So this one is on me, because I crammed so many interviews in the first few days of SXSW this year, that I basically forgot I had this one banked, which is surprising because I loved talking to the subject. You’ve probably been aware of Tami Sagher’s writing work well before you saw her as Lindsay, one of the members of the Commune improv group in writer-director Mike Birbiglia’s surprise summer hit DON’T THINK TWICE, which keeps expanding into more theaters as the summer winds down. Of all the performers in the group, Sagher probably has the most formal improv training and experience (with the possible exception of Keegan-Michael Key).
Sagher came up in the entertainment world as a writer and occasional co-producer on such shows as “MadTV,” “Psych,” “30 Rock,” “Bored to Death,” “How I Met Your Mother,” “Broad City,” “Girls,” and as part of the Emmy-nominated writing team of “Inside Amy Schumer.” As an on-screen performer, she’s had bit parts on “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and in KNOCKED UP before becoming a regular performer in Birbiglia’s real-life improv company “Mike Birbiglia’s Dream” (along with DON’T THINK TWICE cast member Chris Gethard) at the Upright Citizen’s Brigade’s theater in New York (Chelsea location).
Sagher is supremely funny and has loads of great stories about her years of training (some with improv godfather Del Close at Chicago’s Second City, and her time as a writer and improv performer. We only get to a fraction of these stories, but she’s an invaluable part of DON’T THINK TWICE, and it was a great joy to talk to her. And the movie is still doing well at the box office, so this interview doesn’t seem as dated as it probably should (yeah, I’ll keep telling myself that). Anyway, please enjoy the hell out of my chat with Tami Sagher…
Capone: I’ve had like a crash course over the last year of like Chicago improv history. I saw the Del Close documentary [THANK YOU, DEL: THE STORY OF THE DEL CLOSE MARATHON] at the same screening a couple of days ago, when Mike saw it. So I walked into DON’T THINK TWICE not knowing what this movie was about at all, because I love Mike’s work, so I didn’t need to know what it’s about. So the fact that it’s about improv, I was just thrown for a loop.
Tami Sagher: I studied a little bit with Del. I grew up in Chicago; I went to University of Chicago and did an improv group there, which Bernie Sahlins founded. He was the original producer [and co-founder] of Second City. He went back 25–30 years ago and taught a class, and the improv group sprang from that, and I did that in college.
Capone: What was that called?
TS: Off-Off Campus. Instead of Off-Off Broadway it’s Off-Off Campus. And then I went on and did this group in Amsterdam called Boom Chicago, which does like a Second City-style show, but in Amsterdam.
Capone: Wow. Did they take to that? I have no clue what the humor in Amsterdam is like.
TS: Totally. It’s been going on for 20 years now, which is amazing. Then I came back into classes at Improv Olympic and Second City, and then I worked at Second City for five years.
Capone: So now you’re based in New York.
TS: In New York. Although I was back and forth between L.A. and New York.
Capone: I was confused, because all the stuff in the documentary was the L.A. UCB people, and then this movie is people from New York. Did you see the doc?
TS: No, unfortunately I didn’t.
Capone: One of the things that Del brings up as the difference between improv and all other acting exercises is that it’s the only one that’s “of the moment.” It’s never going to be the same twice, but in both your film and that documentary, a lot of it gets filmed, which seems to go against the improv ideals. Do you think there are people that are going to think “That shouldn’t be filmed”?
TS: I think that’s what is so honestly amazing about Mike’s movie, because we were talking about it before, that has nobody done this before. I was like “Why not?” And then today I was like “Oh, I know why. Because it’s super hard.” There’s been so much improv filmed, that I’ve been filmed in, and it reads terribly. It reads like “Yeah, I don’t know why the audience is laughing that hard.” You know what I mean? It feels like it “Wasn’t this clever, and wasn’t this fun?” And I think what he does that’s so cool in this is, we’re not meant to be the audience. We’re not meant to admire these people. We’re meant to be a part of that group, and how it’s shot. Our cinematographer Joe Anderson and Mike figured out a way to shoot it that feels immediate and feels…
Capone: He’s on the stage a lot of the time.
TS: Yes.
Capone: I have to see it again to be sure, but I remember when they first start, the camera is behind the chairs, and sometimes the chair is taken away.
TS: Yeah, yeah. They shot with a Steadicam. Our Steadicam guy, this guy Mike Fuchs, he’s amazing. He’ll give all the credit to Joe Anderson, but they were like another member of the improv team. You’d think that would make you self conscious, and they were so smooth, because he doesn’t know what to look for. But he had the instincts of an improvisor of how you would frame things or where we would go, so that was really cool.
Capone: In doing my research yesterday, I found out that you were a writer for awhile on “Mad TV,” which makes the film even funnier. I’m glad I found out after the fact, because that’s your character’s storyline, that you’re clandestinely hired at a variety show. Is that where that plot point came from? Or is that how it was written anyway?
TS: I don’t know. Mike wrote it. There were different iterations in the script. I’m sure he told you about he had like so many table reads at his house. As a writer, I’m so impressed like that because I’m just like, [pretends to type] “I’m done!” But when he made that happen for Lindsay, I was so happy, because I really love her having a victory. Yeah, I have no idea if that was inspired by me or not, but it was written in the script.
Capone: You also have the meanest line in the movie, which Mike was realizing now that he’s like, “I wrote that for someone to say to me.” He hasn’t really processed that.
TS: With the, “You don’t have it.”
Capone: Exactly. He’s like, “That’s how much I hate myself.”
TS: It’s so funny, because when we were filming this movie, his character, Miles, I was so like “Ugh.” When we filmed that, I did not feel sorry for him at all, and then watching it, I was so devastated for him.
Capone: They don’t have to be mutually exclusive, either. We still understand the dream and the mindset.
TS: We totally saw that, which I guess is good when you’re doing it. I mean, for me, my heart had just been broken, and he’s coming up to me and saying “Don’t go there.” But it is the meanest, yet I totally see where she’s coming from. That’s what I love about this movie, is I see where everybody is coming from, and it still doesn’t work.
Capone: There’s no villain.
TS: That’s what I think is so heartbreaking about it: it’s about what happens in friendships, what happens in growing up, what happens in relationships. It doesn’t need a villain.
Capone: It’s interesting, because that particular line, and a lot of the lines in that scene, you guys are pushing buttons like families fight. That’s not co-workers, that’s like digging and knowing where to dig.
TS: Yeah, it’s best friends for 11 years and all the things they would never say to each other.
Capone: It’s awful. It’s the worst.
TS: [laughs] That’s the pull quote for it: “I hate it. It’s the worst.”
Capone: I hate fighting with someone who knows you that well.
TS: When you’re like “This will break things forever, but I’m going to do it anyway.”
Capone: I didn’t have that feeling that it would break forever. I thought, “They’ll get past it, but it’s going to take a while.”
TS: That’s what I love too, is it doesn’t feel pat to me. That’s such a nice, BIG CHILL moment.
Capone: I also discovered you were on the writing team for Amy Schumer’s show last season.
TS: Yeah. And the season that’s coming up [which hadn’t aired as of this interview].
Capone: How does an improv background translate to a writing room?
TS: It helps me so much. It’s funny, because it’s not just for sketch, which you think well, “I can see how that happens.” Also at Second City, sketches come out of improv, but it’s about working in a group, and so much of TV writing is working in an ensemble.
Capone: And throwing ideas out.
TS: Exactly. Throwing ideas out and hearing another person’s idea and building on it and being like “Oh my god, that idea is great because of this and this, and this can happen,” and also the faith that we can build on something and then edit later. And I think that needs to happen to have a great creative environment, because sometimes people really worry like “Oh no, this isn’t good, and now we’re going to have a thing on TV that isn’t good.” It’s like, “No, let’s throw it all out there, and I’m going to pitch something that could be terrible, but it’s in my mouth.” It’s also having that thing that happens in improv where it’s like “The audience isn’t going to love this, but this is what my partner needs.” Or “I don’t know if this is what my partner needs. This might just be garbage, but my partner is going to treat it like a gift.”
And the best writers rooms, which absolutely “Inside Amy Schumer" is, and thank god a lot of the TV shows I’ve worked on have just been wonderful places where I’ve said something, and somebody churned it into gold. Because sometimes you say garbage, and you can even laugh. When you’re really good friends, you can laugh at how dumb that thing was, but it’s a laugh. It’s not a snare and it’s not silence.
Capone: Is it ever the case where someone will throw out an idea that’s so outrageous and so beyond what can actually happen on television, and people respond “That’s great. Let’s just dial it back a little bit and still keep it funny.”
TS: Yeah, yeah. And sometimes you just have to keep going with that thing for a while.
Capone: With Amy, you can probably do that.
TS: We can do a lot. We can do a lot. But even at Second City, there’s so much history associated with that place, and one of the shows I did there was “Second City 4.0,” which was the 40 anniversary and we knew that, like, Alan Arkin was going to come. That burden when you’re in process is terrible. It’s the worst. Any time you’re like “Oh, no. This is going to be judged,” then you don’t do things. Our director then was Mick Napier, who’s fantastic, and the founder of the Annoyance Theater, which is in uptown in Chicago. So many great theaters in Chicago. But Mick had a thing, I think it was called “Taboo Tuesday,” where he was like, “Come in and bring the thing that’s never going to be on stage,” and a bunch of those sketches ended up making it. And it wasn’t because it was so shocking it’s funny; it’s because it’s all context, and he’s a genius at that. He’s a genius at contextualizing and also like getting to what the funny is behind the funny, because if it’s really funny, there’s an honesty to it, an emotional honesty.
There was a sketch there—oh my god, it was so brilliant. The timing of this will be very clear when I tell you the idea. It starts with Kevin Dorff and Susan Messing are playing a villain and his moll, and they’re like robbing a bank, and it’s like, oh, it’s Lex Luther, and then you hear the Superman music, and Rich Talarico—it was his idea—he comes out in a Superman outfit in a wheelchair. And I’m telling you, it was months after Christopher Reeves’ accident, but the thing that made it beautiful and acceptable and not just a laugh at Christopher Reeves’ expense is that, there’s a song, it turned into a song and it’s a beautiful song that Rich sings of like what he dreams of doing, and he gets up and he dances with Susan and it’s just…I know.
But there was another scene where Stephnie Weir and I were confronting Susan Messing. We were like, “We know your husband beats you.” And she’s like, “No, no, no. He doesn’t, he doesn’t.” And we’re like, “We see it. Stop it.” And we get so frustrated with her, and we’re like, “We’ve got to get you out of here.” And we start beating her up. And we didn’t know how to make it okay. And we knew there was something there, and it took time. Mick made it okay. We figured out a way where there were three endings and it was fantasy and contextualizing it, so that you could go there, and not have it be cheap and not have it be a laugh. There was somebody we worked with who had been in an abusive relationship, and she talked to us about it, and it was great. It’s not that there are some things you can never joke about, it’s just that that joke better be fucking funny, and it better be smart and it better be done from a place of empathy.
Capone: I’ve heard standup guys say a lot of that same stuff, like Louis C.K.…
TS: Louis C.K. has this bit that I saw on his show where he was like, “You know what? We shouldn’t put child molesters to death, because so often, if they do that, then they kill the kid. It’s like, no, no just get the kid back. We’ve got to get the kid back.” What a crazy take to take on it and laugh.
