This interview was conducted at the Atlanta Film Festival in April. Trust Us, This is All Made Up screens at the 92nd St. Y in Tribeca on Friday and Saturday.
In the West Village’s Barrow Street Theater, three empty chairs sit on an otherwise empty stage. An audience gathers, chatters, sits to stay. It’s not notable really; in fact, it’s so much less than that it could be called pedestrian. Then a second thought occurs, which is, of course, “What exactly in moments will happen on this empty stage? Who will sit on these empty chairs?” That, then, is the mystery.
Somewhere in this audience, say toward stage right, sits filmmaker Alex Karpovsky. A friend clued him into coming to this improvisational show of veteran Chicago comedians T.J. Jagodowski and David Pasquesi. Karpovsky came, he admits, with some bit of hesitation: “At least back then I wasn’t a huge fan of improv; from what I’d seen, it just wasn’t for me.”
The show, however, an entirely improvised 50-minute stretch of narrative exploration, struck Karpovsky, its characters and story arc remaining with him for many days afterward. “It was made me wonder about the underpinnings of human creativity and human imagination,” he says. “It made me very curious about (T.J. and Dave’s) relationship toward one another, and it made me very interested in their relationship toward improv in general.”
Far from a rote live performance film, Karpovsky’s resulting doc Trust Us, This Is All Made Up tiptoes gracefully around universal issues involving artistic collaboration, faithfulness felt toward and trust in some greater meaning and fearless, open-minded storytelling. It’s a film that catches you slightly off-guard and leaves you there, tottering you lightly on the boundary of some greater truth, teasing you to discover not only the stories T.J. and Dave will tell but also your own story, which in the end remains as mysterious as do the purposes of those three empty chairs.
While traveling the film festival circuit this year, Karpovsky pulled time out of this schedule to speak about the challenges of editing live performance, the magic of character development and the unknowable “It” that writes a story yet unread.
One of the interesting points for me about this particular show is that when I think of traditional improv, I think of its much faster-paced form, I think of an immediate punchline, I think of a set-up and agreement. All of these tropes I had so well known, [T.J. and Dave] felt comfortable enough to shirk off. How, in watching the two work, did you redefine for yourself the limits of what improv is, can and should do?
Speaking on their behalf—and I could be wrong, I put that out as a preface—I feel that they don’t necessarily adhere very closely to what seem to be conventions of improv, but I think one of their fundamental beliefs is to pay attention and keep it interesting, keep the story moving. If you do those fundamentals, you find that the general principles are present. There’s no reason to consciously put those principles at the forefront; those are more or less byproducts of paying attention to the other person…So, yes, there is this rule, “And…always agree with your partner,” but sometimes T.J and Dave are not interested in that, and it’s okay for them not to be. A lot of times the most interesting stories come when the other person says, “No.” Then there’s conflict created, and they have to deal with that conflict.
Shooting with an eight camera set-up [led by cinematographer Ariel Boles] must have helped this along, but it occurred to me as difficult, taking an art form that depends in large part on live communication with an audience and translating it into a much more staid medium. In order to keep the story lively, what kind of editing process did you have to go through in order to maintain that energy?
That was the central challenge and central source of enthusiasm for me personally, that, “How do we translate this inherently and fundamentally 3D live theatrical experience into a 2D, flat cinematic experience?” T.J and Dave were very wary initially about this whole idea because they’ve seen this process fail many, many times, and so there was a lot of skepticism, and it was very warranted.
One of the things I felt would help any possible translation would be to set up a context before the show began, and that’s what I try to do in the first 18 minutes of the film, is to introduce the audience to the characters and the dynamic between them, to explore their dynamic in improvisation in general and at the same time to ratchet up the suspense and interest in the show itself. It also serves to sprinkle in a few points of interaction that, during (T.J. and Dave’s) daily wanderings, will resurrect within the performance itself.
The two movies that we talked about that have structural similarities to this are two live concert performance films—although arguably only one is really a live concert performance film. In Swimming to Cambodia–which is one of my favorite films in general—the film doesn’t begin with Spalding Gray talking in front of the theater; it begins with him walking around Manhattan, and this sets up a context for the audience to get ready for the show. I don’t even think Spalding Gray says much of anything, but this does somehow introduce you to this person before you know who this person is, before you know that he’s a really well-known and well-received monologue performer with a big following, before he embraces this confidence as a theatrical performer. The other film is My Dinner With Andre, which is basically one long conversation, but it doesn’t begin with the conversation; it begins with an approach to the restaurant to start the conversation. It’s just a good fifteen minutes of voice-over where Wallace Shawn introduces the audience to this man he’s about to have dinner with, and so by the time that the dinner actually begins, I’m so intrigued and mesmerized and curious about who this guy Andre Gregory is that I can’t wait for the show to begin. To some extent we were hoping to do some of those things with [Trust Us…], to create some of that suspense and intrigue so that the audience can’t wait for the show to begin, even if they don’t know what the show is about.
Another thing that we needed for the translation to work in terms of the actual performance was to have really good sound, not to have really theatrical, boomy distance sound. So both of them have wireless lavalieres.
Then for the editing, we needed as much diversity in points of perspective as possible. One of the points that I found most challenging during the edit of the show was that on the one hand I wanted the audience of the film to experience what the audience in the Barrow Street Theater experienced. I wanted them to feel like they were there in the room with the others who were really in the theater during the show. A lot of the angles were from that perspective, with the back of people’s heads in front of you. But, I also really wanted to show the close-ups because T.J. and Dave can throw each other the smallest gesture, know exactly what to do with those meanings and run really quickly and agilely right when the gesture is laid down. So that was a give-and-take between having a lot of perspective, having a lot of cutting going on but also trying to preserve the general notion of sitting in the theater.
Earlier you talked about the underpinnings of imagination and creativity. What does this particular show’s narrative development teach you about those two things?
[T.J. and Dave] play seven or eight different characters during the course of the show. To be able to remember all the idiosyncrasies that define this character, even before that character needs or has to speak during the show, is to me really impressive; just to be able to come up with that character very quickly, then to be able to give that character context and meaning within the scene, and then to give that character an arc that spans throughout the show and in some case reaches a crisis and/or delusion, and then to multiple that small miracle by seven, create a bunch of these characters, and then to be able to basically play chess with seven opponents at the same time, to basically juggle all of those characters in their minds, building these mnemonic devices as they go to remember who those characters are, and then on top of that to have both (T.J. and Dave) play those characters, and then to make sure that the audience understands what’s going on, for the audience to understand, “Oh, this is T.J.’s character, but Dave’s now playing him, and we haven’t even seen this character in 15 minutes,” to let the audience be aware of this language, this largely symbol language that’s developing between these characters, I think all of that requires an extraordinary amount of creativity, imagination and mental, cerebral dexterity and agility.
…I’m not only talking about the characters, it’s also the larger plot. These performances are basically one-act shows with a fully realized plot, in addition to the story being really, really funny most of the time. When you combine all of those factors and role them into one, it’s pretty impressive little casserole that they are able to do this every time they come on stage. It’s a remarkable feat, an outstanding feat. It requires a deep faith and trust in the other person, I think.
Among the big questions I left this film with, and this ties a bit into the last question, is the question as to whether or not people are inherently creative. There’s doubt as to firstly whether humans are inherently creative and then secondly, if there is creativity noted, as to its sustainability over long periods of time. What are your thoughts here?
It’s not really my place to talk about the nature of human creativity. Generally, and this might sound a little silly, I think we are all equally creative; I do. It’s most applicable to this film and our discussion in that I don’t think T.J. and Dave view what they do as a process that they create. So, in that sense, if you’re looking for a close connection between the notion of creation and the concept of creativity, it’s not a concept they are trying to pursue while they are on stage. They are not creating, constructing or producing when they are on stage. All they are doing is revealing or exposing what story is already there.
When I began the project and started interviewing them, that was a total surprise to me and something that I found really interesting. They feel like the show—they call it the “It” because they don’t have a better word for it—they feel that this “It” is already waiting for them on those three chairs before they take the stage. What they have to do is find out what is already there, what is already waiting for them, and usually they can find that out within the first moment of the show. The lights go up, they look at each other for five, ten, fifteen seconds in total silence, and everything is already there. Everything is in that first moment. So for the next 50 minutes all they have to figure out is, “Why are we here? Why am I talking to you? Why am I feeling this way? Why have all of these things been happening?” In many ways it’s like peeling off the layers of an onion over the course of the show and discovering, along with the audience, what the “It” has placed there. It’s discovering “It” in real time collectively. That lends to this almost cultish following that they sometimes have, this idea that, “We’re all in this together. We’re all figuring out where this is going to go.” And, at the end of the show, they’ve all figured out, “Yes, that is the end of the show.” They didn’t know this was the end of the show; it’s just what happened over the course of the hour.
Going back to the original question, if you have this underlying association between the process of creation and the notion of creativity, (T.J. and Dave) approach it from a completely different perspective. They are not creating anything. They are just paying attention to what’s already there. So, if you think that anybody can pay attention to what’s already there, anybody could, over time and with enough courage, overcome any insecurities or ego consciousness between themselves and this “thing” that’s already happening. And so we’re all equally creative. There’s no hierarchy in this notion of creativity. We can all possess it. We can all see what’s going on.
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