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RobM

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Posts posted by RobM

  1. Posted

    I'd suggest bringing in the guy who made the Overcast app. Really clear, simple, easy interface for adding any podcast, making custom playlists, sorting by what has new episodes and what's played. I gladly paid for bonus features that cut out pauses, boosted voices, had a sliding scale of custom speeds, and remembers preferred settings by podcast for each of those.

    • Like 2

  2. Posted

    I asked for Analyze Phish and UTU2TM to remain up, since there are so few episodes, dating back years. AP because it's over, and I want as many people to listen to it as possible. And UTU2TM because it's so new, and kind of a limited series. Not sure what the plans for ADPP are specifically.

     

    Hi Scott - super excited about Howl and have been checking it out since last night. Just wondering if the paid archive exemption is a hard rule applying to limited run/infrequent shows, or just those two? Wasn't sure how to read this in terms of whether ADPP backlog will become Howl Premium only. Like will that, or Mike Detective, become exclusive to subscribers?

     

    Thanks!

  4. Posted

    https://twitter.com/...066154379894784

     

    ".@PFTompkins as the ghost of Richard Harrow on @ComedyBangBang makes me tap my foot like I was a puppy & my foot was my tail! Ya get me?"

     

    Girl GETS IT. And has an improv background.

     

    Ideally, please have her be on as the first guest, then have PFT come in as a character, then have Maslany leave during a break and come in as a new character.

     

    Thank you for your time. I think we can all agree this is important.

    • Like 7

  5. Posted

    James Franco will play Tommy Wiseau

    Dave Franco will play Greg Sestero

     

    Yeah, to add to this Correction of a Correction, Tommy Wiseau more or less confirmed he will be played by James back at a Toronto screening I attended in March. I remember strongly because the Q&A was literally bonkers. A fan asked him what he thought of Franco's involvement. Tommy Wiseau seemed confused as to whether the person meant Franco as diretcor or Franco as actor, and said something like:

     

    "We have meeting, and I talk to him, this is very important. And I ask him, 'Do you have vision?' And he says yes. And I say that's good. Then I ask 'But do you have execution?' And he says 'WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?!' And I say 'It is most important part!'

     

    ... So, I don't know. Franco is okay. I would prefer Johnny Depp, but Franco is okay."

     

    Then he asked Greg Sestero who he thought should play Tommy in the movie, and he said Sylvester Stallone.

  6. Posted

    First off, empireinrecline seems like an awful person.

     

    A long form has nothing to do with how long it is. A long form could be one minute long. Our nine minute setup wasn't setting up the rules of what we were going to do.

     

    I didn't mean to compare long-form/short-form to storytelling stand-up/punchline-based stand-up in terms of length. Your comparison to karaoke vs music seemed to imply you think of short-form as a simplistic, pale imitation of long-form, where the performer doesn't have to worry about actually creating something. I assumed (based on what I know of you from the podcast, reading about UCB's history, and currently working my way through the UCB Improv Manual) that this might stem from the idea that short-form improv (usually) doesn't have to worry about creating an actual scene, establishing a who/what/where, or finding a game that needs to be heightened. Usually, short-form is primarily about making simple connections in service of the joke (this prop looks like this object! Here's a dumb reason to justify why this audience member moved my body in a certain way!), rather than creating an organic scene and letting the comedy flow from it. In this way, I compared it to punchline humor versus storytelling humor. Punchline comedians don't have to worry about heightening a story or establishing character or context. But I wouldn't expect punchline comedians or storytelling comedians to refer to the other as not "real" stand-up.

     

    If there had to be an analog to karaoke in improv, wouldn't that be, say, Second City touring performers who act out, word for word, scenes that were originally improvised by other people? (Assuming Second City still does that.)

     

    We were having conversation which is supposedly entertaining in itself... I'm not just shilling for my book but if you really want to know what my feelings on this are then it is all in the book. Right now I feel like I'm trying to convince someone that cotton candy isn't a food while they are in the middle of having fun at the circus.

     

    I think I just disagree that it was a conversation that stood on its own. Of course, that's not objective, and I don't have a podcast with thousands of devoted listeners or a history as a huge influence on modern comedy, so I'm almost definitely in the wrong as to what's entertaining. It's just that no one played devil's advocate or offered an argument for why short-form deserves to be called improv - which is fine - but also, no one really explained their rationale behind why long-form is more credible (versus how you've fleshed out your argument here on the forum). That short-form is a lesser form was just accepted by everyone on the show as the truth, without much question or elaboration. That meant that the nine minutes was made up mostly of playing two clips of Mochrie/Sherwood, mocking them for wasting the audience's time - while playing the clips nearly in their entirety on your own show. I just thought that was ironic.

     

    I'll just throw in here that if I'm being a dickhole, I invite other people to tell me so. Because man, empireinrecline cast a dark shadow. And I'll also throw in Jeff Davis's name again as a potential guest, for a Case Closed or not. Really smart, thoughtful, witty guy on Harmontown, but still performs with Whose Line to this day.

    • Like 2

  7. Posted

    if you've ever heard greg proops talk about whose line, he doesnt seem to have done it out of any great love for short form improv, i doubt he would argue much with mr besser

    I haven't heard his comments. Again, I wouldn't guess many of them would argue for the sake of it being a high art form, but I'm guessing they'd occupy a middle ground between that and Matt's all out hatred.

     

    Matt makes the comparison that short form is to long form as karoake is to music, but it seems more like a storytelling-style stand-up comedian who hates punchline comedians that don't have to deal with setting character, context, escalating the story...

    • Like 1

  8. Posted

    You should get Greg Proops or Jeff Davis on the podcast for case Closed. Both smart guys. I wouldn't actually be surprised if they said they did Whose Line at least partially for the money and were more artistically satisfied elsewhere, but I'd bet they'd offer a different point of view than Besser's scorched earth attitude towards the form.

     

    Edit: I also think it's worth pointing out that while some of those setups were ridiculous, and the games silly, some of them can be justified. A game requiring audience participation, like that moving bodies/puppetmaster game, obviously requires explaining the game to the point that the participating audience members are 100% crystal clear on how it works. The redundancy of explaining/demonstrating the gimmick over and over to them is the price you pay to make sure the game goes along smoothly. The Torture Game, which involved the rotating gimmicks including switching out one letter for another, was clearly designed *around* getting the audience to try and stump the performers rather than help them. They called it the Torture Game, after all. An audience for that show would know who the Whose Line performers are and paid to see them, and (at least from their point of view) think they're talented enough to handle some curveballs. It was a game based around watching the performers comedically struggle and flail, after they'd earned credibility with the audience over the TV series and that night's live show. With that said, both games are still dumb.

     

    I also think there's an irony that the podcast spent the opening 9 minutes complaining about 3 minutes being too long to set up a scene.

    • Like 3

  10. Posted

    CHICO: You gotta laugh. You gotta laugh. That's what we say in the horse fighting business.

    BEVER: We gotta! That's how you start the fight. You know when in a normal boxing it be like, 'LET'S GET READY TO RUUUUUMMMMBLE'? We just— you know, there ain't many people there so you don't even need a microphone— so we just say, "Folks, you gotta laugh. Now for your enjoyment, two horses that are gonna punch each other 'til one dies."

     

    It was very appropriate that Taran could not get through that sentence without almost losing his shit multiple times. That is a hilarious sentence.

     

    I was walking through downtown Toronto listening to that, and stopped in place to laugh uncontrollably for about 30 seconds. I literally could not start walking again until I collected my shit. I looked like a goddamn lunatic.

    • Like 1

  14. Posted

    So, the Blu-Ray has the "Extended Edition", right? I'm hoping that that means that the runway at the end is like another 12 miles long...

    There's some breakdowns of the additions online, but it's basically just alternate takes (like, different reaction shots) and maybe another sentence or two here and there. The whole movie's less than a minute longer, and I didn't even notice the additions when I watched it. Pretty disappointing.

     

    But oh, we can dream.

  23. Posted

    The only other thing I walked away from this movie with was the weird notion that Daredevil became supepowered when it rained like Popeye eating spinach. Just from this movie you would swear his name would be "Aqua Man" or something. It's doubly dumb because they establish that Daredevil sees through sound so you figure he would be blinded when it rains, from the noise (a passing subway car blinds and pains him, but millions of splashing raindrops and thunder doesn't?) and the fact that sound travels terribly through rain; those droplets absorb and muffle sound.

     

    Rain is indeed a hindrance to Daredevil's abilities, and one that pops up fairly often in Mark Waid's current (spectacular, more lighthearted) run on the Daredevil comics.

  24. Posted

    Daredevil isn't as bad as people say it is. Only problem is Garner and the dated soundtrack. The directors cut fixes and adds a lot and makes an overall decent movie.

     

    I recently tried watching the Director's Cut for the first time, having not seen the theatrical cut in forever. It doesn't suddenly turn it into a good movie by any stretch. Let's remember that the director behind this Director's Cut still has this as the third result when Googling his name. He made the Michael Keaton Jack Frost movie, which probably deserves its own episode.

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