Sinatra's Theory of Acting

"Acting is Doing."
"Acting is Being"
"Do Be Do Be Do"—Frank Sinatra

Thanks to Kurt Vonnegut for introducing me to a variation of this joke.

Hugh Macleod's Crazy, Deranged Fools

Cartoonist Hugh Macleod recently coined the term Crazy, Deranged Fools. In his words,

A CrazyDerangedFool [CDF for short] is, like me, somebody who has the temerity to aspire to work in a way that produces both joy, meaning and contribution for both them and others, while also paying the bills. It's about creativity, it's about finding meaning, but it's also about living in the real world.

A. Most people work for the money. Most people wouldn’t do their jobs for free.
B. Most people hate their jobs.
But I’m not thinking about “Most People” right now. I’m thinking about the small percentage of the population who want to love their work; who want to find meaning in their work... and are willing to work like hell to find out how. Those crazy, deranged fools… How do they manage to exist? How dare they exist!

link: gaping void: dear crazy, deranged fools...

Hugh Macleod's blog offers many foolish thoughts (in the good way), whether from his contrarian marketing strategies, his "cartoons drawn on the back of business cards", or his advice on creativity.

You can read some of that advice on how to be creative here: Ignore Everybody (the book comes out in June).

And here's my favorite cartoon:

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George Carl and the Inner Monologue Exercise

Here's one of my favorite fools, George Carl:

Foolish Exercise
The exercise here is to look at the first two minutes or so of this routine and to write or improvise a monologue for what this character might be thinking, often called an interior monologue.

I'm not saying this is something that George Carl did, but I have found for myself that an interior monologue can help with intentions, fine-tuning, presence, and timing. It can also help to bring back to life a routine that has become rote from too many repetitions.

Some may think that this is too intellectual a tool for a physical routine, but I find that it's really a trick to occupy the verbal/intellectual part of the mind so that the playful part can get past the critical guard.

Some guidelines: The monologue can be like you are narrating to yourself what you are doing and what is happening to you. Keep it simple and short—inner monologues aren't usually great poetry, deep thoughts, or even complete sentences:
Oh!
Wait a second...
How' d that...
Stuck again.
I know...
I'll move this and—
Ouch!
Walking, walking,
Falling!

Another way to practice this fool tool is to narrate five minutes of your life while engaged in some non-verbal task. As a side benefit, you'll also be practicing a form of mindfulness.

How To Steal Material Without Getting Caught

I wrote this article/online workshop on creating visual comedy in late 2001 and early 2002. After many years floating homeless on the internet, it has just been republished at performers.net.

Originally intended for variety entertainers, the same principles can be used for any creative endeavor. Let me know if and how you use them.

Why Think Like a Fool? 10 Irreasons

1. There can be wisdom is foolishness.

2. What you're doing isn't working.

3. You need a workable idea that is new, great, and innovative.

4. Because you don't want to be a fool.

5. You want to think like an artist.

6. You take things too seriously.

7. You like to play.

8. Life is short.

9. To free yourself from limiting thoughts.

10. You already do.

Foolish Question: Why would you want to think like a fool?

Alt Scores for Alt Perceptions

Over the years, I've learned a lot from studying silent movie comedies. One downside of all these repeated viewings is that the movies can lose the entertainment and humor they had for me when I first saw them. One way to breathe new life into these classics is to see them with a new musical score. 

Silent film accompanist extraordinaire Ben Model has been recording alternative scores for available movies that you can buy for a very reasonable price (he even has some free ones), download as an MP3, and listen to while watching a DVD. You'll be surprised the new things you can discover from a film by watching it with different music, which has the power to adjust meaning, highlight subtleties, and make or break gags. Ben's wonderful score for Buster Keaton's Sherlock Jr. brought back all the excitement I had first seeing the film in New York 23 years ago.

Ben Model's Alt Score website

Foolish Questions: What music do you listen to while creating (if any) or what music do you perform to? Can you find something completely different to accompany you and observe how it affects your work? What did you discover?

NOTE: Many of the videos on my blog and on my website are hosted by revver.com who is having "technical difficulties". Hopefully they'll reappear soon.

The Guy Who Lived on the Stairs

I made this as a kind of sequel to my very first silent short, "The Guy Who Lived on a Chair", which ended with the Guy escaping from the chair onto stairs (available as a special feature on my DVD.)
But since no one who was going to see this short had seen the original, I did not really connect the two movies, and made this to stand on its own.
Another seed for this idea came many years ago in college, when I rented a house that had doors at the top and bottom of the stairs (My roommate and I called the house, The House of the Rising Pun). When I closed the doors, it made the stairs into a room, and I thought it would be an interesting place to live.
The box of eggs refers back to an earlier short in the series, "The Guy Who Juggled".
I'm glad I shot the final slide down the steps more than once, because in the first take I looked too realistically terrified—because I was truly terrified.

Foolish Questions: How could you take one of your creative accomplishments and make a sequel to it? Could you disguise it so nobody knows it's a sequel?