i'm thomas middle dish and that's ben
schwartz and we do a two-person improv
a show that's the got a home base here
in los angeles and we toured the country
and then the netflix specials are a
culmination of all that hard work
and three completely improvised comedy
specials
we talked to an audience member for
about 10 minutes five minutes and then
we make up an entire almost like play
one narrative throughout the whole thing
and it started off as like five minute
shows that nobody would come to then
eight minute shows nobody would come to
mostly at
midnight or 11 p.m on wednesdays and
then the goal through that was also
let's get a special like uh like an
improv special the way that stand-ups
get stand-up specials
um on netflix and so it took a lot of
time it took a lot of people saying no
and then finally uh we got it another
thing in the way that we filmed it we
took you know
whatever uh money that we were paid we
kind of put back into the project and
just
hired as many camera people as we could
and got nine different cameras on us at
all times so when we're
editing we can edit it in a fashion that
really highlights the form that we're
using
all of them shooting in ultra 10k
imax format yeah by words in six months
despite the pandemic
everyone is going to have in-home imax
theaters 2 200 feet high and 20 feet
20 feet wide with ben and i
we're kind of steering a slightly bigger
ship and we're trying to
weave in a story obviously i'm looking
for jokes or specifics with characters
or you know try to use the suggestion
and all that kind of stuff but i think
ben and i talk about this
behind the scenes a lot of kind of like
what the show will need
energy wise as if it were on a graph
kind of
so if you have some scenes that are kind
of low you might want to
try this or just so it feels dynamic and
not
uh not too static i i think we just sort
of feel where
it it wants to go and and feed it that's
it when i hear the suggestion when we
talk to the person at the beginning
you clock some things in your head like
like thomas
then i clocked the idea of a short haul
character in this special right so that
goes in your
head somewhere and you don't know how
you're going to use it you just know
that if you find a place to use it you
use it
and you we never uh exactly thomas says
we never have an idea of what the show
is going to be it could be two people in
beds talking it could be 16 people on a
thanksgiving table which we did for a
torture once
the whole idea is to just stay as open
as possible any accident is welcome
whatever happens anybody can take any
risk
and we're trying to create a narrative
together a lot of people ask because
they say it's improv and they don't
quite understand there's truly nothing
planned before japan
thomas is an incredible improviser and
it's because of two things i think make
great improvisers one of which is
that he will take any idea of yours and
jump on it he's not deterred if i say
something insane
he will 100 get on board which i think
is
the basis of what a good improviser is
he wants to make the other person look
good
um and then just the specificity of what
he can do he can encompass characters
better than he's one of the best people
to just it's not just like when he says
he's a character he'll be like i'm
playing a woman named emily
and i'll do like i'll try to do my best
but thomas will have a specific way the
person walks
talks deals with their hair he gets into
the intricacies of that and he's
incredible with specifics and stuff like
that
i think that's really incredible to do
that on the spot uh consistently while
there's 16 of characters around
i think is pretty remarkable agreed
now listen to me no
no listen to me benjamin
benjamin j schwartz
is america's finest
and smartest absurdist
he can live in a world of wack-a-doodle
and you by the end of it you will know
exactly
how the world of wackadoodle operates
ability to understand narrative
understand uh placement of characters
and how they interact
basically i feel like i'm a toddler on
stage
and ben is my parent wiping my butt
eating me my snacks and making sure i
don't completely derail the show
without ben it is chaos that's so nice
too i think
also the only way our shows exist are
because both of us bring kind of
we're able to do what each other do but
the skill sets that we just talked about
they complement each other really well
uh
on stage so our shows become very unique
and also we're
we're friends we're close friends but
also we're very different people
in different aspects and that helps as
well like you don't have to
be mimicking exactly what the other
person is i think that brings two
different points of view to different
things and characters and that helps as
well
yeah and plus ben i know you don't want
me blowing you up because you often have
to demonstrate it
right afterwards but ben is a master of
g condo and can do the one-inch punch
that's true and so
obviously if you were there in front of
that punch you'd be on the ground
begging for your mama like my sci-fi
process everybody remembers what this
iphone process is and everybody wants a
one-inch punch
under your sternum guys biology
you