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February 28, 2003
Poster and site
I've got the poster done for Cinema 2.0 and I've put up a little web page for the show. It's not a FuzzyCo production, so I really should have just put the files together and then handed them off to Holly to put on the Playground site, but sometimes I get a particular kind of lazy where I figure it's just easier to do it myself. I'm guessing Megan will fuss at me and I'll have to fix it later, but I wanted to get something up.
I was in my photo studio (i.e. my front hallway) taking pictures of a microphone and videotape to Photoshop some sort of videotape/microphone hybrid for the show poster (quite frankly, my ideas were a little too close to the Twisted Flicks logo). At some point, I decided to pull the videotape out of the case and try arranging the microphone in loops of videotape to see what that would look like. My cat Latté decided that was the best cat toy she had ever seen and attacked it with both vim and vigor. And... voila, a poster image is born. It almost makes sense, in a kind of "reordering the movie via the playfulness of improv, represented here by a cat" kinda way.
Posted by Fuzzy at 03:32 PM | Comments (1)
Closing Night
Tonight is closing night for The Neutrino Project. Again.
This time, however, I can assure you that we won't be making any last-minute extension announcements. We had a few offers for possible extensions, but all of them involved hopping around different nights and times, week after week. That, we easily decided, was too much work for us and for the audience to try and find us.
The Neutrino Project, as well as Neutrino (the original NYC group) has been accepted to the Chicago Improv Festival, so we'll be back in May, if not before.
And, frankly, I'm ready for a break from TNP. I was up until 3 am last night capturing last week's show and then blanking the tapes, packing up the gear, etc. And I've got a bunch of work to do for Cinema 2.0. And I really need to do the dishes. (Or maybe it's Shaun's turn...)
Posted by Fuzzy at 03:16 PM
February 25, 2003
Is this another NY idea?
I got asked by email about Cinema 2.0, "I'm curious...where did you come up with an idea like that? Is that someone else's from NY* or did you think of that yourself?" It's hard to tell by email if the question is snarky or sincere, but I'll go ahead an tackle it: the idea for Cinema 2.0 was one I had on my own, even though other people have had the idea, too. And I even know most of the influences of this idea:
When I was in high school in Adelaide, Australia, I saw a show where they projected a movie and three live performers dubbed new, scripted dialogue for the movie. It was very funny and was one of my first experiences with fringey theater and really stuck with me over the years. (I wish I could remember the name of the show. The movie was a low-budget robot monster movie, and the new script had the Australian government creating a new man for the upcoming Australian bicentennial.)
Years later, after I had been doing improv for a while, I saw Woody Allen's What's Up Tiger Lily?, where Woody Allen wrote a new egg-salad-oriented script for a Japanese spy thriller movie. Remembering the live dubbing performers from the Australian show, I thought "you could do that live, with improvisors." And promptly put the idea in the back of my head.
It's an idea other people have had -- LA Connection did their Mad Movies in LA and on TV, Jet City Improv does Twisted Flicks in Seattle, and there's Mr. Sinus Theater in Austin, TX. (And there's a much longer list of scripted movie dubbings -- What's Up Tiger Lily, Firesign Theatre's Hot Shorts and J-Men Forever, Hercules Recycled, etc.)
But I think we're going to come up with our own spin on it. If nothing else, it's improv, and so the particular group of performers we have will necessarily shape the nature of the show.
* I assume they're referring to the FuzzyCo production of The Neutrino Project, which was created by the group Neutrino from New York. I try to be extra careful whenever I talk about The Neutrino Project to credit Neutrino for the concept.
Posted by Fuzzy at 11:12 AM
February 24, 2003
"Publication"
None of us need any extra stress in our lives, and I think I need less (extra) stress than you. Unless you're Hans Blix or something. Hi, Hans!
So I wasn't super happy to receive a call at 5:00 pm on Friday from one of the Neutrino Project's camera guys saying that he was stuck at work and wouldn't be able to come to the show. Worse, he supplies one of the video players we need to do the show. Good news: he was happy to let us use his camera and player. Bad news: his camera was in his car and his player was at home.
There was nothing for it but to pack up, run over to his office, pick up his house keys and car park claim ticket, head for his car, realize I hadn't actually taken the keys, go back to his office and get the keys, realize that it was over a mile from his office to where his car was parked (how does he get from the car park to work?), take a cab to the parking lot, get the camera, take a cab to his house, get the player, and take a cab to the ImprovOlympic.
In the end (and after $35 in cabs) I was only 5 minutes late for call, and Scott McNulty stepped up again to ably run camera.
The suggestion was "Publish" "Publication," which for some reason led to a very violent show. Lillie egged Phillip into a fight with Sean. Lance got his head shaved (thanks to Orbit Salon, one of our locations) which made him "feel like a skinhead" and lash out at Shaun and later Ben. (In the first scene, one of Orbit's stylists was gently trimming Lance's hair. When I popped the tape out so Jennifer could run it to the theater, Lance said "OK, let's do it -- shave it all off". And so she did.)
When we decided that Lance would hit Shaun in the salon, we quickly rehearsed the punch so it could look (semi-)realistic but be (reasonably-)safe. Shaun and Lance worked out two lines of dailogue that would lead up to the punch and let Shaun get ready for it. When I said "action," Lance popped Shaun. Bloodlust, indeed. Later, when Lance hit Ben, Ben hurt his elbow when he fell down, so we're all pretty scared of Lance now.
Posted by Fuzzy at 04:21 PM
One Step Closer
We had a milestone Cinema 2.0 rehearsal this weekend -- the projector at the Playground works! Yay! It was great to be in the space, working with the actual setup.
The cast is right on track -- nowhere near perfect, but that's why we have rehearsals.
There's still plenty of tech work to do, too. I don't want the movies to be over 75 minutes, so that means editting. And I need to get the poster designed -- I've designed the poster for every Directors Series show except Sybilization, and I didn't want to skip that for my own show, but it's one-more-thing-to-do.
Posted by Fuzzy at 11:44 AM
Performink article
The Neutrino Project and our entry into the Fast Forward Film Festival are included in an article in Performink about the intersection of theatre and film.
In a first for me, some of the quotes Christina used are straight from this journal. That's cool, under the any-publicity-is-good-publicity rule, but a little scary, too, given the number of times I talk about freaking out, my uncertainties about directing, etc. Next entry -- more freaking out!
Posted by Fuzzy at 10:55 AM
February 19, 2003
Pix from Seattle
I've posted some pictures from our trip to Seattle last weekend.
Posted by Fuzzy at 01:09 PM
February 17, 2003
Seattle...
Saturday we rocked, again. Can I say that? I just did.
Also, Neutrino rocked, especially for the rag-tag group it was (1/2 NY Neutrino, 1/4 FuzzyCo, 1/4 WIT). The only problem with the NVP was that Shaun's scene had him jumping around in a dumpster in the rain in a t-shirt, and it gave him an awful cold. I hope Bob, his scene partner in the dumpster, is OK.
Oh, and I guess all the NY folks are stuck in Seattle because of the snow in NY. Strength, NY friends.
Pictures up soon. Neutrino has a new web site. Love to all Seattle.
Posted by Fuzzy at 11:24 PM
February 15, 2003
Seattle Day Two
Friday was a very, very busy day. The two hour time difference from Chicago means that we get tired faster in the evening, but have trouble sleeping-in. So we got up and went out with four of the Neutrino folks to the Pike Place Fish Market. While I was off getting a coffee, the others decided they didn't want to wait for the fish sellers to throw fish in the normal course of their day, so they paid a guy $5 to throw a fish at Bob. Evidently, they think it was money well spent.
After a hearty fish-laden breakfast, we went off via the monorail to the Space Needle. At the foot of the Space Needle is "Fun Forest" -- an arcade and low-rent amusement park. We played Chicago vs. New York lasertag (Kurt had the highest individual score, but Chicago ruled on team score) and rode the little Ferris wheel and put Rachel on the carrosel and made fun of her.
Chicago vs New York Lasertag
Then we went over to the Experience Music Project and pretended to be a band and jammed in a jam room and danced in the disco exhibit.
Bare in the reflection of the EMP
And then, oh yeah, why are we in Seattle in the first place? Oh yeah, the shows. We had a Neutrino tech rehearsal and I was glad to see that it wasn't just me who starts a tech rehearsal by sending someone out to Radio Shack to buy all the cables I left at home.
The shows were good again, with the stand-outs being Jet City's Lost Folio (an improvised Shakespeare play) and (cough, cough, false modesy) Bare.
Yeah, we rocked. We decided to take off from that erroneous listing that said we did vaudville acts and we started the show with me juggling and Shaun eating fire. The eating fire went fine, but then Shaun escalated to breathing (technically, blowing) fire. We had forgotten to pick up some liquor during the day, so Shaun got the Rumpleminze for his fire tricks from a local bar and it's our suspicion that they watered down their liquor, because when Shaun went to breathe fire, he ended up just covering the stage with a fine mist of Rumpleminze, which made the floor sticky for the whole show. (We tried to find a mop in the intermission, but failed, and Uncle Elaine ended up doing a very physical show where they rolled around in our Rumpleminze mess a lot. Sorry.)
And the suggestion we got was "blast," which was perfect for our mood and led us into a bizarre world of Mexican stand-offs and Marlon Brando disguises and Miss Arkansas. ("My speech topic was that there's nothing anyone can't not do.")
Today's about to start off with more Neutrino rehearsal and we've got another show tonight. S-the-D, B.
Posted by Fuzzy at 12:06 PM | Comments (1)
February 14, 2003
Hello from Seattle
Hello from Seattle! Shaun and I are here to do two Bare shows (Friday and Saturday at 10 pm) and sit in with the New York Neutrino. Tonight was all Seattle groups, and we saw some fine improv indeed.
Tomorrow the Chicago Neutrino Project will happen for the first time without Shaun or I. I'm sure they'll be fine, but we're both control freaks, so it was hard for us to leave. We both left lots of instructions that I hope the crew will just ignore and just do the show they know full well how to do.
Tomorrow morning we're off to see the market where they throw the fish.
Posted by Fuzzy at 03:56 AM
February 11, 2003
Cinema 2.0
Did I say Movie 2.0? I meant Cinema 2.0.
Shaun reminded me of the A-B-C rule last night. The A-B-C rule is why there are so many businesses named, for example, A-1 Locksmith -- people tend to start at the beginnings of listings and read until they find something good enough. So the earlier in the listings you can be, the better. Sometimes I think that the only reason every show isn't named the Acme Show is that Shakespeare didn't have to deal with getting listed in the Reader.
Posted by Fuzzy at 10:31 AM
February 10, 2003
Fire-eating
I shouldn't look gift publicity in the mouth, but it seems that someone may have misread my figurative description of Bare as "two men who perform with the energy and presence of a ten-person group -- a ten-person group with some acrobats, a fire-eater, and a rock band in there somewhere" as literal. Caveat to the Pacific Northwest -- we don't actually eat fire. Or do (good) acrobatics. We're funny, though. And I can juggle. Note to self: bring juggling clubs to Seattle. I wonder if I'll have any problems carrying them onto the plane?
P.S. "Nurtino". Hee hee.
Posted by Fuzzy at 05:09 PM | Comments (1)
AYUMDS --> Movie 2.0
We had our first AYUMDS rehearsal last night. I had assigned the cast homework of coming up with possible titles for the show, and the main contenders were Dub, Movie 2.0, and Dubby McDubDub and the Angry Giant. I had a quick meeting with Producer Megan this morning and we settled on Movie 2.0, with Homer's tagline "You took the words right out of my movie."
We were scheduled have rehearsal at the Playground, and I had planned out some exercises to transition the cast from "standing-up and moving around" improv to "sitting around and just using our voices" improv. But the Playground was double-booked and the other event won, so we had the rehearsal in my living room. Which precluded doing any "standing-up and moving around" improv at all.
I have confess that, even though I knew about the venue change on Friday afternoon, I somehow (please see "emotional rollercoaster" below) managed not to plan for a all-sitting-down rehearsal. So the first few minutes of rehearsal were a little rough (pattern games? What was I thinking?). Bad director, no cookie.
But we did a bat and that went well (note: it's hard to take notes on the bat. Because it's dark.) And then dove right in to watching scenes from The Phantom Creeps and dubbing them. We learned a lot in just a few hours about what kinds of skills we'll need to work on. Overall, a great start.
Posted by Fuzzy at 12:52 PM
Oh, and Seattle
And this week I have to get everything all straight by Wednesday again, because Shaun and I are flying to Seattle on Thursday. We'll be sitting in with the New york Neutrino, which is very exciting, but as a control freak it's very disconcerting to be leaving the show here.
Posted by Fuzzy at 12:20 PM | Comments (0)
"Peppermint Ice Cream"
It's been a busy Neutrino Project week, a busy AYUMDS week, and a busy Bare week. And the ol' personal life has been an unbloggable rollercoaster. So... get off my case, Don, for the lack of updates.
We had a tech rehearsal at IO on Wednesday. The two big changes were sound and where Greg sat.
Everyone we spoke to who had done a show in the Del Close Theater said "get your own sound." I guess the speakers cut out a lot and such. We didn't want to risk it, so Shaun and I went down to Guitar Center and bought a Fender PD-250. Which brings our total expenditures for this show to somewhere around a half-a-jillion dollars. It's all equipment we can use for this and future shows, but still. But, I can't wait until we get a golf cart to mount our PD-250 on.
We also had to figure out where to stick Greg and all the gear. The lightbooth at IO is pretty small, and the runners would either have to run across the picture or come in the back door, which is currently broken. So, we stuck Greg just to the right of the stage. I'm not sure if having him visible adds to or detracts from the show. But that's what we're stuck with.
The tech rehearsal was also an opportunity to break in a few new folks. Because the extension was so last minute, no one had cleared their schedule for the four Fridays. The only person we're losing completely for this run is Rachel Michalski (which is a huge shame) but the rest of the schedule is a hodge-podge of people missing one or two shows. Add in that we're trying to give each of the runners a show as an actor and we're back in huge, complicated chart-land and we're pulling in some Neutrino Project alumni (Tim Sniffen) and some new faces (Trish Conlon, Chad Reinhart).
A big advantage of a Saturday show is that I can put off lots of stuff until Saturday afternoon -- for a Friday show I need to be ready for by Thursday night, so I can go straight from work to the show. And since I was going to Steppenwolf and Lakeview Lounge for my birthday on Thursday night, I had to go home after the tech rehearsal on Wednesday and blank all the tapes and pack up cables, etc. Whew -- planning ahead?! What do you people want from me!?
So, Friday came all too fast and we were still short a runner. At 5:30, when I needed to leave for the theater, I walked over to the desk of Ben Taylor, who was fortunately still at work, and asked if he'd mind running. Ben wins the all-around-great-guy award of the year for saying "sure" and heading to the theater with me. (Ben's the band leader for the two-piece that will be doing the scores for the AYUMDS.)
The suggestion for the show was "peppermint ice cream" and the show was more-or-less about childish behavior. Dave Colan (in his Neutrino Project debut) and Andrea made a giant mess as food-artists at the Billy Goat and Beth and Jen were a professor and frightfully under-age student at Mullen's. Mike Starcevich was in San Diego, so Scott McNulty, who had run camera in some of the early rehearsals, stepped up to the plate and acquited himself well as a videographer.
We had an audience of about 40, which was about what we were expecting for moving theaters, days, and times. I hope too many people didn't show up at WNEP on Saturday at 10:30 (or if they did, I hope they stayed for Dirty Bible Stories). Forty people in WNEP feels pretty full. Forty people in the Del Close Theater doesn't feel quite so packed, so I hope things pick back up in the next few weeks.
I know that one concern is the higher ticket price at IO, so here's my special you-read-this-far-you-must-be-cool offer -- send me an email and I'll hook you up with a 2-for-1.
Posted by Fuzzy at 11:56 AM
February 03, 2003
Cast cast
(noun and verb, get it?)
Yesterday we had the AYUMDS auditions. It was hard to pick just 6 people, so I picked 7. And it was hard to pick just those 7. There were lots of great auditions. All day I've been walking around with the nagging feeling of "Yeah, the people we cast are great, but people I didn't pick were great, too. Why can't I have a cast of 17?"
The great and horrible thing about improv auditions is that you're not selecting for specific parts. Instead of a rather specific "we've got our Hamlet and our Polonius, now we just need to pick the right Gertrude, etc." it's a very squishy question of "goodness" and "energy levels" and "kinds of play." And in the case of this show, "funny voices".
The cast we cast:
Andrea Swanson
Dan Izzo
Emily Dugan
Homer Marrs
Michael Starcevich
Phillip Mottaz
Trish Conlon
Posted by Fuzzy at 05:38 PM
Birthday
Hey, Fuzzy, it's your birthday. We're gonna party like it's your birthday. Hey, Fuzzy, it's your birthday. (repeat)
Posted by Fuzzy at 12:22 PM | Comments (2)
"Hemoglobin"
I think Greg put a hyphen in there somewhere, but I'll spell it right for here. So we had former plasma donators reuniting after 5 years, we had blood donation induced craziness, we had the actually-sick Elizabeth McNaughton playing a sickly lesbian, and a very, very angry Shaun and Beth, arguing about kidney donations to mail-order brides. I was really happy with the end of the show (which, yes, I shot) because I thought it linked the stories without being sledgehammer about it.
I was also happy with my new, too-expensive, video camera. An extravagant birthday present to myself, and it means that I'm one step closer to owning everything I need to do the show without borrowing stuff from people.
The midnight showing was sparsely attended, which surprised us a little, especially because a number of people had called to ask about it and try to make reservations. We showed Michael Starcevich's trailer for Pop Psychology, our Fast Forward Film Festival entry ("Ted McGuillicutty, Man of Action"), a sequence shot by Adam Witt in rehearsal that I think stands on it's own as a delightful short (it's got some great physical comedy by Jen Ellison and great bitchiness from Andrea and Lillie), and then last week's show, which was voted by the cast as the one they wanted to see.
And then we tore down and cleaned up and we were officially done at WNEP. Sniff. WNEP has been good to us and I wish we could have extended there.
This Friday we'll be opening at the ImprovOlympic (8 PM. Friday.). We're having a tech rehearsal Wednesday to figure out crucial details like where to put Greg that the runners can get to him. I need to get over there tomorrow with a tape measure and then make a RadioShack run for audio cable, I think. And we need to look at locations up in that neighborhood (first impression - lots of bars).
Posted by Fuzzy at 10:26 AM