David Razowsky - Part 2 - 2/15/07

JF: How do you try to encourage that acting in your classes? Do you do a lot of acting exercises?

DR: No, all I say is ‘How do you feel right now?’ I stop the scenes. In my class, the scenes don’t go too long, unless they’re on a roll or I feel I’m working on something with them and they’re close to getting the point. I will stop the scene and I will say ‘How do you feel about what you just said?’ ‘Well, I don’t know.’ ‘Then why did you say it!?’ We’re not going to walk around and do the mirror exercise or any of that bullshit. All my students are past that. What I will say is read a book. The best acting book I’ve got these days isn’t an acting book at all. It’s ‘Buddhism Plain and Simple’ by Steve Hagen. It’s all about being in the moment, say what you want to say, be truthful, because I give you permission to be you. I don’t want you to go up there and be Jim Carey.

If you’re a stand-up, you’ve got to work a little harder than other people in my class, because stand-ups and writers stand on the outside. And if you’re going to be in my class, I’m going to demand, demand that you be truthful and that you be in the moment.


JF: Have you ever kicked anyone out of your class?

DR: For drinking. What else? No. No, I mean people have challenged me, and I welcome the challenge, but there comes a point where I say ‘We’re not going to talk about this now. We’ll talk about it later.’ And we will talk about it later. One time when I was teaching at Second City, it was an 11 o’clock in the morning class. I smelled liquor on the guy’s breath and I said ‘You’ve got to go, and I don’t want you back.’


JF: So, what took you from Improv Olympic to Second City?

DR: I never wanted to work at Second City. I had lived in Chicago my entire life. I would go to see George Wendt play, and Shelly Long. I think I saw Jim Belushi. I know I didn’t see John Belushi. I would go with my Temple youth group and go watch a play and go ‘Oh my God, these people are hilarious!,’ but I never thought I would work there.

When I was at Improv Olympic, my father would ask me ‘When are going to Second City?’ I thought ‘When I’m ready. When I’m ready to go.’ I auditioned for Second City Conservatory and got in. Mick got in. He was a year ahead of me. I would sit in on every one of his classes. And I loved it. Every day that I was there I ate it up.

Mick and I both auditioned for the Touring Company. He didn’t get in and I got into the company. I thought ‘This has got to be a mistake. He’s so much funnier than I was, than I am.’ He’s such a fucking personality. He went his way. He wound up directing many shows there and still does.


JF: Did you find a difference between your Second City classes and your class with Del?

DR: Yes, because Second City is not an improv school. It’s a sketch school. Its goal is to teach sketch. What they teach you is how to repeat a certain character, how to repeat a certain beat, or how a scene works. At IO, you do a scene and it will never be seen again. At Second City, they teach you how to repeat that. The next time you do that scene you’re like ‘Ok, the arc needs to be here,’ or ‘the game needs to start here,’ or ‘This game is done. We start another game.’ You take a look at how the scenes work.

Another difference was Del was not a nice person. He just wasn’t nice. I don’t think I’m speaking out of school here. I teach at Improv Olympic out here. I’ve never said anything bad about IO. I love IO, but when I went to Second City, I had teachers like Martin DeMaat, Jeff Machowski, Jane Morris, all these great teachers who loved what they were doing. They were positive and they were young and they were bold. At the time Del was not in the twilight of his career, but he certainly was in the Autumn of it. Is Autumn twilight? I don’t know.

Martin DeMaat, again I go back to this guy and say ‘This guy was a special teacher. He was a special human being.’ When you meet people like that, you go ‘Oh, great. You’ve got so much to offer humanity and that’s what I want to do.’ I was at IO for two years and the fucker, [Del], never knew my name. He never ever knew my name. I thought ‘Ok, fine.’ He didn’t know many people’s names, but he didn’t know my name.


JF: I heard there was like a light and dark side to him, that he could definitely tear people apart if he wanted to.

DR: I remember him tearing Mick apart and Mick walking off stage crying.


JF: Really?

DR: Oh my God. He just laid into Mick one day. Next week, I don’t know if Del felt bad about it, but Mick could do no wrong. I’ve seen teachers tear people apart. I’ve never been torn apart, but I’ve seen teachers tear people apart and I’m like ‘What the fuck am I supposed to do with that?’


JF: Do you remember what happened with Mick? Why was Del so mad?

DR: I don’t remember the specifics of the scene, but Del had something up his ass that day and tore into him. He would have a phrase like ‘Fuck off turkey! Get off my stage! Get out!’ I’ve seen him kick people out of class. ‘Get out!’ People wanted a guru, and I didn’t need a guru. I didn’t want a guru. John Bergman was the closest thing I had to a guru and I didn’t need that. And I don’t want to be anybody’s guru. I don’t need to be anybody’s guru. All I’m doing is, you know, spreading the word. Ultimately it’s this: I’m saying what works for me. That’s it. I’ve been doing it for a while. I’m teaching classes, and I’m performing and I’m doing festivals and I’m still in it. I’m still in it. So, I’m doing what works for me. People are still coming to see me play, and I’m still excited to play with people. I’m working with a woman now named Carrie Clifford. We’re doing festivals around the country. She’s a student of mine. We work together. I’m still doing it, so, for me, I must be doing something right.

But now I’m an elder statesman, whether I like it or not. I have a feeling that fifteen years from now you’ll see Joe Bill, Mark Sutton, Susan Messing, Mick and I sweating in our pants and drooling oatmeal out of our mouths in some improv nursing home.


JF: That’d be great if they had improv nursing homes.

DR: Yeah, everything’s new to you if you have Alzheimer’s, and that’s the way we should look at the scenes anyway. Everything’s a revelation.


JF: So, what’s the writing process like at Second City when you’re working on a Main Stage show or just writing sketches together?

DR: The life of a Main Stage show is typically three to four months. They get a director. They’ll work with the actors from say 11 to 4 Tuesday thru Friday. They’ll come up with scene ideas. Every director has different ways of coming up with ideas. People bring in scene ideas or they’ll improvise. Mick use to like doing thirty one-minute scenes, just go boom, boom, boom, then he would say ‘What do you want to do again? Let’s put that up again.’ In rehearsal, you’d work on that and put it into the set. A Second City show is three acts. The first two acts are written. The second act is an improvised set, that’s where you throw in the stuff you’re working on. You videotape the shows. The next day you come in early, watch the tape, or maybe you watch it with the director and the director says ‘I like this idea. Keep working on this. Put it back up there.’ If it works, great, you keep working on it. Eventually, half or two thirds of the show is new material. You have previews. You set an opening date. Once the show is set in stone, you don’t change any of the running order, then you have an opening, the director leaves, and there’s your show.


JF: Did you start directing any shows at Second City?

DR: I was the director of the Touring Company, then I came out here [to Los Angeles] and directed a Main Stage show called ‘No, Seriously, We’re All Gonna Die.’ It was 2002 or 2003. They flew me in. I lived downtown. They put me up. I had a cast and I worked with those people.


JF: How did you try to generate material for that show?

DR: We would brainstorm. They would bring stuff in. We would work on stuff. It was a very hard show for me. The cast was there for 9-11, and they were supposed to open up a show on 9-12. These poor people were really toast. It was a really hard process putting together that show. We ended up getting it up.


JF: What was it like working with Steven Colbert, Amy Sedaris and Paul Dinello, who went on to do Exit 57?

DR: Yeah, and Strangers with Candy. They were a trio back then with Mitch Rouse. They thought differently. They worked differently. You never know what Amy’s going to do. You never know what Amy’s going to bring in. Amy would go to a garage sale, pick up the hoofs of a deer that were mounted on a wall, and take them somewhere so that they moved. They were able to flap around. She would call them ‘Deer Paw Girl.’ She would bring in dumbass stuff like that. She was just charming and lovely. I get along with everybody, but I know there were a few people there who felt that it was a little [inaudible]. But you work with who you work with. You work with who you enjoy working with. We try to put a cast together that can collaborate. It’s all about collaboration. Amy was, you know, had her way of doing things. David Sedaris was there a lot. He had moved there. David and Amy knew how to put a show together, knew how to put characters together. Colbert was very focused on who he was and what he wanted, very smart and very charismatic. They were all very charismatic. If you’re on Main Stage, you’d better be charismatic. You’d better connect with the audience. But there was never a lack of ideas, smart ideas, really fun characters. Amy’s wonderfully crazy, not that she has to be sent away, but she’s wonderfully crazy. Her ideas are really great. I found it all to be tremendously inspiring.

I wish I could give you dirt. I love going back and working there, and if you want to have your own fucked up time, that’s your thing, not my thing. If you want to say how you were fucked over by these people, I don’t know how you’d feel that way. When I was there, there were a lot of people who were leaving saying ‘I got fucked over.’ I’m thinking ‘How were you fucked over? You got to perform in front of 300 people! A night! Some times 600 people a night on Friday and Saturday.’


JF: They were just angry because they got cut or something?

DR: No! They were onstage. I never understood how they could be bitter, because you bring your own mishigas [sp.] to that shit. Maybe it felt that the producers fucked you. I never let that shit get to me. When I was hired one teacher, Don Depollo, said to me, I said ‘Donny, I got hired.’ He said ‘Great, don’t pay any attention to the politics, just do your work.’ I just want to say I couldn’t believe that I was there. I was like ‘Wow, this is amazing.’


JF: How long were you there?

DR: I was there for 7 years and I did 10 shows.


JF: So, from 87 to 94 or something?

DR: Yeah, I left in January of 95. My first show was Valentine’s day of 87. I remember I had a girlfriend at the time who said ‘I finally have a boyfriend that I like and now he’s in the Touring Company.’ Second City ruined Valentine’s Day for us.


JF: How did you end up performing in the Real Live Brady Bunch?

DR: Faith Soloway was the piano player for Second City. Her sister Jill Soloway went to Indiana University with Mick and Joe and Mark and all these other wonderful people. They said ‘We’re doing this show.’ I said ‘I watched the Brady Bunch. I can do it. I think it’s fun,’ so I did it. I played Davey Jones in a couple of them. I don’t know how well you know the Brady Bunch.


JF: I know he was Jan’s boyfriend or something.

DR: There’s a Prom date scene or something like that. When they took it to New York off-Broadway, they asked me to perform in that. When they took it to what is now the Geffen theater, which is now run by a former Steppenwolf person, I’d fly out whenever they wanted me to do it.

A lot of people would say ‘Yes, but is it art?’ I would say ‘If it’s in front of a lot of people, yes. Are people paying for it? Yeah, the line’s around the corner.’ Huge success.


JF: It seems like there might have been some mixed feelings about the Real Live Brady Bunch among some Annoyance people. It seemed to put Annoyance on the map, but some people felt it wasn’t really representative of what they did.

DR: Yeah, that’s what was going on back then. People were saying ‘Is it exactly what the Annoyance does?’ For me, I’d look at it and say ‘Yeah, it wasn’t exactly what the Annoyance did, but it was representative of the mentality of the space. Anything can go. You can do anything. Yeah, it’s stupid, but so what. Do it for fun.’ I think the Annoyance was starting to get known for that, when there were other shows go on there as well. Eventually [The Real Live Brady Bunch] left, and at the end of the day The Annoyance isn’t really known for that. Do you think it’s known for that?


JF: No.

DR: No, it’s not known for that. It’s known for a specific style of improvisation, a technique, and that’s what it’s known for. Again, I went in a different direction. I was a Second City, and I would go see all the shows at the shows there. Let’s put it this way. It’s not Chekhov! Alright? When you’ve got a show called The Miss Vagina Pageants, which is the real name of a show, or That Darn Anti-Christ, or Manson The Musical, to look at a show and go ‘Go, well we can’t do The Real Live Brady Bunch.’ You’ve got a show called Your Butt. That’s the name of the show. Y-O-U-R-B-U-T-T. That’s the name of the show. ‘The what? And you’re saying what?’ But then again, I wasn’t involved with the politics of that. I’m a cousin over there, not a child.



JF: So what was the Real Live Brady Bunch?


DR: They took scripts from The Brady Bunch and just recreated it. They had Faith Soloway on piano. Melanie Hutzle was in it. Jane Lynch who went to do all the Guffman movies. There was a specific kind of affected acting style that they would do for these parts, and it was hilarious! It was just hilarious. ‘Marsha, Marsha, Marsha!’ To hear Melanie Hutzle say that was ridiculous. Andy Ritcher played the Dad, Mr. Brady. And to see Andy Ritcher play something serious with a pipe in his mouth. ‘I don’t know. Maybe you should go back to school.’ It was just an affected style, that we all understood.

They said ‘Here’s the script. You’re going to be doing Davey Jones.’ I’m like ‘Ok, how?’ And they said ‘Here’s the script. You’re going to be doing Davey Jones.’ I was like ok, that’s direction enough for me.


JF: So what brought you to Los Angeles? And what were you doing in Chicago before you left?

DR: I was on the Main stage in Chicago. I felt that I had done everything I could do at Second City. My friend Kenny Campbell was on a show called Herman’s Head. He was making some money out there. That’s just where he went. I had a bunch of money from doing a Captain Crunch commercial. I played Captain Crunch’s nemesis, Dr. Sog. I had a bunch of money in the bank and thought ‘I’ll blow my money faster in New York than L.A.’ and I had a free place to stay in L.A., so I went out to L.A.

I got a commercial agent, a theatrical agent pretty quickly. I got a bunch of commercials, which really kept me going. Thankfully, I only had to do catering I think three times. I got married September of 94. I moved out here in January of 95. My wife moved out here in July 96. It was tough for us. It was tough for my wife and I. But I was ready to take the next step, and whatever that next step was I went and did it.


JF: So, did you enjoy it when you moved out there? And what was the artistic climate like out there, especially compared to Chicago?

DR: I was lucky because any Second City person who moves out here from Chicago you’ve got a community out here right away. I think I got here January 15, 95 and I think January 18, 95 I was improvising long-form improv with all these people who were my heroes from the Main stage: Danny Breen, Jeff Machowski, Jane Morris, Joe Liss. I felt this sense of community.

It would drive me crazy when I was out here, because I though ‘Fuck the weekends. I can’t work. There’s no work on the weekends.’ I got some great advice from a guy named Mark Beltzman, who said ‘Get a distraction. Get something to do.’ So, I connected with a bunch of Annoyance and Second City people who were out here. I rented spaces and started teaching classes. I connected with some former students who knew who I was and directed their show.

When I came out here, the only sense of community that was out here was the Second City family that I knew. That’s what I missed about Chicago. I missed theater. A lot of the shows out here were showcase-y shows. A show that was run over and over again by every fucking little theater was 12 Angry Men because everybody had a monologue and that was a good show you could invite agents to. There was no sense of community. There was no sense of ensemble, except for the people that I hung out with.

When I got the job as the Artistic Director of Second City, the first thing I said was ‘I’ve got to get a community out here. I’ve got to get connections with The Groundlings and IO.’ IO was just starting out. So, I taught at IO and at this theater Bang. I said ‘Let’s do shit together. Come on.’ [Now,] there are a lot more theater companies that are ensemble-based. There’s a lot of Chicago mentality out here. The Chicago mentality is ensemble. It’s about the group, not the individual talent. It’s about the people that form that group.

At our school, it went from two hundred students when I first got the job to almost five hundred students now at Second City L.A. That’s a big ass thing. That’s a huge thing. In the past year alone it doubled. I feel like now there’s a community. Now there are people who are helping other people. I’m sure there are some people who feel jealous of other people, but Bill Hader’s on Saturday Night Live now. He came from our school. This guy Masi Oka was one of my students. He’s on an NBC special now called ‘Heroes.’ Our students are starting to get work. And these are ensemble comedies, ensemble episodes. It’s no coincidence that they’re getting work in these ensemble pieces. They know what it’s like to have to work with other people and make other people look good. That’s the difference between us and The Groundlings, which is where Will Ferrell came in and all those type people. They teach you how to be a character, that’s what they teach you. Well, we don’t teach that. We teach how to connect with each other and it’s starting to spread out. And it’s really cool.


JF: Do you guys [Second City] want to get a resident company in Los Angeles?

DR: L.A. isn’t a city for a resident company. It’s too transient. We tried to put two resident companies together and just couldn’t get any audience. We don’t have a big enough space. Our space right now at the most we can get about eighty people in the seats. We don’t have a liquor license. It’s tough to get a theater together if you don’t have a liquor license. We don’t have a liquor license, and don’t have any plans for a resident company out here.

What I wish for my students is get as good as you can be, and leave. Perform with us for a while and leave. Start your own thing. Branch out. Go fly. Get out of here. I say it in a loving way as well.