This American Life, Live

Ira Glass, Live On Screen

When I first heard about the “live screening” of This American Life, I was skeptical. I’m not a fan of the TV show. I like the radio show as-is. And the idea of projecting the show live… wasn’t there something profoundly artificial about that? I mean, it’s not really live unless you’re there in the same room with the people doing the show. Right? I figured the real point must be to give radio listeners a chance to listen to (and, ugh, watch) their favorite radio show as a sort of social activity.

It’s worth mentioning that I attended this group activity by myself. A friend who couldn’t go gave me her ticket, and I didn’t know the person she had planned on attending with, so we didn’t sit together. Although, attending this sort of thing by myself is the sort of thing that I would do anyway. Living in LA cured me of any embarrassment at seeing movies alone – it’s not uncommon there, as everyone feels the need to keep up on what’s showing as a matter of professional pride – and after all, this event was a movie. Sort of. Well, not at all. But it did happen at BAM Rose Cinemas.

Ostensibly, the theme of the stories told was “return to the scene of the crime.” But what the “acts” really had in common was their sense of immediacy and self-awareness, and this jibed perfectly with the radio theater experience. Dan Savage, usually flippant and self-assured, choked up as a he described his struggle to re-explore his Catholic roots as a way of mourning his mother. Joss Whedon, a through-and-through behind-the-scenes guy known for his meta-narratives, played piano and sang before a large audience for the first time in his life. His performance was clever and catchy, but surprisingly self-referential and direct. It’s a song that is to be part of the musical commentary track on the upcoming DVD of Dr. Horrible’s Sing-A-Long Blog. Comedian Mike Birbiglia (whom I’d never head of) told a story about learning to forgive both the drunk driver who almost killed him, and the belligerent cops who kept him from getting closure or justice.

But the biggest pleasure of the evening was Ira Glass, who controlled all the sound cues himself while he was talking into the microphone and giving equal attention to the camera and his own (actually) live audience in Chicago. No doubt that, for the average recorded TAL episode, the interweaving of music, interview clips, narrative, and other sound bites is done by a post-productioin staff, over the course of many hours. But Glass flawlessly executed one cue after another, with his own hands, in real time, even with the occasional flourish.

All TAL episodes end with a clip from earlier in the show comedically inserted into a quip about the show’s producer. In this case, the clip was a line from Birbiglia’s routine. As Glass delivered the quip, a spotlight came up to reveal Birbiglia, who had left the stage over an hour earlier, long enough for him to deliver the needed phrase, as if he was a recording of himself. It was brilliant.

The whole thing was brilliant. And seeing Dan Savage and Joss Whedon standing next to each other on stage at the end was almost as surreal as sitting in a packed movie theater, watching Ira glass perform a live radio show.

And I wonder if Glass has now cleared a path for the legitimacy of this semi-live performance model in general. If it worked for radio, maybe it could work for stage plays…

I saw this video about 8 hours after I wrote the above post: