Soft Skilled

The temperature has started to dip, just enough anyway, to where I can break out a jacket in the evening, and for some reason, it makes me think of improv practice back in college. Thursday nights, 9:00, we'd all come stumbling out of the student union, and the next stop was always the Keg for drinks, all of us still giggling and tittering on our own brilliance. (Why mild weather makes me think of southern Mississippi, where it is rarely something other than blinding hot, is an interesting question unto itself.) What I really miss about that time though, is how familiar we all were with each other, and how much we enjoyed the craft.

This is the rarely discussed “soft skill” of improv – the part about really knowing and enjoying the company of your team mates, and this is the part my group is really struggling through right now. For part of it, I blame just on San Diego in general – this is one of the busiest cities I have ever known: hardly anybody just hangs out around here, instead everybody's always taking trips, going to events, etc. College, and Chicago as well, differ in that everybody generally stays around, in both cases because everyone's generally too broke to travel and do stuff. For example, at the last couple of shows my group has done, it's only been me and one other troupe member going out (even on a Friday night) for some post-show good times, and it's shown: I have a bunch of very talented, knowledgeable improvisers in my group (and dare I say, well taught), who treat each other like strangers on stage, and we are struggling through shows. Scenes are technically good, but are sluggish and uninspired, and the answer is we have no “esprit de corps”. There is no spark in the players, and I sometimes catch actors eying each other with a cautious leer, like wolves circling a kill, but none willing to dive in and get to roughin' each other up. At issue is the “soft skill”, which is under-taught – we spend lots of time talking about scene work, characters, and forms, but little time worrying about camaraderie, fellowship, and morale.

The problem is, how do you make mandatory a thing like “let's all go to the bar after the show”? Jason Chin wrote a great article where he bemoaned the constant drive among some of the Chicago improvisers to make the “bar trip” part of the weekly ritual – just a continuation of practice in a new venue, as an avenue to group mind. (His objection is that this kind of ritual seems to make improvisers seem like alcoholics.) I won't argue that you're not going to get a perfectly jived group just by going to a bar, but you've got to invest some more time in your group than 2-3 hours a week; there are people I work with who I talk to more than that, and most of them I would never even think about stepping on stage and sharing an artistic moment with the hope that they would support me. You don't have to bar trip every week after practice, but you could try a road trip, movie night, game night, go carts – seriously anything. Your group doesn't have to be a boozer group to get soft skilled – you just have to spend some time with your team mates. I still don't know how to make it mandatory and it still be fun (those two concepts are always diametrically opposed to each other). The hope is if you make the effort to get people inspired by each other – to get your fellows soft skilled – that people who are keen to make the group great will also be willing to make the effort.

No one ever said you wouldn't have to make sacrifices to be a good improviser, so why not just try once a week telling your boyfriend/girlfriend that you're going to hang with your team. So you have to work tomorrow? So what – most people do too. You can sleep when you're dead - you can only improvise right now.

Cellular

Back in 2004, I used to write movie reviews for the USM student newspaper, the "Student Printz". Because I occasionally feel lazy, and it seems a shame that all of five people ever read these, I've decided to repost them here, in the original versions that emailed to my editor, Noel, all those years ago.

Despite falling into most of the typical snares for an action thriller, like absurd plot twists, lack of message, and plot holes Cellular manages to be entertaining enough so that you don’t notice these problems. Cellular is well acted, uses its gimmick basis well, and provides a successful skewering of the cell phone subculture.

Cellular opens with Jessica Martin (Kim Basinger) being kidnapped by a gang of thugs shortly after sending her son off to school. The thugs led by Greer (Jason Statham) whisk her away to an old house where they lock Jessica in an attic, leaving her only after smashing the wall phone in the attic into little bits. However, Jessica is a high school Biology teacher, and apparently studied at the same college where the professor from Gilligan’s Island went, because in a matter of minutes she does a MacGyver with the phone, and makes a call. But the only phone she gets belongs to Ryan (Chris Evans) who is needless to say a little skeptical about a kidnapping plot on the other end of his phone. Ryan is your typical college student, irresponsible, lazy but after hearing one of the other kidnappers threatening Jessica, decides to try and help her out. His only assistance comes from Sergeant Mooney (William H. Macy) who is on his last day of duty before he opens his own beauty parlor (“It’s a day spa!”).

Director David R. Ellis wastes no time in getting this movie on a roll, as Jessica is kidnapped within the first two scenes of the film. Thankfully, he also manages to keep the pace of the movie all the way to the closing credits (which are done on cell phone screens) which is probably the film’s greatest strength: it may be unbelievable in some places, but it keeps your attention well enough to where you don’t notice it. The acting is plausible (we’ll overlook that our Biology teacher heroine was about to leave for work wearing fishnet stockings), the movie is well executed and the dialogue goes just far enough to keep from being hokey. What is equally amazing is all the different ways that the cell phone is used not only as a prop, but also as a plot device. The hardest part about writing the whole movie was probably in just coming up with a few dozen ways to use a cell phone. Cellular never takes itself to seriously, and ends up just being a fun movie to just sit back and watch.

Should you manage to overlook Cellular’s gimmicky nature and plot holes, you may just find the movie to be surprisingly entertaining.