You guys have known each other for more than 20 years. Does the
improvisation process get any easier or is it still scary?
M.M. Chris keeps hiring new people and
that's only scary for the first nanosecond. But the answer is, no. The
three of us have been improvising together for a long time but as this
cast has grown it's just getting better and better and easier.
Harry, what was it like working with
these guys again?
H.S. We had performed as The Folksmen
fairly recently. In 2001, we opened for Spinal Tap as The Folksmen, so
we've been working together fairly consistently. This was the first time
that I have worked for Christopher as a director. I didn't appear in his
first two movies so that was a different relationship, yet I was also
acting with Chris and Michael as these guys.
So how was Christopher as your
director?
H.S. Christopher establishes such a
feeling of trust on the set. To be able to go out on a limb and improvise,
that's the first thing you need to feel safe. It extends all the way
through to the cast and crew and into the audience. You also have to trust
the audience to get the joke, too.
Chris, when you made Waiting for
Guffman and Best
in Show you had over 60 hours of footage to cut down to 90-minute
films and I'm sure it was not any different for A Mighty Wind.
C.G. You figure out pretty quickly
what you need to tell the story. Even in a conventional script things are
written where you are looking at the movie and you say we don't need a
certain scene. We can go right from one to another. Doing this, it's 10
times that because I had 80 hours to look at. But if a scene hits the
cutting room floor it's about something that doesn't get us to where we
need to get to and it's gone, even if it's funny. It'll eventually be on
the DVD if it's a good scene.
What makes folk music such great
material for parody?
C.G. I think any backdrop where people
take themselves seriously…
M.M. Earnestness is the key!
C.G. is going to work. Truthfully, we
happen to like music and it's fun to play this kind of music and because
they take themselves so seriously it immediately lends itself to this kind
of comedy.
- Bonnie Laufer-Krebs |