[Music]
CHARLIE TODD: Improv Everywhere, um, kind of started in the summer of 2001.
I had just moved to New York to be an actor, or to pursue comedy.
I, um, was hanging out with a college friend who remarked that I looked like the musician
Ben Folds, so just sort of spontaneously, and perhaps partly out of boredom, I responded
and said, "Hey, let's see if we can make people think that I'm Ben Folds tonight."
So we went to a bar in the West Village and entered separately.
I sat at the bar, and five minutes later he came in and sat at a booth, and he ordered
dinner, and ate a whole meal while I drank at the bar, and after about 30 minutes he
came up to me and said, "Oh wow, you're Ben Folds.
I'm a really big fan.
I have all of your albums dating back to the Ben Folds Five," you know, "Can I please have
an autograph?"
So I gave him an autograph, I signed a cocktail napkin, and he said this loudly enough that
other people in the bar overheard and word sort of started to spread.
And pretty quickly other people were asking for autographs, and people were coming up
to me and taking photographs with me.
Um.
The bartender eventually started giving me free drinks - it was sort of this crazy experience.
At the end of the night I, I realized that I had to figure out how to leave and figure
out how to end the prank.
And rather than making a big announcement and saying like, "Hey, guess what everybody?
I moved here last month.
You guys are all idiots.
You've been fooled."
Um, I thought it was better just to sort of thank them and leave.
So that's what I did.
And I got excited about that concept of staging performances and pranks that were, were fooling
something, were changing reality, but were doing so in a positive way.
I think often people get confused by the word "prank" and sometimes people don't understand
why I use the word "prank" to describe Improv Everywhere projects because they, they really
are intended to make someone's day, and to do something that is, you know, funny and
unusual and is a positive experience, rather than a more traditional, um, prank that, you
know, one might associate with embarrassing someone or humiliating someone or angering
someone.
The real goal is to give somebody a unique story to tell, and to stage something in a
public place - usually here in New York - where the people who encounter it sort of will never
look at that public space the same way.
You know, they were walking through Union Square and then saw 70 performers suddenly
appear in the windows of a giant retail building and then disappear and there's no explanation
for it.
[Music]
CHARLIE TODD: Here in New York we have to make things that are, you know, truly out
of the ordinary and really spectacular to get someone to react.
And in that first No Pants Subway ride you can sort of see the girl who's, you know,
reading a book, and she looks up and she sees me, and I've entered the train in my underwear.
And there's a man in a winter coat, but no pants.
You know, that's weird, but I'm not really gonna deal with this.
When a second guy gets on, then that's when she, you know, puts the book away and goes,
something's going on here.
I can't explain what's going on so I'm gonna pay better attention.
And then she notices some other guys on the train who are laughing, and that makes her
laugh, and then it becomes this shared experience where, you know, she's a part of something.
Something's not happening to her, something's happening with her.
So I like that moment a lot.
I think the best Improv Everywhere ideas are ones that are site specific.
Uh, and, for, for me that just comes from walking around the city and noticing an unusual
public space and thinking about how I might be able to bring some comedy to that space.
Um, for example, one morning I was making the transfer from the E train to the 6 train
[Music]
and I had to take these, you know, giant escalators that are in the stations and, uh, it was a
very depressing place, it was early in the morning, um, it was winter, people were, you
know, making their commute and making this cumbersome transfer.
We had to sort of wait in line to even get on this escalator, and I looked around and,
and noticed a staircase right next to it, and came up with an idea called "high-five
escalator" where I put a series of actors holding signs on the stairway
[Music]
It's one of my favorite projects that we've done.
It was very simple, just five people holding, you know, sheets of paper, but, um - that
project really only works there.
It's not a broad idea that could really happen anywhere, but a specific idea that works well
in one spot.
I just think it's important for people to realize that it's, it's acceptable to go do
something because it's fun.
It's acceptable no matter what age you are to go play and have a good time.
And there doesn't have to be a reason behind it.
I've gotten criticism a lot of like, Okay, I don't know why you guys all went out and
did this random thing together.
Like, what purpose did that serve?
Why, why wouldn't you just go volunteer in a soup kitchen instead?
And, you know, it sort of drives me crazy because I, I feel like other forms of entertainment
don't get that criticism.
You'll never see like, somebody review a movie and say, like, "This movie was pretty good,
but these people spent like, 10 months working on this film, and I'm not sure why they weren't
in a soup kitchen for 10 months volunteering," you know.
Volunteering is great, you know.
I have no issues with that at all, and I agree, people should volunteer for charitable causes
as much as they can.
And I think it's just because what we do is, we do get random people together to do something,
and people look at it and say like, "Wow, I'm impressed that you can get, you know,
300 people to put on tuxedos and go swim, you know, in the sea at Coney Island.
I'm impressed that you can get 4,000 people together to take their pants off and to do
something that is so pointless."
So I think people just look at those large crowds and go like, "Oh wow, imagine if you
could get these crowds together and have them change the world, you know, by volunteering."
And yeah, that, that would be great.
I mean, that's not what my organization does.
I think people look at some of the projects we do as something that, because it doesn't
have an explicit purpose, then it must be a waste of time.
Um, and that is sort of, that's the other criticism is that, you know, you all have
too much time on your hands, and that people we might put on black-tie attire and spend
the day at the beach, we have too much time on our hands.
And, you know, we don't.
You know, the people who participate in Improv Everywhere are normal people from all walks
of life, who, they just think that, that doing that for a couple of hours on a Sunday afternoon
is a fun way to spend the afternoon.
And I agree.
I do think it's important to remember that it's okay to go out and do something just
because it's fun.
Having pointless fun is relaxing.
It, you know, maybe it, it takes away some stress.
You're able to kind of forget everything else that's going on and just go out and do something
that's dumb and silly and fun.
And, um, you know, I think more people should do that.
I'm Charlie Todd, and this is Epiphany.