At lunch the other day at a new sushi restaurant called Sugarfish, my friend, Josh Rose, a creative director at Deutsch Advertising, told me about watching the legendary improviser Christopher Guest (Best in Show, Waiting for Guffman, et al) essentially rip up the script Deutsch had given him for a series of DirecTV spots, and tell its creative team he and his cast were going to improvise everything instead. Guest promised the agency team they’d get ten usable spots worth of material, far more than their contract called for.
He delivered, to excellent effect. The series of commercials starring Guest, who also directed, memorably distinguish DirecTV’s product from that of a fictional blowhard cable company.
Josh took the position that, well, yes, you can get away with something like that if you’re Christopher Guest. And if you’re not Christopher Guest, maybe improvisation isn’t going to be so beneficial.
I wish I had responded by holding the albacore sushi drizzled with ponzu sauce between my chopsticks and said to him with a Kung Fu master’s equanimity, “Yes and Christopher Guest is no Chef Nozawa.” That would’ve been deep. I didn’t. I took the more mundane position that there is improvisation in every business process, and that, while its place in the process may vary–most TV commercial shoots, for example, cannot withstand the amount of improvising that a Christopher Guest brings to a set–there is always an opportunity somewhere in every business process where improvisation is possible, and in most cases, required. As long as you’re going to do it anyway, why not do it well? And as far as the fuss Guest stirred up, who ever said birthing originality was easy?
Josh chewed on his yellowtail for a sec, and I wish I could say he nodded like an eager Chef Nozawa apprentice, accepting every word I said as doctrine. He did not. He told me that he is a ‘plug-n-play’ guy, meaning he carefully measures the opportunity afforded, and calibrates performance to it. Improvisation, he said, can feel too loose and unpredictable.
Maybe that’s when I should have stood and slapped him across the face and and told him to wake up and smell the wasabi. I did not. Instead, I calmly explained that recognition of an opportunity for what it is, and responding accordingly, is good improvisation. The Networked World, I explained, is filled with new opportunities. New plugs that require new plays. This continually-evolving business environment demands improvisation.
I imagine Christopher Guest could have walked into Sugarfish at that instant, looked our way when he overheard us use the words ‘improvisation’ and ‘DirectTV’ in the same sentence, and, having heard, come over to our table to support my argument. He did not.
My lunch with Josh Rose did not result in a decisive win for the art of improvisation in business. Josh is an intelligent and reflective person, with his own well-honed ways of working. He sells way more than he buys. He was not in any hurry to introduce Deutsch to what they’d no doubt perceive as more headaches like the ones Christopher Guest gave them. That would not be the plug-n-play thing for Josh to do.
Our debate about the merits of improvisation in business was the agreed-to game. The objective was to reconnect after not having seen each other in a couple of years. The result was a productive lunch scene, at which Josh and I discussed business, families, photography, the evolution of journalism in the Networked World, the role of social networking on behalf of brands, Dr. Pepper, Big Red soda, Costa Rica, the Great Apes (Josh’s dad is a primatologist who lectures all over the world), Chef Nozawa’s sushi, gonzo multimedia – and Christopher Guest’s DirectTV work.
It was not the lunch that might have been. It was the lunch that was. Likewise, none of us are the players we might have been. We are the players we are. We all – Christopher Guest, Chef Nozawa, Josh Rose, you, me – have the potential to realize our own particular form of greatness. To realize it, we have to travel our own paths, accepting and acting on the gifts we are given along the way.
Knowing how to improvise is like having an experienced Sherpa along on your climb, versus following a map and seeking advice from random climbers down at base camp. For the best chance at reaching the summit, especially if the climb is challenging (and whose isn’t?) gather all the information you can and retain the Sherpa.
Tags: Business, Chef Nozawa, Christopher Guest, Deutsch Advertising, DirecTV, Dr. Pepper, GameChangers, Improvisation, Josh Rose, Sherpa, Social Networking, Sugarfish
Christopher Guest ha! A friend turned me on to your post about him and I have to say I’ve had personal experience with Guest and he singlehandedly contributed to my leaving my small but burgeoning career as a celeb journalist. I really should thank him again for being the worst during my “Best In Show” interview with him. At least I did not run from the room crying like the previous interviewer did (and he was a man!) I did however tell Guest politely at the end of the interview that I was thankful because his interview freed me from a job that I was growing to hate as it was. It signaled to me that it was time to move on and do greater work that I enjoyed.
You’re funny. Love your recap of our lunch, even if I remember it slightly differently… but I think that’s the difference between improv (”yes and”) and blogging (”yes but”). Either way, I certainly would have enjoyed a good slap of raw tuna across the face. That hasn’t happened to me since college.
A few points to clarify: I wasn’t actually AT the DTV shoot. All the stories I heard are second hand. But all the accounts I got were that the script improv stuff was done collaboratively and with everyone’s approval. “ripping up the scripts” was the plan all along. But the bigger point I was trying to make was that the COMBINATION of script and improv was what made that shoot so great. It needed both. And, as we discussed, the rules that inform improv are part of what make the end result useful. A director needs to guide things to some extent, right? And certainly there is an art to good direction.
Also, your use of the term “plug-and-play” differs slightly from how I intended it. That was a personal description of the role of one busy creative guy’s ability to engage in a new endeavor – certainly not my role within an ad agency, where I like to think I can roll with the best of ‘em. You seem to make this notion of “plug-and-play” as having something to do with your business’s role with my business. My lunch was with an old friend. If yours was with a potential client (or chapter of a book) then you’re the director there. And, again, you have to set up the right setting for the actors to act in. Otherwise, all your lunches will not be the ones that might have been.
Until the next, my friend…
J.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/joshrose/2821755529/
Josh
Noted. The Committee hereby accepts and approves all amendments to the Permanent Record, including where you were and when on the dates and events in question.
I tend to write about the emotional rather than literal, or cosmetic, truths of this stuff.
Hence The C. Guest story comes across as a ‘productive upheaval in the status quo’scene.
Hence the ‘plug n play’ description is to sharpen the debate between ‘defining structure and working freely within it’ vs. ‘working freely and letting structure emerge’. The answer, in terms of creativity, lies, always, in the synthesis of the ideas, not in the hegemony of one or the other. Sorry for suiting you up in the colors of a team you didn’t know you played for, just to make a point. Not about doing business together, or mine vs. yours, just about process generally.
Tuna soon,
m.
Okay, okay… we’ll even the score at the next sushi place. I will slap you with an emotional tuna babe. Like our waitress.
- J
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