Improv Everywhere (even on TV)

A list of television pilots for NBC includes three of some interest. It looks like the Bionic Woman is going to be modernized, for starters. There is a show called “Business Class” about two soda salesmen on a never-ending business trip. But most of the red flashing lights and beeps are because Improv Everywhere is coming to television.

My recent NOTF post on the subject includes the following info on the group:

According to IE founders, they just want to have fun. They like their fun in public places with lots of participating people and masked identities that allow for lowered inhibitions, a prerequisite to doing things like synchronized swimming in a fountain. Says one organizer, “We’re out to prove that a prank doesn’t have to involve humiliation or embarrassment; it can simply be about making someone laugh, smile, or stop to notice the world around them.”

Mission accomplished. Here’s some highlights:

• In 2003, several Improv Everywhere agents created a living moebius strip in a Starbucks by repeating a five-minute slice of time for twelve consecutive repetitions.
• When U2 announced the dates of their “Vertigo” world tour, high ticket prices inspired what MTV labeled one of the greatest pranks of all time. IE agents duplicated the band’s famous rooftop concert with real covers and fake fans.
• Creating a 27-minute Mp3 file containing music and instructions, agents recruited an army of headphone-wearing party-goers to listen to the file and do as instructed. The Mp3 experiment began with a video telling the crowd when to simultaneously press play. Differences in playback speed caused the army to become out of sync, but otherwise it was a hit that has been since repeated.
• Agents conducted free tours of Manhattan by boat in the fountain at Union Square. The “Circle Line Tour” offered a much closer view of the city during its short trip. Eventually, the inflatable boat sank.

A recent blurb from IE indicated that they have been stocking up missions, but can’t reveal them because they are going into the pilot television season. Although I have some fears of NBC corruption of a great bit of performance art, this fits into a sub-class of reality television and documentaries that have brought the world such fine shows as Weird Weekends with Louis Theroux and T.V. Nation with Michael Moore. (Louis, btw, apparently wrote a book in 2005—The Call of the Weird: Travels in American Subcultures—in which he revisits people from his previous excursions to the U.S. We’re waiting for both series to show up in the U.S. on DVD.) IE will also carry on the tradition of Candid Camera and Punk’d, where the viewing audience is in on the joke and gets to laugh at all of the unsuspecting people on screen who aren’t.