WALSH &
ROBERTS:
Upright Citizens Brigade
Members
Make Their
Jump to the Big Screen
by Chris Arnone / Sr. Contributing
Writer
T a l k i n g C o m e d y . c o m |
‘Martin
&
Orloff’ is
the new independent film from the members of the comedy troupe Upright
Citizens Brigade. The group formed in Chicago in 1990, eventually moving
to New York, founding a theater and an improv school. They developed
a TV show for Comedy Central which ran from 1998-2000, garnering critical
praise and a massive following. Martin & Orloff was written by and
stars Ian Roberts (Antoine) and Matt Walsh (Trotter), and tells the
story a depressed promotional-costume-designer (Roberts), who has recently
attempted suicide after an actor wearing one of his costumes drowned.
He seeks psychiatric help from the unconventional Dr. Orloff (Walsh),
who leads him on a string of wild adventures in the name of mental health.
The two wrote the screenplay along with Ian’s wife Katie Roberts,
an accomplished improv alum herself, who also appears in the film. It
features performances by the UCB’s Matt Besser (Adair) and Amy
Poehler (Colby), Andy Richter, David Cross, Tina Fey, and Jeneane Garofalo,
among others. I caught up with the pair at the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival
in Aspen to talk about their new movie, their improv roots, and the
state of the Upright Citizens Brigade.
|
A
New Comedy from the Members
of the Upright Citisens Brigade
O R L O F F
a n d
M A R T I N
Martin
Flam recently tried
to kill himself.
His psychiatrist
may finish the job...
The Upright Citizens Brigade (UCB), a New York based
comedy group known for their unique blend of improvisation and absurdist
humor which was featured on their hit Comedy Central TV show,
have been performing on stage and television for ten years. The
UCB enjoys wide popularity with a faithful following of fans nationwide.
UCB founding members Matt Walsh and Ian Roberts, along with Katie
Roberts, have written their first feature film, Martin & Orloff.
This independent film comes out of the thriving subculture of New
York’s downtown alternative comedy scene. It stars all four
members of the UCB as well as other great comedians including Janeane
Garofalo, Andy Richter, and Tina Fey (along with several other current
SNL members).
The screenplay for Martin & Orloff was developed through a series
of improvisations based on two main characters, a depressed executive
and his irresponsible psychiatrist. The film parodies therapy movies
like “Ordinary People” and “Good Will Hunting”.
Drawing on long-form improvisational techniques and structure (known
as the ‘Harold’ method) the writers bring together a group
of seemingly disconnected characters for what appears to be a completely
logical but absurd conclusion.
Martin (Ian Roberts), an uptight and lonely promotional-costume-designer,
is released from a mental hospital after
a failed suicide attempt. Tortured by feelings of guilt after the
death of an actor who drowned wearing one of his creations —an
egg-roll costume without eyeholes— Martin turns to psychiatrist,
Dr. Orloff (Matt Walsh) for help.
Unfortunately for Martin, Dr. Orloff turns out to be the more unstable
of the two of them and drags Orloff on a series of misadventures
in an unorthodox pursuit of mental health. Along the way they pick
up a posse of unusual characters.
Martin’s integrity is challenged when asked to design another
costume for a dangerous stunt. He juggles his professional responsibility
with his fear of putting a group of actresses in jeopardy. Along
with his ragtag army of weirdos, which we meet during the course
of the movie, Martin fights to save the lives of the girls.
Although this is the first feature film for director Lawrence Blume
he won several film awards and prizes for his past short work, Otherwise
Known As Sheila The Great, including the USA Film Festival and
top prize at the National Educational Film Festival.
For
more information on Martin & Orloff the new movie by Matt
Walsh and Ian Roberts visit
www.martinandorloff.com
|
Chris
Arnone: You both studied at Second City and then at ImprovOlympic,
right?
Matt Walsh: Yeah, that’s
sort of true. My personal history is I did Players Workshop, ImprovOlympic,
Annoyance Theater, Second City.
Ian Roberts: I never studied
at Second City though I performed there. I studied at ImprovOlympic.
CA: And that was with Del Close?
IR: Yes.
CA: He was the one who came up with the
Harold [an improv structure in which recurring characters and scenes
play off each other and eventually intersect] to begin with, right?
MW: That’s right.
IR: Yeah – it’s a bunch
of scenes that seem unrelated, but end up coming together.
CA:
What drew you to that longer, more connected form?
IR: Well, one thing is you get sort
of a call-back effect. In most sketch shows where you just have a sketch
and you black out to another sketch, that’s the end, like that’s
the payoff of the sketch. But with that form you get laughs, and they
tend to be even bigger than the first time around. It makes it more
like it’s the real world because you don’t just have a thing
show up and disappear, you know, it’s like it exists in this world.
CA:
You incorporate a lot of audience participation into your shows and
have done many practical jokes and hidden camera bits on street crowds
and other unsuspecting people. Is that just to get that tension; to
get those different reactions from people? Why does that work so well?
MW: Pranks, I don’t know, pranks
are funny because – like on our TV show, we used to take a premise
for the sketch show, and then take it into the real world. Again, kind
of what Ian was saying, it has a fuller pay off. You’re not just
saying this is a joke, your saying this is really happening in the world.
And that was sort of the premise of our TV show, was forcing these absurd
premises into the real world. Why to do pranks? Pranks are just funny
because you are startling or shocking people or scaring people or confusing
people and their reactions are so authentic. And I think people like
to be in on a joke; that’s the appeal of a prank.
CA:
You were doing pranks before you had a TV show, as part of your stage
shows and other things you did—
IR: In the shows we used to do things
where you took people out of the theater and you tried to convince them
things were happening, like you’d stage a hit and run, or you’d
have a suicide
where you threw a dummy off a building. We did things
like that and they were part of the shows, you know, just a way to get
people not to be complacent – you can’t just watch.
CA:
The movie kind of centers around suicide and the awkward emotions and
after effects that go with that—
IR: So you saw it already?
CA: Yeah, I was at the screening.
IR: What did you think?
CA: I thought it was great.
IR: Good answer. [laughter]
CA:
I think I read that you shot it on the Sony digital film—
IR: 24P, the stuff that Lucasfilm
did the last Star Wars film on. We wanted to have a Jar Jar Binks.
CA:
Oh, it didn’t work out though? Contractual pro
blems?
MW: It was too funny. It was –
it was stealing focus in every seen.
CA:
That’s what happened in the Star Wars movie I think too.
MW: Yeah, Jar Jar Binks walked away
with that movie.
IR: If everyone else would’ve
played it a little lighter it would have been an excellent comedy. But
with everyone taking it so seriously it
kind of screwed over Jar Jar Binks, or I’d say
you’d of had a break out comedy turn. [laughter]
CA:
Why did you decide to write this movie?
IR: We were like on hiatus from
the sketch show and we were like, "Let’s do something. Let’s
write a movie." We had never written a movie before, and the way
we decided to write it was – the first idea was: let’s just
take a dramatic movie – see if we can take a totally dramatic movie
and make it a comedy. So we tried that, we rented a few dramatic movies
and it just seemed like too – like too much of an obstacle. So
then we just decided well, let’s just take a really horrible subject
and start from that moment, and the first image was a guy rubbing scars
on his wrists, and the movie was written from there, linearly.
CA:
Even though the movie isn’t a Harold form, it seems to me the style
and the tone that you guys used in the sketch show pretty much stayed
the same—
MW: I think it borrowed from what
we’ve learned over the years – not to sound pretentious, but
we are kind of trained in long-form improvisation, and a lot of the
writing was just I play my character and Ia
n plays his character. We’d all just brainstorm – me, Ian,
and Katie would just brainstorm the ideas. We’d actually just improvise
dialogue, and a lot of the stuff that gets called back – seemingly
meaningless elements – would come back to have meaning in the end,
which is basically the Harold.
CA: And just the tone—
IR: Well that’s – I mean
there’s a sensibility, like what we find funny. We were writing
what we thought funny on UCB and we wrote what we thought funny on this.
CA: Do you think – do you guys distinguish
between low-brow and high-brow comedy? Is funny just funny? Like "unibrow"
I guess?
IR: Well we’ve been described,
and I’m willing to embrace that, as "low-brow-high-brow".
I think there’s some way – I don’t know what the trick
is, and I just hope we do it – that you can take sort of dumb stuff,
but the way you approach it can be hopefully smart.
MW: Yeah, I don’t know. I think
cheap jokes – or like low-brow comedy is funny but… I think
you have to provide some intelligent variation.
IR: I think when you say something’s
low-brow; it might just be that it’s old and prurient instead of
new and prurient. Like I think you can be sort of – you can be
sexual, you can be foul-mouthed, but you need to have a new twist on
it. And I think as long as you do that, I think people tend not to call
it low-brow. But it’s low-brow, it’s like ‘oh I’ve
seen that a million times. In other words my grandpa does that same
joke you know, and… hopefully haven’t done any jokes our grandpas
did.
CA:
How is the movie doing on distribution?
MW: We have 15 offers to distribute the film. Two of them are outside
of Denver; most of them are just here in Denver.
IR: And uh – my mother has
offered a distribution deal which would be on our block. It’s Marianne
Terrace, which has eight houses.
MW: Eight houses but probably 35
people. We’ve also got some company–production – uh –
like Fed Ex – I think they’re going to distribute it back
to New York for us.
IR: Then we might – we could
distribute it in one of our suitcases and just take it back on the airline.
We would like to get our hands – we figure the production was enough,
we’d rather not distribute back to New York.
CA: I can see that was a valuable question.
[laughter]
CA:
You’re obviously doing this now – promoting your film, but
are you guys still teaching? I know Amy’s doing SNL now, but you
did write a movie for Upright—
MW: Yeah.
IR: The movie that we wrote for
Upright Citizens Brigade? That is out there, it’s been handed around
and—
CA: Sitting on a shelf at FOX?
MW: Yeah, sitting on a shelf at
FOX.
IR: We do an improv show every Sunday
– we get together, and as many of us as can be there are there
– but we haven’t done a sketch show for a while.
MW: No, I mean you realize Ian and
Matt are in LA, and then I’m in New York on the Daily Show, Amy’s
doing SNL, and we do Sunday shows when we’re all together.
IR: But if there should happen to
be the fellow who’s looking to produce the Upright Citizens Brigade
movie reading this article: give us a call, let’s do it. [laughter]
[At this point, Ian Roberts leaves the interview to fulfill a prior
obligation]
CA:
Ok, a few non-sense questions. Pat Morita or Pat Benatar?
MW: Pat Morita. In this kind of
weather, Pat Morita.
CA: You think so?
MW: Yeah, absolutely. This high
up, at this altitude yeah, Pat Morita. Good question.
CA:
Who is your favorite member of Creed?
MW: Uh – the lead singer. He’s
got a tattoo right? He’s cut. He’s cut, yeah he’s buff.
CA: And he’s Christian.
MW: He’s buff, he’s Christian.
He’s got Jesus on his side. What would Creed do – I have a
ring that says "What Would Creed Do."
CA: Ok. Now finally, the proverbial advice for-the-aspiring fill-in-the-blanks
question. You know – for people looking to get into comedy, is
it just commitment that gets you success – and in doing the improv
– what do you recommend?
MW: It’s uh – incredibly
simple. Just start performing comedy; hanging out and drinking with
people who like to do comedy. Do shows; read lots of books; do what
you think is funny. Yeah, that’s it. Just meet funny people; hang
out with them; drink with them—
CA: And for improv in particular?
MW: I think like – for improv
– go to Chicago or come to New York. Take classes at UCB or back
in Chicago at a place called ImprovOlympic, or in LA. It frees you up.
Improv is great because it frees you up because you’re not censoring
it, you’re not judging it. You’re just sort of instinctively
performing, which is refreshing because so many people – writers
or comedians – I mean you always critique and like "that’s
lame, that’s been done," but improv is completely freeing.
CA: Thank you so much for being here and
we’ll be looking for the movie to show up somewhere, even if it’s
through UPS.
MW: It may go out on the next Mars
probe and just be projected into space. Martin & Orloff might be
the first feature comedy to try to communicate with aliens. Dolphins
love Martin & Orloff – dolphin aliens love Martin & Orloff.
Upcoming screenings: May 23 - Kansas City, MO - Kansas City Filmmakers
Jubilee …
visit www.kcjubilee.org
• June 8 - Lake Placid, NY - Lake Placid Film Forum …
visit www.lakeplacidfilmforum.com
• June 14 - New York City - Toyota Comedy Festival … visit
www.toyotacomedy.com
Photo Credits:
Photos from ‘Martin & Orloff’
courtesy
Tashmoo Productions
TalkingComedy.com
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