Life is improv and improv is life, man
Your calendar is right — it's Thursday! I'm working with a slowly-dying computer that loves to just shut off sometimes, and unfortunately, it did it yesterday. Editions will (hopefully) continue on their normal Wednesday slot from here on out.
On Shifting Tones and Subtle Emotions
In a crafted piece of work, no matter what it is, tone is a driving force behind its coherence and impressionability. Tone, defined as the approach and attitude portrayed in the work by the writer, is what clues you into what feeling you should have about the work. When the tone of something is off, it can ruin the experience for the consumer and turn them off to the art. But when the tone elicits the right response, it can help create something beautiful.
Tonal shifts, however, are the altering of the original tone of a piece into something else. If the work is originally a comedy and then switches to a drama, that’s a tonal shift. A great example is the film Shaun of the Dead, which starts out as a thrilling comedy, but hits a depressing and dramatic wall when the main characters have to start killing people they love, before transitioning back to a comedy at the end. Tonal shifts can be hard to get right in any piece of work, as the point is to shift between feelings in a way that feels natural, rather than abruptly switching and expecting the audience to go along with it.
One show that I think does this almost perfectly is How To with John Wilson, HBO’s comedy docuseries that was just renewed for a third season. The show follows an easy premise: John Wilson takes a simple question, like “Why is there so much scaffolding in New York City?” or “Why is making small talk so hard?,” and seeks to offer some sort of answer or advice to the viewer through an investigation of his own. The finished product, however, is made up of real footage from the streets of New York and loose interviews. Think things like people making out, or cops picking up a shirt from a pile of blood, or a man relaying a graphic sexual encounter with no hesitation — the things you’d witness and think about for the rest of the day. This combination means the show often diverges into tangentially related concepts and meandering thought-processing. In the episode “How to Improve Your Memory,” for example, Wilson starts by interviewing a memory champion before veering off-course to talk to Mandela Effect conspiracy theorists and the inventor of a grocery store’s inventory system. It all ties back together in the end, but the walk you take to get there is never as straight as you expect.
The bizarre oddity of life in New York, paired with Wilson’s humorous and thought-provoking narration, means that, as episodes begin to wind down strange roads, so too does its tone. What’s so impressive to me about How To’s tone is that it’s constantly shifting, but those shifts are delicate and subtle. There’s not a moment where an episode becomes something new — like a comedy becoming a depressing drama — but there is a sense that something’s shifted because, suddenly, you as a viewer start to feel a bit different. In an interview with a woman whose view has been blocked by scaffolding, Wilson pans down to the visible street below as she talks about not being able to see it out the window anymore. It’s funny at first, but then it cuts to a different clip from the interview. “It’s depressing,” she says. “It’s just depressing.” And based on a choice of how the clips are lined up, your emotions shift. Though it’s not immediately apparent, when you’re left to dwell on the contrast just a bit longer, it all seems to click. It’s less a rollercoaster and more of a soft ocean current; if you don’t pay attention, you may not even recognize the shift until your emotions change to reflect it.
The subtle tone shifting is, of course, a purposeful device. Wilson even admitted that the footage isn’t cataloged based on what people are doing in them or what topic they might work with; instead, it’s how they make the viewer feel. “They’re more themed based on the emotion I’m trying to draw out,” he told The Ringer. Thinking about how each bit of footage elicits a different emotional response means that Wilson can both string them together in a way that fits with the tone of his narration and sequence them based on how he wants the viewer to feel moment by moment.
That ping-ponging of emotions does more than make the audience emotional, though; it also keeps it captivated. Sometimes, as Wilson splits off into something only mildly related, tonal shifts are used to keep you immersed in the situation, to keep you watching with a sense of needing to know what comes next. You begin to crave the feeling you get from slight changes in emotion — like you need to be told the way to feel as you watch the show unfold in front of you. You trust Wilson, even if you’re unsure of what he’s showing you or what exactly something means, and he uses that trust not to manipulate but as an aid to getting his point across.
In one episode, Wilson films an anti-circumcision activist using a device he claims help foreskin grow back. As he reclines on a bed to show how it works, he starts talking about the movie Parasite. It feels odd, but when Wilson keeps the camera on the man for a few moments past the end of his movie monologue, there’s a lingering shift. You go from making fun of this guy to realizing that he’s just a human being — that for all you know, someone you saw Parasite in theaters next to was just like him. And suddenly, the tone changes too, as it shifts from confusion and disbelief to honest introspection and understanding — though it may be hard to feel at first.
Wilson finishes this segment off with a seemingly disconnected thought. “I was reading recently that they’re planning on putting a wall up around Manhattan to combat the rising sea levels,” he muses. “I guess it’s tempting to just put a cover on something when you don’t know what else to do.” The words themselves aren’t a gut punch, but they’re a sort of indicator that makes you realize something in this story has shifted emotionally; you feel a bit more reflective of what you’ve just seen. Your emotions have shifted, but it takes until Wilson ties it all together for you to really realize.
Those subtle tonal shifts never catch us off-guard. Instead, they play with our emotions in a significant enough way that our line of thinking shifts without having to pull back from the story. There’s no real way to know what’s coming next in How To, so your emotions follow in the moment, no matter how it shifts. And eventually, as you begin to realize that there’s no pattern to what you’re watching, no way to fully get your footing before the tone changes, you begin to understand the show a little bit more. “What’s more astonishing is that you might, watching it, have one of those rare TV experiences when you realize all the typical rhythms have fallen away, and what you’re watching has become unpredictable and alive — and somehow you’re not sure whether you’ve been watching it for 15 minutes or 45,” writes the New York Times.
The subtle shifting of tone creates a unique and honest docuseries that gets to the heart of being human and experiencing life. The subtle tonal shifts that Wilson employs make the show — which is already a documentary to begin with — feel so real. Nowadays, documentaries tend to be presented through a specific lens, giving it a filtered and editorialized feeling even if it’s not on purpose. But what Wilson does makes us feel like we’re simply seeing the world as it is and experiencing it on an individual level. Sure, How To is an edited work of art — there’s no denying that there’s a filtered piece we’re meant to see. The way that Wilson strings together thoughts and ideas weaves a tale that shifts often from feeling to feeling in a way that mimics the anxiety of life, that considers the way we all walk around as different people with different thoughts. We’re laughing about something one moment, and the next we’re contemplating our place in the universe. We’re watching someone say something a bit insane, and the next we’re wondering if that’s how we sound to other people. As we watch the show, we’re experiencing not just what’s on the screen, but our own interactions with the content, in a way that feels natural rather than jarring.
That, to me, is where How To with John Wilson truly shines. Tone is much like editing — when it’s done right, you don’t really notice it unless you’re meant to. Wilson, though, takes something so minute and blows it up to greater importance, almost forcing you to feel it without ever rubbing it in your face. The back and forth comes from the fact that How To invites us to find humor and absurdity in everyday life, but also the truth that humor isn’t the only feeling that comes from that. In life, you have to take the introspective with the judgmental, the humor with the sadness. There’s no pattern to the way Wilson shifts tone, no template that he fits words and video into. Instead, he wants viewers to feel as if they’re emotionally always on their toes, because that’s how we all go around experiencing life anyway. And isn’t life itself the biggest comedy of all?
Interview with a Comedian: Sebastian Connelli
When New York native Sebastian Conelli took his first improv class at the Upright Citizens' Brigade, he didn't take it seriously. Eventually, though, after putting his head down and sticking to it, Conelli fell in love with the art form. From working for a theater company for children to eventually teaching at his comedy alma mater, Conelli has a lot of improv experience under his belt, which shone through in the conversation I had with him. In talks about everything from having done too many drugs in his lifetime to the importance of taking comedians off a pedestal, I was kept on my toes and never stopped laughing. Check out our conversation below.
How would you describe your comedy?
It's boisterous and fun — but, my God, I'm a little mischievous. It's a little immature. I like feeling like—you know how kids get excited and are excited to say something out loud? Like they're not supposed to? I feel that a lot of the time.
I know you started out in comedy by taking a class at UCB, but what exactly got you into improv versus other forms of comedy?
I like how in the moment I get. I'm anxious, so I like being in the moment, because a lot of times, I'm not. Comedy forces me to be in the moment, especially improv in general. It's like things are going well when I'm not like thinking about anything else in my life. I really enjoy moments and improv is the perfect encapsulation of embracing the moments.
I know you started out in comedy by taking a class at UCB, but what exactly got you into improv versus other forms of comedy?
I like how in the moment I get. I'm anxious, so I like being in the moment, because a lot of times, I'm not. Comedy forces me to be in the moment, especially improv in general. It's like things are going well when I'm not like thinking about anything else in my life. I really enjoy moments and improv is the perfect encapsulation of embracing the moments.
You also did a lot of performing outside of comedy. What is it about performing in general that you love so much?
I mean, people love you when you’re performing. There's something about making a room full of people enjoy you. Maybe that comes from my own issues, but performing to have everyone be with you and what you're doing feels very special to me. I'm there to make people laugh. I'm not the smartest person, I'm not going to make a drug that helps people. I'm not like teaching children. It's literally the smallest thing that I could do to make it a little easier. Life is to make people laugh.
Also, it's very selfish. Performing is one of the most selfish things you could do — in a beautiful way, right? There was a phase where, before a show, I used to think of myself as a curator of fun. Because sometimes, especially when I was at UCB and on the Harold Team, people put a lot of weight on the shows, because you get noted, and you could get cut from the programming. I would try to remove the weight, and I’d be like, this is just a roomful of people that I'm going to be that fun for for a couple minutes, you know? I really liked that. I think taking comedy off a pedestal is what I like, also.
And as a performer, I can only imagine how it felt when the pandemic both halted performances everywhere and shut down UCB, where you taught and performed.
I felt very bad. It was the longest I didn't perform for years and years — since I started. I felt like I lost a lot, because a thing I was a part of that I invested so much time and energy into fell apart completely. I was like, oh, most people knew the thing I was a part of, not me. That really made me think about a lot of stuff and reevaluate but also [about] not having an outlet to express myself in. It made me feel weird, because on stage, I get to say all my silly opinions and thoughts that I have in my brain; people want to listen to my reactions to just what's happening in the moment. Before I started doing comedy, I was definitely loud and annoying. And then when I started doing comedy, I became more quiet and less annoying, because I realized what I was looking for was like that outlet. … Then, all of a sudden, [I] didn't have that outlet again., so it made me just feel uncomfortable.
You talk about your family a lot in your comedy, and I’m wondering just how much, if at all, they influence you.
My mother's very funny but doesn't think she's funny. She hates comedy, my mother. She does not enjoy comedy at all, because my dad was a musician. When he was playing in clubs in the village and stuff when they were growing up, they would have comedians open the show for them, and my mom would cringe, and she hated comedy. She goes, “I just don't want my son to be a comedian.” And of course, that's what I ended up doing. What influences me about my mother is she shows you what she's feeling. There's no hiding any of her emotions. They're big. They're loud. She's not going to hide a single feeling. And I think that's literally so funny. I laugh at my mom when she does that, and she hates it. Probably just how free she is with her emotions might be the best thing comedically I’ve learned from someone.
You talk about your family a lot in your comedy, and I’m wondering just how much, if at all, that they influenced your comedy.
My mother's very funny but doesn't think she's funny. She hates comedy, my mother. She does not enjoy comedy at all, because my dad was a musician. When he was playing in clubs in the village and stuff when they were growing up, they would have comedians open the show for them, and my mom would cringe, and she hated comedy. She goes, “I just don't want my son to be a comedian.” And of course, that's what I ended up doing. What influences me about my mother is she shows you what she's feeling. There's no hiding any of her emotions. They're big. They're loud. She's not going to hide a single feeling. And I think that's literally so funny. I laugh at my mom when she does that, and she hates it. Probably just how free she is with her emotions might be the best thing comedically I’ve learned from someone.
I once heard you say on a podcast that comedy is easy, but doing comedy is hard. Could you elaborate a bit on that?
I mean, your friends are funny, right? One, the hardest thing is to learn how to put context around a joke. Most people could sit in a scenario and make you laugh because all the context is laid out. The hard part is learning how to do the context.
Comedy is easy, but doing comedy is hard, because you have to learn comedy in front of an audience, so you fail in front of people. Learning the piano might be harder than comedy — I would say definitely — but you can learn privately. … Doing comedy is hard because you have to publicly feel stupid in front of people all the time. … Everyone sees the process of failing.
That's also the other thing: Everyone thinks they're funny, and I think everyone is funny, but not purposely. The sooner that you could remove your ego and be like, oh, yeah, this is why I'm funny, and it's okay that it makes me look a little stupid [is doing comedy]. … It's like, if you could remove your ego and be okay with looking silly in front of people, that's what makes doing it hard. It makes comedy hard.
Do you feel like people who watch improv have a different understanding of it than those who do it? Do you think they look at it and form misconceptions of any kind?
I think that people that just consume it understand it better than people that are taking classes.
I think people that are taking classes make it much more complicated than it is. I think people that just walk in the door, and if you explain the basic rules — it's all going to be made up, they're going to pretend to live out a short play, it'll be scenes and all be made up, they'll run in front, that'll be the end of the scene — … I think that people understand it pretty quickly, as long as they believe it's made up. But I think people that are students are like thinking that everyone's being much more calculated on stage and much more deliberate, when I think it's much more just muscle memory and training that matters, and then on stage it’s freedom.
Are you an improv person?
Oh, no. I don’t think I have that capacity to get on stage and fall down over and over again. Plus, I think I’d internalize everything to the utmost degree and get inside my head.
You know, I don't say a lot of words on stage. Everyone thinks they need to talk a lot. You don't have to talk a lot. I make a lot of noises, I do a lot of hand gestures, and I don't have to think about what noise I’m going to make. … People that put pressure on what they're going to say just don't realize that it's much simpler than that. I think that's what students also think, too: “Oh, I need to think of the most crafted thing ever.” No, not at all. I mean, some people are great at that structure. That's not my lane at all.
Is there an improv scene you really love being a part of when it becomes part of a show?
I like a classroom scene. I like being a kid, like pushing buttons of the teacher — riling up a setting. I also like scenes with heart. I like scenes where there's love between the characters. I like brother, sister, and parent relationships. I like living out scenarios that I know. I rarely initiate scenes that it's a setting I haven't lived. … I like to just do scenarios that I know, because I know it's easier. People try to make it complicated. I try to make it as easy as possible.
You can hear Conelli co-hosting the podcast Loud About Nothing with Robbie Nunes. He's also co-hosting New York is Single, an improv show "about being single on Valentine's Day in the greatest city in the world," on Friday, February 11 at 9:30 p.m. at Asylum NYC. For more, check out his Instagram or Twitter.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Saturday Night Dead?
The Good: Weekend Update
A lot of things have changed at SNL over its run, from the show’s format to cast members. One thing that has remained, though, is the presence of Weekend Update. The segment, which appeared in the show’s premiere, has managed to become a central pillar of the show. It’s what a lot of people hang on to as a consistently at least somewhat entertaining part of the SNL, and some even watch the show just for Weekend Update — I’ve seen my mom skip sketches just to watch the segment.
While the quality and style of Weekend Update have fluctuated over the years, it’s become something familiar — a lighthouse in the storm of the show, a segment that remains no matter how the rest of SNL fares. Though that’s partially because of its appearance on every show, it’s also because Update continues to produce unforgettable moments and cast members that end up defining their seasons. I genuinely believe that Weekend Update is the best part of Saturday Night Live and has been instrumental in helping keep the show on air for 47 seasons.
Weekend Update began more as a parody of traditional news shows, like 60 Minutes or ABC World News Tonight. Its intention was to take the serious framework of an evening news show and insert jokes for absurdity, and while it had characters, they tended to be in the form of correspondents. But even now, there are bits from Update that are still fresh in our minds, that created an uproar when they happened and are still held as an iconic moment on the show. During an edition of Point/Counterpoint with Dan Ackroyd and Jane Curtain, the two begin a debate on whether a celeb’s partner should get half of his money when they split, but it quickly devolves into an insult-hurling contest. After Curtain fires at Ackroyd, he shoots back: “Jane, you ignorant slut.”
That exclamation is a small line within a much larger bit, but it has managed to stick in people’s minds. Ask people who were casual SNL watchers during that era what they remember from the early days, and I bet they’ll mention that Update moment. The line is so off-kilter for what was being said on TV at that time that it couldn’t help but stick — which is exactly what SNL is all about: upending the comedy that’s expected to create something fresh and funny. They’re still trying to work that same angle nowadays, though more so with absurd characters or pointed statements. Plus, the Update hosts are major players in the segment’s impressionability themselves, and their personalities often bring people back time and time again, even if the content isn’t their cup of tea. Weekend Update manages to hit a sweet spot: It’s memorable, it’s silly, and it allows cast members to shine far beyond what typical sketches allow.
Eventually, SNL began to rely more on characters than straight absurdity or longer bits, which switched the feeling of the segment from an absurdist newscast to a place for the cast’s wider-ranging humor to shine. Not to say characters didn’t exist since the beginning of Weekend Update — it’s just that they weren’t relied on as heavily as they began to be. It became less of “Here’s a correspondent in the field” to “Here’s a song from one of our cast members,” and the structure allowed players to perform as heightened versions of themselves. It let cast members enter a space they were familiar with before joining the show: doing silly bits as themselves. It allowed the audience to get a better sense of whom the performers were past what they had to do in sketches — sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. Either way, that new set-up pulled back a bit of the curtain in a way and let us see the people behind the humor. I would say this switch began sometime in the ‘80s and carried into the 2000s. It’s the structure that brought us gems like a scathing bit from Al Franken about Dick Ebersol taking over SNL and The Hannukah Song from Adam Sandler.
Then, sometime in the early 2000s, that structure started evolving again, and Weekend Update became more of a dumping ground for characters. At first, they were woven into the “real people” bits, but eventually, it kind of became the driving force of Update. While that’s not particularly my cup of tea, it does still allow for cast members to show off their skills in ways we don’t get to see — just less so people being straight funny and more showing off what they could do in the realm of characters, impressions, and bits that couldn’t fill a whole sketch. Whether you love or hate the direction Update now moves in, you can’t deny it’s brought some memorable characters to the forefront. I’m talking Stefon, I’m talking Gay Hitler, I’m talking Kat and Garth, I’m talking Scrooge McDuck (okay, so maybe this one isn’t as momentous, but I distinctly remember seeing it in middle school and not shutting up about it for a week because I thought it was so funny, so it gets a mention).
I think Update has started relying on the same characters in a way that can often seem lazy, but I also think that it’s started to improve again. Working within its character-first structure, recent seasons have been able to create moments that are unforgettable not just because they’re quippy and relatable, but also because they have something to say. Cecily Strong’s recent “Goober the Clown” bit, about a “clown” who had an abortion, is a prime example of this.
Though talking about very different topics, you can compare the bit to Al Franken’s one about Dick Ebersol. They’re both talking about something bad happening (again, we’re not comparing the actual topics, because they don’t even begin to match up), and they’re both behind a wall of exaggeration, but Strong is hamming up the character where Franken is almost downplaying it. Both hit the audience just right, but there’s such a drastic difference in the how of it all. Different eras call for different sensibilities, and Weekend Update has continued to progress to match that in a way, it could be argued, much of the rest of the show hasn’t.
Of course, you can’t mention Weekend Update without giving credit to the anchors as well. Update anchors are there, Saturday after Saturday, reading you jokes about the news. Regardless of whether you love or hate them, they connect with the audience on a level the other cast members don’t get to as they’re frantically running back and forth between sketches. You get used to seeing someone’s face, hearing their voice, and getting to know their character in a slightly more intimate way, and they keep viewers coming back. Legendary anchors like Chevy Chase, Kevin Nealon, Norm Macdonald, Amy Poehler, and Seth Meyers became headliners for the segment, drawing people back to hear their take on things. And even if they were bad, you wanted to watch them being bad. Unfortunately, it’s what keeps me tuning in for Colin Jost and Michael Che’s Update, even. It’s not my cup of tea by any means, but sometimes it’s like a train wreck I can’t look away from. And on the flip side, I know a lot of viewers like them, so they’re a draw from any angle. Anchors are the glue that hold Weekend Update together, and they’re the underlying reason why it continues to be such a great segment. (Editor’s note: We are not talking about the Lorneless years here, as their Weekend Update format was so vastly different and ranging that to discuss hosts of that era would not be insightful in any way.)
You have to admit, though Weekend Update isn’t always amazing, it’s consistently good. Nowadays, it feels sort of formulaic — you have straight jokes at the top, with a handful of characters woven throughout the rest of the segment — but a rotating set of characters makes it promising; who knows what you’ll see. Plus, Jost and Che have a rapport that’s fun to watch, whether you love or hate it. There’s a comforting excitement that underscores Weekend Update, and regardless of how you feel about the hosts and the bits, you always kind of want to see more. It would be wrong to say Update is not one of the driving forces behind the continued popularity of Saturday Night Live. If anything, it’s one of the strongest things the show has to offer. As long as people want to watch Weekend Update, they’ll want to watch SNL.
The Comedy Showcase
Here are some things I enjoyed that I hope you will, too!
1. Murderville, whose trailer I mentioned last edition, premiered on Netflix, and it is delightful. You may see more about it here sometime soon, so watch it while you can!
2. Please Don't Destroy's cut for time New Personalities sketch, which makes me feel like I should find a new personality.
3. Bob Odenkirk and David Cross are writing another TV show together!