Story – Robert McKee's Creative Storytelling Magazine Issue 005 – Drew Carey | Page 35

MCKEE
INTERVIEWS
MARK WHITNEY
a stand-up comedian. I want to
be able to leave the script and talk
to the audience or if something
comes to my head, I want to be
able to say it and then be able to
go back to the prepared material.
There is a joke in the show that
you watched last night about Sarah Palin, and I wrote that joke on
stage in that performance where
I say, “Sarah Palin, John McCain’s
parting gift to America: note to
the war hero—we’re even.” I wrote
that right on my feet, and it got an
applause break, and that doesn’t
happen every day. I thought, that
was a keeper, but that was just organic. The only way something
like that can happen is if that piece
that you’re going to perform is so
much a part of you that you can
leave it and go back to it and be in
the room. Somebody says something weird or somebody is laughing in the wrong place, and you
can make a joke about the woman over here with Tourettes, and
everyone can have a little chuckle, and you can come back. That’s
really what I wanted to be able to
achieve as a spoken word artist.
It’s all a work in progress. I’m getting there.
RM: That is kind of, in a sense,
backwards, right? Stand-ups
are writers who perform their
material. They think the other
way around. But you thought
structure first and then improv;
they think improv first, and out
of that you find your structure.

I believe the way you think is
really the most creative way—
the strongest way to work. The
other can just lead to spiraling
to hell. What I’m curious about
is why would that be your first
idea and not the other way
around? How did you know
that that sort of structure that
you could depend on would
give you the freedom to improvise because you could always
come back to the material you
knew? Why did you know that
that’s how it had to be for yourself?

of immersing myself into studying
how other comedians do what
they do.
RM: I’m going to interrupt you
because I’ve seen your show,
okay?
MW: Okay.
RM: I know a bit about your
life. Maybe you’re lying—I don’t
know—but I took it to be true
that once you went to jail. You
headed for the law library…
MW: Right.

MW: It was from watching Rick
Cleveland.
RM: Never before that?
MW: You mean in terms of the
medium?
RM: I mean something deeper than that. A lot of people
watch Rick Cleveland, but they
don’t necessarily come away
with that kind of understanding. What do you think it was
about everything that you did
up to that moment in your life
that gave you the kind of insight t