rehearsal is the only time you see each other during the week. But by the time we were in The Family we were all friends from either the Upright Citizens Brigade or just being around each other at the IO. It wasn't like we were a bunch of new people meeting each other and starting to rehearse.
Another advantage that we had was Del really hadn't directed any groups, at least in our generation of improvisers, and he just got the bug again. We were the best group at the time, so he just directed us. That super-motivated us, because we knew how big a deal that was. We were greatly complimented and intimidated by that prospect. That made us super-serious too. We would rehearse a lot. All the time.
JF: More than once a week?
MB: Oh yeah. Definitely more than once a week. In some way or another just about every day of the week. [The interview was interrupted for a moment]
You had asked me about my experience on The Family. So, it was definitely was like a family. When Rick Roman died, that was a huge deal. He was the first person I ever knew who died. It was a huge emotional trauma for all of us, which I'm sure none of us had never experienced. That brought us together as a family. We performed at his memorial. We did a memorial performance at Second City for Rick, us and a lot of other groups and improvisers from around town. We did the form that we had been working on with Del, which was the Movie. That ended up basically being our coming out party. We did it really well that night. We had just figured it out as a form. I don't think at that point we were respected as being as good as the other groups in town, like Ed or Jazz Freddy. I think at that point people were like 'Oh, these young guys are good improvisers. They do have a good group.'
So, that brought us together, and some of us were doing the UCB at the same time too. We just were together all the time. When you're that focused [you're going to get better]. In Chicago it's so much easier to survive and not work and focus on your art. I was as focused on improv at that point as I ever have been and ever will be. I'll never be able to focus on improv like that again. That was a special period for us.
JF: Where were you born?
MB: I was born and raised in Little Rock, AK.
JF: What were some early influences on your sense of humor?
MB: Early ones? There was a disc jockey called Craig O'Neil in our town who did prank calls, just very simple prank calls, but I was blown away by the fact that adults could do prank calls, that was how someone made their living. I guess as I started to learn more about comedy, just all the ones that everyone else says: Lenny Bruce, Andy Kaulifman, Steven Martin.
JF: Lenny Bruce and Andy Kaulifman are kind of people who tried to break boundaries or instigate people a bit. Is that something that has cropped up in your own comedy?
MB: Maybe those two in particular, they're a little off the mainstream, instead of something ubiquietous like Steve Martin or Woody Allen. So, learning and discovering their work is more like finding out about punk rock. Not only is it a cool thing, but not a lot of people know about it, so it feels more special. It used to be really hard to find Andy Kaulifman stuff, so when you found it in a video store somehow it was a really neat thing to have. Lenny Bruce was next to impossible to find.
But your question was does it crop up in my own work. Yeah, definitely. When we started UCB, we liked that Andy Kaulifman thing of screwing with the audience. We enjoyed it when a good part of the audience wasn't in on the joke, and we hoped that the other part of the audience, who was in on the joke, would notice that the other part of the audience wasn't in on the joke and would enjoy that aspect of the performance as well. Now, we're old men and doing it. I just got off stage from doing that. Did you see the show in the [Del Close 2006] marathon?
JF: Yeah.
MB: We just screwed around on a mobile scooter cooler, and had chugging contests. It didn't look like improv at all. I'm sure a lot of people out there hated it, and were going 'This isn't improv. These people are just screwing around,' but I think we enjoy those people walking out and being perturbed by it, as much as we're looking to make people laugh by jokes or scenes. It might be immature, but I think that's a thing we all have in common. We all gain enjoyment from fucking with people beyond the comedy.
JF: How did you get involved with improv?
MB: [laughs] Well, I read Walsh's interview, so people are going to know this from Walsh's, but I went to Improv Olympic and saw Chris Farley and who else? Tim Meadows was in that group. They just put on an amazing show. There was a group called Blue Velveeta that did a perfect Harold. I couldn't believe stuff that people could make up stuff, that they were saying on the spot. I actually thought they were cheating. I wanted to know how they did what they did. It really seemed like magic happening. After seeing that show, I wanted to get involved and I did.
JF: What were the early classes like?
MB: At Improv Olympic?
JF: Yeah.
MB: I took from many different schools. In fact, I took from every different school in Chicago, Player's Workshop, Improv Olympic, The Annoyance, Second City, but I didn't learn very much in years of years of classes except for from a very few people, like Mick Napier from the Annoyance. The biggest thing I learned from him was getting out of your head. I think that's a big hurdle for a lot of improvisers, especially ones that come from another backround like stand-up, like I did, where you're used to getting on stage with all the jokes ready, and not used to working with other people. It's a whole different process with your brain. It definitely took me a while. I did have a few other good teachers. A lot of teachers were a waste of time.
Eventually, everyone would get to Del and that was eye opening. He gave us techniques for improvising that were tangible, not just philosophical. I got so much stuff that was philosophical. You would do scenes and someone would be like 'that was that good' or 'that wasn't good.' I didn't have anything to latch onto until I got to Improv Olympic, and Del in particular. Once we understood these methods, it was obvious that he had given us a great gift. There's nothing like that in stand-up, not that I've ever found, no methods of making it easier, like I found in improv.
JF: What were some of the methods that you focused in on for improv?
MB: It's the same thing said in every one of your interviews. They sound simple to say, but they can take years to learn: listening, heightening and exploring, playing at the top of your intelligence, playing the game. I can say all those things very quickly, but it takes a long time to understand how to do those things. You can't just describe it in a short answer, that's why you have classes. You need to really have to get up on your feet, walk people through things, show them examples, show them what works what doesn't work. A lot of thing are easy to say, 'heighten and explore,' that's easy to say, but what does that really mean? I think a lot of people say that and they don't really think about exactly what it means. They're really saying heightening. They don't really take in what the exploring means. It takes a while for improvisers, students of improv, to understand the difference between heightening and exploring. What it takes to explore isn't the same thing that it takes to heighten. You find the philosophy behind the crazy thing that you're heightening. You're not just being silly and heightening, which may even get laughs from an audience. If you're don't explore, you're either going to heighten yourself out of the scene or your going to become so silly that the audience isn't interested in the scene anymore. That's the kind of thing that takes a long time to get. You write it down in your notebook and go 'ok, I get it. 'Heighten and Explore,'' but everybody has to have their personal epiphany on stage when all of the sudden they get that. They do a scene where they do that, and go 'oh, that's what it feels like.'
I think the same thing is true of listening. It's easy to hear it and go 'ok, I'm listening.' That doesn't mean just hearing the words coming out of their mouth. It means hearing their intentions, where they're trying to go with their words, finding the usual thing. If you're not really listening, you're not going to hear them when they say that unusual thing that could become the game. It just looks like you're a bunch of crazy people on stage, and who cares what happens to you.
JF: What was your experience like performing at Improv Olympic at first? How did you start to grow at a performer?
MB: Improv Olympic, when Matt Walsh and I joined, was very competitive, that's when Blue Velveeta was the best Harold team. A some point I think they even had referees. It was like ComedySportz, but it was like the Olympics. It was set up like it was a sport. That competition was very real off stage. You did not support the group that was on stage at the time. You wanted to do better than them, because if you did better than them you got more stage time and eventually you'd become the house team. It was very cut throat. Teams were broken up very quickly. I was on a team that performed once and Charna broke us up.
But I enjoyed that. I didn't mind that at all. I'm a competitive person. I find that fun. I think it made everyone work hard, because it wasn't 'Everyone gets to be on stage the same amount of time.' It wasn't being communist like that. It was like sports. It was the team that performs the best will get the most time. It was fair. It made us all rehearse and really work like a team, not be casual about it at all. It was like sports in that people would get not traded, or moved from one team to another. That would be a huge deal. The team that got left would be pissed off at that person. That's just how shit happens. That's how my group formed, The Family.
I was on a group called Corky's Callback with Jon Faverau and Pete Hulne. Adam McKay and some other people were on Victim's Family at the time. We were already friends, Adam, Ian and myself. We wanted to be on the same team, so that happened. Corky's Callback all got mad at me for a while. Long story short, we had a guy on the team, Rick Roman, who passed away, and that was the day we changed our name to The Family. That was pretty much the number that it stood. Neil Flynn came in a little bit later. A few people dropped out, bringing us to six. That's how our team formed. It was like a sports team. You got recruited. Different groups tried to get different people, and were actively recruited.
JF: How long had you been doing improv by the time you went on The Family? Because it seems like people formed these groups that are now legendary in a short amount of time.
MB: It didn't seem like a short amount of time to me. I'm not very good with numbers like that, but The Family took a couple years to form. I was on a couple of improv groups before that. Definitely, it wasn't less than a year. I want to say it was at least two years, if not three. I don't know. I'm sure someone has some better numbers than that.
JF: What was your experience like on The Family? How was it different than other teams and how did it challenge you?
MB: We all hung out all the time, so it seemed very natural that we would be good improvisers together. Whereas on other teams, you're not necessarily best friends with everybody when you start, so getting together for rehearsal is the only time you see each other during the week. But by the time we were in The Family we were all friends from either the Upright Citizens Brigade or just being around each other at the IO. It wasn't like we were a bunch of new people meeting each other and starting to rehearse.
Another advantage that we had was Del really hadn't directed any groups, at least in our generation of improvisers, and he just got the bug again. We were the best group at the time, so he just directed us. That super-motivated us, because we knew how big a deal that was. We were greatly complimented and intimidated by that prospect. That made us super-serious too. We would rehearse a lot. All the time.
JF: More than once a week?
MB: Oh yeah. Definitely more than once a week. In some way or another just about every day of the week. [The interview was interrupted for a moment]
You had asked me about my experience on The Family. So, it was definitely was like a family. When Rick Roman died, that was a huge deal. He was the first person I ever knew who died. It was a huge emotional trauma for all of us, which I'm sure none of us had never experienced. That brought us together as a family. We performed at his memorial. We did a memorial performance at Second City for Rick, us and a lot of other groups and improvisers from around town. We did the form that we had been working on with Del, which was the Movie. That ended up basically being our coming out party. We did it really well that night. We had just figured it out as a form. I don't think at that point we were respected as being as good as the other groups in town, like Ed or Jazz Freddy. I think at that point people were like 'Oh, these young guys are good improvisers. They do have a good group.'
So, that brought us together, and some of us were doing the UCB at the same time too. We just were together all the time. When you're that focused [you're going to get better]. In Chicago it's so much easier to survive and not work and focus on your art. I was as focused on improv at that point as I ever have been and ever will be. I'll never be able to focus on improv like that again. That was a special period for us.
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