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I read a quote the other day. Somebody like
can't remember if it was p.T. Barnum
or Henry David Thoreau that
said that democracy is based on the notion
that ordinary people can do extraordinary things.
Societal pressures tend to keep our abilities quashed down.
We don't sing. We don't dance
because the professionals do it for us.
But in order to do improvisation
you have to have some respect for
the possibilities of human abilities.
Like
you have to assume that people can do extraordinary things
we've got a real special treat for you right now
it's my pleasure to introduce to you
ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Del close.
If you've never heard of del close
well, congratulations
that means you're not a comedian
which all in all, is probably good news for you.
If you are a comedian,
then you know this actor turned comedy guru
trained pretty much everyone in the business.
He was like a living legend.
If you don't know del close, Google him.
He's done everything interesting in comedy, in my opinion.
What do you want to see a show about?
- Yeah, I'm talking to you! - Um...
Um, crime!
An excellent suggestion!
Del close showed me the connection between
comedy and bigger ideas.
We're not worthy!
Oh yeah, the cult of del
it should be the church of del.
Del taught me the whole concept of just
being bold in your life and being fearless.
I'm just trying to put you to bed.
No! Me baby!
Baby no go night night!
It was the first time I was
part of a bohemian culture
I was around gay people. I was around white people
that... I was around white people
a whole lot of white people
del, thanks for teaching me everything I know.
Being present in the moment. In a scene.
And not going for a cheap gag or a cheap joke.
Thanks honey.
And that's just a smattering of comedians
who studied with del close.
Dozens of those comics started their own del-inspired theaters
passing down the wisedom to a whole new crop of comedy nerds.
Del has created now
multiple generations of people
who seek even more freedom
like the free jazz of the 60s and 70s.
This is a very pretentious comparison, I know
- I like it. - See!
But I'm an eccentric.
That's three generations of comedians
if you're keeping track.
All of them chasing this myth
of the guru who discovered a new art form...
Improvised comedy.
Which, for some reason, he called Harold.
And a friend of mine said
they're doing this pure improvised show.
It's called Harold.
I went down and I watched it and I thought, this is for me!
I have to improvise.
A lot of the comedy everyone is used to
they improvise like crazy.
I mean, look at judd apatow's films.
There's so much improvisation.
I've never been in one... judd.
When we did "anchorman"
and "Talladega nights"
we improvised for hours.
The skeleton took a shower
the skeleton ran out of shampoo in the shower.
Which was heavily inspired by del close.
The human torch could not get a bank loan.
The human torch
so one cameraman if you look at his dailies,
you can see the camera move a little bit.
Sure, laugh it up
but del's path of destruction has cut through almost every
seminal comedy moment of the last sixty years.
Which is all the more amazing when you realize he was
I bite myself, I bite myself, I bite myself
literally nuts.
There was a period where del
was doing shows at second city
where he was in the mental hospital.
They had to go pick him up
bring him back to do a show
and then take him back to the mental hospital.
He was a fucking crazy person.
He was crazy.
Undecided!
I think with that crazyness
he's kind of a genius.
So how did a mad man manage to change
the face of comedy as we know it?
And end up with roughly the same name recognition
as a third tier fast food chain?
Well, you can't ask him because frankly, he's dead.
But he did leave behind one clue.
The burn of the...
Uh, nickel, dimed, and quartered
uh yeah
the goddamn fog
ooh! Matin' with Satan.
No! The creamin' demon
which one?
The creamin' demon
what am I looking at?
Is maybe what you're asking yourself right now.
Well, del close has just been hired to write
a comic book about his life.
For DC comics, no less.
Emergency room service?
No, no... emergency...
- Rumors! - Rumors!
Great minds.
And this is his team.
Smell... of the mega brain.
Here's del. Full of ideas.
Sniff and crawl.
Only problem is they're all batshit.
Done.
That's Mike gold, del's editor,
trying to turn batshit into comic books.
Well, he was insane.
Now, I like that.
Insane people come up with great stories.
They go places nobody's ever been before.
What happened to Merlin?
Feed us... the fetus
here's John ostrander,
del's trusty writing partner.
He's just happy to be in the room,
even if it smells like an ashtray full of farts.
Many times, I go, how did del and I ever
together?
Del is... hip.
I'm a square.
I'm so square, I'm almost cute.
But I knew comics,
but he was del.
He had this imagination.
Probably there's androids.
Probably..
- Probably there's androids. - There might be...
You know what?
Oh, and all del's lines here are direct quotes
taken from tape recordings he made throughout his life.
Starting with the audition process...
Anyway, back to 1987.
Witches in Toronto.
I love that.
Witches...
Toronto freaks me the fuck out.
Right?
That is great. Can I get an outline on that?
- Witches in Toronto, Thursday? - Yeah, yeah, you bet.
Beautiful
- did you write that? - Good.
I got it.
Witches in Toronto.
I got it.
Thank you, John.
I was the outside-the-box guy
over at DC.
They had just started "the dark knight"
and "watchmen" and, you know, they were feeling pretty good.
And they figured this is a good time to sort of
push the boundaries of comics and enjoy the surreal.
That's del.
Anybody who ventures into the land of del close
hears all of these del close stories.
And they're phenomenal.
We famously dine out on del's stories.
We feast on del's stories.
I wanted to get some of those in print.
Del volunteered for some tests
for the U.S. air force.
They would give people acid
and they monitor their dreams.
He left the experiment
and he ended up getting a letter that said:
"Mr. Close, you owe the United States air force
one more dream."
So I'm driving through the streets
of San Francisco,
and del is going to eat fire.
He pulled it out,
and that thing of flame shoots out
and my car caught fire.
He met Tennessee Williams.
And he reaches out, and he shakes
Tennessee Williams' hand,
and a cockroach crawls out
from his sleeve onto tennesee Williams.
And del goes
"excuse me, I believe that's mine."
And sticks it in his pocket.
Del's whole movie-acting career
is just so bizarre.
I know he did a lot of weird films
and stuff earlier in his career.
He had two parts in "the untouchables".
- That's right. - Two parts.
You fellas are untouchable, is that the thing?
There's a story of him with I. Ron Hubbard.
He was a science fiction writer that del loved,
and I. Ron was complaining about the fact that
he was getting taxed so heavily,
and he said, "well, form a church."
And he said, "alright, maybe I'll do that."
He was a natural. These stories are so unusual.
And, in comics, you have free reign.
For "wasteland", del would be given full freedom
with the comic book form.
Using a variety of artists, del could go
literal,
metaphorical,
hallucinatory,
conceptual,
meta,
whatever... this is.
All in service of excavating his own life story.
Which also happens to be the story of an entire
comedy movement.
You know, I'm writing my autobiography.
- You are? - In a comic book, yeah.
Great!
It's in a comic book called "wasteland". It's, uh, for DC.
- Really? - Yeah.
But what, why?
But I wanted to leave behind the great lessons
really?
Indeed, the secrets of comedy.
Okey, doke.
That's, I think, part of the reason why
he liked "wasteland".
Because he had a chance to do more,
and even with some of the autobiography pieces,
to show more.
He wanted to reveal what he'd learned in the past
about comedy.
The concept was the first issue would be of
del's origin, or as close to an origin story as possible.
Yeah, I worked for Dr. Dracula.
I was his assistant.
I carried out a flaming bowl while Dr. Dracula ate fire.
Del used to tell everybody that studied with him
about running away from home, and going and traveling with
Dr. Dracula's tomb of terror.
There was this old guy who played Dr. Dracula.
He would get up, and he would do a magic act.
And you learned how to eat fire from him?
No, he wouldn't teach me. I learned on my own.
And my entrance music was.
Dr. Dracula would come down to the footlights
and he would say,
"a plague of worms will descend upon you",
and the lights would go out, and I would run up the aisle
throwing cooked spaghetti everywhere.
And the audience would literally go "wah!"
My first show business experience
you know, and I cause people to shit their pants.
You know, man, and it's been downhill ever since.
I know what del means.
If I was onstage and something I did
led someone in the audience to say, "I just shit my pants!"
Oh my god!
It's an amazing thing.
This line between, kind of, is it great?
Or is it wrong? Should I be scared or should I be laughing?
What journey can you take an audience on?
It was like performance art
meets improv, which I think is what del was kind of all about.
He just loved that weird, subversive world.
Even if the audience hated it
he was like
killed it!
Freaking people out as a teenage carnie runaway
was a perfect origin story for del.
But what was he running from?
Del's life as a child was really ordinary
growing up in Kansas
he was much smarter than most of the kids in his class.
You know, by all conventional standards, he was brilliant.
But his father didn't see that.
Del loved his mother. He wanted to love his father.
And then...
John, can I talk to del for a minute?
Yeah.
Enjoy... this.
Del,
I just want to say, I love all the Dr. Dracula stuff
it's great. The guy pooping his pants.
But I was also wondering, maybe there's something...
A little darker from your childhood?
More appropriate for our little grotesque booklet here?
Nah.
Anything from before you left Kansas?
Something rotten in the little apple?
Daddy drinks the dark dram.
Sometimes it's hard to deal with the thing
in terms of the thing itself.
You know?
The thing itself, an incendiary thing.
Del told a story throughout his life
"the big story", some thought of it as
when del was eight, his father called him over.
He asked his son to bring him a glass of water he left
on the counter.
Eager to please, del does as he's told.
And watches as his father drains the entire glass.
First come the convulsions,
then the glass smashes as del's father goes limp.
As it turned out, the glass didn't contain water at all.
It was battery acid del learned later.
There's at the heart of that a betrayal.
A father's betrayal of the son.
Okay...
Commiting suicide, I'm not judging that,
but to do it, in that manner, in front of your son,
that's a betrayal, that's... By my likes.
He started swallowing fire
at a very early age.
To me, if you were going to psychoanalyze a person whose
father commited suicide,
you might wonder why they're swallowing fire.
Just asking.
After traveling with Dr. Dracula
del was hired as a "human torch" in Bermuda.
And then del got another call, not long after that,
from his friend, severn darden
"and he said," hey, there's this theater action happening
in St. Louis.
"You really should come out, and give this a shot."
As del says, "well, I'd only dove three times.
The wind kept shifting.
So this sounded like a pretty good alternative."
So del headed out to join the newly formed,
compass players.
Not knowing that he was walking into the one thing
more dangerous than fire:
The world's first fully improvised comedy troupe.
What I did over the last couple of days was like
put myself back into that period of time
and I was just amazed.
It was definitely a creative experience.
It was like unmatched perhaps on the planet.
The compass theater was the first group of people
dedicated to making theatre out of improvised work.
Geniuses, and dropouts, beatniks, weirdos.
Highly evolved, very intelligent
the task we were taking on which nobody had ever done
was to, somehow or another, train ourselves to improvise
whatever that was.
There was no script.
And we would do a new show every night.
We would open usually with some kind of like
some mad opening that I would start
like sometimes, I remember, we would sometimes come in
wearing helmets with flashlights
examining the audience members as though they were
complex fungi.
And then we would take suggestions.
We would do a scene on every suggestion.
I just remember the horror that everybody felt
before somebody spoke the first word.
We would just go out and do literally anything.
Sometimes the audience was fucking bored.
Right.
But sometimes we would be doing a scene,
and we would just blurt these amazing, wonderful things.
We just didn't know why
our successful work was successful
and why our failures were failures,
so we can chuckle now, but this was quite serious
right.
In improvisation, each performance was a risk.
But del sensed that a little danger could be just the thing
for a genre that had become...
How do I say this?
Ah, good evening, ladies and gentlemen
shitty.
A lot of the comedy on TV,
the kind of Bob hope stuff
made me feel kind of gross.
And I want to be sure, at all times, to do the right thing.
That's the right thing.
So that older generation of comedy
was a palliative.
You know, it was meant to
make life okay, and you can laugh,
and we'll laugh, and we'll all be nice people.
Let's not do any jokes we didn't plan on, huh?
As it turned out, there were plenty of people
who were tired of Bob hope's dick jokes.
So the compass was packing them in.
To fill the need, they brought in two new cast members.
Mike Nichols, and Elaine may
yep, that Nichols and may, but we'll get to that
but like Mike was there in order to work with Elaine
uh huh.
Elaine was there, to, you know, work
in improvisational theatre right, right.
And so Mike's reasons for being there were
- a little shaky. - Right.
And she was able to adapt to it?
Yep, she was able to adapt to real improvisation.
Elaine was absolutely fucking amazing.
And fearless.
I have been going with the same man for the last fourteen years.
Last week, I got the shock of my life.
There, sitting at a sidewalk cafe
was my intended with another woman.
I asked him, "what is the meaning of this?"
In reply, they both stood up,
and gave me such a merciless beating.
Del and Elaine may shared the same kind of
dogged persistence to figure out what could you do to make
improvisation consistent.
And this was Elaine may's line,
I love this - tell me what I need to know
to get off stage without dying.
And they came up with the kitchen rules.
He and Elaine apparently constructed
a whole set of rules. I think they called it,
"the Winchester kitchen table rules of improvisation".
Like, don't deny, respect the other person's reality.
Right.
Remember where the objects were
right.
Uh, don't do mime.
That's right.
Always play to popular intelligence.
- And think the unlikely choice. - Right.
We're not locked into this thing like an actor
with a script.
He met his match,
and I think they had a romantic engagement as well.
Elaine, I was thinking about this,
I mean, of course, she was frightening and intimidating,
I mean, the goddess is more evident in her
than in most people.
And you know, right
in all of her phases right
the wrathful one, and the beautiful one.
Right.
It's, uh,
it's like she was a supernatural figure.
I kept having all these, what am I doing here?
Why am I in the midst of all this here?
I was fairly mentally unstable in those days
cause I was still...
In my father's killing zone.
Everybody says you were madly in love with Elaine.
- I have her at... - And vice versa.
Actually, we never officially broke up.
And I still love her.
Del had met the two loves of his life.
Improvisation and Elaine.
He was in paradise.
But there was a snake in the garden.
Mike Nichols used to say "Elaine can work with anybody.
I could only work with Elaine."
Moving out of the Bob hope era,
Mike Nichols checked all the boxes
of the modern comedic genius.
Highly educated and refined,
he was an auteur who was interested
in the Polish of social satire.
Not the sloppiness of improv.
And that had a good deal to do with our inability
to get along.
Still somehow or other, a plot was hatched
to go to New York and audition as a four-person night club act
to become, maybe, okay, famous.
We did not have plane fare for the four of us
so we all kicked in money for Mike and Elaine to go.
So the crucial period comes when we leave St. Louis
to go to New York.
And I thought it was like, a guaranteed thing.
When we got to New York, there was Mike
with a contract from Jack rollins
for two.
Not four.
So I was left out in the cold.
And at that point, Mike and Elaine
began working together.
I was absolutely completely cast adrift
and I went temporarily nuts.
Can you analyze this patient?
He is an adult, white male.
The only child of well-to-do parents.
Since the recent death of his father,
the patient has suffered from severe attacks of depression,
withdrawal,
Apia, catatonic apathy, and often toys
with the notion of suicide.
Clean family show, ladies and gentlemen.
No geeks, no freaks, no romedy.
Now, I would like to provide a selection of danse macabre
on my head.
After the breakdown, del got back on his feet.
But he wasn't quite the same.
So he drifted to the place where every dirty hippie
lands eventually.
♪ Ow! ♪
There's a story in "wasteland"
where del and his former writing partner
were sitting around writing, getting stoned,
trying to figure out how to be funny onstage.
And their idea was: Okay,
you take some Cole slaw,
and you stick it down your shorts.
Then as you interact with it, you're doing interesting things
even though you're too stoned to really be reacting.
And he said first it worked just as they figured it would.
It was irritating him, and was giving his performance
and interesting level.
He said, "Howard, I've discovered the"
the problems with it.
If you're wasted, you tend to forget what you've done.
So he said, after the show, he was in the bar,
and he picked up this sweet young thing,
and took her back to his place,
and he got undressed,
and out poured about a half pound
of warm rancid cabbage.
Cole slaw.
That was the kind of experiment one came to expect
of the committee.
Where del had managed to get hired as a director.
Wow! The committee!
It was basically sketch comedy
that was hilarious, and had a voice that was both
political, and socially, interpersonally relevant.
♪ Oh, say can you see, by the dawn's early light ♪
♪ what so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming ♪♪
♪ who put stripes and bright stars ♪
♪ through the perilous night ♪
♪ for the ramparts we watched ♪
♪ were so gallantly streaming♪♪
♪ and the rocket's red glare ♪
♪ the bombs bursting in air ♪
♪ gave proof through the night ♪
Summer of love.
Everybody was sharing everything.
Everything that was done was done in large groups.
Now, sex, theatre, politics, the whole thing.
Big bunch of people.
The drug culture at the committee
was pot, alcohol, and psychedelics.
But del said, let's push this a little bit further.
Anything that was ingestable del would ingest.
I came in once with eight or ten
different pills.
I had no idea what any of them even were,
and went to del, saying, "do you have any idea
what these are, and what they might do?"
And he said, "let's see!"
He was fueled by the drug
to go further than he might have gone otherwise
in his work and his curiosity
about life and human experience.
Quaaludes, Cole slaw comedy.
Hey, an experiment is an experiment
when you're spirtually dead in the year 1967.
So the committee turned their addled brains to improv.
If you could take a drawer full of drugs,
and still stand for your bows, could, you say...
Improvise a whole play?
So we're doing these long-form improvisation
experiments.
And I remember, one night, the longest one we ever did,
it was like maybe twenty people on this stage for just like
two hours, I remember.
Were those good? A two hour, twenty people...
Well, I mean it was, um
so we improvised through the whole workshop,
and then, at the end of the piece,
everybody fell on the ground, exhausted from the experience.
It was like...
Okay...
Can we do some more funny stuff now?
But del was just, you know,
bouncing off the walls,
saying, "we've created a new form of theatre!"
And everybody was saying, "right, del.
"Take it easy." You know?
Yeah, well, it's a new form of theatre.
We need a name for it,
and somebody to, kind of, undercut del's enthusiasm.
A kind of satiric comment on it.
Said, "well, Harold's a nice name."
And it became del's holy grail.
Del had found his purpose,
and its name was Harold.
But what was it, exactly?
Well, what del had glimpsed was just an idea.
The idea that people could improvise
for long enough to achieve some greater comic meaning.
And if betting it all on a half-baked idea
sounds scary
so much the better.
Del was forever wanting
to follow what he wanted to follow.
He had this imagination, you know, he had this outlook.
In the summer of love, in San Francisco,
his new idea wound up being called "the Harold."
That's what he called it, at the time, then it stuck.
And del really believed in it.
But somedays, it was hard to follow del
out to those reaches, that he went to.
I have a bad feeling.
I think we should cut this coo-coo-bird story.
No, no, let's not.
Let's criticize the obviously stupid.
I'm just not sure a story titled "retroactive abortion"
is going to sit well with the people who publish Superman
and aquaman.
Relax!
This is art!
A function of art is not to assuage.
For crying out loud!
This is one of my first jobs with DC!
I can't spoil it!
Oh god, I've spoiled it.
- Oh no. - Right.
Oh...
Oh man.
Are gonna blow her little brains over...
No, who ya callin'?
No, don't...
Lynn?
I have these edits here.
Will you get them to the author?
- Oh. - Thank you.
Arabella, sorry, I just can't get rid of this guy.
He keeps talking about how he writes
something called "wasteland"?
He says we need to stop making him slice
the comedy sausage?
There's a thin line between
genius and nutbag in this company
go for Arabella.
Well alright, DC's got commercial success.
Fine, great, there it is.
However, I'll tell you a couple of cautionary tales.
One time, I was in Los Angeles, I was at all these restaurants,
the kind where they...
- Has this been happening for. - Yeah.
- This whole time? - The whole time.
Okay.
More often, some sort of mystical journey
inside the washing Mac...
Hey, have you seen that new movie "fatal attraction"?
- I saw it. - Was it good?
Oh no, I think you'll hate it.
Unless you hate women, then you'll love it.
You know?
Oh, well, I love women, so...
- You won't love it. - Right.
Forming a secret society
which using secret names.
Now I'd like to tell you about my...
Okay. I don't want to go to this.
I think you should.
- Feather on the invite? - You're right.
What kind of classy event is that going to be?
I'm old now, you know?
Chicks don't hold my hand when I'm sad..
Hey, what happened on your date last night?
Oh, um,
didn't go great.
What?
- How is that possible? - I don't know!
He doesn't want a woman with attitude?
Yeah, well, that's... What I would have said.
What did you say?
I just said thank you.
Okay.
The praying mantis can't get it up
until his head has been gnawed off...
Okay! hello dear.
Yes? here's the deal.
I'm not paying a lot of attention to your
"waste-lords" right now.
- Oh, "wasteland". - "Wasteland".
Yeah, and that's a benefit
for both of us, I think, right?
I don't have to read your gross stories.
Mike gold sent me the outline...
For "retroactive abortion".
It was disgusting, to be frank.
And then you don't have to deal with me breathing down
your neck. Does that make sense?
- Yes, but... - Great.
So why don't we instate a policy of benign neglect?
Leave us alone.
And don't make us take you anymore seriously
than we want to,
and we'll get alone fine.
Okay, if I can play de...
You know what? I will go to that.
That's what I thought
okay?
Oh, del loved to push the boundaries
in a corporate environment.
"Wasteland" is, there's a sort of, special thing
that's like, yes! We've invaded...
DC was the majors.
It was one of the two biggies.
DC and marvel.
Del loved the idea of that.
He wanted his influence to spread out.
He wanted the recognition
that he knows his stuff.
I think there's something that continues
when he went to second city.
This is one of Chicago's cultural institutions:
The second city theatre.
The inside of this place is familiar to a lot of people
who enjoy an evening of comedy.
This bare stage with its familiar chairs
is a landmark of American theatre.
And through the years, it has served as a training ground
for many young, talented performers
on their way up.
In 1973, second city was the country's most
famous comedy theater.
And any fanboy can breathlessly list the legendary comics
that filled that stage.
Ah! That's derry the honky!
Harry the donkey?
But a lesser known fact
was that their director,
like the goddamn zelig of comedy,
was del close.
Where are we gonna take it...
Yes, we're at the top, right?
Lured by the possibility
of finding a stage for his newly discovered art form, Harold.
Del agreed to direct the theatre's scripted sketch shows
but by night, he'd use the theatre
as his personal laboratory,
developing the Harold in underground workshops.
Remember, we got style.
Del spends his evenings
at the Wells street second city theater.
He's doing what some call impossible.
Close runs a workshop in improvisation.
Del was the one voice
in the wilderness which is like
improv is a performance medium in its own right.
People will come just to see comedy improvisation
and it works by itself.
It's not a means to anything other than the thing.
Although improvisation
has been established as comedy
close has a greater vision for it.
That was always the problem with improvisation.
You can't depend on it.
You don't know if it's going to be entertainment.
It might just be
oh, look at these people shitting themselves.
That's always a distinct possibility.
One of del's fundamental comic exercises
was "what's the worst thing that could happen?"
Now let's play with it.
What's the impossibility? Let's make it possible.
And that's what del used to do in his workshops.
As an actor the Harold workshop
was really
this liberating force.
And you never know if it's going to tank
or if it's going to work.
That's what makes it so exciting.
I used to sort of get by on winking
at the audience kind of in my behavior,
making like smart jokes.
And del pulled me aside one day after a show, and said,
"some day you're going to look in the mirror and say,
'I'm so cute, and I'm only 45 years old.'"
and it sort of sobered me up, you know?
It taught me that, you know, that there was more
to just scoring with the audience.
It wasn't about just getting a laugh.
It was putting human nature
up onstage to study it.
To see why people do the shit that they do
to each other, to people that you love,
to people that you hate.
Like why do we behave the way that we do
and exploring that.
He came up with the line "you have a light within you"
"burn it out."
To me it means, go for it
until you get to the meat of your soul,
and the heart of your comedy,
and if you fall off the stage,
too bad!
But, unfortunately, not everybody was so
excited about doing long-form improvisation
at second city.
This was the source of dispute between del and Bernie sahlins
who was the long time producer at second city.
They want you to meet the man who gave this place
its start and who has been the driving force
behind it all the way.
His name is Bernard sahlins,
and he's owner, producer, and sometimes director here.
He is truly second city's first citizen.
Bernie sahlins was not at all interested
in doing long-form improvisation.
Uh why?
They had a formula that worked.
Bernie's formula was as follows:
Drunken audience suggestions
any fantasies at all, whatever you would like to do.
A whipped cream party.
Plus backstage planning
three-mile island,
invasion of normandy,
and Catherine the great, hubba hubba.
Plus weeks and weeks of rehearsal
rehearsal. Rehearsal.
Rehearsal.
Until all the mistakes
and failed experiments were buffed away,
revealing a show that even the boys from marketing could love.
It was money, we bring in regular audiences.
What they did was very safe.
Improvisation, especially, in the early days
was not safe.
I had a fundamental disagreement about the uses
of improvisation.
There are others, led by del, that feel that the process
itself had some mysterious beauty.
I think if you're going to see improvisers,
often enough, you'll see that half of their audience
are other improvisers.
Sometimes it's brilliant, and most of the time,
by my lights, it's not brilliant.
I remember Bernie allowed del
to run his workshops,
but you're not going to screw with the stage on that.
The notion of improvisation as a performance art form
that's preposterous.
The big no.
Ten years later, during the writing of "wasteland",
it still stung.
So del took his anger toward all the bosses
who had ever shut him down
turned them into one, vaguely anti-semitic.
Bernie look-a-like, and named him lash larue
after a cowboy he worked for in his teens.
But like all del's creations,
once brought into existence,
they tend not to stay put.
Well, howdy, shithead.
Hear you're having trouble with your boss.
Lemme guess, he's a moron, and you're a genius.
He's not a bad guy.
I like him.
He's just, you know,
greedy, and intrusive, and...
It's his candy store.
Lemme ask you something.
And I know I'm just a big ol' dumb fake cowboy,
but what is your beef with Bernie?
I thought you guys just wanted a couple of yuks.
Well, to the general public
it's a trivial little disagreement.
But to us, it's a great crisis of artistic vision!
Bernie's conception of improvisation? Oh boy!
True improvisation demands your whole mind.
We're not reproducing human behavior!
We're transforming it so that it's
meaning appears.
Well, shit, hell's mouse.
Hey Trisha? Can you get a babysitter?
Del close is putting on one of his meaning shows.
Uh, here we're going to see human behavior transformed
hey do we get a free diaper with this show
from when we shit our pants cuz of all the meaning?
Do me a favor? Just pretend this isn't bullshit
busting your chops, buddy, rough.
To del close.
Worst employee.
All that fancy talk, still can't put on a show worth a shit.
Goddammit!
Tastes like a lollipop's butthole.
Bernie always thought that del was crazy.
To expect people to see shows where wholly 100%
improvised.
The actors, on the other end,
you know, most of them loved improvisation,
and doing it in a long-form.
They can see it all paying off.
Sister, is this really necessary?
I was told, I could just come in and get some antibiotics.
Oh really, you were just trying to get some shots and pills?
Oh really? Well, who told you that?
Just this guy...
Just this guy? I wanna know what guy.
- You know, just a guy! - No, I wanna know what guy
told you that!
This guy! He told me!
It's the greatest job any young actor can have
cause there's no place like that where you get to improvise.
There's something about that technique that makes you
really like a sponge.
You really do... you try to absorb everything you can.
I'd like you to take a look at this picture
and tell me...
John belushi is a prime example
of del's work.
There was serious danger on the stage.
But it was hilarious.
This fish comes from one of the most polluted
streams in the United States.
That fish was actually killed by pollution?
Well, not directly, Tommy, see the fish crawled out
of the water and was hit by a car.
He's a very good example of the kind of approach
that del would expect.
That quality of walking the tightrope.
And just when it seemed
the power balance might be tipping in del's favor
live from New York, it's Saturday night!
The director can
set the goals,
work with the actors, and train them to some extent
okay?
But then, when push comes to shove.
I'm the one who stayed behind.
And we're ready to go on to make films and television.
Without his most prized cast members,
uncertainty took hold.
What if the excitement of the Harold
had been more about the brilliant talent
than the form itself?
What if the form itself, god forbid
fucking sucked?
Satchel
damn!
General.
It was a very frustrating experience.
Those were really years of struggle for del.
Well, he'd scream at people or belittle them.
Del would self-destruct,
or od or disappear...
All the time.
I'm sorry, you know, like, uh...
That's... am I ratting him out?
- No! - Is everyone...
Everyone's ratting him out yes!
Okay, good.
The wheels were coming off del's rebel act,
and Bernie's Patience had worn thin.
He needed del, but he no longer wanted to see, hear,
or smell him.
So he decided to export him.
Canada, the endless surprise.
♪ Magical, we want to see, come on up ♪
Come on up.
♪ Come on up! ♪
And so, del found himself banished
to second city's new Canadian outpost
to direct a group of unknowns.
Okay, this is the great white north
okay, on the map.
Now here is a different color cuz it's like u.S.A.
They got like a pimple right here
- it's Florida. - It's Florida.
Martin short was in that cast.
Catherine O'Hara, Andrea Martin, Dave Thomas, John candy.
It was interesting... The Toronto group
versus second city in Chicago
the behavior issues were quite different, you know?
Our cast started having families.
They were settled down.
There wasn't outrageous issues with drinking or drugs.
And del, he was going through a lot of stuff,
you know, personally.
I mean, he was well-documented about his addictions.
So you never knew which del was going to show up.
Had you heard about del before Toronto?
Oh yeah!
He was infamous before we saw him
they said, you know, he's out of his mind.
He was a delicate basket of eggs
that were ready to break at any moment.
He was definitely going through his crazy period,
you know what I mean?
Del, del! Whoa, whoa!
Hey! Put that thing down, man!
Get a hold of yourself, dude!
Where ya going with this comic book thing?
I mean, what happened to those
secrets of comedy you were writing, huh?
Did ya drop them while you were reaching for your bong?
Well...
It became decadent right away...
You gotta channel your follies and stupidity
and use it for comedy.
A short time ago, the manager was having trouble
with the same limousine.
He had a...
I have a hard time being a person too.
No shit, del!
No shit...
So one of the early nights,
when del had come, we were doing workshops
he said,
and he gets up on stage, takes over.
Now this was a story del had
had already told us that this was how his father died.
So...
Okay, we're going to do a scene now, Dave, where
you will play the doctor that comes and tells me
that my father died from drinking sulfuric acid.
I looked at him, and said,
I'm not doing that.
That's not a good joke.
I think del was always interested in making
the audience gasp,
and that would be equivalent to a laugh.
Which I never believed.
They wanted to laugh.
You have a responsibility to that audience.
And without them, you got nothing, you know?
You're a... you're a madman on a street corner,
you know, raving at passers-by.
And he was a madman, there's no denying that.
It got worse.
Iconic actor, John belushi, died today
at the rented hotel bungalow in Hollywood Hills.
Authorities say that cause of death is believed
to have been a heart attack.
Fire department medics say they were called to the hotel
where they found belushi unconscious...
One evening, we heard del's booming voice
and he had a real booming voice,
screaming, in the little alleyway
behind the theater.
It was probably ten degrees above zero.
He walks in his stocking feet, all the way down Jarvis street.
And he came backstage
by this time, we see Andrew backing up.
And del moving at him, trying to punch him.
And he started throwing punches at me,
and then John candy got inbetween us.
And he's so big that del can't reach over him
punching Andrew,
and Marty gets up 'cause he hated del,
and sanctimoniously closes the door
like we don't need to see this.
Del was screaming about how Andrew had betrayed him.
"You demon!"
"You Judas!"
And then there was a bit of a pause,
"you cheeser!"
He yelled out, "you cheeser!"
He ran out of ammo
at sort of the demonic level of things to describe
Andrew as, and
tripled out with "cheeser".
So that's our show for today.
So good day.
To me, it was just like, he's fucking nuts.
We gotta get him on a plane as fast as we can,
so that he's no longer our responsibility.
Bernie and Joyce Sloan met him at the airport,
took him straight to
some psychiatric ward, and he was
an inpatient there for awhile.
He checked himself into cook county
a psychiatric wing.
You know, he was sort of still being very active,
as if he was still directing the show from the psych ward.
And he would call in, and he'd throw out ideas.
With the hope that he was going to come back
and finish the show off, which he didn't.
Bernie kept del around for the next few years
but his addictions and combative nature eventually
got him fired for good.
So without a stage, or coherent creator,
the art form called "Harold" reached a dead end.
People like to talk about the beauty
of the creative process.
They compare it to the depths of the ocean,
or a gently flowing river.
But if you really need a metaphor
here's the one del kept coming back to:
It's a sewer.
The thing about horror stories
they usually take you into a dark place,
and then they would take you back out again.
We didn't do that.
We'd take you to a dark place, and then say bye,
and leave you there.
We wouldn't tell you how something
ended somtimes. We wouldn't tell you
how to feel about it.
And so...
Most of our readership didn't quite get it.
Oh, this is the one, this letter.
Dear Mr. Close,
what is the point?
Am I interested in what del close puts down
his underwear?
To be honest, I couldn't give a toss.
You are a boring old hippie, and I claim my five pounds.
He didn't say anything about me.
Exposes a middle-age neurotic with no ideas.
Trying to reinvent everything
every eight pages,
every twelve issues gets a little tough.
At that point, it was a question of
do we keep on writing the stories?
The question is this...
How do we achieve the goals we have in mind?
Huh? I have to toss a few coins,
and write a bunch of lines on a blackboard.
Okay, I, uh,
I think I'm going to excuse myself
hold that.
What is it?
This hexagram looks like a breakthrough.
As a swollen river breaks through its dykes,
this refers to a time when inferior people
will gradually begin to disappear.
Oh.
Your influence is on the way.
Won't be easy.
I think we're on the right track.
One thing about del was
he found rock bottom an oldly inspiring place to be.
And he wasn't alone.
They'd been doing comedy at college,
on the radio and some live shows.
And I thought, maybe, I can do this for a living.
The only place I knew where people were doing it
was second city, and I thought,
I would go, just see what happens there,
under the guise of doing a news report
for my college radio station.
I called and got an interview with Joyce Sloane,
the denmother of second city.
She told me a lot of, sort of, magical, legend stories
about the actors who had been on the stage there.
John belushi, he came to our door and he knocked,
and he said, "I want to get on that stage", and we
looked at him, and said, "you get up there, mister!"
I think Joyce wanted to tell me the legend, you know?
But I think, what she didn't realize
was what I wanted to hear was,
you know,
"they sucked when we first saw them",
"they were terrible", and then, "they worked really really hard
for a long time,
and they slowly got better...
You know? That's what I wanted to hear.
And I walked out thinking, I can't do this
'cause I'm just not that great.
I walked down the street to Barbara's bookstore,
and this guy walks in,
and he's talking to the girl at the, um,
desk, and she's calling him del.
I didn't know what del close looked like,
but I'd seen his name in the program of second city.
I walk over, I go,
"are you del close?", and he goes, "yeah."
And I go, "well, I just interviewed Joyce Sloan,
I'm here, can I interview you about second city and stuff?"
And he said, "that's great! I'd love to."
And he explained that he had just quit second city
the day before,
and he had just quit cocaine, I think, a few weeks before,
and he's changing his life now,
and he would love to talk about that.
One, two, test, test.
Okay, um, Bob odenkirk here.
Got some really important questions here.
So we walk over to his little apartment
across from second city, and at the time,
they had a window that was busted out.
And this is February, in Chicago.
So, the fucking, freezing
cold wind blowing in that little... that window
the whole time we're sitting there.
He had stopped hard drugs.
He had stopped coke and heroine.
He went to this coven, this witch gathering.
'Cause he was a witch, you know?
And he did a ceremony to get rid of his cocaine addiction,
which he said worked.
I mean, I don't know that stuff, I'm a kid from naperville.
But if he says he quite coke, and he did it by going to
a witch ceremony
then I believe him.
The crazy thing is that
I walked out of del's place
so excited about doing comedy
and being in show business.
And it was not through any overt effort
though, I promise you.
He didn't sit around and go, you should do this!
I mean, he was just talking about his life.
Talking about all these things he was dealing with
personally and professionally, and it made it seem real.
It made it seem possible, and it made it seem amazing.
But also I wouldn't put it past myself for thinking,
if he can do all he did
and still have his brain intact,
imagine what I could do if I'm not doing cocaine or heroin.
You know, I might even have some money left over
to fix the window.
Well, I'll end this for you.
No, no, no I wanna...
Window or no window, del was ready to get back
to work on the "Harold".
But where to begin?
Hello!
I was an improviser
that was desperate to learn more.
I was bored. I felt like it was the same old jokes.
The same old tricks.
And so I sought out del, because I wanted to see if there was
something I could steal from him.
My first meeting with del was a disaster.
It was Halloween. I saw him at an art gallery,
and I went with the plan that I would talk to him
and see if I could get him to teach a class.
And he was wearing these witches' robes,
and he was invoking demons, and doing this very scary
invocation of gods.
And I went up to him afterwards, and said,
"you have a lot of nerve for invoking demons
with all these people in the room."
And he said, "I protected the building", and I was like,
and I just walked out in a huff, and then I was like "oh god."
There was your meeting with del close and look what you did
then a couple weeks later there was del, sitting in the theater.
And I thought, well, I had heard rumors
that he was always high, and that he doesn't
remember people.
I figured, he's not going to remember me.
So I said, "hey, how'd you like to make two hundred bucks
in pot?"
And he was like, "hm, what do I gotta do?"
And I said, "just teach one three hour class",
and he was like,
"can I do anything I want?"
And I said, "yeah," and he said, "can I invoke demons?"
So he taught a class, and he revealed the secrets
of the universe to us.
And we talked, and I said, "I just feel like there's
something more for improvisation."
And he said, "well,
perhaps you're not a twit after all."
And then he told me, he had been working on this thing
since the 60s when he was directing the committee
called Harold.
Which was basically unteachable and unplayable,
but if I would like to shut down my little game theater
perhaps we could find a way to make it work
and change the face of improvisational comedy,
and I said, "yes please!"
Here's the funny thing about del.
I mean, he was like this legend, he was definitely brilliant.
But he could also be a little bit of a baby sometimes.
And after the end of his run at second city,
there was still a serious argument going on
about... is improv even a performance
uh, form?
It wasn't a polished, regular second city show.
It was a road to nowhere.
The only thing you could get out of improv at that time
was to get better at doing improv.
I think he worried that he was wrong,
and maybe a big group of people onstage just making stuff up
really is a trainwreck.
Like, the thing is that second city worked for awhile.
Was it an accident, you know?
Did it just happen?
It's easy to question the validity of your art form.
If it only works when bill Murray and gilda radner
do it.
Charna saw that the real proof of the Harold would be
if it was teachable.
We thought, okay,
we really have to find a way to train anyone
that comes through the doors.
You know, I said to him, "I'm asking you to just listen,"
and collaborate, and work together,
and I'm going to take you idea,
"and I'm gonna make it brilliant."
He just trusted me, and
opened up and let it in.
Charna really believed in del,
but she saw that you need a form
for groups of people to use as a guide rail onstage,
so it doesn't turn into a giant mess.
And that was when it hooked.
That was when they cracked this form called
"the teaching Harold".
Yeah, you could probably use graphics if you need,
- we are going to... - You could show... yeah, yeah,
perfect!
All of this starts with a one-word suggestion.
Okay, we need a theme
something meaty we can tear apart.
We get one suggestion from the audience
like
god or cardboard.
We're not going to do a full, long improvisation about
god or cardboard; We're going to use this suggestion
to be inspired by.
You sort of toss around ideas
whether it's in monologue, or word association, or whatever.
And now those were our blocks from which we could build.
That is going to give information for the first scene
that you go into.
Then you'd break off and do two-person scenes.
Scene one, scene two, scene three.
Then what you do is you
bring each of these scenes back.
And the scenes can progress.
Same characters, different time.
In the past or in the future.
And the next step of the three scenes
that we invented first time around.
And then you have a third beat,
third set of scenes.
And it all harkens back to the original suggestion
and by this time, the scenes
are beginning to interrelate, to be affected by each other,
to mirror each other, to rhyme
with each other in some sort of mad, conceptual way.
And the goal was not to tie it up all neatly
but just to see how some of these things
all along had been related.
You see amazing moments of discovery,
moments of connection where the group brain really does
start functioning.
Yeah, you're looking for discoveries.
That's the juice of the Harold.
And that's why our audience is so much on our side.
The audience is with you.
They're seeing that you don't have a script.
They're seeing that you're looking for the discovery,
so when you find it,
and it's really good, they cheer.
There was a distinction made
at the very beginning: We're not looking for laughs.
We're looking for cheers and roars.
With the teaching Harold suddenly the
idealistic dream became a reality.
And finally, almost twenty years
after del first glimpsed it,
Harold actually worked.
Wowee, Harriet, wowee!
I'm the happiest fellow on campus!
♪ Howie ♪
I loved him. He was just the best.
He was always doing something cute.
He was in "the blob".
When we were at the movie theater,
I guess the director had given him some of the tentacles
from the movie when it was done being shooting,
and he never told me.
There was this one scene where she was
climbing down the man hole, and the blob reaches down
and starts touching her head.
As it's happening, he slowly starts
sliding the tentacles down my face, and I
scream so loud, you know, and I'm seeing the tentacles
um, so, oh he was so romantic.
♪ And when we dance ♪
We knew that we couldn't be lovers
because he felt that I would be grossed out
or he would kill me,
one or the other, so we decided just to be family.
♪ We'll do the sock hop ♪
And that's when the art form spread
like wildfire.
Charna was his anchor, was his rock, you know,
she permitted him to
to live, and made sure he could live the life that he wanted.
She convinced him to go back to the first rule of improv
and say yes.
You know, open your eyes, and open your mind.
I think that's what happened to him.
Hm?
What the heck is this?
- You made me a voodoo priestess? - Uh...
How did you not think I wasn't find out about this?
I mean, I'm the grand summoner of your coven, del.
- I know shit. - Blessed be.
You know, not only is this offensive to me
as a druid, it's definitely a little racist.
Well, it's an archetype.
It's lazy.
You know what? You might be right.
I won't argue with you.
My mood has changed.
Really?
I learned a great lesson
which is: Conflict is boring,
and agreement is less boring.
We don't need that old
tacked-on, obligatory conflict, "yeah, but"
- what about "yes, and"? - Hm.
In these situations, "yes, and" is a lot better.
Care, concern,
- let's take care of each other. - Yep.
That doesn't sound like the guy who wrote this.
I mean, it sort of looks like you're dissecting someone here.
Ooh, hey, you gotta light?
Well, sometimes, you can develop a picture of a person
and that can change right under your nose.
Hm.
I think he was interested in
exploring transformation.
Improvisational work itself, I think,
worked on his system, you know,
and made him... Open him up,
made him eager to open up more.
And it was really when he began working with charna halpern
at the improv Olympics, I think, which was his stage,
and his joint,
and his students, that he really began to accept himself
and accept the work.
With his very own stage, at long last,
del could finally put whatever he wanted on it.
My name is del, and charna's partner.
And what he wanted was
everyone.
Before the improv Olympics I think the general consensus
was that improvisation
couldn't be studied, and it couldn't be understood
and couldn't be taught.
And we discovered that this was not true.
It does not take an enormous amount of training
for somebody of ordinary abilities
and no theatrical experience
to participate in some degree of credibility
in a public improvisation.
We were freaks, basically.
He took in a bunch of really smart
talented freaks who were ostracized
by every fringe of society,
and we finally found each other.
That becomes the kind of Incubator
for a lot of people who don't belong in a
trad... they're not like traditional actors.
They're not standups.
It attracts a lot of smart, nerdy people
who want to exercise that in favor of comedy.
It's always this or that!
You empower
creative voices
to express themselves in the moment
as only they want to.
He gave permission
for people to say
I have unusual connections. I have eccentricities.
I belong onstage.
Intellectuals and anti-intellectuals,
philosophers, and
dope-smokers, low status, and high status,
most people existed on that stage because
del close said we need people like that.
I think he got to a point
where he probably became more enamoured
with people who were taking improv class to become
you know, better salespeople,
because they weren't doing it
for the purpose of getting on snl
or getting a sitcom
or a fucking beer commercial.
They just wanted to, like, come out of their shell.
One of del's favorite students was a
deaf prison electrician, um.
He was this older, middle-aged guy
he had actually done some living,
and he had interesting life experiences,
regretfully, we could not locate the electrician.
But we did find a few tapes with these guys on them.
Ted Bundy was quite a character.
Let's edit that out. That feels wrong.
My name is Amy poehler,
and my last name is: P-o-e-h.
I-e-r.
And del totally opened my eyes
to the potential
that I didn't know I had.
I didn't know what I wanted to do,
and he gave me a vision
to say yes onstage and in life.
There's no wrong move.
You're a poet onstage. You're an artist.
Take what you have in your life, and put it into your art.
We were all so obsessed with it.
We would do harolds in people's living rooms.
We would rehearse in dining rooms.
Anywhere we could.
When I improvise with someone,
we can do something a lot better
than either of us are capable of.
A notion of "just pay attention"
just care about this other person.
Rather than get the laugh.
You also have to remember
you're in the 1980s.
There's actually the opposite message is being told
in our society.
We're being told that the individual is what rules now
I mean, if you need help, you're weak.
If you watch "Ferris Bueller's day off",
you know, it's a very entertaining movie,
but the message of that movie is about one guy
who's in charge. One guy who games the system.
Like Arnold Schwarzenegger is the one guy,
and meanwhile, del is teaching the exact opposite,
and what you discover is
it's got a tremendous amount of power.
And the people who really commit to it,
just right away start doing special, unique work.
It's a true outsider art.
It's just filled with people who are funny
and that like you, no matter what.
You feel like, you're part of a much bigger thing.
My friends in scarbrough, Ontario said
"so what do you do? Kinda like, get drunk and crack jokes?"
And it's kind of, halfway between that and
uh, truly getting in touch with your higher self.
Are you a comedy fan?
If so, you have this man to thank for developing
countless comedians and comic actors
over the years.
His name is del close.
In the 80s, more and more people
were moving to Chicago to do long-form improv.
And del was the selling point.
And now I would like you to meet
the best partner a girl could have...
Mr. Del close!
I think as he got older,
he carried himself in that guru way,
and I think he enjoyed the role.
There wasn't a modesty of like "oh, no, no,
please, I'm just here to run a few exercises".
For charna, as the businesswoman,
it's also a smart business decision of just like,
this is the guy!
Everybody has to study with this guy.
You've gotta come through here,
take all the levels to get to this guy.
It is a cult.
Uh, um, yeah.
Improv olympic is a cult,
and I got sucked into it, um...
One night, out of nowhere,
these like eight guys came at me,
and they were just these like,
doughy looking white guys in khaki pants,
and they told me, I had to go with them,
and that I couldn't deny anything they said,
and that I had to heighten their initiation.
And, you know, the next thing I know,
I'm writing out checks to yes, and productions.
A cult of personality was forming,
distracting del from other things.
Like say,
living up to the ideals of his egaitarian art form
by putting someone other than white guys
from schomberg onstage.
But alas, his focus was elsewhere.
I sometimes sit around and wonder
would I like to have millions and millions of dollars?
Direct movies? Direct Broadway plays?
Raise arabian stallions?
Or work with charna here at...
I think there was a big part of del that wanted to be famous.
I think it was a conflict within himself,
between his artistic aspirations and wanting popular fame
like his contemporaries, you know?
Like Mike Nichols, who couldn't have been
bigger.
His Broadway directing debut
with Neil Simon's "barefoot in the park"
earned Nichols the first of six Tony awards
and the reputation for having the midas touch.
If I'd gone a different direction,
maybe I'd have arabian stallions
and be married to Diana Sawyer like Mike Nichols,
but here,
I'm in a basement with charna.
And he had a sense of humor about it,
but it's only natural to compare yourself to your peers,
that he had come up with,
and to see his students reap awards
that he never reaped himself.
You know, it's gotta be hard sometimes.
And he's like, "wait a minute!"
I taught that big guy with the glasses
everything he knows,
and he's using what I'm using,
and so is that Rachel dratch,
"and I feel like they ripped me off!"
We were like, "well, I thought,
the idea was that you teach us, and we could use it."
But we realized he was just wounded.
He felt a little left out.
It bugged him. It definitely did.
Alright, we're rolling right now.
As comfortable as you are talking about this...
You worked with Saturday night live for awhile.
Yeah, yes.
And what do you think
when you see all these improvisers
from Chicago going out, and doing things like.
Saturday night live?
I mean, you can't work with all these terrific people
um,
you know, without... But then,
a Harvard medical school study
has determined that rectal thermometers
are still the best ways to take a baby's temperature.
Plus it really teaches the baby who's boss.
I mean have you ever gone on vacation,
and left your child home?
No.
- Old testament, Mr. Mayor. - Yes.
Real wrath of god type stuff.
Forty years of darkness, earthquakes, volcanoes!
Human sacrifice!
Dogs and cats, living together!
I can't believe what an asshole you are!
No, maybe, she smiled.
She's smiling at what an asshole you are
no, no, no, no, she was smiling at how money I was.
Historically, syphillis is right up there with Germans.
Morning, everybody!
Though you don't want a fish sandwich?
Upright citizens bri...
Behave!
Hi!
Correct.
Was he cool being the teacher,
the trainer,
the guy that you've never heard of?
Well,
I don't know, I mean...
I can't tell you what he thought.
But I can tell you that the last conversation
that I had with him
I told him, I hope I made you proud.
And he said, "yes."
That I, like, never let him down.
And it was weird because he
how do you say goodbye to somebody
for the last time, you know?
I saw that he was weaker
like when we'd walk somewhere
he'd have to stop and breathe.
He was now coughing so badly that he would vomit.
I was so angry because he was still smoking
at the time.
I was like, "you can't smoke anymore."
And I remember when we went to the doctor,
they did all these tests,
and the doctor came out, and he said,
"it's emphysema."
So it's a pretty awful death.
But we had a great party for him
like he wanted to die a special way.
Me and bill Murray pulled it off.
The hospital gave me this room in the basement,
and all these people came back, I mean everyone came back.
Murrays there, and ramis.
Charna is obviously hosting, and
really guiding everybody through the processes well.
Well, she's the high priestess.
It was hard on Bernie. Much harder than he let on.
And he wanted to go talk to del.
Charna already knew that they were going to have a moment,
so she kind of cleared out this place for these two
giants to have their final chat.
And you could see at one point, del kinda nodding,
nodding, and he was
kind of leaning, and.
I thought he was going to topple forward,
and for a moment,
I thought, and a bunch of people around me thought,
maybe this... Maybe he's going,
maybe this is it?
And then somebody said to me, in that typical second city
scene...- stepping on his air tube!
And then, Bernie's like,
"what?" "you're on his oxygen!"
He goes like this, and then del's like,
"whoa! Hey, I'm back!"
I gave him a hug, and he said to me,
"here's an art form!"
And I said, "del, for tonight, it's an art form."
It's worth noting, that on his last
full day on earth,
del didn't tell the wild stories.
He didn't talk about the drugs, the rage, the chaos,
the stunts, the myths.
He didn't even tell his father's suicide story.
Hm.
Wonder why.
I found out when I was writing my book,
a few years later,
it wasn't exactly the way he told it.
Del was in New York, you know,
he was a thousand more miles away,
when his father actually killed himself.
He said he was ten years old when it happened.
Well, he was twenty years old.
So he kept changing all of this.
And he would just sit back and let the legend grow
because he knew that's what was happening with it.
Yeah, yeah, I've heard that story.
Is it true? I don't know.
But that's part of the complexity
that made up del.
Del's telling that story
about his father, even if it wasn't factually true,
that says something about del.
Stories are a wonderful tool
for getting at what we're all about.
But all stories are lies.
Lies in service of the truth.
Or maybe in search of the truth.
You know, and that's what "wasteland" was for del.
Del
wanted "wasteland" to be a rulebook
of the nature of comedy.
But, at the end of the day,
it was a way to come to terms with the world view
that he taught
that comedy's about
everybody.
It's about the stage.
It's about the story and the experience,
not about any one person.
He was a young comedian.
He didn't know what he was doing.
He got into show business for all the wrong reasons.
He got satisfaction in the fact that it was too easy.
Very easy, very easy to impress.
But then he began to learn.
You!
You! You, you asshole! You began to learn.
And then you began to realize
what you've gotten yourself into.
I am not what he expected to become.
I am the messenger.
I am the channel.
I am the door through which
you will pass,
but he may not.
But he understands.
Some people have a simple story.
One the world eats up,
and success comes easily.
But fuck those people.
Because there's another group
who are a little louder, weirder,
sloppier, little more honest.
And for them,
del kicked open a door.
You know, as I leave it,
I began to realize that we really haven't done
such a bad job
for the world,
and I think that we need
all my fellow conspiratorians
to recognize this.
You know, we're not doing as bad as they claim we are.
And so let's hear it for the fucking human race.
Haven't I passed this way before?
Same sewer, different ending.
Oh.
I guess this is the end.
It's kinda like fireworks, the most ephemeral
of art forms.
You know, once it's gone, it's gone, baby.
There's the afterimage for a few seconds,
but nobody will ever see anything like it again.
Del wanted to bequeath his skull
to the Goodman theater, to Robert falls.
So that he could keep working, you know.
He wanted to be yorick, in uh,
in Hamlet.
So you accepted the gift of the
the skull. I think that's great.
Yeah.
I guess I'm early though.
So on his death bed, he said to me,
"make it happen, any way you can."
Well, it isn't that easy.
I called so many places, and so many, um,
and associations, and said, "you can have the body to study"
just...
"Decapitate him, and prepare the skull."
And most people would say, "oh, no thank you."
So I went to this place where they sell skulls, and
human bones to hospitals, and stuff like that.
And my sister and I, we went shopping
to go pick out skulls.
So then I was like, "this looks like him.
And this doesn't. This head's big enough!"
And so we bought a skull,
and I'll never forget, because I went back to my hou...
Sister's house with her, and then I realized,
del didn't have teeth.
She pulled the teeth for me.
I was too squeamish.
And um, I took the skull home,
and put it in my pantry, and waited a few months
'cause I read that beetles have eated... that there' this whole
process to preparing a skull, so I had to pretend
that I was doing that.
I got away with it for years, and years and years,
'til some jerky reporter
brought some actor there, and it turns out there was
a screw that showed there was an autopsy,
and that the screw itself was sixty years old,
and I was like,
aw, man, why would you ruin that?
So I did get caught, in the long run.
But at least, he got another story out of it.
And I figured del would like that, you know,
because del taught us
that we take care of each other's ideas,
that we make them happen.
We don't say no to each other's ideas.
We make them happen.
And that's what he wanted, and that was my job
was to make it happen.
Any way I can.