Trust Territory

Absolutely blown away.

I mentioned the performance by TJ and Dave on Tuesday. Today I saw the documentary about them, TRUST US, THIS IS ALL MADE UP.

Improv has never looked so good. (On film, at any rate.)

There are so may angles that make this film interesting: from a film audience perspective, from a live performance audience perspective (in trying to recreate that feel but through film), from a viewer who is familiar with improv, to a viewer who has never seen any kind of improv before...

And then there's the performer perspective. I did improv on stage before audience for almost 3 years. And maybe that's why I am so impressed by the 83 minutes of film I saw today.

For me (and for a lot of performers, I would wager) it's just not an easy thing to explain why you keep performing improv - there's a rush, but it's more than that. This film is absolutely what I know and FEEL and remember from all the performances I ever did with Theatre Strike Force in Gainesville - I got nerves in anticipation of TJ and Dave going on stage in the film; It felt like I was there with them.

The camera-work and editing just give this first-person view of what's going on stage; you see every little nuance: the stuff you're looking for from your partner when you're an improviser - the stuff that a live audience rarely sees all of, because they're too far away too separated from the stage.

There's always the possibility that filming something live and spontaneous will absolutely ruin that thing (by making it no longer live or spontaneous). With improv it may be more difficult to convey that, since some people seem to have a hard time anyway in grasping/believing that it is entirely made up, right on the spot even in a live performance (let alone for a movie, albeit a documentary).

But Alex Karpovsky does it. And it's brilliant. And it's funny. And it's real. He uses an entire near-hour-long performance, without mincing any of the slight lulls or what might be thought of as 'mistakes' in the performance (there are no real mistakes in improv, trust me).

It's funny. It's good. You want to see this even if you have no idea what I've been saying at all. Really, you do.

Wendy