![]() Middleditch: You want a more relaxed way of delivering improv. That was always part of the thing, because you never know what’s going to be great and what’s going to just be OK, so we were always going to shoot more than we were going to air just to give us the safety so that we’re not going on stage so tightly wound. Middleditch: We shot four shows over two nights, two shows a night, and the fourth show, it’s good, we like it - there’s a couple technical issues that kind of made it be the one that got left out, but who knows? It’s good enough to maybe be a bonus show or something it all depends on like how well this stuff does. So you have three coming out but recorded four. We believe in you guys.” So we got very lucky that they said yes, and we’re happy with how it came out. It’s just this is what it is.” And Netflix was the one that said, “Screw it, let’s do it. And whatever happens happens.” It’s a lot of trust that this network has to give you when you’re like,” Hey, we have no idea what these specials are going to be we have no idea what the content is going to be we don’t know if it lines up with whatever your network is. We’re going to set up cameras for two nights we’ll do four shows. Schwartz: It is a really hard pitch, because when we went around and pitched it’s literally, “OK, what are the specials?” We’re like, “Oh, we have no idea. We hope that they’re pleased so we can do more. Don’t screw this up.” So we hope that we haven’t. We had to convince Netflix, and to be honest, they were like, “Hey, this is kind of risky. I think these Netflix specials were a couple of years in the making, like when we got the idea of, “Man let’s try to do that,” no one’s really done it the way we’re thinking of. ![]() Middleditch: I’ll say this, though, it’s always been a campaign to change people’s minds. It felt so nice to go to different cities and make all these people laugh, and it kept growing, and it grew to this, which is incredible. ![]() When we did Largo and we started selling out two shows at Largo - so every night would be 560 seats, 280 a show - we were like, “Let’s try some small venues and see what happens.” It just happened that people were showing up and people want to see it, and the reactions were so positive. I will give Thomas credit, he wanted to tour way before I wanted to tour, because it’s another example, there are very few examples of a long-form improv troupe touring big theaters. Schwartz: In the beginning, there was never a piece of us after our performance 12 years ago that was like, “Oh my God, maybe one day we’ll do a special,” because they didn’t really exist specials for long-form improv are few and far between. and then started touring, and then we were booking theaters and we’re like, “Man, wouldn’t it be cool if we could do a special? That’d be crazy.” It was just bit by bit, it was never some Machiavellian plan we just sort of got little bread crumbs that were like, “Wow this might be possible, let’s keep going.” We’ve been doing Largo shows - a theater in L.A. There’s so many different ways to do it, but we’ve fallen into something that really feels like unique to us, and then, let’s cultivate the show a little bit. Improv is a little bit like - you need other people to do it, so both of us had other groups and other people we performed with, but I think in the past four years we started to really double down and think we’ve fallen on a rhythm and a way of executing improv. We would just do eight minutes of really fast-paced, insane improv, and we’re like, “I like this.” where you could go up and do like eight-minute sets. We were having a fun time, and there was just so happened to be some kind of variety show Wednesday night at 11 p.m. Ben was like, “I think you’re funny, I’ll do it,” and I was like, “I think you’re funny!” We just got Two Boots Pizza one day walking around the city of New York - what a hell of a town! The Big Apple, god dammit, you can do anything there. When I first moved to New York from Chicago, I had done all of this improv, but I didn’t want to go through a whole other training scheme at UCB. Middleditch: Ben and I have been doing improv on an individual basis each for over 20 years, and I think together it’s been somewhere around 12 years. ![]() How and when did you two start doing improv together? Ahead of releasing the trio of shows during a pandemic (“Posting a promo video when there’s far more important and crazy things going on always feels a little silly,” Schwartz says), Middleditch and Schwartz spoke to The Hollywood Reporter about their “really hard pitch” to get the specials made, their approach to performing and their crusade to make improv more accessible.
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