We Cause Scenes Page #5
It was conceived
as a stage show.
The idea was,
what if we had a-a show
where the audience,
whether they knew it
or not going into it,
were told to become the actors.
We asked people
to download the track.
Put it on to a portable device
and then show up at the Upright
Citizens Brigade Theatre
for this midnight show
on a Saturday night.
All right, I'm paused.
- Played paused.
- Say it again?
We had a countdown clock
Two.
Mp3, engaged.
Welcome to the Mp3 Experiment.
My name is Steve and I will be
your omnipotent voice tonight.
There were some simple instructions
like breathing and then...
you know, stretching
your arms out or whatever
and then, pretty soon everyone
was told to get on stage.
All right, don't be
the last person on stage.
All we had,
this all-powerful narrator
that is telling people
things to do.
Jump!
Simple, joyful things.
Meant to just sort of be
this euphoric, fun party.
I dropped my bubbles.
It was one of those things
where your face literally hurts.
I could not stop smiling.
Let's see you doing,
having fun.
Balloons for everyone!
Everybody's doing it and
everybody's committing to it.
That's such a comforting feel.
Hug as many of your new
friends as you can.
At the end of the show, people
were asked to get their belongings
and go upstairs and go out into
Eight Avenue and 26th Street.
We had a million ideas for what would
happen once you got on the street
but budgetary constrains uh,
ended up making it so,
got a big, great, white beard
and we rented
and he came up
and he handed out candy canes.
Ho-ho-ho-ho-ho!
It was very cool.
to have a whole audience of a show,
still participating in the show,
you know, outside,
and I think that did make me realize,
like, this could happen anywhere.
I met Charlie Todd uh,
through improv classes
at the Upright Citizens
Brigade Theatre.
classes together, maybe.
And I convinced him to leave
a story of Queens,
come live three blocks from UCB
and then I got to become
a collaborator
by birch of sharing
a living room with Charlie.
When I lived
with Anthony and Ken
a lot of ideas
would just be generated
with three of us
hanging out and talking.
And it was this same thing when I moved
in to Manhattan with Chris Kula.
We had just found out that U2 was gonna
be coming to Madison Square Garden
for a week of shows.
The two of us
came up with this idea,
what if we staged a fake
U2 concert on our rooftop,
across the street
on the very night
of the real U2 show.
it kind of was a no-brainer
like, so we can get the Enormous
Television band to play?
I said, "Yeah, absolutely. "
The fact that I lived
across the street
playing a concert.
I had access to my roof.
U2 was known to play roofs and my
roommate was in a band, you know,
all those things coming together, it
was like, that's-this is too perfect.
I have to do this.
Well, what we didn't have
was a singer.
So I had to figure out who of the Improv
Everywhere family would be right to play Bono.
my friend, Ptolemy Slocum.
It's a bit of a daunting task.
The only thing
that saved me was that,
I knew I was gonna be
very far away from every one.
But, I don't think Bono
has freckles.
In between coming up with the idea
and actually staging the project,
my day job gave me an
ultimatum.
Either get more involved
or be laid off.
It was sort of a cross-roads
for me where I could've said,
"Okay, the safe thing would
be to stay in this company.
To keep my healthcare. "
Or I could take this opportunity
of Improv Everywhere,
started to become something way bigger
than I expected it would ever be
and see if I can give that a go and somehow
be my own boss and-and have that be my job.
You know,
setting this equipment up here.
'Cause it's about noon.
We're not doing the prank
for seven hours.
I don't think they'll even
be able to see me anyway.
- Yeah. - I just wanna go
for the authenticity of it.
Dan Demon
was playing Adam Clayton.
So, we had to spray paint
his hair white.
Chris Kula
We figured nobody really knew what
Larry Mullen, Jr. looked like anyway.
Ptolemy found a black wig that
sort of looked like Bono's hair.
Terry Jen, who was playing
The Edge, is an Asian man.
There was really
nothing we could do
to change the fact
that Terry was Asian.
Uh... so for his costume, he wore a
skull cap and he wore a fake goatee.
Tyler, I'm gonna have you
on the roof with Zach.
Camera, you-you need a tape,
right?
I do, yeah.
I'm supposed to have a spare of fives.
Our production values were
increasing just a little bit.
Some people had this nice,
three chip cameras
but at that time,
the documentation
was still more centered
around photographs and text.
Up to a 130 people are gonna
come to that location?
Maybe it's 150?
And it's only 30.
I don't know but 130 people
said they were coming.
if we had some people
who pretended like they were
just U2 fans going to the show
who were not in, on it.
Who all of a sudden ran down to this
block to sort-of see to the crowd.
Charlie told everyone
that wanted to participate
to show up in the steps
of the library.
So when I arrived, there's already
about 75 eager participants
who were fans of I.E. this was, most
of their first time doing a prank.
Tell everybody to go now.
I'm-I'm worried it's gonna start
raining so let's start it.
I remember looking at the band and
they all seemed kind of nervous.
I was very nervous.
Were we gonna get in trouble?
Where they gonna be able
to hear us?
How loud is it really gonna be?
You know, I didn't know!
Bono!
All right, some start.
Thank you guys for helping,
this is gonna be great.
Are you guys ready
to hear one band U2?
Who are the biggest
band in the world? U2!
It was chaotic and I don't think
but what was so cool was seeing
all of the neighbors show up.
cranked up and distorting,
thought, that is helping.
It just sounded like
loud rock music from a roof.
And certainly, from a distance,
recognizably U2 music as well.
From a distance, it was U2.
A very out of key, U2.
Or at least vocally.
I don't care if we were
convincing or unconvincing
but that moment
had a lot of power to it.
They finished their...
fourth song and...
One more song!
It was a little bit of a
problem
because they didn't have
one more song.
They only learned four songs.
So we went back to the beginning
the first song over again,
which is a bad idea
because the police got there
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"We Cause Scenes" Scripts.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 31 Oct. 2024. <https://www.scripts.com/script/we_cause_scenes_23153>.
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