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I am back writing this blog after a very busy and unusual summer and will return to talking about improv in the future. I need to ease myself back into writing, and since the summer is coming to a close, I thought this would be a good place to pick back up.
Today was Betsy's first day of kindergarten. As parents, Lauren and I had talked to her about it, to prepare her for her big day.
She admitted that she was excited and scared. "I’m excited to make new friends and sacred I won’t remember everyone's name," she said.
Her parents had their own feelings. We did not know how she was going to react when we dropped her off. Sure, she had gone to preschool, but those were only half days and she always had time in the afternoon to play with her parents.
Would she cry and have separation anxiety?
Would we cry and have separation anxiety?
I was proud of my daughter that she could so articulate exactly how she was feeling, and proud of us that we did not try to fix her feelings. This was very different from how I was raised.
Since Kindergarten started an hour earlier then preschool used to, everyone in the house was up by 7:30 a.m. except for the cat. I was already having a hard time with the time change.
Betsy was dressed and ready to go. After breakfast, I packed Betsy's snack in her Disney Princess lunch box and filled her matching water bottle, thinking how much this whole Disney Princess thing is either the most brilliant marketing ever created or a scam. They basically bundle six different princesses from six different movies and created a whole new line of products called Disney Princess.
Lauren and I had decided we would both walk her to school, since it was her big day, and even though we live directly across the street from the school, we knew we were going to be late on the first day. I don't really anticipate that changing for the rest of the school year.
On top of it, we wanted to get a picture of Betsy on the front steps of our house to document the occasion. The older your child gets, the clearer it is to see what traits he or she gets from you. Betsy does not smile when you take her picture, which she gets from me. Even though I ask her to smile, I have given up, like I am sure my parents did when I was her age. After five years, I’ve realized that her not smiling is something I just have to accept, especially when we’re running late.
When we got to the back of the school, a crowd of parents had formed outside the Kindergarten door.
It was emotional. One mom was in tears and asked another mom for a hug after she said goodbye to her kid. How would we all do?
We were standing in line waiting for our turn, I could look inside and see a long hallway, as a teacher was holding a crying 5-year-old in her arms. This was not just any hallway. This was a rite of passage.
Now it was Betsy’s turn. She had her Disney Princess backpack on with her matching lunch box, and a woman in a mask came to the door and took her hand. Betsy not only ran in to the building, she refused to look back when both Lauren and I called out to say goodbye.
It was a bit of a letdown that she went so easily.
Maybe as parents that is the kind of thanks we get for doing a good job of preparing her for Kindergarten.
On July 31, I will be going back to teaching improv in person. The last time I taught in person was March of 2020. It's been a long time.
The world has changed and so have I.
I have learned a lot by teaching on Zoom and I look forward to continuing to do so.
I am one of the fortunate ones. I got to keep teaching what I love to do online. I survived and at times even thrived. I am grateful that I got to work with some of the best improvisers all over the country who taught me a lot.
One of the things that I enjoyed about teaching on Zoom, is that I had to approach teaching with a beginner’s mind, which means that I had to look at things as if I was seeing them for the first time. It was stressful at first, learning both the technical and the artistic side at the same time, but after asking for a shitload of help from other teachers, I eventually thrived.
Through teaching online, I became a better teacher. I learned to be more patient, more positive, and more compassionate to my students. I started looking for what the students were doing right and stop trying to fix them.
The students kept telling me how important it was for them to be able to continue to take improv classes, even though they couldn’t do it in person, and how much they looked forward to class every week. It became more than just teaching improv — it became a way to give people the human connection they craved as they stayed isolated in their homes.
Going back to teaching in-person classes and workshops seems new to me, and I am sure as I get closer to the date, I will get nervous, just like I did when I started teaching on Zoom.
And while I’m really looking forward to it, I’m sure it’s going to be emotional on that first day back in person when we do our first warm-up game together. It’s been a long time, and I’ve really missed you all.
I hope you can join us. I would love to see you in person.
Mark Larson is the author of the wonderful book Ensemble: An Oral History of Chicago Theater. He recently posted on Facebook an excerpt from a conversation he had with actor John C. Reilly for an interview that he did for The Paul Sills and Viola Spolin Oral History Collection at Northwestern University.
Though it speaks specifically about improv teachers, I think it’s important for improvisers to read this as well, since we have all taken or are taking improv classes, and to remember that there are no gurus.
THE ONLY GURU IS THE MOMENT
MARK LARSON: I recently spoke with actor John C. Reilly about the work of Paul Sills and Viola Spolin and how profoundly it has impacted his own work and life since his days at DePaul University with Patrick Murphy.
But I think there is something wonderful here for all my teacher friends in all disciplines.
JOHN C. REILLY: Doing Spolin’s work requires, even from the teachers of her work, a certain suspension of ego, because in Spolin’s games-based improv workshop, the teacher is not an expert. The teacher is just a guide who has more experience maybe than you at playing these games, but they’re not the expert. They’re just there to join into the moment with you.
One of the most amazing things about doing Spolin’s work is when you finish doing your scene or the games you're playing, you stand there and you turn to the group.
The teacher doesn't read you a list of what you did right or wrong. The teacher turns to the group, too, and says, “Well, did you see the focus of the game? Did you see the weather in their movement? Did you see the ‘beyond circumstances’ in their relationships?” And then everyone talks about it.
So, it's this wonderful kind of Socratic dialogue where there is no guru; the only guru is the moment. And there's something really, really pure and true about that. When you go into the workshop, all you have to sign up for is being attentive to the moment and being willing to transform according to what the game asks of you. There's something really beautiful about that. And it’s very self-empowering.
But it requires a kind of rigorous, um, ego checking, you know? Just, like, get out of your head. Don't worry about being good, just focus on being THERE.
I have interviewed a lot of comedians and improvisers over the years, and I always find it interesting who turned them on to their first comedy album, or movie or TV show.
For me, it was my older brother, Bobby. I was a grade behind him in school, so when I was in seventh grade, he was in eighth. It was 1977. My parents had gone on a trip to Florida for the weekend and had hired this older woman whom we had to call Aunt Fannie to babysit us.
Since our parents weren't home, we lied to “Aunt Fannie” about what our bedtime was on Saturday night so we could stay up late to watch part of this show that came on after the news that my brother swore was the funniest thing he had ever seen. He seemed really excited as he explained the skits, including a hilarious one with bees. I didn't understand, but since he was excited, I was excited. Older brothers have that power over their younger brothers. Of course, Aunt Fannie didn't know what we were talking about.
After the sports was over on the local newscast, this show came on called Saturday Night Live. I remember two things from that show.
SNL had a profound effect on me. On Monday morning, I was that annoying fat kid, repeating all of the lines from the show like I had made them up.
In seventh grade we had to debate on a subject, and I imitated Dan Ackroyd and used his line, “Jane you ignorant slut," replacing Jane with the girl I was debating. I don't remember getting in trouble but I do remember that the girl was really mad at me. This is no excuse for the fact that I used that word, but I didn’t even know what “slut” meant at the time.
I learned all the words and all the moves from Steve Martin's King Tut song, and students would ask me to perform it. I loved the attention.
Then Bobby came to me later and said, “You've got to watch this show that is even funnier then SNL. It’s called Second City Television.” In Chicago, it was on at midnight on Saturdays right after SNL. I didn't agree that it was better, and it took me a while to like it.
But on Saturday nights I was watching two hours of the funniest TV I had ever seen.
When I was 13, my brother was not the funniest person I knew, but he had great taste in comedy. He thought I was funny, too, and as we got older, he tried to keep up doing bits with me, but that was not his strength. His appreciation of comedy made him both a great audience and a great sidekick. He was much more light-hearted then I was and he had a way of bringing people out of themselves. I was always funnier around him.
He helped me get through some pretty dismal times in my life and around my family.
My brother and I have not spoken since my father's funeral over five years ago. I hope one day we will be back on speaking terms so I can thank him in person for turning me on to comedy, because my life is so much better because of it.
Who turned you on to comedy? Let us know in the comments below!
Yesterday, I got my second dose of the vaccine. In two weeks, I should be free. And I feel sad about it.
This is not what I expected.
I thought I would be excited, like my friends who got their vaccines months ago. Yes, I will not have to worry every time I go out the door that I have a mask in my hand.
Or be vigilant about staying six feet away from people in the grocery store and judging the people who don't.
Or constantly going online to checking the positivity rate and deaths in Illinois like some people check the stock market.
I could not figure out why I was not in a hurry to get the vaccine in March like most of my friends, some of whom traveled 300 miles both ways to downstate Illinois to get a vaccine. I mean, I believe in the science of vaccines, but I just wasn’t in a rush to get the shot. I thought something was wrong with me.
But what I’ve realized is that I guess I didn’t rush out to get a vaccine because I actually like being quarantined.
I am a home body to start with, but the pandemic gave me permission to slow down, since the entire world came to a screeching halt.
I was fortunate that I got to continue to teach improv online and got to work with some incredible improvisers from across the country whom I would never have gotten to work with. I got to spend more time at home with Betsy and Lauren.
I didn’t have to commute into Chicago to teach classes. Instead, I just turned on my computer and taught class online from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. and I was home by 9:03.
And the absolute best part was not worrying about my mother fucking career and worrying about who was getting what and what I was not getting.
The pandemic gave me a sense of serenity.
I am sure when my life revs up again, I will forget my pandemic life and go back to rushing around and obsessing about my career, which makes me human.
But, I still have two more weeks before I am free to roam about the planet, and I’ll try to enjoy them, like they’re my last days of vacation.
If you’re a reader of my blog, you know that I often recommend that you stop looking to the gatekeepers to give them validation, but instead work on developing your own shows and your own work so you do the work that inspires you.
So I was incredibly proud and impressed when I found out that one of my former students, Gabe Caruso, had done just that.
Gabe had studied improv with me in Chicago before moving to New York two years ago to get his M.F.A. in musical theatre writing at New York University. And recently, Gabe and his thesis partner, Sangwoo Simon Lee, found out that they had received the Amas Musical Theatre’s Eric H. Weinberger Award for Emerging Librettists for their new show, “Settle Down: A New Hip Hop Musical.”
This week, I asked Gabe to share with you some of his thoughts on winning the award and also give his advice on following you passions. Enjoy!
***
Even though I spent a few hours preparing the application for the Eric H. Weinberger Award, when we received an email saying our show had been selected out of all of the applicants, part of me believed it was a scam. We were asked to stay quiet until the press release went out, so when we had the W-9 forms sent to us to receive our award, I kindly informed our contact that we would be waiting until the press releases before sending in our social security numbers. I was THAT skeptical.
As a writer, I have a hard time believing that people value my work. In my brain, I have always been able to justify awards I have received as people being nice, and not much else. For example, when my play, “Dundee,” won Best New Play, and I was awarded Best Playwright by The Chicago Reader, my brain reminded me that the award was not voted on by a jury of theater professionals, but instead anybody who clicked on a link. I was able to justify this award as me having an engaged Facebook following. When it comes to my writing, if there is a way that I can knock myself down a peg, I will find it.
I also carry a lot of doubt with me as an artist because I am horrible at auditioning. I hate it. In Chicago, I auditioned for everything I could, and failed over and over again. It seemed like the only auditions I “passed” were to get into classes where I could fork over hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars. I am grateful for these failures because they pushed me to create my own work. It’s much harder to not get the part you are going for when you’re writing the script, and producing the show yourself, so that’s the route I went. It felt much better than my Second City teachers yelling “Gabe! Care about anything!” during my auditions. (And yes, that really did happen.)
At NYU, I learned that this self-doubt is just part of being a writer. When I first showed up to the M.F.A. program, I had the biggest case of impostor syndrome. I was earning my master’s in musical theatre writing, despite having seen probably less than 10 professionally staged musicals in my lifetime. I grew up on Disney movies, sure, but I would never have considered myself a “musicals” kinda guy. I applied because I felt that I had a unique skill set in both rapping and long-form storytelling, and this was pretty much the best way I knew how to combine my two passions. Even my generous scholarship was no match for my brain and its ability to find excuses for my success. And sometime around the second semester, I realized that almost everybody in my class felt the exact same way that I did.
So maybe that’s why this award means so much to me. Sangwoo and I poured our hearts into this story, and it wasn’t all rainbows and sunshine. We had a steep learning curve, as most collaborators do, and it took us quite a few months to be able to understand each other’s artistic strengths and languages. It didn’t really help that not too many hip-hop musicals exist out there, so for a lot of our process, we were making up our shorthand/process as we went along. We wrote some great songs, and some flat-out awful ones. We made our faculty advisors cry, and laugh, and on at least one occasion, we made them laugh when we were trying to be serious. Not the best feeling in the world, but thank God for the honest feedback. (That song was BAD.)
While my work has been performed by talented actors, many of whom I consider close friends, everyone has always had day jobs. In March of 2020 I was so excited for our thesis to be presented, as that would be the first time that my work would be presented by professional actors. I was beside myself. The previous year, as first years, my classmates and I had stage managed the second years’ thesis projects, and we knew what to expect in these readings. Then on a sad day in March, our department chair came in to tell us that the theses would all likely be canceled due to Covid. It was heart wrenching.
We finished writing our show, but Sangwoo and I recorded all five parts ourselves. It was a far cry from what we were expecting, and to be honest, it was very difficult to find the motivation to finish our show.
We experienced another blow when we pitched our show to a very well-respected musical theater university. When we said that three of our five characters should be played by non-white performers, we were told this could not be accommodated, and so they were going in another direction. That was another kick in the teeth because it felt like I had self-sabotaged in an unexpected way. I would be lying if I didn’t say I spent the first several months after graduation being a depressed and mopey mess. But life has picked up, and very recently, thanks to this award, I have been re-energized.
With this award from Amas, my skeptical brain doesn’t have much of a leg to stand on. This was an award, juried by theater professionals, and they chose us as this years’ “emerging librettists.” It was a blind selection (from what I know), and our show rose to the top. I can’t say this was because of my friends’ votes, or because somebody put in a good word for me. I can’t tell myself that this show that I helped create doesn’t have power, and I can’t tell myself that I don’t deserve this.
No matter where my life has taken me, I have always relied on my writing to get me through the day. I wrote stories in grade school. I wrote sketches in college. I started a blog in Louisiana, because I was too broke to do anything that cost money. I wrote dozens of shows in Chicago, and for the first time in my life, after writing for literally three decades, I have now been awarded money for my writing. It is truly an incredible feeling, and I cannot thank the good people at Amas enough for the confidence they have given me and Sangwoo in our show.
I hope that you find this as inspirational, and not self-serving. I wanted to share this feeling with you because so much of being a writer or an artist is hearing “no” or “not now” or “not you” and we hardly ever take the time to realize that these are just learning experiences.
I remember one night in Chicago, I was an opening act for my friend Mic One (rapping), and after my set, I had to rush across town to perform with my Second City group. Mic One’s producer at the time stopped me and asked me where I was going. I told him, and he told me something that stuck with me ever since. He said, “If you want to be successful, you have to choose one. You’re great at rapping, but if you want to make it, you have to give up comedy. Or if you love comedy, you have to give up rapping. If you keep trying to make both work, neither will.” I have lost more nights of sleep to that thought than I ever thought possible, wondering which I should be following. However, whenever I’d try to follow just one, I’d miss the other too much, and find myself falling harder into them. For years I kept them separate, and once I started combining them, everything began to start clicking.
So my only bit of advice that I can offer is this: Do what you can’t not do. Find what makes you happy, and follow it. Don’t care about how varied your interests are. Follow them. Don’t stop doing them just because you can’t make money doing them. Do things that you’re not good at if they make you happy. You’ll get better. When you get good enough to show people, show them. Listen to their feedback. Figure out if it’s helpful. If it is, take it. If it isn’t, forget it. Just keep doing what makes you happy, and don’t worry about not being able to make a job out of it.
I have never been able to earn a living as a writer, but I still do it, almost every single day.
I hope that you can find that one activity that makes you happy, and that you follow it as often as possible. I don’t care if the dog you drew looks like a horse. Show me that picture. And then show me the picture of the dog you draw 20 years from now. I really cannot wait to see that one.
For years I thought to get good at improv you, had to get piled on by constructive criticism — what some people call “negative notes.” I was that student who would go up to the teacher after class and beg them to “be tough on me.”
I was tortured that way.
I even took this philosophy into my teaching, sometimes jamming my poor students’ brains with all of the things they were doing wrong. Eighty percent of the time I could see their eyes rolling in the back of their heads. They didn’t respond. They were overloaded by having too many things that they needed to work on.
The other 20% of the time, they would send me long what’s-up-with-the-notes-you-gave-me-last-night emails.
Lately, however, my approach to giving notes has changed. I am not saying I don't ever give hard notes, especially when I see potential in someone or when I have worked with a student for a long period of time, but overall, I’ve become much more positive in my approach to giving feedback.
My feedback has become more positive because, I am sorry to say, I have become more positive.
Recently, a student that I had in class 20 years ago said that when they had me at Second City I was really hard on their class.
That kind of comment used to be a thing of pride for me. Now when I hear it, I am embarrassed because it’s true, and I regret it.
I think one of reasons for my softer, gentler approach is that I am finally ready for more affirmation in my own life.
I’ve noticed this in my relationship with my crazy therapist. For the last 14 years, I wanted him to constantly point out how I was fucking up (which, by the way, he is great at), because I thought that was the only way I was going to get better. But lately I’ve realized this approach isn’t working for me anymore. Now, I can no longer hide from myself that I want more. More affirmations. More encouragement.
I was out of whack for all these years, thinking I only needed to hear what I was doing wrong so I could change.
Today, I need both.
As an artist, it’s always been easy for me to go the dark side. But life is not just dark. It also has an underrated light side. Life is a balance. Improv is too. I am just glad that even at my age, I have the willingness to adjust, and it's actually a lot more fun to teach this way.
Since the start of the pandemic, I haven't gotten to perform in front of a live audience. That changed last week.
No, it wasn't in a theater. It was for a small group of preschoolers and their parents in our backyard.
Betsy, who is almost five years old, became obsessed with inviting some of her friends over to put on a play. A real play, with costumes and a script.
She would not settle for anything less. She wanted a real production.
A four-year-old’s excitement can be contiguous, even if her Dad is not really loving the idea.
Shouldn't have I been more excited since she was expressing an interest in the performing arts, like me? I wasn't.
And if you read this blog on a regular basis, I don't have to explain. (For those of you who are new to my blog, I’ll just sum it up by saying that I have a severe problem with joy.)
At first Betsy wanted to do an adaptation (that is my word, not hers) from The Berenstain Bears Give Thanks, which is the Berenstain Bears’ Thanksgiving book. Lauren didn't think this was a good idea because "the kids won’t know the story and it’s not very PC when it comes to portraying Native Americans."
In this situation we were not only Betsy's parents but also producers, so Lauren said "How about Frozen?" And since there isn’t a child under the age of 12 who has not watched the movie, as parents we thought this would be more inclusive and as producers we thought this would be more commercial.
Lauren had agreed to direct, which was a big relief, since my heart was still not into the play.
Then Lauren sent out an email to some other parents of kids in her class, explaining we had a crazy idea about putting on a production of Frozen at our house, and immediately we heard back from the other parents saying the kids were really excited and were going to be bringing multiple Elsa and Anna dresses along.
On the day of the show, Lauren and I sat down and beat out the scenes for the play at the kitchen table. We explained to Betsy we would be "double casting" -- people would be sharing the role of Elsa -- since she is the character all girls want to play. Though Lauren made the point that “Anna actually has more screen time and a bigger part." That is how showbiz families think.
I was not going to be involved, except as a prop master, so I went around gathering a stick for Hans’ sword and a red wagon for Kristoff's sled.
That was my involvement for the show, or so I thought.
My back had gone out earlier in the day, so I went upstairs while the cast and their parents arrived. I felt a little guilty and a lot of shame not being in the backyard when the show started. I mean, what would the other parents think, since I was an improv teacher?
I heard the Frozen music playing from the boom box and went outside and sat on the grass in the audience.
The stage was a 6-foot half circle slab of cement off the back of the house, and up there was Lauren directing and letting her inner camp counselor out.
Betsy was Elsa and Lauren was playing Anna in one of the first scenes: "Do You Want to Build A Snow Man." When it was over, they had moved on to the next scene, Elsa’s coronation. Betsy and Lauren asked who wanted to play Anna? No one was interested. They all seemed a little self-conscious and scared.
Betsy could not understand why they did not want to come up on the stage with her. Later, I would explain to her, as both her parent and a producer, that the reason they did not come up was that they were afraid.
“Tomorrow I am going to tell them they don't need to be afraid," she said. Ah, I only wish it was that easy. We would all being winning Academy Awards.
But since none of the other kids really wanted to be in the show, I ended up joining in. I put on the Olaf costume Lauren had made and I danced around to the song “In Summer” as it played on the CD player. Ok, it was not my best work, but for a couple of minutes, the audience made up of children and their parents were mesmerized. They were eating out of the palm of my hand.
I missed this feeling being in front of live audience and to think all I had to do was go to the backyard to get it.
I was really proud of Betsy for her persistence in making the show actually happen and her courage at getting up on stage in front of her friends. And I was glad that she had pushed me out of my comfort zone, too.
In the last year that I have been teaching improv online, I have gotten to work with improvisers from all over the country and at various skill levels. And regardless of their experience, I have seen the students in my classes and workshops make the same mistakes over and over again. And I’ve also seen that once most of my students realize what they are doing, they improve at a very rapid rate.
Here are the five most common mistakes I’ve seen improvisers make this year.
Great online improv scenes happen the same away they do on stage — when players say one or two lines at time. Less is more in this medium, and if you can condense what you are trying to say to one or two lines, you will have a better chance of doing great virtual improv scenes. That’s because the more concentrated your lines are, the more they will affect your scene partner.
I recently watched a documentary on Netflix called The Last Blockbuster. It's about the last remaining Blockbuster video store in Bend, OR. It also takes a look at how the once-powerful chain that had 9,000 video stores collapsed.
Watching this documentary brought back memories about when I was high school and first started renting videos. Back then, it was VHS and Beta, which were these big, clunky video tapes. At the beginning of the video era, video stores were tiny and drab with crumpled-up movie posters in the window. The videos were crammed on the shelves like library books, with no covers on them, so you picked them by the stickers on the side of the video case. Most of time you went in knowing what you wanted, and if they didn’t have it, the person behind the counter would try to convince you to rent another movie they thought you would like.
A video could only be rented for a night, so you had to rush home to watch it and bring it back the next day to avoid a late fee and the embarrassment of bringing it back late. It was not uncommon that if you had a video, especially if it was a new release, for an angry video store owner to call you and remind you to bring back Good Morning, Vietnam, since they probably only had two copies of it.
At the time, video stores were all mom-and-pop businesses, so you’d always know the owner, which sucked when you forgot to rewind a video or turned one in late. It was hard not to take things personally. But, after all, most of the people who rented videos in my neighborhood were irresponsible suburban teenagers, so it makes sense that they treated us like spoiled kids.
A lot of that changed when Blockbuster came on the scene.
I remember when the first Blockbuster video store opened near me. The store was big and bright with its blue and yellow colors. It stayed open late. It had a huge selection — not only of movies, but also old TV shows, documentaries, and stand-up specials. They carried tons of copies of new releases.
They had the videos displayed so you could read the front and back cover, and because of this, you could get lost in Blockbuster. It was the Bermuda Triangle of video stores.
Yes, it was corporate, but back then there was something refreshing about that, because when I went in there, I felt like an adult. But more than that, for someone like me who always wanted to be in show business, there was something about a Blockbuster that made me feel closer to it. It was like Hollywood had set up a branch office in the suburbs.
I was learning how to binge watch before it was a thing. I would rarely leave with less than three videos — let's say Rain Man, 12 episodes of the first season of “The Andy Griffith Show,” and a Beatles documentary. You could do this because, for the most part, you did not have to bring them back the next day. When I got home, I never knew what I wanted to start with and would end up staying up 'til 4 in the morning watching my videos.
It wasn’t until after watching The Last Blockbuster that I realized that renting movies wasn’t just a big deal for me, but it was a big part of many people’s growing up.
The last time I rented a video from a video store had to be about ten years ago, when I was first dating my wife, Lauren. I had resisted getting Netflix because I resist change. There was one video store left in Evanston.
People in Evanston like causes and there was no better cause than supporting the last independent video store in town. I loved going in there, even though the vibe was they were going to close any day, and they could close without warning. The big guy behind the counter thought I was famous because I had two lines in Public Enemies, and I think he looked my up in IMDB, which I have to admit, was pretty cool.
When I went in there, we talked about movies, how the store was doing and other famous people who had come in over the years. (Bill Murray, Tim Kazurinsky and Chris Stolte from "Chicago Fire.")
The Big Guy knew movies, and not in a nerd way. He was more practical than pretentious. Like a friend who had similar tastes in movies that I trusted.
Those conversations were always enlightening and inspired me to watch things I might have normally overlooked, and it always felt like we were two "show people" talking about "the industry" we loved, though I was slightly more famous and never held it over him.
Watching that documentary really made me feel sad that video stores are no longer. Today, you don't have to make as much of effort to watch a movie. I can watch anything I want at the click of a button, and I never have to rush out to the store to get something back on time, but I also miss the human connection, even over the power of movies.
Blockbuster, I miss you.