As we've liked to do in the past here at the Bastion, today's post is brought to you by a traveling scribe, sent over the hundreds of miles, mountains, and plains, to reach you, dear readers, in the hope that you will find enlightenment and enjoyment from a few pithy words on the screen. It's the latest installment of Robert Buscemi's Report from the Road. He's been in Los Angeles for several weeks, taking in the scenery and entrenching himself out there, and we look forward to more stories when he finally returns to us in the crystalline Midwest.
I'm in LA for the month, and the Chicago comedy syndicate is entrenched. Old stand-up friends are putting me into their shows (Blerds at the UCB and a great new one: "Gimme a Minute" at the West Side Eclectic) and helping me plot to get on everyone else's shows as well.
My favorite new-to-me comics out here: Chris Fairbanks (whom I've mentioned before), Natasha Leggero, and Paul F. Tompkins (who just last night headlined the top alt-room out here, "Comedy Death Ray" at the UCB Theater). And of course Chicago's own turbo-charged madman Mike O'Connell, though he no longer counts as new-to-me. Oh and everyone's talking about the super-creative, baby-faced Johnny Pemberton, whom TJ Miller told me "is actually as smart as you try to act, Buscemi." Good old TJ, huh?
I'm running around with (or at least running into): Nate Craig, Becky Garcia, Renee Gauthier, Tony Sam, Mike Bridenstine, Mike Holmes, Jordan Vogt-Roberts, Hannah Gansen, Josh Cheney, Mike Burns, Adam Witt (from Schadenfreude), Matt Braunger, Kyle Kinane (who just last night got a near-capacity UCB crowd laughing its ass off with GREAT, all-new-to-me material -- Kyle headlined "See You Next Tuesday," the UCB late Tuesday alt-stand-up show), and TJ Miller, who continues to bum-rush every stage in town and dish out bone-deep, ludicrous stand-up jack-assery, and who just did several dates in NYC on a 3-man bill with Chicago greats Pete Holmes and Kumail Nanjiani.
Shows I've done or am booked to do: Maria Bamford, Natasha Leggero, and Melinda Hill's "Tiger Lilly," the El Cid avant-garde show "Garage Comedy," Josh Fadem's "Acid Reflux Hour," Brad Stewart's "No Name Comics," and "D & D" at Big Fish, and the World Cafe in Santa Monica.
For star sightings, I saw Louis CK and Mark Maron and Maria Bamford ignite "Tiger Lilly," and I'm almost sure I saw Martin Short duck into a high-end restaurant.
My two cents on the comedy scene out here is this, if anyone's interested: It's pleasingly DIY. My experience is that there is a very friendly, loose collective of people performing, and it takes no time at all to make friends and acquaintances and figure out what rooms will be most conducive to your style. The Chicago gang is infiltrating and ingratiating themselves exceedingly well, running rooms, getting representation and management and gigs. There are crap open-mikes that you can do to make your name among your peers, and the system will let you rise to better rooms if you do well and show your face out and about. And I almost always find that people will give you an initial booking out of curiosity alone if you can show them you've made your way around the scene or have decent press or past bookings or friends to recommend you with whom they are familiar. But even failing all that, just showing up every week, shaking hands with the bookers, and then emailing politely and regularly can get you on stage. Whether you get invited back depends of course on whether you're funny and original.
Blah blah. It's sunny and warm in winter and it's nice to feel like there's industry around, but you quickly realize how much your tastes and your act and your trajectory and your pals are defined by the bonds you forged in good old Chicago. I talked to Alana from the great improv duo Lannie and Emmy for like a half hour at the Improv recently. And watching Kinane or Miller or Burns or Holmes or Nate Craig on stage today means simultaneously seeing them in your mind four years ago, so your perspective is somehow just more rich and satisfying.
That's that. Could I be more gay and mushy? No offense, Bill and Cameron. I meant gay-gay, not GAY-gay. And no offense, Sheehan, I meant mushy-mushy, not MUSHY-mushy.
The Lincoln Lodge crowd this past Friday night was treated to a super-excellent show, hosted by a sharp-looking Jeb Cadwell, with knock-em-dead performances by 2008 Chicago Comedy Award (CCA) nominee Carrie Callahan, 2007 CCA award-winning comic Jared Logan, and soon-to-be-LA-comic Bradley Fojas. As if that wasn't enough, comedy fans were star-struck by the return of TJ Miller, merely a month out of his Cloverfield premiere craziness. TJ just seemed happy to be back in the mix, telling jokes in front of his Chi-town crew. Eagle-eyed patrons in attendance will also have noticed fellow Carpoolers funnyman Jerry O'Connell in the audience, enjoying the show with his lovely wife Rebecca Romjin.
As intermission broke, the Hollywood couple slipped out front to pay their check, and were promptly "ooohed" and "aaahed" over by the Lincoln Restaurant's wait staff. Rebecca and Jerry autographed their ticket and posed for a couple of pictures. Being as yours truly was standing right there watching the whole affair, I did what anyone with a little liquid courage in his belly would do. Setting aside any reservations about being "That Guy", I stepped right up and introduced myself! Both stars were very pleasant, even after I told Rebecca I liked her in "Pepper Dennis, a show that was canceled all-too-soon". I told Jerry I was a big fan of Sliders and enjoyed him in Buying the Cow, to which Ms. Romjin noted, "Wow, you really like the obscure stuff". I stood by my opinion that it's the good stuff that usually gets canceled and thanked them for the chat. They left through the front shortly after, probably not realizing they were soon to be the target of Steve O'Harvey's man-on-the-street routine.
Their hasty exit, however, caused them to miss variety act The Amazing Tomas and his sometimes-stomach-churning illusions, in which he swallows balloons and reproduces Tic-Tacs from his sinuses. Their loss. Being from LA, I'm sure they have a strong stomach, anyway.
Special contributor c. r. mccubbins
2008 CCA Nominee, Blerds member, and VLR co-host Sean Flannery just informed me that he's been trying to leave a comment for us. Grrr, the comments aren't working right now!!! Here is what he wanted to mention: "Jerry O'Connell was on the Visitors Locker Room that Friday. He told one of the funniest Hollywood stories I've heard, about auditioning for Webster as a kid. You can hear it here (its at the end of the show).
Guess, what, Bastion readers? We're feeling a little revolutionary. We're showing solidarity with our fellow writers and refusing to blog until the WGA strike is resolved, or until our publisher yells at us, whichever comes first. Want to know what the writers' strike is all about? It's about technology changing and us getting our media from new places. Well, why read when you could click this clever little video?
Basically, writers want to be paid for what they write, and get a reasonable share of the profit every time their work is viewed, whether that's on television, on a movie screen, on a DVD, or in an online clip. As it stands now, they are paid a tiny amount for DVD sales (the result of a 1988 agreement that was supposed to have been amended shortly thereafter) and NOTHING for online content. That means if you watch The Office or 30 Rock exclusively online (and we know people who do), the writers get none of the share of the beef jerky ads you watch online between show segments.
New media is here. Television is changing, if not dying. Writers deserve to be paid for their work. Hence: STRIKE!
David Letterman sides with the writers, and Jay Leno has joined writers on the picket line. According to an article today in Reuters.com, Seth Meyers and Tina Fey may become the key faces of this strike, much like Letterman 20 years ago, and help viewers to understand the issues at hand.
An interesting thread on the strike on the AST board, featuring comments from several showbiz writers.
Have thoughts? Do you support the writers? Worry about missing some valuable boob tube watching? Think this whole internet thing is a fad? Let 'er rip in the comments section.
Benjamin Vigeant: One of the more intriguing things to me in this program is the approach that we're taking to it. Having trained at the UCBT in New York, the approach was about teaching comedians how to do comedy, or at least that was the feel that I received from it. In this program, it's far more focused on teaching actors how to do comedy.
Greg Guiliano: Which is nice. It's putting less emphasis on the "be funny" and more on "write/perform real, interesting theater....that happens to be funny." Which is odd, for how much of a focus on comedy everything has. The reason I said it's nice is that it feels like all this will have greater utility outside of comedy.
Benjamin Vigeant: Part of why it feels like a more complete acting experience is probably because we have so much time, and instead of trying to stick in one or two classes each weekend or night, we get to have several across four days, each week. But it's just interesting to me, because it has been a long time since I really tried to stretch my acting muscles as much as just my "comedian be funny muscles."
Greg Guiliano: What Ben is saying is he needs to work out more.
Benjamin Vigeant: This sort of hilarious zinger humor is the sort that you can readily pop off if you're the type that studies it for credits.
Greg Guiliano: No need to knock on my zingers. I try. That's the important thing. The other important thing is that a lot of the stuff in class, although it's been taught for quite some time to quite a few different people...it still feels relevant and fresh. Stuff that, while I've heard some of it before, still rattles in my brain as something important to listen to. I imagine most school is supposed to do that, but I actually feel that happening with this. Not to say that it's all serious business. We frequently get distracted in class just by listening to our teachers tell old stories about various Second City alumni. Which I know we've talked of before, but there's always something new that makes me feel like mentioning it again.
Benjamin Vigeant: Actually, its more or less us trying to get them out of them.
Greg Guiliano: true, they usually don't want to tell us those stories for time purposes.
Benjamin Vigeant: As Greg said, some of the things said in class are things that I've heard before in various other comedy performance settings. However, within the context of a focus on acting, and within the context of all of the classes we're taking at the program as a whole, it does gain a new sort of meaning, and it gives me a better understanding of how that whole comedy jokes business works.
Greg Guiliano: Not just that, but theater in general...and what theatre in specific. Someone, no names, had a perfectly fine piece of theater brought to class and was told that, while a fine piece, it wasn't meant for a Second City stage. That is to say that it's not the kind of piece that would go up here, and they should think about what kind of venue would use it.
Benjamin Vigeant: Greg's lousy piece aside, we are constantly urged to think about a more Second City sensibility to the sketches that we write. As much as this sounds obvious, we have to make sure that they have things like a beginning, middle, and end, as well as clear objectives for most characters. The general belief is that most comic pieces, like on SNL, tend to just have a beginning and maybe a middle, and/or just might be a way to deliver on a wacky joke premise. The idea we're being taught in writing, as well as in general, is to round that out and stop being so jokey.
The Bastion's Second City/Columbia College Comedy Studies Program cub reporters are back with another update on their exploits at clown college. Benjamin Vigeant and Greg Guiliano are settling nicely into their academic routine, learning a lot, and getting to know their classmates better, in a "Jets and Sharks" sort of way.
Benjamin Vigeant: We are now in the third week of Comedy Studies, and we're past the sort of awkward "sitting around and talking about what we're going to do while strangers from across the country look at each other phase," and we're down to the nuts and bolts. To begin, I will share a fun anecdote that will make Greg mad, because I'm getting to it first. For our writing class, our group had to write scenes based on of a combination of a character that we created and one that someone else did. In order to inform the scene and give it some sort of structure, we had to give the characters an objective. The most common objective in group 1's writing class? Someone who is trying very hard to make a friend.
Greg Guiliano: Whether that says a lot about us as people or just about the situation is hard to say, and yes, I am mad at Ben. Aside from the classes, a few of the students have already tried to organize routine events, such as Thai Tuesday or Taco Newsday, though the two don't compete. There is a slight schism between the two sections of students. We're getting the same lessons and classes, just that we don't really see the other section that much, so we're not becoming an ensemble with them. Not to say that we dislike them, we just don't have as much class time with them. Except for the outside rehearsals some of us have thrown together so we can practice what improv we've each learned from our various outside influences in addition to what we're learning in class. Seeing the different rules/names applied to games is kind of interesting as we'll have the same game just known by a different name...sort of an East Coast/West Coast thing, but less rap.
Benjamin Vigeant: Last year, (to my enlightened understanding) Comedy Studies operated as one big jolly group of twenty or so people. The problem that arose from this is that each person got less time to have as their own. The problem with this method, though it's probably better, is that now there are two groups who are friendly and social with each other, but definitely aren't an ensemble with each other. I don't even think there's a sense of competition between the two as much as it's, "well, people in group 1 spend more time with people in group 1." The positives are that this does lead to much tighter ensemble within the groups, and more equal time, or at least equal opportunities for everyone to prove themselves.
Greg Guiliano: On to what we've actually been being taught in classes...well, we've got 6 classes. A Context for Comedy class, which is kind of like Current Events but with an emphasis on "how do we make fun of it?" Then we have Comedy Writing, History of Modern Comedy, Improvisation, and an Acting Through Improvisation class. History of Modern Comedy has, so far, consisted of us talking about old comedians and how they developed and performed what they did. Currently, we're on Vaudeville and the classes just put up our own Vaudeville shows. We had a pretty wide variety, everything from a mentalist to a juggler. Sadly, due to the Section split, we didn't get a chance to see section 2's.
Benjamin Vigeant: One of the more fun things we've done, and Greg mentioned it, was doing the vaudeville acts for the comedy history class. One of the best parts about this vaudeville project was that none of the acts were similar. Where one would assume that we'd lazily just take the stereotypical lousy pun patter and call it a day, every act was uniquely different. Greg and I did a juggling act, another group did clog dancing, another did a "magic" show (most of the magic tricks failed), and so on and so forth. The group of us at Comedy Studies, I'm sure the other group included, don't lack anything of variety.
The Bastion's 
Greg Guiliano: Which is nice. It's putting less emphasis on the "be funny" and more on "write/perform real, interesting theater....that happens to be funny." Which is odd, for how much of a focus on comedy everything has. The reason I said it's nice is that it feels like all this will have greater utility outside of comedy.
