| The Del Close Messages (part 1) |
| Del
is dead! Long live Del! Gwinn |
2:10 am |
| Del Close, without whom this
forum would not exist, died on Thursday at approximately 6pm. He died the way he wanted--
on morphine. And he had several days and a big party to say goodbye to all who cared about
him. Andrew Alexander called him to declare ultimate victory over Bernie Sahlins. He won the I/O death race by dying well before Gracie. All of us who love and practice long-form improv owe it all to Del. Let this thread and this forum be a space for people to share their recollections and thoughts. Long live Del! |
|
| Re:
Del is dead! Long live Del! Frank Payne |
2:14 am |
| He was the only person to say I looked nothing like John Candy, Thank You Del. | |
| Re:
Del is dead! Long live Del! Rob Kozlowski |
6:34 am |
| Del saw no limitations to this
art form. When I took class with him, he would let us improvise for a straight ninety
minutes on one topic. And what resulted would invariably be gorgeous. God knows if I would
ever have improvised again if not for his insight into what can really be accomplished on
stage. Thank you Del. |
|
| Re:
Del is dead! Long live Del! Jed Resnik |
9:03 am |
| Del Close infuriated me when I
took his class(es). At times, he really pissed me off. He'd stop a scene after the opening
line, declaring that "transaction scenes are boring". I'd foolishly argue that
there could theoretically exist a funny and intelligent transaction scene, unlike anything
he'd ever seen. Del would tell me I was wrong and ask for 2 different people to do a
scene. Perhaps my fondest memory (though it was far from fond at the time), was of doing a show upstairs at IO. Someone had just done a monologue about being a bad dancer and having to dance (or something like that) and the following scene began with the announcement of singing auditions. So, I went up and sang the Hallelujah Chorus. Terribly. And the audience laughed. So I kept doing it. And the audience kept laughing. After the show, Del came backstage and asked me if I thought it was funny to do what I had done. I said yes. He said that I was wrong for thinking that and that the audience hated it. I told him that I could hear them laughing. He told me that he was sitting at the bar and heard no laughter. A year later, I finally understood what he was driving at. It all goes back to what he has always said-"Play to the height of your intelligence". What I did was the easy laugh. It was the improv equivalent of stand up. I hadn't used my brain. Del never pulled me aside and chatted with me. He was one of my many teachers in Chicago. But he made me more frustrated than any or all of the others put together. And like all good theater, the provocation of a strong response is proof enough of the merit of the catalyst. In retrospect, I learned a great deal under his tutilage. I, and everyone else reading this, I'd wager, owe just about everything to Del. He will be sorely missed. |
|
| Re:
Del is dead! Long live Del! Matt |
9:33 am |
| I had no intention of liking
Del when I got to his class. My college improv troupe had a workshop with him where he
bummed cigarettes, stopped scenes and told us we weren't as funny as we thought in a voice
halfway between a rumble and a whisper. Nevertheless, I liked him... more so now than ever before. By the time I reached his class, I was a) more humble and b) more savvy. His stories started to make sense, when I finally stopped to listen. His direction proved subtle and infuriating at times - the level 5 class that would become the Lindbergh Babies profited the most when he let us grow wild. "Do what thou wilt." Jesus go the unoffical title of "Fisher of Men"; I would like to remember Del as a gardener of play - he pruned us, tied us to stakes to correct our crooked growth and planted us in fertile ground. We owe him a lot. We owe him a lot of quarters, dammit. According to improv tradition, if you use someone else's character in a scene, you owe that person a quarter. Usually, you just say you do and stiff'em. Everyone does a "Del" - even the women who took his class tuck their chins in their necks and rumble in as low a voice they can muster, "I remember smoking pot backstage with Elaine May when the polyester wig she used for the barber scene caught fire..." No one ever dies as long as his memory lives on in the people who loved him - think how glad he would be to know his voice goes on without him. Matt |
|
| Thank
you, Del Cacky |
2:14 am |
| Improv as we know it and
peform it would simply not exist if not for Del Close. Oh, I'm sure somebody would be
improvising somewhere and there would be other teachers and innovators to lead them, but
it would be a very different world from the one we know. The man invented the Harold, for
crying out loud, and devoted a good deal of his life to the study and development of it.
And when Harold (there actually shouldn't be a "the" in the front of it) felt
done to him, he looked for different takes on it, or came up with other new forms, even up
to his final days. Proud was the improvisor who could make Del laugh at his scene, or,
even harder, surprise him with a line, or a move. This was truly a man who had done and
seen everthing (there's really not a form or move you can think of that he didn't ponder
long ago), yet still spent his life passionately pursuing new avenues of improvisation.
Del especially enjoyed the work of so-called non-performers, people without any stage
training who may have seemed awkward to others but were prized by Del for their freshness,
their insights, their freedom of being themselves. It's as if he had seen so many slick,
ready-for-Second City funnyboys that he challenged himself to find different kinds of
talent, to prove (as he did) that anyone can learn this work. I was truly lucky to study
with Del for a year, and to return periodically to his class. It felt great to get a
compliment from him, and no one has been more accurate in calling me on my bullshit, on
any falseness in my performance. Del taught me to play form the top of my intelligence; to
bring my own passions, opinions, and knowledge to any improvisation; and to look at a
scene in my own, skewed way without being concerned whether I was "right" or
not. Del's death is a tremendous loss to all of us, but after the sadness passes, remember
that we celebrate Del and his life work every time we take the stage. Celebrate Del by
bringing yourself to your work. Celebrate Del by making smart choices. Celebrate Del by
constantly challenging yourself. Most of all, celebrate Del by loving the work, because
it's bigger than all of us, and I know he want us to keep it alive. Craig Cackowski |
|
| re:
Thank you, Del Tammy |
12:10
pm |
| Craig, what a wonderful
message. As one of those "nonperformers" whom Del continually singled out to the
dismay and wonderment of much more skilled and funny actors, I know that even he had his
limits on "naturalness". One day, two years after Shannon and I had first
worshiped in the Church of IO, he stopped class and told me he was writing me a
"prescription"-- for one full year of childrens theater. He wanted me to be more
actorly, and theatrical. Whatever you were, he wanted more, something else, something
surprising. Whenever he asked, he got it. or he'd scowl silently in the dark, clear his
throat, or, most dreaded, head to the john in the middle of your scene. And you knew his
bladder was always right. Yes he was full of contradictions and surprises. I was surprised by his frankness, his sometimes brutal accuracy, his passion for the sacred in art and theater, but most of all I was surprised to like him so much, instantly. We'd heard stories about this politically incorrect dirty old misogynist, how he scoffed and harumphed and made girls cry, so how shocking it was to find instead a lively brained true subversive, encouraging mayhem and explosion of gender and sexual stereotypes, who laughed loudly when he wanted to encourage you, and who held true love for his calling, his work, and his students. He was the guru. Shannon and I would have killed for Del. We still might. If his career in comedy had ended with the Compass or the Committee or even My Mother the Car, we still no doubt would be indirectly influenced by Del. If his career had ended after his early days at Second City, after working with guys like John Belushi and Bill Murray and Peter Boyle and Harold Ramis (all permanent fixtures in my comedy pantheon), he could be credited with having changed the face of American comedy. If his final triumph had simply been his inspiration for the characters in Elaine May's much neglected and unfairly maligned "Ishtar", then we might rightly have said, that's a life fully lived. But it never ended. Charna literally brought him back from the dead, and gave us almost another twenty years with Del, another generation of comedy honed and hammered til we shimmered and shone. His legacy hasn't ended. It won't end. Without the last generation of Del, there would've been no Pinata full of Bees, no Upright Citizens Brigade, no Chris Farley, no Tim Meadows, no Tina Fay, no James Grace, no Family, no Noah. Or there would've been, but it would have been different. You know what I mean. Thanks Charna, for giving us more time with him, for the place to play, and learn, and love. Thanks for keeping him doing what he loved to do, right til the end. I remember at Don DePollo's memorial gathering at Second City, Del finally took the stage after some relentless breastbeating and somber performances, and said simply "I'm suprised no one's mentioned the hookers and cocaine." The room roared. Let us never forget the hookers and the cocaine. Tammy |
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Go to part 2.
If you want to discuss this go to the thread "The Del Close Messages" at the IRC Message Boards.
Last edited on 01/25/01.