Matt Walsh 7/19/06 Part 2

JF: The National Improv Theater?


MW: Yeah, I think you might be right. I think that might be where Billy and Delaney came from. Yeah, when we got there those were some of the first people to find us, people in those groups. They hadn’t been doing long-form or they certainly hadn’t been doing ASSSSCAT, which is basically the Armando. They hadn’t been doing it at all. We just locked into a pretty hardcore audience right away, because of the free show. I think the free show helped.

When we moved to New York, there was already foundation of people, Adam McKay and Koechner were at SNL and Tom Giannis, Conan had Brian McCann and Andy Richter. Miriam Tolan and Brian Stack might have been out there as well. On our Sunday night show, we just wanted to have a club house where we could perform with our friends. I think that helped bolster an audience too. They saw that a lot of people could do long-form and that it was fun.



JF: Were you guys ever intending to start a theater or did that just develop?


MW: It just developed unintentionally. We were at a place called Solo Arts. We were teaching classes by that point, me, Matt, Ian and Amy to teach people what we learned in Chicago. And the people from our classes were doing shows at this theater, so we were programming like 4 nights a week at this theater, including our stage show, our improv show, which was ASSSSCAT. I directed shows. Ian directed shows. Matt directed shows. So, we were putting up 4 or 5 nights a week of programming at this place, so it was like ‘well, let’s get our own place.’ That happened at about the same time we started working on our TV show.



JF: So, how did you guys get that TV show?


MW: Another reason we went to New York was a guy named Dave Beckie, who was already working with us and Besser. He had brought Besser to Aspen. He was in New York so when we went to New York he had gotten some people to see. A guy named Ken [Angeman] who was in development at Comedy Central took a liking to us. He gave us our first job. Microsoft had the first internet comedy TV show in 1996 and things kind of went from there.



JF: What was the experience like working on your TV show? How did you guys generate material?


MW: I think the first season was stuff that had been onstage for several years. It was the combination of 3 or 4 stage shows, and bits that we had done in New York at a Monday night open mic show called at Luna called Eating It. Even old bits like the Titee Brothers was an bit that Matt Besser had done probably before the UCB was even around.

The second season and third seasons were pretty much programmed from our ASSSSCATs. We would do two Sunday night shows. If there was a funny scene, we’d go ‘oh, I like that idea. Can we try to write it up?’ Then we’d bring it into the office on Monday. Then we’d go with what worked.



JF: I’ve heard that you guys had like a Harold structure or an ASSSSCAT structure or whatever. Is it true that you guys tried to have an improv structure to your TV show or was it just whatever you guys found funny?


MW: I think we definitely borrowed from the Harold. We definitely made an attempt to find a thematic thread, which essentially was ‘a restaurant show,’ or ‘a crime show’ or ‘a mafia show’ or ‘a dog show.’ So, we would try to find a sketch that fit into that theme. In essence, in improv terminology, the theme of the show was our suggestion, and we would take existing scenes or write scenes that related to that topic or explored that idea, then we would start to weave it together, like the Harold does. We’d tried to find interesting and unlikely ways for those characters or ideas to meet.

Our other thing that we tried to push was to take sketches or characters or ideas [and put them in the real world]. I had this idea for ‘Santa Liquor,’ which was basically exploiting Santa to sell liquor to little children. We had Ian Roberts do a prank outside FAO Schwartz where he would try to give liquor to little children dressed as Santa. So, we would tape these pranks after the show was over where we would put the characters into the real world. That was something we were doing in Chicago before we left. Matt Besser dressed like the Unabomber and went into a Post Office, because the Unabomber was a character in our show.



JF: Did anyone get pissed at him for walking in as the Unabomber?


MW: No one noticed it. It’s one of those things that you can’t believe no one noticed it, but no one noticed it, which is scary because it’s a Federal building.



JF: So, how much input does the UCB have into the UCB theater right now? In New York and also Los Angeles?


MW: How much what?



JF: How much input? How actively are you guys involved? How closely do you work with the Artistic Directors?


MW: The Artistic Directors we work pretty closely with. We have an idea of what we want to teach the students, so we definitely monitor the curriculum and the teachers. We keep an eye on who’s a good teacher or performer. Obviously the teams are harder, because I don’t see that many shows anymore. Certainly with the curriculum we’re on top of it. It’s what we learned from Del and Improv Olympic: playing at the top of your intelligence, playing things as real as possible, finding the game of the scene, supporting and heightening whatever that idea is, putting your ego out of the way and supporting and heightening the idea or game of the scene. That’s our group-mind, whatever the bit is, commit to it, that’s where the group-mind is headed at that moment.

I took just shy of a year of classes with Del and his lesson to me was to …keep it renewed. Improv is obviously a very perishable art form. The challenge for each group or generation that passes through the improv community is to bring life to it and make it relevant to what’s important to people at that time. Del was like ‘I would like to do something with video games’ or ‘I’m fascinated with movies.’ When he was developing the Movie, he would come in with that. ‘I’m not sure what is it but there’s something wonderful about how films can jump forward in time, and jump backward in time, focus on different things. Let’s just have a go with that.’ That was his route, his spirit, that was the torch he always held, which was invaluable. I think in our theaters in New York and L.A. people are completely surpassing what we did with improv, completely making it relevant to their peers and their world, so I think that’s kind of cool.



JF: That’s a big compliment.


MW: I do believe it.



JF: Where do you see the UCB theater going in the future?


MW: I would say the UCB brand is probably the bigger picture, I think. The biggest goal would be to have a channel where we program television. Essentially, what we're doing already could fill 24 hours of programming, because there's just so many shows and ideas, so that would be the biggest goal. I think we'll probably write a book on improv that speaks to what we think is important, that talks about the things that all 4 of us have learned. What else? I guess another thing Del was a big fan of was keeping it like a people's artform, keeping the prices low, keeping it from getting boring and staid.



JF: On the note of the UCB's opinions about improv, what is the game to you?


MW: The game of the scene is the dynamic you discover between the characters that when you heighten it creates comedy.



JF: So what is heightening then?


MW: Heightening is adding stakes to something, adding detail, enfusing it with emotional committment, expanding it to a bigger world. Something could start in the living room, then it becomes a national problem, then a world problem, so expanding the impact of that dynamic is heightening. ...Just playing the 'if that then what' of the idea.



JF: How important is repitition to the game?


MW: Well, repitition I would describe as pattern. Obviously, when you improvise you're seeking out pattern and ideas in the exchanges that you're throwing out there with your team, so you're not necessarily looking for repitition but pattern. There's a Del quote, I believe 'once is happenstance, twice is a coincidence, three times is a pattern.' So things returning definitely heighten things and make the pattern more present; it brings it farther forward in the audience's mind and in the players mind. So repetition is involved in that, but it's not like hitting a table is a complex game. If you just kept tapping a table, tapping a table, that's not necessarily going to provide a scene that is interesting to an audience.