Posts tagged upright citizens brigade.

Looking Back at the Upright Citizen’s Brigade’s Early Years, NY Mag

It was the winter of 1999, and Amy Poehler was in a grimy bathroom on West 22nd Street, pulling used condoms out of a toilet. For three years, the 28-year-old Poehler and her fellow members of the Upright Citizens Brigade comedy troupe—Matt Besser, Matt Walsh, and Ian Roberts—had been performing sketch and improv anywhere they could. Now, thanks to Rudy ­Giuliani’s anti-porn crusade, they had their own theater in a defunct strip club. “The women’s locker room was all Prince mix tapes and bikinis,” Poehler remembers. “It was as if there’d been a nuclear disaster and everyone had just turned into dust and left all their shit behind.”

Inside the Master Class, “Elimination”

First in a UCB series about a new master improv class led by Matt Besser.

Oh god, so much talk about seeing people die and college kids committing suicide when Horatio and Chris opened the show. It was bizarre. They were also confused as to how it took such a dark turn.

Also I like how Horatio disappeared backstage and missed the first monologue because he apparently had to tweet this.

I hope my harrowed journey had you all at the edge of your seats

It was a pretty classic tale of WILL THEY/WON’T THEY between me and the UCB. Romantic comedy arc. Spoiler alert: happy ending.

The lineup was Horatio, Lutz, Sue, Zach Woods, Chris Gethard, and some other UCB folk. They were all amazing. I swear, I have the biggest headache from laughing and when they did the big scene with all the stuff being called back at the end, my lung could have burst. At one point there was a cockroach on the wall and Horatio kicked it and killed it and it was pretty epic (also, skinny hipster Horatio can get it).

There was one moment where I was looking at Lutz in the back and then he looked at me and then we both looked away and then I looked back and he was looking at me and then we both looked away and then the moment passed. I was thinking PLEASE DON’T REALIZE I STALKED YOU THAT ONE TIME IN CHICAGO.

Anyway. So, so pleased that I got to go. I thought my feet would fall off while waiting in line but they did NOT! Just like the end of all romantic comedies.

Now it is time to eat M&Ms (my mom and I accidentally spent $40 on M&Ms… shut up, they’re all peanut or peanut butter, so it’s a heavy bag okay) and work on being sleep deprived tomorrow because tumblr is important.

They told the audience that they were performing an “award winning sketch” called Sushi Holiday, and then proceeded to just sit and eat sushi for several minutes until Horatio came out and they all got in a fight and spat sushi at each other.

Top Amy Poehler Friendships | 2 | Upright Citizens Brigade [Matt Walsh, Matt Besser, Ian Roberts]

People keep trying to pick us apart, but we’re a really tight group… When you fail, you all fail together.

Even though I haven’t been on a real improv team yet, I know that there’s a certain closeness that’s pretty much necessary for being cohesive, daring performers. And the UCB was always at the top of the game. These four went through a lot together; kind of rotating members in Chicago, moving out to New York, starting their own theater from scratch, having a series on Comedy Central… They basically brought improv to New York City. And they still perform together. They still are in each others’ work all the time. There was no “Fuck you” when their show ended and Amy got on SNL. They’re still a tightly knit group, and I adore that. Amy dated Besser for a long time and three years ago she did a toast at his wedding. They’ve just all been friends for so long and the fact that they’re still friends nearly 15 years later is just wonderful.

This is what I read about at 1am

When Pepsi sponsored an outdoor concert at Chicago’s Navy Pier, Besser, wearing a Pepsi T-shirt, showed up pretending to be a Pepsi promotion employee and bluffed his way onstage to give away raffle prizes. Meanwhile, other UCB members in the crowd, posing as disgruntled Pepsi workers on strike, started chanting “No Pepsi, no scabs!” Then the confrontation got surreal: Pepsi official Besser called the “protestors” up onstage and got them interested in winning a VCR, making them chug Pepsi and push two-liter bottles around with their noses. But when the “protestors” started to rile up the crowd again, Besser pushed them off the stage, snapping at the audience, “Those people don’t deserve to drink Pepsi, if you ask me!” The local police detained the UCB members posing as agitators and, deferring to corporate authority, asked Besser what they should do with them. He pondered for a moment before saying, “Oh, let them go.”