This week on The Sound of Young America, our theme is Making Friends with Black People.
Our first guest, Nick Adams, is the author of a book by that name, and a standup comedian. His book tackles inter-race relations with a comic edge. We talk about the N-word, being black at liberal arts college, and much more. Nick's about to do a book tour for his book, which will take him to LA & the Bay Area.
Our second guest, Calvin Levels, is a Tony-nominated actor, currently touring the nation with his one-man show James Baldwin: Down From the Mountaintop. Calvin talks with us about Baldwin's life, how he balanced his dual identities as a black American and a gay American, and more. Calvin will be performing in Santa Cruz March 17th as part of UCSC Arts & Lectures.
This whole business is a symptom of a broader culture in which things that are funny can't possibly be good, and vice-versa. Think of this year's Oscars. "The Squid and the Whale," Noah Baumbach's wonderful serio-comic film, received the only comedy nomination in any of the major categories. The only one! Out of like 30! If you want to find any other comedy at all, you have to look at the animation category. I guess if it's funny, it isn't art.
Of course, this is self-reinforcing. If a funny prestige film gets no prestige, then why try to make funny prestige films? And if you're not making a prestige film, why not just aim for the bottom of the barrel?
Even the best comedies of the last few years, films like "School of Rock," "Rushmore," and "High Fidelity," are ignored. "Sideways" slipped through, but it was about hoity-toity stuff, which pretty much gives it a pass. I remember watching the good-but-not-great "In Good Company," and being shocked. Not because it was a shocking film, but simply because I realized I was watching a comedy that was trying to be a good film.
When no one's trying to make something good, the cream of the comedy crop ends up being semi-improvised mish-mashes like "The Wedding Crashers." There's a place for movies like that, don't get me wrong, but the pile-of-jokes thing gets old after a while. I mean, I liked "Old School," too, but I feel like I've been watching it over and over for five years.
"The 40-Year-Old Virgin" was a problematic film, but at least they gave it a shot. The main character had some dignity, the romance was somewhat credible. It was a bit bloated and a bit formulaic, but at least it didn't abandon all hope of being a story, with characters we care about.
At this year's SF Sketchfest, David Cross & Bob Odenkirk of Mr. Show pointed to the sketch-iness trend in recent comedies. Why bother with story, the asked, when people just want to see a bunch of jokes? Why not just make a sketch movie?
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Stupidity is the devil. Look in the eye of a chicken and you'll know. It's the most horrifying, cannibalistic, and nightmarish creature in this world. - Werner Herzog
Debate in the comments thread was hot and heavy, with many important points being made. Andrey set the tone with a thoughtful essay which began “This set of choices is deceptive, at first. One one hand, you have a choice that incorporates both dinosaurs (awesome) and crime-fighting (if not awesome, then certainly b'dass.)”
Jeff T asked an important question: does this dino have a dino brain, or the brain of a man? The answer was the brain of a man. His crimefighting is as effective as Batman.
An anonymous poster and David Lifton agreed that while free brunch was tempting, let’s face it, a dino can get whatever it wants.
It was a compelling debate. Now, it’s time for the answer. FREE BRUNCH
Why? Jim explains it thusly:
…the most critical downside of dino crime fighter is this: you're a dino living in a man's world. Although bringing the heavily padded/clawed foot of justice to wrong doers will make you generally well loved and respected, as the only dino you may also (probably inevitably) become lonely and feel alienated, leading to depression and detachment, and not to mention you'd be generally illsuited at every other aspect of daily life (besides crime fighting).
There would you find friendship and love? The life of a crime-fighter is lonely, and the closest friends you could hope to have are the irrascible commissioner of police and the government scientists. All you have is the dino-cave and your work, and when it comes down to it, that’s just not enough.
Or as Matt put it eloquently: "Which comes with melon? Once you answer that, there's really no question at all."
I'll save you the usual rigamaroll about sitcom actors breaking out of typecasting and all that jibber-jabber. It's true that if millions and millions of people come to know you as one character, it's tough to do something else. This piece in the Times, though, gives me some hope for the new series.
Like everyone else, I loved Seinfeld. Everyone's got a favorite character, and I was usually on the fence. Some days, George, some Kramer, many days Jerry (really!). In all honesty, I never really considered Elaine. My girlfriend of many years, though, told me one day about Elaine being her favorite, and the last few re-runs I've caught, I've taken the opportunity to appreciate the character and Louis-Drefuss' great work.
Women on sitcoms tend to fall into a few broad categories... accessory, ditz, bitch. Elaine was something else entirely. For one thing, among the central characters of Seinfeld, she was the driving force. You put those four in a room together, and while Jerry's the protagonist, Elaine's running things. And it's not through bitchiness, either. The only analogue I can think of to her power in that group is Rosanne, though she obviously struggled with Dan.
The piece describes her certain something as "plucky," but I would call it "gutsy" or perhaps, in less civil company, "ballsy." She's fearless in the same way that Lucille Ball is, but she isn't a clown or a fool. She's very physical, but in kind of an odd way (think of that terrible dance). She's very smart, but she often makes odd decisions that sink her.
The new series is from one of the creators of "Will & Grace," which was at it's peak a witty and well-crafted show. She says that she's trying to bring out Louis-Drefuss' softer side, and we'll see how it comes out. Hopefully she won't lose her, uhm, balls.
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Tina Fey has a new pilot, a behind-the-scenes at SNL sitcom starring Alec Baldwin. It also features Fey and Tracy Morgan, among others. If you live in NYC, you can go see the taping... Greetings from NBC Studios!
Next Friday, March 17th, Tina Fey will be shooting her television pilot in Studio 8H at Rockefeller Center. Tina Fey stars in a workplace comedy behind the scenes of a television show. The pilot also stars Alec Baldwin and more details are to follow. We would LOVE to have you as a part of our audience! Shooting will take place from about 1:00pm until 5:00pm . Arrival time of audience will be no later than 11:45am. If interested in attending, please email: Kathleen.Tula@nbcuni.com with "TINA FEY PILOT" in the subject line. Please include all names, numbers, and email addresses of those that would like to come.
**ALL CALL TIMES ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE**
SHOW DESCRIPTION: When Liz Lemon was hired to write for her best friend's show on NBC, she was living every lady comedy writer's dream. But her life gets a jolt when a brash new network president bullies Liz into hiring a wild and unpredictable African-American movie star to join the cast. If she doesn't, her little show is history. Now Liz must manage the unmanageable and appease the unappeasable so that her dream can go on.
Interestingly, NBC is planning two sketch comedy behind-the-scenes shows for the fall. The other was created by Sportsnight/West Wing/A Few Good Men scribe Aaron Sorkin, and is an hour long drama. A little birdy let us check out the scripts of the two shows, and we're coming down on Aaron Sorkin's side (not that Sportsnight didn't predispose us to that outcome already). That said, both shows have a lot of potential, and with performers as winning as Morgan and Baldwin on board for Fey's, we hope both succeed, creatively and audience-wise.
"The STELLA series was on Comedy Central last summer. The network has offcially decided not to renew it for a second season.
Thank you to all the fans for your lobbying and support. Perhaps Stella will return on TV in some other form in the future. In the meantime, Comedy Central occasionally repeats the episodes, and we are currently working on a DVD which will have the whole season and lots of cool extras. The DVD release (and possible touring) will be this fall."
At least we got a season, huh? At SF Sketchfest they said they felt that Comedy Central had really supported the show, and the audiences just weren't enough. Sad.
Our pal Nick Adams checks in with news on his new book, Making Friends With Black People: "Wow. I just cracked the top 200 on Amazon, thanks in large part to a piece on Daily Candy."
...with the publication of Making Friends with Black People, everyone (read: all the colors in the Crayola box) can get one step closer to true racial harmony. The new book by L.A.-based comedian Nick Adams is a smart, hilarious look at the conflicted, all-too-often misguided relationship white people have with African-American culture...
You'll find no greater fans of the San Francisco-based sketch comedy group Kasper Hauser than us here at The Sound of Young America. It is our considered opinion that they are the best sketch comedy group in the US of A. Besides being featured on The Sound performing classic sketches like "Spicy Pony Head" and "Phone Call to the 14th Century," they perform all over the world, have a book coming out later this year (it's called Sky Maul), and they're starting to work more and more in video.
Our pals over at McSweeney's DVD magazine Wholphin have graciously hosted one of KH's new video pieces. It's so hilarious, I can barely even describe its hilarity.
The soft-spoken and relentlessly positive Armisen keeps an attitude of grateful humility throughout. "It was like being asked to be the pope or the president," he says of getting an audition for "SNL." "It just seemed so ridiculously huge that, you know, you just think, 'I'll do my audition, but, man, this is really insane to even be in this room.'"
Ira previously wrote (effusively) about The Sound in this post.
Our Python post has been making the rounds in Bloggington (as I will heretofore refer to that which was formerly known as "the blogosphere"), and has made it into several languages. Here's one post, translated from German to English via robot:
In the year of the gentleman 1975 a strange troop landed in Dallas: four young men with long hair and a stuffed armadillo. No - not the Beatles, but Michael Palin, Terry Jones, Terry Gilliam and Graham Chapman: Monty Python. Directly of the premiere of its film "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" they had hurried from Los Angeles in the KERA TV kERA-TV-Studio, in order to introduce itself the being astonished Americans.
This interview was sent 1975, and since then it had disappeared. It was rediscovered on an old Videoreel (comes me admits forwards?), the Blog The sound OF Young America arranged a publication with the transmitter and the Pythons, for which Jesse Thorn and its people of infinite thanks are entitled. The file may be downloaded, but not spread further. The recording breaks off after 14 minutes, because someone overacted the remainder of the volume (’%!!?xx??#!&!!).
Ladies & Gentlemen: fourteen precious minutes with four young Pythons and an armadillo. That has tip for the reference goes at MacFrisbee.
Former Sound of Young America co-host Jordan Morris, Boy Detective, works in television production. I was chatting with him once about a show he was working on, and there was something he couldn't get over... the show was a sitcom, but a fair number of the actors couldn't say their jokes right. They said them wrong, over and over, take after take.
There's a right way to say a joke, and a wrong way. Jokes have a rhythm, and you have to "punch" the punchline. Being able to master this is the bedrock of being funny on stage or screen. Some people joke a lot in their lives, and they already know how. Other people have to learn. Obviously, these actors had never bothered to learn this most basic of skills. Outrageous!
Except for this: what do we expect?
Most succesful actors, especially the ones who aren't really, really beautiful, are very well trained. People go the Yale School of Drama, or to the Neighborhood Playhouse, or Julliard. They get BFAs and MFAs and sometimes even PhDs. But it's entirely possible to go to theater school for four years, or even six, and never take a class which seriously covers comic acting. The closest they'll come to comedy in anything that isn't self-selected is David Mamet. Or maybe Twelfth Night. Possibly a production of The Music Man. Maaaaaybe an improv class in which they are warned again and again not to try to be funny. Other than that, they're on their own -- maybe they've got it, maybe they don't.
That's the system, and because of it, we have a nation of actors who can find the emotional truth of a cereal box, but can't do a spit take to save their lives.
When you're in acting school (and I did theater in college and went to a very well respect arts high school, where I studied theater three hours a day for four years), what you're learning is about finding and representing the truth of a character. What's often called "method" acting is very internally oriented -- you are finding some essential quality in yourself. Of course, comedy is almost completely externally oriented -- you're getting laughs from the audience. And because of this apparent philosophical contradiction -- acting for the audiences benefit is so 19th century -- it doesn't get taught.
And there are most certainly comic acting techniques that can be taught. I was lucky enough to work with Jeff Raz, a professional clown and Commedia Dell'arte teacher and performer, and as much as I hated clowning, I was shocked at how techniques I learned were directly applicable to the getting of laughs. It turns out that the funnyness that some people have naturally has been refined for hundreds of years by comic performers who weren't against training. Even the most unfunny folks in my class could learn ways to use their bodies and voices to get a laugh on stage. I don't say this to diminish clowning, either... just to illustrate that technique works.
Of course, the nation is covered in improv schools, many of whichare great. These schools are where most of our great comic actors come from -- Bill Murray, for example. But they're teaching improv, not comic acting. They're two complimentary but ultimately seperate skills. I'd say that most of the comedic acting skills learned at improv schools come the hard way -- from trial and error in hundreds of performances in front of audiences. These skills often have holes, though. When I see even great sketch shows at the UCB or a similar theater, I'm often dissapointed by the acting on display.
And where else do our comic performers come from? Standup, were we often get the total non-acting of folks like George Carlin, Jerry Seinfeld and Chris Rock, who've also honed their comic chops in front of tough crowds -- though these guys have also each honed a single comic persona that compliments their material, a persona that's tough to break out of in other media. One day I'll learn to stop going to see Chris Rock movies.
One of The Sound of Young America's top pals is Davey Rothbart, editor of Found Magazine. Davey is a really awesome guy, and Found is a really spectacular magazine. It's made up entirely of things people have found -- notes, grocery lists, signs, diaries, letters. It's funny, sad, wonderful, whatever adjective you want.
The note above was the inspiration for the magazine. Davey found it on his windshield one day.
Anyway, they've got an RSS feed now, so you can see them in the big blogroll to your right, or check out their website. Highly reccomended.
Did I ever tell you about the time I tried to have a debate on The Sound between David Cross and Larry the Cable Guy? Cross, to his credit, was happy to do it. LtCG, not so much.
Here's a bit that I originally thought was about Cross, but I misread it in haste, turns out (per Todd Jackson, editor of dead-frog) that it's about Dane Cook, and we all dislike him, right?
If you’re going to start trashing another comedian, which there’s no call for in the first place, I know David Cross and Larry have a rift going too, but if you do, then we’re going to take a look at your material. And it better be great and it’s not. It’s punchline-less, he’s very very charming. My manager thinks he’s funny. If you are going to be throwing rocks, then we’re going to take a look, and it better be great. So if you’re not Bill Hicks, and he ain’t, then I would just shut-up. He also makes gillions of dollars.
There is great dissent in the public radio world about what to do about satellite radio, and it speaks to a bigger question about the future of media.
As it stands, Sirius Satellite has three stations of US public radio. One is programmed by Public Radio International (who distribute shows like This American Life), and two by NPR (who distribute All Things Considered, Fresh Air, Car Talk, and so on). XM has one station, which produces a show of it's own (the Bob Edwards Show), and carries various other public radio content (I haven't had XM since pre-Edwards, so I'm not sure exactly what).
When NPR decided to get with the satellite revolution, it made a compromise with its member stations: they would give Sirius their programming, but would hold back their two flagship news programs, All Things Considered and Morning Edition. Local stations were understandably threatened by satellite, which doesn't have to ask for contributions (though it takes them, in the form of a $12/month subscription fee). This is more or less the same bargain they've struck when it comes to podcasting, where you can get portions of some very popular shows, all of other, less popular shows, and some shows you can't get at all.
Now, public radio consultant John Sutton, who as I understand it is a sort of the Dick Morris or Karl Rove of public radio (respected by all, reviled by some), is proposing that NPR consider offering ATC and Morning Edition to XM and Sirius. His proposal, in a nutshell, is that if NPR could get half of what Stern got, NPR could offer it's programs to member stations for free, and everybody would win. The stations might lose a bit of their audience, but by his calculations only about 5%, and they could use the revenue for local programming, the money for which often comes from the fundraising success of the big NPR news shows.
Of course, this presumes that NPR is interested in acting in the interests of the stations, and won't eventually just stick it to the satellite networks and the affiliates. It also presumes that Sirius or XM are interested enough in NPR programs to get up off big money without exclusivity.
What it means for local stations, though, is that they have to realize that the radio station business model, public or commercial, is gone. It's been replaced by the content provider and content aggregator/filter models. When you can get audio content from satellite, from the internet, or even on your Tivo, being the local NPR station means much less. Whereas they used to find shelter in NPR's overall brand ("You're listening to your NPR News station for Central Ohio..."), they now realize that if their own brand doesn't mean something, and they're not producing their own content, they're toast.
This is one of the big reasons I've tried to keep The Sound of Young America independent (though it's not like they're beating down the doors). One of the big lessons of the internet is that much more power goes to the content owner, rather than the content distributor.
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One of my favorite ballplayers, former Giants starter Kirk Rueter (known to teammates as "Woody"), retired today. He'd been trying to catch hold with his hometown St. Louis Cardinals, but it didn't happen.
I'm a sucker for a crafty lefthander, and I always loved how much success Rueter had with almost no "stuff." You usually get that with a guy who throws a "heavy ball," that is, a sinkerballer. Those guys get a lot of ground outs, double plays, and so forth. But Woody was a flyball pitcher, so it was doubly impressive. He always seemed on the brink of disaster, and until the last year or two, he always found his way out. To me, there're few greater pleasures than watching a perfectly pitched game by a guy without any great pitches, and Woody afforded me that many times.
Once, I was at a game at Candlestick, and this kid with big ears and a big low ballcap was leaning over the railing, yelling at Rueter. "Hey! Monkey boy! Look! I'm a monkey boy, too!" Rueter stopped his outfield long-toss, and ran, laughing, over to the kid. He ended up giving him a hat. Warmed my heart. He'll be missed.
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Sound of Young America pals Tony Camin and Leo Allen (of Slovin & Allen) have a very cool talk show at the UCB Theater in New York called Broin' Out with Leo & Tony (there's also a Left Coast version in LA, hosted by Seth Morris). I've never had the chance to see it in person, but Tony and Leo are so funny, I can't imagine that it's not awesome.
