-Jordan
(and if you know anyone out here who might be interested, pass this along to them and point them my way.
)The Prelude
I have become fascinated, in recent years, with the concept and practice of genre styled improv. On the surface, it brings to mind short form line games, someone asking for film styles. One person invariably shouts out "film noir," as if this suggestion were somehow clever and not shouted out across the country whenever such games are played. The improviser, in turn, falls back on the cliche of miming a cigarette in between each line while speaking in faux-Chandleresque dialogue, making sure to talk about "dames" and their "gams." And so on down the line. A genre is suggested and the improviser plays into recognizeable cliches, providing the audience with a quick laugh. Which, in the end, is all that line games are good for. It becomes less improvising and imagining and more a call and response. The audience asks for what they want to see and the player provides the familiar notes. I've seen it. I've done it. I'm bored with it. There's more to be done.
Genre style longform, on the other hand, is utterly compelling. Almost because of the dichotomy that makes it so banal in shortform. Improv is about new ideas, thinking on your feet, making something from nothing. Genre storytelling is about tropes, cliches, a preset (though malleable) structure to play within. Combining the two is almost contradictory...except that if you understand them both, you can make them work. They simultaneously subvert and support one another. Start Trekkin', for instance, plays on a highly specific formula and set of rules, narrowing in even beyond genre to the tropes of one particular program. But within those confines, you can find so much freedom. The tropes become just another suggestion, the rules just another box.
A while back, a few of us experimented with serialized longform improv in a show we proudly called The Great Mundane. A serial longform improv. Seven shows, each building on the last. Again, dirtying the purity of improv by introducing confines...in this case, the continuity of past shows. But it also provided a base from which to build on, callback jokes that played off of something from five weeks ago, recurring characters and constantly shifting interpersonal dynamics. And because you're constantly trying to top yourself, ever rising stakes over a two month period of shows. It was successful in some regards and fell apart in others...but it was a great deal of fun and a new kind of improv storytelling to play with.
I'd like to continue the experiment.
The Idea
As many of you know, I have long been fascinated with the genre of superheroes. Not just in comic books, but in multiple media. I've been trying to find a way to shape an improv format around the ideas and tropes of that genre as far back as my time in the Well Hung Jury. But some of the "larger" ideas don't lend themselves well to the stage. Colorful form fitting costumes, vibrant spectacular powers...very difficult to do without slipping into straight up parody, which can be fun for a while, but isn't the kind of show I want to do. It's poking fun at the genre, when I would much prefer to go the Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz route and HONOR the genre while having fun with it, letting the comedy come naturally from story and character instead of the perceived silliness of the genre itself.
So...superheroes could not be done, or at least not be done easily. And then it came to me. In the shower, of all places. Take it back a notch in the memetic Darwin poster. Go to the most direct ancestors of modern superheroes.
Pulp heroes! Doc Savage. The Shadow. The Phantom Detective. G8. Flash Gordon. Tarzan. Phillip Marlowe. Sam Spade. High stakes. Action. Adventure. Exploitative spectacle. Melodrama. Fate of the world. Two fisted twin gun justice. Very broad, arch storytelling...that lends itself so naturally to comedy.
The Format
Let's take the genre side of genre prov one step further and go in not only with the preset rules and tropes and structure of the genre...but stock characters as well!
The central idea of this format would be to put together a troupe, ideally 5-7 people (good mix of guys and girls, too). Each individual member of the troupe develops their own pulp hero along pre existing archetypes (more on those later). Abilities, skills, powers (if any), origin, mission, etc. So every person in the troupe has a set protagonist that they play. With stock costume and props. We put together a short video montage of each hero in action, giving a little taste of what each one is about. The audience then decides whose adventure they want to see that week. Everyone else fills out the world of that "hero" (sort of like the role of Captain in Start Trekkin') as supporting cast, sidekicks, love interests, villains, goons, innocent bystanders, etc. So we slowly build a continuity. Not through serialized storytelling (though that option is open to us if we're feeling frisky), but through more contained episodic installments. For example, if one of our heroes is a super scientist with a crack crew of assistants, those assistants (or at least some of them) could appear in later shows for that character. If one of them dies, they wouldn't appear again (unless we do a flashback story, a "never before seen adventure!" or come up with a REALLY good retcon). We can establish recurring love interests, an arch nemesis or two, the city they live in...real world building stuff.
And here's the really fun part...the worlds we're building for each of these characters? They're all one world! It's a shared universe, an interlocked continuity. Along the lines of Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Warren Ellis' Planetary or Philip Jose Farmer's Wold Newton Family. Hard boiled detectives walk the same streets as masked vigilantes, secret agents, super soldiers, occult investigators, time travelers and space adventurers. A random passerby in one hero's story might prove to be the double agent in another. Two of them might be cousins, or have dated the same girl (or guy). A disaster in Paris that one hero has to deal with could send a group of refugees on to the streets of Chicago, where another hero has to deal with them. If the world goes to war or the moon gets blown up one week, those circumstances are reflected throughout EVERY story.
This presents not only unique storytelling challenges, but also opportunities. We do a run of shows for a few weeks where two heroes have to team up. Have an extended run where some great danger is facing the entire world...an alien invasion, a megalomaniac bent on world domination, a massive international war...and see how each hero deals with the threat in their corner of the universe.
By building a world and establishing these characters, improvising our own pulp mythology, we reward the return audience with shared knowledge, allowing them to grow into a fanbase. Hell, we could wind up with competing groups of fans showing up at different shows trying to out "suggest" each other to see their favorite heroes! At the same time, by keeping each episode tight and episodic we also avoid penalizing first time audience members, allowing the world to be absolutely accessible at any point you jump on. And if we're feeling especially saucy, we try to expand upon an element of The Great Mundane that was attempted but never came to full fruition, an active archive section. Writing up plot synopses for shows and putting them up online so people can catch up, taping the shows and posting them online as well or transferring them to highly affordable no frills DVDs for the bigger fans to collect.
All that stuff is for later, though. For right now...we need people. We need improvisers. Longform improvisers. Longform improvisers who are willing to do some research as well as rehearsal to familiarize themselves with this style of storytelling and develop strong and compelling characters.
We need heroes.
The Heroes
Pulp is interesting because it's not exactly a genre, but not really its own medium either. It's a KIND of storytelling that embraces multiple genres. "Heroic fiction" naturally lends itself more towards "boy's own" genres, to borrow an outdated phrase: science fiction, fantasy, action-adventure, horror, crime/detective. But there are some things they share in common. The storytelling and prose are usually very broad and arch, relying on spectacle and exploitation. High action, high suspense, high drama, high stakes...high comedy.
Our heroes are typically extraordinary in some way. Peak humans. Strong, fast, highly intelligent with various skills and abilities at their disposal. Often urrounded by a crew of assistants and friends, a motley assortment who provide aide, comic relief or someone for our hero to rescue. They break down into a few different categories that I'll attempt to map out a little bit here, to give you some idea of the KINDS of heroes we're talking about. You might be surprised just how much they've affected popular fiction even today.
(Note: There is, of course, some crossover between these archetypes. Captain Future, for instance, is as much Doc Savage as he is Buck Rogers. The Phantom shares elements of both the Shadow and Tarzan. So they don't necessarily break down as neatly as this...but you'll get the idea. And combining and subverting archetypes is what this is all about anyway! Also, for the purposes of clarity, I refer to each archetype in the male sense...but I absolutely WANT females to fulfill some of these parts and subvert that expectation!)
The Adventurer
Probably the most recognized of the pulp heroes. He may not always crave action, but it certainly knows how to find him. He's a Renaissance man of sorts, skilled in various disciplines, typically with a very public identity. He's intelligent and resourceful, solving puzzles and following clues with great ease...but also usually resolving whatever threat is looming through extreme violence. Fists, guns or a trusty bullwhip are always a problem solving option, as are gadgets created by his own super science. A thirst for knowledge and an appetite for adventure...and also usually a rather amorous appetite for the ladies.
Examples: Doc Savage, Doc Brass, Indiana Jones, Buckaroo Banzai, Lara Croft, Reed Richards, Elijah Snow
Mystery Man
Clad in a mask and costume, typically to keep their identity a secret, this class of hero led most directly to the creation of the superhero. They share certain traits with the adventurer, but tend to focus more on fighting crime. Highly developed physical skills and abilities. Sometimes with special powers, but usually more dependent on their wits and gadgets (or, on occasion, twin guns or a more siganture weapon). Typically driven by some tragedy in their past. Their public identities tend to be rich playboys, seen as spoiled and arrogant in stark contrast to their more intense and disciplined alter egos. If not wealthy, they tend to have some kind of metropolitan professional position. A reporter, a lawyer...even a detective, for added delicious irony as their relationship with law enforcement is almost always strained, leading them to fight cops as often as they do crooks.
Examples: The Shadow, The Phantom Detective, The Spider, Green Lama, Green Hornet, The Spirit, Batman, Green Arrow, Daredevil, Iron Fist, V
Hard Boiled
The standard trench coat and fedora, hard smoking and hard drinking anti heroes that would come to typify film noir. The world of Chandler and Hammett. Whether a PI, a gumshoe or a crook, theirs is a world of moral ambiguity, where corruption and avarice are the order of the day. They don't look for trouble. They've just come to expect trouble's already downstairs in the kitchen helping itself to a bowl of cereal. Nothing and nobody are what they seem and everyone has an agenda or an angle to play. Trust is a joke. And while some exploit this grey sorrowful world and others just bask in its decadence, the hero is usually the only one with a shred of nobility left to see SOME kind of justice done, to rescue...or avenge...innocence lost. Usually played for a sucker, down on their luck until the very last act. Punched, kicked, shot, stabbed, betrayed. They don't save the world. They don't change the status quo. The best they hope for is to live another day get as close to doing the right thing as possible.
Examples: Phillip Marlowe, Sam Spade, The Continental Op, Dan Turner Hollywood Detective, Rick Deckard, Marv, Dwight McCarthy, John Constantine, Veronica Mars, Malcolm Reynolds
Secret Agent Man
The best combination of super soldier and spy. Highly trained in covert operations, espionage, infiltration, sabotage and assassination. Adept at armed and unarmed combat. An array of gadgets and weaponry at their fingertips. Excellent drivers and usually adept as pilots as well. In times of war they are an ultimate weapon against the enemy. But when the war is over, they are just as likely to turn upon the more corrupt elements of their own government. Typically emotionally scarred or detached due to a life of deceit and the fact that almost anyone they care for meets a gruesome fatal end. They often straddle the line between patriot and sociopath.
Examples: Operator No. 5, G-8, Secret Agent X, The Saint, James Bond, Jack Bauer, Jason Bourne, John Rambo, Captain America
The Traveler
Whether through time or through space, this hero finds himself flung into far distant worlds to face nefarious threats. The conceptual end of science fiction. Typically an outsider to the world or era they've entered, they become its people's champion through physical power, mental ability, mastery of technology or just being a better shot than the other guys. Their adventures may strand them in a distant world or age, take them back and forth between the here and now and another specific time and/or place, or they may roam freely through the space/time continuum, exploring untold dimensions and conquering foes who may be vaguely analogous to social woes in our own world. Funny, that.
Examples: Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, John Carter of Mars, Captain Future, Doctor Who, Sam Beckett, Luke Skywalker, Adam Strange, Superman
Night Stalkers
Occult investigators. Usually borrowing elements from other heroes and bringing them into a world of horrors and nightmares, monsters come alive and unspeakable evil. Their world is the flip side to our own. Irrational, superstitious, dangerous...so perhaps not so much the flip side as we would like to believe. Their adventures can be as simple as debunking a haunted house or as dire as battling off Lovecraftian monsters and the end of the world itself. Armed with enchanted weapons, arcane artifacts and strange incantations, their greatest weapon is knowledge. They tend to be well read, or at least have someone by their side who is, in dusty tomes of ancient lore. Dead gods, feral demons, names and words that mangle the tongue, they are the champions that walk between both worlds and belong to neither.
Examples: Solomon Kane, Jules de Grandin, Dr. Strange, John Constantine, Buffy Summers, Angel, Hellboy
Rough Rider
The Western hero, taking the natural mythos of the Old West to whole new levels. Typically, though not always, masked mystery men of their time. They roam a lawless land, spreading justice where they can among corrupt local governments, gangs of criminals and wild savages. The best with their chosen weapon, be it a six shooter, a rifle, a sword or a whip, they're also all prodigious horsemen. The heroes of a bygone era, inspiring those who come after.
Examples: Zorro, Hopalong Cassidy, Lone Wolf, the Lone Ranger, Brisco County, Malcolm Reynolds
Jungle Lord
Yeah, there's more than one. I'm just as shocked as you are. But like Kipling's Mowgli, these heroes are typically lost or abandoned children (or, sometimes, adults) who are accepted by the untamed wilderness around them. They learn skills from the animals and environment to survive and thrive...until eventually the modern world encroaches upon them where they prove themselves by protecting the naive outsiders (either from the jungle or themselves), and are eventually brought back to the world they were born into, leaving behind the world that raised them. They often find the more "civilized" world to be even more fraught with peril and savage than the one they left behind, and employ their skills to fighting for what's right. Oftentimes, they'll return to the wilderness...either permanently or as a sabbatical...another example of a hero who walks in two worlds and belongs to neither.
Examples: Tarzan, Ka-Zar, the Phantom, Green Arrow, Crocodile Dundee
Sword and Sorcery
A very specific but rather popular genre in pulp fiction and since. More primitive and less cerebral than its Tolkien ancestors. If the hard boiled detectives are trench coats and fedoras, these guys are loin cloths and broad swords. Typically taking place in some long forgotten past of wild magic, ancient gods, barbarians and dead kings whose names are as lost as Atlantis. Think Beowulf without the poetry. Heroic quests, slaying monsters, battling evil wizards, saving scantily clad princesses. By Crom, I think you've got it!
Examples: Kull, Conan, Red Sonja, Bran Mak Morn, He-Man
As you can see, there are places where many of these intersect and connect. If not directly, then at least thematically. An occult investigator could be more hard boiled in his approach. A time traveler could be tossed back into some ancient time of sorcery and monsters (I'm looking at you, Ash!). But these are the basic archetypes that my research has turned up. So these would be the foundations we would build our characters on.
The Conclusion
Sound like fun? Have a suggestion? See something I missed? Please, please, PLEASE, don't hesitate to comment here, send me a message or e-mail, call me, whatever. I've been really excited about this idea for a few months now and I'd like to get a group of equally excited people together to start working on it and honing it into a state where we can start performing, building a fanbase, changing the world and maybe get some action figures of ourselves made. Who's with me?
(also, if anyone has any ideas for a better name, I've been struggling with that. I'm calling it Tales of the Uncanny right now as a placeholder, but while it's stylistically appropriate, it's also kind of bland. any and all help is appreciated!)[/b]
