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<p>Entries in Interviews (59)</p>
<p>Wednesday Dec 06 2006  Inside With: Max Silvestri</p>
<p>Wednesday, December 6, 2006 at 11:52AM Max Silvestri moved to New York less than a year ago and already he's performing at some of the hottest shows in Downtown Comedy. What's his deal? Find out!You have a degree in semiotics?Yes, Arts Semiotics from Brown. My degree is half art production, so I focused on video and made videos, and semiotics is just the fancy word for theory. Semiotics is the study of signs, which is how the color red in a certain situation connotes a larger meaning and how to analyze those meanings. I never actually studied semiotics, per se. It was just an excuse to get a fancy sounding degree, make videos, and confuse my parents.What sort of videos did you make? Some of the stuff was funny sketch videos that I made with friends. We were encouraged to do more experimental stuff. The program wasn't very large and it wasn't trying to turn out commercial directors. We didn't have the equipment to replicate commercial production situations. It was smaller scale, more interesting stuff viewed through theory. I did a documentary about my own stand up, which wasn't as much a documentary as much as it was that I taped myself for an entire month so that I had twenty-five sets , took apart certain jokes, and edited them to be something different or took one joke and had used syllables from different nights.When did you start doing stand up? My freshman year, I was in an Improv group and the second semester a kid came back from LA, who's now my best friend and roommate. At the time, none of us knew him because he'd taken about three and a half years off from school to go out to LA and do stand up, which he did professionally. He had gotten tired of LA, came back, and rejoined the group. We immiediatly hit it off. He was telling me stories about all of these people I had seen on TV and was a fan of. He made it seem like a real thing. For the first eight months I was only doing Improv, but he kept saying, "You gotta do stand up, you gotta do stand up," and I said, "I don't really write stuff. I don't know if that would work." He lied to a club owner in Boston saying, "This kid Max plays colleges all the time and I know him from way back." He lied to get me stage time at one of the cooler clubs in Boston. I wrote an act, I did it, and I liked it. That was my sophomore year of college and I was nineteen.What was the comedy scene like in Rhode Island?Rhode Island had a pretty horrible scene, despite all the colleges in Providence. The king of Rhode Island comedy was this comic Eddie Galvin. He was forty-five, had spent ten years in prison for beating a guy to death, but he was out making, "Forty grand a year off the books," doing comedy. He'd do racist jokes, street jokes, and he had a bag of tricks that he'd reach into and pull out a ratty looking stuffed animal and make jokes to this local crowd like, "This is the Easter Bunny in Central Falls," and they'd go, "Oh my God! It's true, Central Falls is a poor community." It was the most horrible thing I'd ever seen. There wasn't much Rhode Island comedy that I was involved in. Brown had a little bit of a scene, which I tried dipping my toe in. There was a group that some great people in New York had come out of. Matt Goldich actually started the group and Jordan Carlos was in it as well. When I was there, I was just starting stand up. I went to a meeting and it was just twelve people sitting around, work shopping. It was a great idea, but I didn't know any of these people and it was strange of them to be like, "Well, I really think you need to make that joke left ball and not right ball. Left ball is much funnier." I didn't want to be a part of a group of strangers who work shopped each other's jokes. Mostly, I was in the Boston scene, which was really great. It was such a good scene to grow in and meet people. There's the scene that's a lot of clubs and guys who make a living just touring New England, and across the river in Cambridge is the equivalent of the downtown scene in New York. There's sketch and strange stuff. Both people play on either side, but it was kind of a marked divide. I hung out mostly with the Cambridge comics. There was this great club called The Comedy Studio, where you could try whatever and the club owners let you go. The Cambridge scene sprung up in the mid-nineties at the Comedy Studio with guys like Eugene Mirman, Brendan Small, Jon Benjamin, and Patrick Borelli putting it on the map. Eugene especially. The scene was still rooted in more alternative ideas. Guys like Lenny Clarke didn't come to the Comedy Studio too often, though, Steven Wright was an old friend of the owner's and popped in once while I was there. He walked up the stairs and someone was onstage. It was a bit of a dead night. We started whispering, "Hey, that's Steven Wright." He went up to Rick, the owner, and he said, "Hey, how's it going?" "Good, good. You want to go up?" "Yeah, I'd like that. How much time do people usually do?" "Well, about seven minutes." And he said, "Okay, I'll do that. I'd like to go up soon. Who's next?" Rick pointed out a guy in the corner and Steven Wright said, "I'll go ask him," and walks over and whispers into this guy's ear, "Do you mind if I go up before you?" And he did a tight, seven minutes. He was super polite. Watched the act before him, who was actually Erik Charles Nielsen . He was very complimentary to Erik, did his set, shook Rick's hand, and then left.How helpful did you find your college experience n your career as a comedian?That's a good question. One that I ask myself every month when I write my student loan check. I certainly don’t use much of either the video or the theory. I did take a lot of theater and got the chance to do a one-man show at the end of my college career that was really fun and a great experience to put together a forty-five minute non-stand up show. Mostly it's the people I met and what I got to do extracurricularly. I wouldn't have gotten into Improv if it weren't for school and if I hadn't have met my friend Abe who knows if I would have even started stand up.What was the one-man show that you put on? Most of the shows were autobiographical, like, "Wait till you meet my grandma. She's quite a lady." I did a show called Touch me in the Netherlands, which started out as a conceit where I came out and introduced the show as a very accurate and historical recreation of what it was like to be an artisan bread maker in 17^th century Holland. The trials and tribulations of that life, the whole family, and everything would be introduced. I started the show with a heavy Dutch accent and a minute after introducing it I get a telegram that Fred Schneider from The B-52s has taken the president of theater hostage and I'm going to have to do a weird show or he'll kill the president. So I did these weird one person sketch characters constantly being interrupted by myself as Fred Schneider and then, at the end, the president of theater was killed anyway and I became the president of theater, which meant that I got to control the sound levels.You graduated and then moved to New York? Not right away. I don't particularly like struggling in life and I had a great job near my hometown that I kept through out college. I knew I could go back home, work there, and save some money while I looked for something to move down for. I knew I'd come down for comedy, but I didn't want to take a temp job or live somewhere I didn't want to. I finally got a job this past March.Do you know of any strange things people Google to get your website? Racist Puerto Rican jokes. I've never had any racist Puerto Rican jokes, but at some point I had two posts close to each other that had Puerto Rican, jokes, and racist. People keep coming for that reason and I'm sure that they're disappointed.What do you like to do after a performance?Drink and get complements, but mostly just hang out with comics.Max Silvestri will be performing at Here's The Thing on December 3rd.</p>
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<p>The Apiary | Post a Comment in EXCLUSIVELY at The Apiary , Interviews Monday Aug 29 2005  Inside With: Charlie Todd</p>
<p>Monday, August 29, 2005 at 10:24AM Charlie Todd (pictured right with bear) takes the stage tonight at the UCBT in a new show called Paid Programming. In addition to being a regular fixture in various shows at the theatre and a darling of the internet, he's also the leader of Improv Everywhere--a world renowned troupe of high-concept pranksters.What's Paid Programming all about? Will it be a monthly gig?Paid Programming is a new series of shows I created where I find a particularly absurd infomercial, buy the product, and then do a show about it. The cast of the show will try out the product live on stage, and there will be bits a plenty, including prank calls made to the operating line. I'm not sure if it will turn into a monthly thing. It all depends on how the first one goes on tonight. I've bought these ridiculous inflatable mattresses called "Restform High-Rise Airbeds." I was at a bar late one night with a few friends when I first saw the infomercial. It was insane; they put all sorts of things on the beds to prove how strong they are: gymnasts, wrestlers, BEARS. I have no idea what will happen when we try these beds out... they might pop. We have some wrestling planned, as well as a bit where we'll get enough audience members on the bed to approximate the weight of a bear. Just showing clips of the infomercial itself is almost enough—it's laugh out loud funny. I tivo'd hours and hours of "Paid Programming" to get a copy of it.Sounds like another winner! You've been a part of so many wildly successful groups and concept shows, has everything you've touched turned to gold?Ha. I wouldn't say that, but I do really love coming up with big ideas and concepts and making them actually happen. The UCB is such an amazing playground for big ideas. I'm currently working on my one man show, "Charlie Todd Sings the Ballads of Sammy Hagar." It will definitely not turn to gold.Your brainchild, Improv Everywhere for example, is enormously popular and nationally recognized due in part to web buzz and NPR's This American Life. Were things palpably different following that broadcast?It's been a slow build over the past year. A few major sites blogged about IE in October which led to more traffic and lots of press. The only thing that's really changed is the size of the volunteer list. It's no longer only made up of my friends and folks I know through UCB. It's now got a load of complete strangers who heard about us on the radio. The influx of new people has helped with the diversity of the group, something that has always been lacking.The missions are really well thought out--you set the bar incredibly high for yourselves. Is it hard coming up with stuff to top previous stuff?I've always tried to give myself the freedom to execute both large and small-scale missions. IE can do something like the U2 mission, which took months of planning and nearly a hundred people, and then follow it up with a very simple idea that takes just 20 minutes and five people to execute. As long as it's a fun idea, I'll try to make it happen no matter how complex. I have a few things planned for the fall.Is IE ready for television?We've been doing our thing for over four years now. We know what we're doing, and if we find a network that is ready to bring us to a wider audience, that would be awesome.Paid Programming premieres tonight at the UCBT @ 8:00PM.</p>
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<p>The Apiary | Post a Comment in EXCLUSIVELY at The Apiary , Interviews Friday Jul 15 2005  Inside With: Giulia Rozzi</p>
<p>Friday, July 15, 2005 at 5:24AM Storyteller and standup, Giulia Rozzi, can be seen around town in Mortified, a bi-coastal showcase involving people reading their most private and secret diary entries and hallway notes they scribbled as a teen. The beautiful and talented Giulia dropped by The Apiary to somehow explain her reasoning for doing such a mortifying thing.Could you tell us a little bit about the origins of Mortified and share what it is that motivates you to dredge up your awkward teenage years in public?The show was created by Dave Nadelberg in LA and I was in the debut cast. I think most of our teenage selves wrote diaries, poems, notes, etc. in the hopes that secretly someone would find it, read it, and understand our woes, so I was thrilled to have a venue to share my teenage drama. What is so amazing about the show is that anyone can be in it, not just comics or actors, but anyone who has mortifying material from their youth. Everyone can relate to the show. Most people have a favorite reader whom they personally feel connected to through their piece. Seeing the show inspires people to go home and dig up their own teenage diary, notes, etc which is an experience in itself; it gets people to revisit their past, seeing how far they've come in life and possibly how similar they have remained. Pretty therapeutic I think.Where are you from? What other gigs do you have going on, Giulia?I came to NYC last February after doing stand up at the Comedy Store in LA for 3 1/2 years and improv at Improv Olympic (I'm from Boston and I missed the East Coast). I still dabble in stand up (Comedy Social, Chicks n' Giggles, $1 Room) and have enjoyed how much alternative comedy NYC has to offer. I do readings, produce Brutal Honesty, improv when I can find people to play with, a solo show "Stupid Foriengers"--which is on a rewrite hiatus right now--and other stuff.Mortified NYC is this Sunday, July 17th, 8PM @ The Magnet Theatre - $10 Brutal Honesty, a similarly structured storytelling style show, is 9PM Wednesday, July 20th at Otto's Shrunken Head, 14th Street (btw Aves A & B) - FREE!</p>
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