Monday, July 16, 2007

You and I are done.

I’ve watched the season finale of The Office, season 3, at least four times. Last night I watched it again with Sarah, and the magic is still strong. The episode’s final beats are two of the most elegant climaxes I’ve ever seen—both beautiful for opposite reasons—and that’s about all I can say without diving into spoilers. Jim’s epiphany towards the end of the episode was also intercut with a true flashback, which I thought was taboo in the documentary-style of The Office… but yeah, it fucking works, and all the seeds were planted so it didn’t feel forced or out of place. 

I would kill to work on that show. I think the turning point, in terms of my obsession with The Office, was reading this interview with Mindy Kaling, in which she references the kinds of discussions they have in their writing meetings.  Wait, it’s not just writing jokes? You actually discuss character, truth, honesty, plot and development? For a job? It’s so obvious, watching the show, how much care is put into the writing, but to hear the process described in such plain terms… well, it makes it seem accessible, normal.

p.s. This article on the management lessons of The Office is alternately insightful and embarrassing.

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Mercy, Melody!

I blame a tiny deformity in my mouth for my terrible poetry and songwriting.

When I was a wee lad, I had superhuman hearing and a minor cleft in my throat.  The cleft—specifically a submucous cleft—prevented (and still prevents) me from closing off the back of my throat like a normal person. Or so I’m told. I went through speech therapy so long ago that my only memory of it is a tiny plastic ball covered in velcro, which I used to toss against a fuzzy dartboard while a nice lady urged me to say “lamp” instead of “mamp.” Apparently the therapy worked, because nobody knows I have a speech impediment unless I’m very tipsy.  There are only two things, throat-wise, I can’t accomplish—blowing up balloons, and playing wind instruments.

However, the latter deficiency posed a problem for young Neil, who happened to be enrolled in a public school system obsessed with their band.  In middle school I was asked to choose which instrument I wanted to play. Trumpet? Tuba? Clarinet, flute, trombone? Those were my (affordable) options. It didn’t help that at the time I had no interest in music, and the only tape I owned was a maxi-single of Little Richard’s “Tutti Frutti.” God I loved that song. Anyway, I didn’t want to take lessons in piano or drumming, and I couldn’t produce a single note from the instruments the school offered, so, I abstained from taking band.

In my particular school, not-taking-band meant not-being-educated-in-music. All of the school’s budget and teacher resources were dumped into its band (who, among other things, played at the Rose Bowl annually). The rest of the students who were either too musically deficient or too cool for marching band, got to take a single music class in middle school, where we learned about the history of music, not the art. No lessons in rhythm, no memorizing note scales, no blasting simple melodies on shitty recorders, no critical listening.

In college, I took a few classes in poetry. In discussions about meaning, context, and rhyme form, I was en fuego. But when the conversation inevitably turned to rhythm, meter, and other musical terms, I would quietly curse my ineptitude.  I made earnest attempts to get better, but they fell flat.

My Sarah, a music teacher, bless her heart, has made me flashcards so I can memorize some notes.  I’m trying to learn guitar, and even though I’m pretty good at playing chords, I can’t keep time for shit.  I suppose I’m learning, but it’s painfully slow.

And although reading and critically hearing music isn’t a prerequisite for songwriting, it would certainly help me put some words in this goddamn blank Word document I’ve been staring at for an hour, for which I have a hilarious song idea all rarin’ to go, but no pretty rhymes in which to cast it.

Monday, July 09, 2007

PIF4

Two weeks ago was the 4th annual Providence Improv Fest.  This was my second year attending, and like last year, I wish I’d stuck around for the whole weekend.  Code Duello had a great show at the Trinity Rep Theater, and every group I saw was somehow inspirational (particularly, the legendary TJ & Dave).  As with all improv festivals my own show was booked against some of my friends and colleagues’ performances, so I wasn’t able to support the swaths of Boston improvisers who went down to play, but if the reports are to be believed, our scene was represented. Of all the festivals I’ve been attended (Providence, Chicago, Toronto, DCM), Providence has been the most well-organized, community-supported, and generally welcoming.  I look forward to next year, when I will book a goddamn hotel so I can make the most out of the weekend.

It’s been a year since Matt and I took Code Duello to PIF3, which was our first improv festival ever. I wouldn’t have guessed it “way” back then, but the improv community is damn, damn small. I’m young to the scene but the same people and performances show up everywhere. It’s nice to know I’ll see some familiar faces backstage at the UCB in a few weeks, since I still get intimidated by the blurry, hungry crowds of New York. And for the most part, improvisers are pretty good people, as eager to socialize as to talk shop. Only in the very upper echelons of the improv scene do players worry about “industry” and “agents” and acting like rockstars when they’re not on the stage. As a result, the other 95% of the community is more concerned with making friends than with competition, and nowhere is it more apparent than Providence, where there is no industry to speak of, and the only people you want to impress are your friends and peers.

Thursday, July 05, 2007

Envisioning The Wasteland

Since The Wasteland Comedy Hour was announced last month, several people have asked me what the fuck the show is about.  It’s going up at ImprovBoston but it isn’t improv, and it’s not a sketch comedy show, and it’s not a play.  We bill it as a “postmodern variety show” but nobody, including myself, knows precisely what that means yet.

My co-producers (Jason Haas, Matt Tucker) and I developed the show’s concept from three primary desires:

1. We want to produce a multimedia talk/variety show that relied heavily on shortform, written bits, and hosted by a pretentious literary figure (T.S. Eliot)
2. We want to write material that is unique, relevant, and entertaining, with an emphasis on relevant that is unusual of our improv backgrounds
3. We want a new show each week. That’s 7 hours of original material to write, develop, and rehearse.
4. We want to explore our love/hate relationship with the media, and the fractured ways in which we try (and fail) to communicate in 2007

It’s that last one that’s particularly heady and nebulous. I’m afraid it’s given our show the dubious label of “high-concept”—and fair enough, it sounds pretty pretentious. However, it’s just an earnest attempt to summarize the issues we feel are relevant to us at this time in our lives. It is not, really, an accurate indication of what a person should experience watching our show in our tiny theater. We want the audience to be entertained first and foremost, and if they leave with some memorable bits to chew on, so much the better.

The challenge for our (very talented) cast is multifaceted:

• Articulate what modern issues seem relevant to us, then break them down into digestible, chewy morsels
• Write entertaining pieces that aren’t just about a subject, but aim to say something about that subject
• Treat the audience with respect; don’t be heavy-handed or pedantic
• Create seven hours of diverse, unique material in 4 months

To aid with the organization of the project, the producers decided to give each show a “theme,” which is just a set of organizing principals to inspire thought, discussion, and material.  Each of the seven shows in November/December will fall under a different organizing principal.  Although they’re still flexible at this early stage, the organizing principals are:

• Intimacy (Love/Sex/Family)
• The System (Politics/Social Order/The Law)
• Work (Class/Economics/Money)
• Aggression (War/Violence/Confrontation)
• The Body (Health/Fitness/The oddness of having a body)
• The Self (Art/Dreams/Creation/Identity)
• The Unknown (Religion/Faith/Abstraction)

Praise be on Haas for taking the first stab at the organizing principals, and on the cast for fleshing them out even further with each writers’ meeting.  It’s too early to know whether these principals will really stick, or how tangible their influence on a given show will be. But they’re certainly a lot of fun to think about, and write for.

So, that’s our ambitious, pretentious, delicious show idea. I’ll periodically write about my experience as a writer/producer for this show, in an effort to make the whole process more open-source.