I quote Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark:

Reporter: What do you think of being called the Da Vinci of our time?
Stark: Ridiculous, I don’t paint.
Reporter: How about your other nickname… Merchant of Death?
Stark: That’s not bad.

Impressive as hell. Touching as hell.

Quite funny actually

Not as much as you’d think…

Further proving the sheer massive levels of my geekiness, I’m closely watching the US Magic Championships.

Guam rocks. (via DigitalBattle.com)

Looking back over the history of comedy, much of the great US Comedians came through specific channels. Working at a comedy theatre has opened a door to understand the channels which most comedians flow through. Please note that I say most not all. There are always people who buck the system and make their own route, but the large majority of comedians went through various institutions.

For the previous generation, the large selection of comedians went through SNL before breaking out on their own but today it seems as if the talented proving grounds is the Comedy Central show with Jon Stewart, “The Daily Show.” They’ve had Stephen Colbert, Steve Carell, John Hodgmann is up and coming, and a small handful of other comedians who are working their way out. Sure SNL has put out a few as well, but in terms of relevance I hear people talking about The Daily Show a lot more than SNL.

This could be attributed to the fact that The Daily Show is, well, daily. And SNL is only weekly, but I honestly only know a small handful of people who watch SNL and talk about it. I know some friends who dream of breaking out as comedians and so they watch it, but other than that, I think SNL is appealing to our parents and our older siblings.

The Daily Show has its spin off, The Colbert Report, which has proven to be meteoric in its success, but it hasn’t produced the comedians that Jon Stewart’s show has. Yet.

So watch out Lorne Michaels, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are gunning for you!

I don’t know how many times I hear it from my various Improv teachers and it’s this: “Start in the middle.”

The audience is smart. Very smart. As improvisors we accept and embrace this concept. We need them to be smarter than us. So if you start a scene with the introduction of two characters, the audience is already bored. For example:

It rings as the start to a British comedy for me, but to most people it’s really boring at this point. Or at least, it’s only luke warm in terms of excitement. As opposed to the lights coming up and the first words shouted on stage are:

The latter example is much more interesting isn’t it? The audience is atwitter with questions and hooks that have them stuck to this story. Who? What? Why? Etc… Both are examples I personally was part of.

So this is a concept well known in the world of Improv, start in the middle. But it’s something TV doesn’t do enough. They think that audiences need to be spoon fed stories, they think we need to see the brickwall being constructed from the ground up when in fact we’re discovering that the most addicting new shows do just the opposite. Lost, Heroes, Battlestar Galactica, etc. Forget the setup, throw the viewer in and let them figure it out.