A kindly homosexual tries to teach Jesse to dance in one ill-fated nightImprov Everywhere (previously on TSOYA), if you don’t already know, are an organization of fun-loving people whose goal is to “cause scenes.” I’d call their works pranks, but their goal is not to dupe people, but rather to create moments of wonder and amazement in ordinary places. They call them Missions.
IE is based in New York City, where founder (and committed MaxFunster) Charlie Todd is based. Last year, they were taping a pilot and shot a few missions here in LA. Charlie was kind enough to invite me to participate, and one of the missions he created out here has finally been posted on the IE website: The Food Court Musical. Essentially, a group of ten or fifteen people, seated in various spots in a mall food court, stood up and played parts in a complicated musical number called “Can I Get A Napkin Please?”
I can’t say enough about how enjoyable the whole process was, from soup to nuts. Everyone involved was super-awesome, from Charlie to the IE regulars to the UCB folks to the random people who came in from craigslist. The song is wonderful, and I realized about halfway through that the star was also Jordan, Jesse Go!’s cheap video game reviewer.
The mall chosen to be the site of the mission is in south LA — you might know it as the place Chris Rock interviewed people coming out of a Magic Johnson theater one time for the Oscars. We actually performed the song a few times during the course of a day, and the reactions on the patrons ranged from, “white people are crazy! I find that amusing.” to “white people are crazy! I find that confounding.” The editors chose to highlight the former, but watch for a lot of the latter on the edges of the frame.
Fortunately for you, my brief solo (as “Man in Suit”) was cut, as was all of my (extensive) dancing, but I think the finished product is a lot of fun, and you can still spot me reacting to a thrown broom and in the closing tableau. Check it out for yourself below.