Subject: Messageboard Date: Sat, 11 Sep 1999 02:26:46 +1000 From: Mark Longmuir To: Mark Longmuir Craig: A Couple of Articles About The "Magic" of DLiiA? (01-Sep-1999 14:54:09) Muran: Re: A Couple of Articles About The "Magic" of DLiiA? (01-Sep-1999 16:13:11) Steph: A Vancouverite, I believe. (n/t) (01-Sep-1999 18:07:22) Muran: Ooooh, wow, really? a Vancouverite? Aw man, that is too cool =) (Can you tell I'm from Vancouver too?) (n/t) (02-Sep-1999 01:10:55) Jules: Gee, I like this woman! :-) That's the best article about DL I've seen yet! Thanks, Craig! (n/t) (01-Sep-1999 22:05:40) Claudia: Yup, Ryan is, but he was originally born in Seattle. But...I should know that =o) (01-Sep-1999 23:48:50) -- Mark Longmuir - longmuir@labyrinth.net.au Homepage: http://www.labyrinth.net.au/~longmuir/ Whose Line is it Anyway? - http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Lot/8451 "Stop tap dancing, you fool!" --------------------------------------------------------------------- [Inside The Web] [Image] [Get FREE Message Board] [Image] Whose Board is it Anyway? A Couple of Articles About The "Magic" of DLiiA? Wednesday, 01-Sep-1999 14:54:09 205.188.198.189 writes: ABC's `Whose Line Is It Anyway?' is pretty close to magic By Ellen Gray Knight Ridder Newspapers If there were only one question allowed about ABC's funniest show, it probably wouldn't be "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" No, it would be more like: "How the Heck Do They Do That?" If you've ever seen the improvisational show "where anything can happen and the points don't matter," you know what I'm talking about. Sometimes, watching Wayne Brady manufacture a song out of thin air, or "Drew Carey Show" co-star Ryan Stiles pull an entire personality out of a funny hat, it's hard to believe it isn't all a trick: pre-rehearsed bits that just LOOK spontaneous, a studio audience carefully coached to offer up the correct "suggestions," maybe some smoke and mirrors to hide the Great and Powerful Oz, the guy who's really pulling the strings from backstage. Which is why, when I had the opportunity this summer to attend a "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" taping at the Warner Bros. lot in Hollywood, I jumped at it. In five years of writing about television, I've endured enough set visits and sitcom tapings to know that watching an entertainment show come together is often less than entertaining and that studio audiences -- primed to laugh on cue and clap till they drop -- are the hardest-working people in show business. Sitting through a "Whose Line" taping, I figured, would help me expose the sleight-of-hand that Drew Carey and his merry band are passing off as comic sorcery. I must not be that observant, though, because while I saw a few things you might not have picked up on at home, I'm still looking for the false-bottomed trunks and the two-headed coins. Here's the dirty little secret behind "Whose Line Is It Anyway?": It's pretty close to magic. Impractical magic, to be sure -- in a business that recycles everything, improvisational humor is essentially perishable -- but magic, nonetheless. How else to explain why a studio audience seated knee to knee (and occasionally bottom to bottom) on spindly folding chairs would still be laughing somewhat spontaneously after two hours without a bathroom break? Uncomfortable seating aside, the audience knows its own importance. Not only are people encouraged to bring along props to be used in the show's games (a table set up just outside the studio entrance holds a collection of odd offerings), but they're asked to help determine the direction of those games. Each seat contains a couple of colored slips of paper and a pencil, with which audience members are asked to suggest ideas for such games as "Scenes from a Hat" (in which cast members must act out particular scenes) or "Party Quirks," in which party guests' oddities, mental and/or physical, might include "skier who keeps skiing into things" or "a foal being born." All the suggestions are then collected for use in this or future tapings. Shouting's encouraged, too, although co-creator Dan Patterson warns, "Please try to avoid shouting out companies that might sue us -- McDonald's, Disney. You know who they are." Are the suggestions used? From what I was able to observe, they are. Sure, Carey as host has some discretion about which of the many shouted responses he chooses, but unless he has people planted in the audience, the procedure seems to be on the up and up. The power of suggestion wouldn't mean anything if it weren't for the cast that must turn those hastily thought-up ideas into comedy. Regulars include Brady, Stiles and Colin Mochrie (the latter two Canadians who were previously regulars on the British version of the show, now more than a decade old). A rotating fourth spot is often filled by guest stars Greg Proops (another veteran of the British show) or Brad Sherwood. Carey, who hosts the show while also starring in his ABC sitcom, "The Drew Carey Show," is a genuinely funny guy, but by his own admission he's the weakest player on stage in terms of improv, which is one reason he spends most of the show sitting behind a desk. Carey, in fact, was largely responsible for the July 24 taping's only debacle, a series of attempts to pull off a "Christmas Hoedown," in which the star's repeated failure to come up with any rhyme at all (and Stiles' use of a euphemism for sex that didn't make it past ABC's on-set censor) made multiple takes necessary. And each time, no matter how well the other cast members' Christmas-themed lyrics had turned out, they had to come up with new ones, to keep the piece from seeming rehearsed. "Usually, if you have to do it again, you don't want to repeat yourself, because it's hard to re-create the improvised part," explained Mochrie, in an interview after the taping. "The trick is to think of a rhyming line first," Carey said. "So the first time down, I knew it was going to be `shoes' and `Jews,' but I couldn't think of what the first line was." And although the Hoedown is one of the games regularly featured on "Whose Line," a run-through of that, or any of the games, during the pre-taping rehearsal couldn't have helped, because once a theme's been used at rehearsal, it can't be used for the show that follows, he said. Brady, a singer who's probably the show's most gifted musical stylist (Sherwood's pretty good, too), said everyone comes up empty sometimes. "What separates you from someone else is how you handle drawing the blank," he said. "If you draw a blank on 1/8something3/8, then think of something else. Just keep on moving. Steamroll it," he said. "The way that improv is built, if you succeed, it's incredible," he said. "And if you fail, it's still incredible because the audience is having fun with you. And if you hit everything a hundred percent of the time, then no one would be interested in watching." WHOSE LINE IS IT ANYWAY? 7 p.m. Thursdays ABC (New episodes begin Sept. 16.) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Game shows and `other' types of programming are becoming more popular By Ellen Gray Knight Ridder Newspapers When ABC introduced "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" last summer, it was clearly looking for something quick and cheap to stir things up during the dog days of August. It didn't hurt, either, that in buying a format that was popular in Britain -- and already had a small but loyal following on Comedy Central -- the network was also getting double duty out of Drew Carey, one of its brightest stars. Carey, who was introduced to the show by "Drew Carey Show" co-star Ryan Stiles, a previous star of the British version of "Whose Line," offered himself up as host and occasional player in order to get the network to bite. When the hard-to-pigeonhole series became an unexpected hit in its first six-week run, ABC picked it up for midseason. For the 1998-99 season, it averaged a healthy 13.2 million viewers a week. This season, the network has given the show a dubious vote of confidence, moving it to Thursday nights against NBC's "Friends." While most prime-time programming can be categorized as sitcom, drama or news magazine, "other" may be the fastest-growing category, from CBS's "Kids Say the Darndest Things" (in which Bill Cosby does double duty for HIS network) to this August's borrowed-from-Britain phenomenon "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" on ABC, which took up four of the Top 10 slots in the Nielsens its first week on the air. CBS is working on a deal for a variety show with Ellen DeGeneres, while Norm Macdonald of ABC's "Norm" reportedly has a game show in the works. NBC got into the recycling business earlier this month with an update of the series "You Asked for It," which ran on the old Dumont network in 1950-51, on ABC from 1951 through '59 and in syndication in 1972, reappearing briefly in 1981 as "The New You Asked for It." Jamie Tarses, who Thursday resigned as president of ABC Entertainment, said last month that what shows like "Whose Line" and "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" have in common is that they're "distinctive." "They're not scripted programming, but they're all completely different from one another . . . If you come up with a truly different idea and it's well-executed, people aren't saying, `Well, it's not like anything else, so I don't want to see it.' If anything, they're saying quite the opposite," she said. And no, it's no coincidence that they're also relatively cheap. "We're always looking for different formats and it doesn't hurt that they actually cost less to produce," Tarses said. "So we'll continue to look for them." Craig ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Message thread: Craig: A Couple of Articles About The "Magic" of DLiiA? (01-Sep-1999 14:54:09) Muran: Re: A Couple of Articles About The "Magic" of DLiiA? (01-Sep-1999 16:13:11) Steph: A Vancouverite, I believe. (n/t) (01-Sep-1999 18:07:22) Muran: Ooooh, wow, really? a Vancouverite? Aw man, that is too cool =) (Can you tell I'm from Vancouver too?) (n/t) (02-Sep-1999 01:10:55) Jules: Gee, I like this woman! :-) That's the best article about DL I've seen yet! Thanks, Craig! (n/t) (01-Sep-1999 22:05:40) Claudia: Yup, Ryan is, but he was originally born in Seattle. But...I should know that =o) (01-Sep-1999 23:48:50) Back to main board ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Prev Page Next Page Now viewing page 4 of 4 (02-Sep-1999 02:51:36 to 31-Aug-1999 12:49:59) [Image] Message subject: Name: (optional) Email address: (optional) Type your message here: [Get them to Buy It!] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Back to main board ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Copyright © Looksmart, Ltd., 1997-1999 All rights reserved. [Inside The Web] [Image] [Get FREE Message Board] [Image] Whose Board is it Anyway? Re: A Couple of Articles About The "Magic" of DLiiA? Wednesday, 01-Sep-1999 16:13:11 24.113.57.57 writes: <> Whoa, that sounds kinda silly... =) <> Ryan's Canadian? I didn't know that.... Muran ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Message thread: Craig: A Couple of Articles About The "Magic" of DLiiA? (01-Sep-1999 14:54:09) Muran: Re: A Couple of Articles About The "Magic" of DLiiA? (01-Sep-1999 16:13:11) Steph: A Vancouverite, I believe. (n/t) (01-Sep-1999 18:07:22) Muran: Ooooh, wow, really? a Vancouverite? Aw man, that is too cool =) (Can you tell I'm from Vancouver too?) (n/t) (02-Sep-1999 01:10:55) Jules: Gee, I like this woman! :-) That's the best article about DL I've seen yet! Thanks, Craig! (n/t) (01-Sep-1999 22:05:40) Claudia: Yup, Ryan is, but he was originally born in Seattle. But...I should know that =o) (01-Sep-1999 23:48:50) Back to main board ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Prev Page Next Page Now viewing page 4 of 4 (02-Sep-1999 02:51:36 to 31-Aug-1999 12:49:59) [Image] Message subject: Name: (optional) Email address: (optional) Type your message here: [Get them to Buy It!] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Back to main board ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Copyright © Looksmart, Ltd., 1997-1999 All rights reserved.