The Movie

An improvised movie. It was originally developed by The Family under the direction of Del Close. They performed it as one of The Three Mad Rituals (along with Deconstruction and Harold). Once he moved to NYC and founded the UCB Theatre, Matt Besser recruited a cast to whom he taught The Movie.

Theybecame the cast of Feature Feature. Members of Feature Feature later directed the cast of Instant Cinema.

The Movie is usually a very popular but difficult form. Many improvisers are movie buffs, and are eager to try and parody genres or directors or techniques, but it's difficult to avoid getting caught up in a complicated plot. Successful executions of The Movie don't focus on plot as much as character and genre -- leaving the details of the plot hazy or even ignored.

Structure

Opening

The cast asks for someone in the audience the name a lyric of their favorite song. With that the cast would describe three scenes using the language of stage directions. They'd all take turns describing the scenes, taking over for each other in mid-sentence. Here's an example of a the first description in the opening, and the start of the second description.

• Improviser 1: "We open on tracking shot of students cramming in a library. They're college aged, well-dressed. Piles of law books surround them."
• Improviser 2: "...law books surround them. We settle on one student who unlike the rest is dressed in blue jeans and a t-shirt. He doesn't appear nervous at all, in fact he's asleep, with an empty notebook..."
• Improviser 3: "We see his T-shirt is a novelty T-shirt that says 'I took the LSAT stoned.'"
• Improviser 2: "We cut away from this scene to a luxurious townhouse. Inside is a posh bedroom where a stuffy-looking man is getting ready for bed."

As some improvisers describe these scenes, other ones step in to become the characters who are mentioned. There would usually be no dialogue here just some people narrating with others miming whatever was said. After three scenes are set up, one of the improvisers would step forward and give a title for the movies they are starting to tell.

• Improviser: "The camera pans to a university blue book, the title appears in red ink 'Crammin' It In!'" And we fade into the first scene...."

Main Show

After the opening three descriptions and the title, the improvisers would return to the first setup and start improvising the movie. From this point forward, the characters would talk. Improvisers not in a scene would step forward to add stage directions, indicate lighting changes, camera angles, or soundtrack effects. Much of the show's humor came from spoofing a particular genre: sports hero movies, film noir, musicals, John Waters-style camp, late 60s sex romps. The cast took it upon themselves to be experts in these genres, no matter how specific. Once established, their stage directions could make comments on a genre. If it were a Quentin Tarinto-type movie, someone might say "We see this character is played by an actor who hasn't worked in 20 years."

Actors would end their movies, explicitly describing the moment when closing credits emerged or a declaring that the words "The End" had appeared on the "screen."

References

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