you know, people become dent sxifts they also become improv artists. ? with sketch comedy it s the immediacy of it. it s the daringness of it. going back to sid caesar on the beach with imo gen coca and getting buckets of water thrown in his face. or you think saturday night live and julia child bleeding to death or the dead parrot sketch on monty python. paulie! it is very ephemeral, it s over quickly, but if it s great and it really worked you get this nice little memory, maybe a piece of videotape. it s the most exhilarating feeling because oh, my god, this sketch worked. when improvised comedy s going well, it has all of the sort of excitement of sports. when it s going badly, it s like watching a beating, a slow motion beating. it s much better to be on stage doing bad improv than be forced to sit in the audience watching it. sitting in that audience is
guaranteed either. hard as it sounds, sometimes they do write themselves. if you have good, juicy ideas, you don t really need a script. you can just wing it. we have moved past the tightly scripted comedy. the improv on curb gives it a rawness and spontaneity that an audience is really seeking, i think, in the comedy they watch these days. you met julia louis-dreyfus. come on. you met julia. it was an unpleasant meeting. it was, nevertheless, a meeting. music: other side by nvdes
community where you can build a career. so let s start. sctv, ratings aside, we re number one. sctv was a show that would come on at 1:00 in the morning. you didn t know what it was. there was no ads for it. you didn t know what was happening. it almost felt like it was a mistakes. welcome to the great white north, cool. the premise is great. it s so simple, they re a cheap cable network, and here are the shows they do, and here s the people that it was great. you have a television show you re supposed to be doing right now. between you and me, i don t think anybody watches it. it was just good fortune that the people who happened to be in the second city cast at that time got to be the cast for sctv. you think what i m doing could be important? we are all, each of us, especially oh, mommy teresa, you re so special, it s scary. there was bit of jovial poking fun at the slickness of american show business. because canadian show business is you ve won
were writers that would hang out in the corridors of nbc and they would shout out jokes. if sid caesar heard them and used them, he paid them. we heard that story and we were looking for a name of that group, we should call ourselves the kids in the hall. on the outside breaking in. the kids already have some great credentials. two have written for saturday night live in new york. the others have worked for second city. but now, they re trying to create their own brand of comedy. one of my favorite sketches, they re at kind of a punch bowl at a party. look, i don t think there s any need to be sarcastic. oh, i m not being sarcastic. no. this is just a little speech impediment.
ever lived. all they did was look at society and skew it a little bit. you laughed at yourself being ridiculous. i want to sing a song for you. it s on the other side of our hit record. this side is selling more than the other side. the show of shows had comedy geniuses gathered together almost like a manhattan project for comedy. you had carl reiner moving back and forth between acting and writing at this time, and sid caesar who would do all the roles and all the accents. the audience fell in love with the people doing that show. name the dates of the following battles. battle of hastings. battle of waterloo. it was done live and they would do like 33 or 36 episodes a year. that is a schedule. that s a real schedule. i think the hardest job in the world is to be a comedy writer for a variety show.