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What could be more American than the person who sees something they've never done before, dreams they could do it, goes after that dream.
Well, let's begin today with a woman who dreams of directing a play in the small town where she lives, a college town somewhere below the Mason Dixon line in the hills of Appalachia, a town which will remain for our purposes today unnamed.
I don't think she had ever directed and she claimed to have acted and it was never really quite clear just what her credentials were but she had managed to convince the the local theater department of this college that she should direct a production of Peter Pan.
When he was in the 10th grade in 1973 Jack Hitt saw her production and like everybody else in town he heard about it for weeks beforehand.
Slowly but surely you know you began to hear you know sort of rumors about this production.
For example I know that they had spent a lot of money renting these flying apparatuses out of New York and apparently there's only a there's like one company in a handful of these apparatuses and so to get them was a major coup.
This is a story not just a mediocre play or a terrible play.
When it comes out to it it's not even a story about a play.
This is a story about a fiasco and about what makes a fiasco and one ingredient of many fiasco's is that great massive heart -wrenching chaos and failure are more likely to occur when great ambition is coming to play, when plans are big, expectations great, hopes at their highest.
And what you have to understand is that everybody in this sort of community understood that there was certainly a sort of air of everyone sort of reaching beyond their own grasp.
Every actor was sort of in a role that was just a little too big for them, every aspect of the set and the crew and you know rumors it sort of cooked around you know there was this huge crew there were lots of things being painted.
This in fact is one of the criteria for greatness is that everyone is just about to reach just beyond their grasp because that is when greatness can occur.
That's right. That's right.
And maybe greatness could have occurred.
Well today on our program what happens when greatness does not occur?
What happens in fact when fumble leads to error leads to mishap and before you know it you have left the realm of ordinary mistake and chaos and you have entered into the more ethereal specialized realm of fiasco.
Today's show Fiasco's a philosophical inquiry perhaps the first ever as far as we know into what makes a fiasco what takes our ordinary lives that extra distance into fiasco.
From WBEZ Chicago it's This American Life, I'm Ira Glass.
There is much much more to learn about fiasco's in this hour.
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To This American Life today's show was a rerun a really fun show that we thought would be fun to run this holiday week and we begin our show with this true fable of Peter Pan in Act One opening night.
Opening night comes and you know well almost everybody in the area and the you know 10 -mile radius of this theater knows somebody in this production so the place is pretty much packed and I don't know if you remember the opening moment of Peter Pan but it's the three little kids sleeping in their bed
and Peter Pan comes flying in the window and in this in this particular production the there's a big bed with all the three kids in it and off to the left I remember is a big huge wardrobe and there's a large window there and a little bureau and Peter Pan comes in and you know and has a little speech
where he says you know anybody can fly why with just a little magic dust one can fly and and Peter Pan sort of sprinkles this magic dust in the air and sure enough the kids sort of suddenly just lurch into the air and it becomes clear right away that the people that they've hired to run these flying
apparatuses really aren't quite clear on how they actually work so instead of the the kids sort of sailing you know gracefully to and fro they sort of hang in the air like puppets just sort of dang there instead of getting jerked up an inch or two or back and forth and then sometimes you're just stationary
just yeah just hanging there like a like a like a spider and then several of them start to sort of circumscribe these circles in the air where it's clear that the the the people running the the machines have just sort of set them off on these kind of oval courses that spiral farther and farther out
and if you're sitting in the audience it was clearly a sense of fear on the faces of these people of the of the actors the actors the actors actually you could sense their lack of confidence in the the people running the machines in the back so they wait and the audience reaction to this point is just
are they laughing no one is laughing everyone now this is one of the great things about audiences especially in a live theater production is that they're very forgiving they want the show to work and so everyone has sort of gripping their chair a little tightly right you know we feel for them you know
they're up there they're embarrassing themselves for us you know why identify with them we are become them and so the audience I think was very forgiving and very understanding of this this moment but there was one one moment that in this first opening scene that kind of put the audience on notice and that's
when as the kids are sort of jerking up and down swinging back and forth and certain and sort of going around in these ovals at one point the little the littlest one the little boy is is sort of being flowing around a little too a little too hard and he has the least mass to resist whatever the machinery
is doing to him right okay so and and so he's flying around this circle and and and the audience sort of sees this coming and there's a real sense of pain and and gripping of the chair and white knuckleness as the kid suddenly does a just a an enormous splat into the wardrobe I mean and it's clear that he's
hurt you know and he comes off of it sort of you know a little dazed then of course he's jerked up in the air a little bit and often a little too high so that he suddenly sort of in the workings he sort of left the stage itself he's now up there with the lights you know and all of a sudden he just sort
of suddenly he would just plummet back down to the stage and and be caught up just before he hit the floor and and it was it was hard to watch because as you can tell it's a it's an incredibly funny moment but but like I say the audience was still in this very forgiving mode and no one said a word we
just all sat there sort of holding our breath in this that weird tension of being in the audience thinking oh oh my goodness they have gotten off to a very bad start oh this this is not good right and we feel for them may I just interrupt for just a moment yes just just say now now at this point because after all
we are not just joined here together on the radio you and I today to laugh at the foibles of the unfortunate no no we're here to enumerate the qualities of a fiasco at this point we are not yet in the territory of fiasco no no because you know like I say audiences are forgiving and they you know one
or one or two mistakes even big ones like this they're gonna let that ride yes they are we did we did we were very good and so we are not yet at fiasco we're at a sort of normal level of mishap right what happens immediately after this they disappeared in Never Never Land and if you remember this the stage
goes dark and then when the lights come up there's Captain Hook and he's giving his first opening soliloquy about how evil he is and what a menace he is and how he you know harms people and hates children and it's all that good stuff and so Captain Hook is out there and he looks great he's got one of those
big old fat hats and a and this great hook and these wild looking boots and everything and people are feeling more confident something's happening it's a good sign it's a good sign and he's in charge this guy's he's got a bad mustache and he is certainly evil yes and the audience is totally in his pocket
he's he's speaking away and gesturing wildly and going on and on about how bad he is and then at a certain point as he gestures his hook and the entire black casing up to his elbow flings off of his hand and flies into the audience and punches an old lady in the gut and now he is bad he had like the worst
ad lib I've ever heard I mean what do you say at that point because of course his hand is now nakedly exposed to the audience a tough moment for any actor very very the very most of your character is that you have a hook your name is Captain Hook literally all that's gonna happen for the rest of the show
is people going to refer to you by that hook your entire motivation as a character is the fact that you're is that your arm was eaten off by an alligator and that you have to have a the entire plot and you have a hook stems from that fact right right and now suddenly you have no hook in fact you have five
fingers on a hand as if a miracle by the Lord captain hook said you know they just don't make those hooks like they used to that was actually the ad lib I will never forget then the lights come up and we are in Never Neverland and in act 2 yeah this is like act 2 and and and captain hook might have stood
in front of the set but you didn't really see it because he was just he spoke from shadow and now the lights come up and this is supposed to be a very dramatic moment the the rumors of all these crew and the painting and everything that was going on and all this construction all work towards this one
moment because when the lights came up here was never Neverland this sort of psychedelic set there were paper mache mushrooms everywhere of different sizes it was it was absolutely wonderful and surreal wow and and there's nobody there and then from the upper rafters of stage right suddenly the kids
and Peter Pan appear flying flying they're flying and they're landing their landing occurs rather rapidly at an angle of about 45 degrees to the stage they come down basically like I don't know lead sinkers on a line and crash to the floor and then are sort of just dragged across the floor like like
mops and wipe out all of the mushrooms and and so now have we arrived at a turning point in our fiasco yeah yeah it's clear now that the audience is giving way something has been lost some sense of decorum that that that little bit of forgiveness that the audience has for the actors and empathy and empathy
it's beginning to dissipate well there was a split in the audience there were the sort of the younger people who were the least forgiving they started to go first okay so the high school students you know a couple of college students maybe they started to laugh out loud I'll be honest Ira I might have been
one of those first people to laugh I was in the 10th grade right it was hard to not laugh at this you know but then whatever restraint that you know the audience had it just evaporated at this point because there were a number of things that happened in quick succession that just made it impossible
to hold any sense of decorum which are for example Tinker Bell appears for the first time around this moment and Tinker Bell is essentially a light bulb on an extension cord and what yeah and this was you know this was the director's idea of like you know you know being raw being very modern you know
Tinker Bell was just gonna be you know this literal light bulb dangling from an extension cord whereas in in other productions what they do is that someone will shine a light shine a light or they'll just a beam of focused light and then that pin prick of light is supposed to be Tinker Bell that's right
hmm or something like that or nothing at all and people just address the invisible you know sprite right right well that did not happen in this case this bulb comes just dangling down and sort of hangs around this naked light bulb just hangs around and people are talking to it and I think Tinker Bell
Tinker Bell must have had an appearance in the first act but but it was somewhere in here that people just started laughing then another thing that happened was later on in this scene if you remember Wendy gets trapped on an island and and she she spots a kite that's floating by and flying by and she's
supposed to grab it and attach it to her back and fly off right right well of course the kite is attached to the flying apparatus line right and it gets closer and closer to her she's standing on this little paper mache hill and but the flying apparatus people can't quite get it close enough to her
to reach so she has to step out into the waters that she's just told us is filled with crocodiles to to grab it she finally gets the kite and when she yanks on it it pops off the flying apparatus and the hook goes zinging up into the lights and catches so now there is this big loop of wire hanging in front
of the stage and there's a wendy holding the kite and she ad -libbed as best she could as I remember she she sort of said on second thought maybe I can swim and with that she walked off the stage sort of motioning her arms like you would do the swim the dance in 1965 so she does that at this point I
mean the audience the actors are just falling apart they are so frightened of the audience there are just belly laughs rolling up to the stage from the audience people are howling with laughter at every mistake and now any small mistake just takes on these these these just you know it's just up any
instigation for laughter is just enough for this and now the old people have given it up everyone has quit being nice now there is just this kind of frightening roar that comes from the audience every time there's a mistake well what happened at some point the audience turned and realized oh wait I
realized what's going on here this is a fiasco yeah this is a fiasco and what's really interesting about a fiasco is that once it starts to tumble down the audience wants to push it further along oh they get hungry for more Fiasco yeah if this play proceeded perfectly they would be disappointed it would have been
a grave disappointment had there not been just one more mistake after another one more embarrassment after another now the reason they're there is to chronicle these embarrassments this is why I have remembered this this play for 25 years towards Act 3 the director had decided that she wanted to break
down the fourth wall you know this was this was cutting -edge theaters far she was concerned before you do this I just want to explain when we say breaking down the fourth wall what we mean is the wall between the actors and the audience what you know usually it's impermeable but then there came a point
in the late 60s early 70s for a lot of theaters basically the actors would come out into the audience that's right and and interact with the audience and and and break down that wall so the idea being that you would get more in touch with the dramatic sense and the reality of what was happening right
anyway so in this particular scene what was going to happen was that the Indians were going to throw rope ladders down from the balcony and climb down these rope ladders into the audience and and you know move among the audience and frighten us right anyway I knew about this scene cuz my friend David
who I went to high school with was in it and so when David was climbing over the top of this balcony to climb down the rope he lost his footing and fell to the floor from the balcony a distance of about 15 to 20 feet a good a good fall that's horrible yeah and he landed on both of his feet and sprain both
of his ankles and of course curled into a fetal position and began to cry right he was really really hurt now to appreciate the horrible moment I'm now describing also understand that it's a Friday night we are in a college town and there is a volunteer fire and ambulance department and in order to
summon the rescuers from wherever they are an alarm is sounded that can be heard for five miles that alarm is located right over this theater so the alarm goes off okay this is an air raid siren it is so loud you can put your fingers in your ear and it's still hurting your ears we're right under it
it can be heard for five in a minute and then of course three minutes later busting through the door of the theater are these you know 15 firemen who are in boots hats they got hoses they don't know what it is all they know is that they've been sent out and to sort of add to the chaos the the director of course
has sort of flog the actors that the show must go on no matter what no matter what so while all of this is happening and people are sort of several people are attending to David and other people are have just now like decided that sense the firemen here he's gonna be fine they can start laughing and now
the audience has has just completely lost control people are standing up in their seats and shouting for more they want blood I mean at this point people are actually injured and they want more somehow that's how this entire play ended what's interesting about about this as a fiasco I feel I feel like
the thing that makes me understand about fiasco's is that is that the fiasco itself is an altered state that is all the normal rules are off you have left to the normal rules of how the audience is going to interact with the actors right I've never seen a production like this and I've never seen an audience
collapse like this see but I want to like when you think about what people go for theater to theater for like what kind of release people want I mean people want an experience that will take them out of ours themselves we all want an experience that would take us out of ourselves and into another place
and another reality right and it sounds like this production even though it was a fiasco in fact because it was a fiasco was more successful at that than any conventional play could be well see I would disagree with this see I think you know the old theater critics you know the the ancients would say
that the reason you go to the theater and to see a great production is to be I think the word they used to use is transported the idea being that you would be lifted away from your animal nature and into these higher more spiritual realms or being get in touch with these these greater yeah tragic emotions
right of course what happened here was the exact opposite we got transported directly in touch with our animal being our base ourselves right but you know that's almost as rare if not more so than a great production Jack head is a contributing writer for the New York Times magazine and Harper's Jack
says by the way the people ask him about this Peter Pan story still all these years after we first broadcast it and the thing they ask him is really is that story true these days he just tells him to go into YouTube and search for Peter Pan and fiasco and if you try that yourself the Peter Pan fiasco
is that you're gonna see and there are more than one happen after we first broadcast the story back in the 90s suggesting the fiasco's are not an exception when it comes to productions of the show but maybe kind of a trend back to squirrel cop well human error is often at the heart of the fiasco but what happens
when you combine human error with what we'll call in this case animal error we have this story from a police officer and suburban community on the east coast there was nothing nothing going on Saturday night in this village really quiet super cold and this call came over for unknown animal in the house
and it was bad was on my post was about five minutes away so I myself and another car were signed the call and we show up there and luckily for me it was another guy who is pretty new so we walk up to the door with all our stuff on you know the nylon coat the vest the belt the whole the whole nine yards
and the door opens and the guy who is behind the door he's about thirty I was 23 at the time he's about thirty he looks like a broker a lawyer just really well put together nice guy wearing glasses he's wearing these like silk pajamas with a monogram got my attention and he's going listen really sorry
to bother you normally I'd handle this sort of stuff on my own but my wife really insists that I call and so we ask what the problem is he says well we were having kind of a romantic evening down in the living room and we heard the scratching upstairs so I ran upstairs to see what it was it turns out
it's coming from the attic there's something up there and it's just running around knocking a few small things over I can't tell what it is could be a squirrel a raccoon I really don't know so the other cop that I was with said well you know we really don't handle that it's not so much a police function it's
you know but we do have numbers of these private contractors will come in and they'll put a humane trap down and they'll remove the animal for you and it's really not such a big deal but it's really not our thing so right as he was in the middle of saying that and getting us off the hook the guy swings
the door back and there's his wife who was just beautiful she was beautiful she was probably about 26 or 27 but just really beautiful like perfect skin long blonde hair great teeth brilliant blue eyes a really nice smile just like beautiful and and friendly you know if she had said you know eat this broken
glass I just would have said okay broken glass it is that's fine but she she seemed really nice so I was gonna be like Galahad so I just threw my arm back into this guy's chest into my partner's chest I said mark we can handle this it'll be okay and she just was just you know thank you so much and she
was really sweet and I was like struck dead so we walk inside and she goes I'm gonna throw a pot of coffee on and we go upstairs we follow the man of the house upstairs and we're underneath one of those trap doors that goes into the attic with the staircase that folds out right and we do here an animal
upstairs scratching away just kind of scuttling around the floor and there's definitely something up there and it's making pretty good speed up going from one end of the roof to the other so I reached up and I took the trap door down we unfolded the ladder and I have this big heavy flashlight you know
like your your cop flashlight 4d cells the metal case the whole thing right I shined it up through the hole in there and it's pretty black I can see the rafters but really nothing else around there and I start up the ladder now the guy who owned the house is standing almost directly underneath me just
to the side of the ladder looking straight up at me and my partner's at the at the base of the ladder right behind me so just before I stuck my head through this like black hole I just kind of pause like I crunched my body up underneath cuz I'm realizing gee you know I don't know where this thing is the second
we pull down the trapdoor all noise upstairs just ceased so I was kind of nervous and I was like well you know I look like an idiot just crouched up here on the top of the ladder so I took the flashlight and I just pop my head up turned the light on again and about six inches from the front of my face
was this squirrel at eye level with me kind of reared back on its legs and I swear from where I was standing it looked like Godzilla it just scared the heck out of me I thought it's a squirrel it's gonna be hiding somewhere it's gonna be terrified of me was six inches away from me and it really startled
me so I kind of went ah jump back and the flashlight slips out of my hands it's heavy and it falls directly onto the nose of the guy who's looking straight up at me and I don't think it broke it but it did some damage and his nose his hands up to his face blood just started pouring out between his hands
this is the homeowner this is the homeowner I lose my balance and fall backwards directly onto my partner and I just I pancake on my we're both on our backs he's on his back I'm on his stomach on my back scuttling around like a like a beetle trying to get up in this really narrow hallway it's a mess
the squirrel while we're floundering around in the hallway jumps down the stairs boink boink lands on me and takes off down the stairs how undignified it was terrible so we're wondering gee where is the where is the squirrel right at that second the woman who lived there you hear her scream so my partner
goes well you know we found the squirrel it's wherever she is yeah so we go running downstairs and the squirrel had come into the living room where they had been having their like romantic evening they had a fire going they had pillows arranged around one corner of the couch next to the fire and they
had champagne flutes out and nice house really nice I mean it just smelled brand new new carpeting new rugs new paint they had been there for that long so the squirrel when it bolted down the staircase took off into the living room and ran underneath the couch for cover so we run downstairs this guy
is bleeding all over the place on his carpets his wife looks and says you know what have you done what have you done to my husband I started going oh it was an accident and I just stopped in mid -sentence what's the point we've only been there about two minutes so the squirrel is underneath the couch
and my partner's going you know let's get out of here this is just you know it's not going well so I am not I'm not beaten yet I always have another idea so so the squirrel though is under this couch which is in the middle of the room so I have this bright idea why don't we move the furniture away from one
of the corners and we'll put the couch in the corner and the squirrel will probably move along with the couch because it's the only cover available to it and once we get into the corner we'll only have two open sides of the couch to worry about so we did that that is so tactical yes yeah I was very
proud of myself at that instant but you know I asked her for a box and she says sure we've got boxes we just moved in we have nothing but boxes she runs out to the garage and she comes back with a box and the box is long enough and it fits across the entire short side of the couch where you would the armrest
would be so I start sweeping underneath the couch with my nightstick trying to move the squirrel toward the box figuring we'll capture it and just get rid of it and we'll be out of here and there'll be no more you know mayhem so it's actually working very well and the squirrels moving down along you
can hear it it's chittering and I'm trying not to heart it you know I feel kind of I'm nervous about the thing it might bite me I don't want to hurt it really you know it's just an animal right so I'm moving it along and everything's going very well and then with about eight inches to go I took one
more swipe and the thing just bolted out from underneath the couch it was lined with like tassels I couldn't really see into the couch it bolted out from underneath the couch and ran directly into the fireplace which is about three feet away it was the fireplace was directly ahead of it and it ran into
the fire oh my and caught on fire and ran directly back out and directly back under the couch is it on fire fire yeah the tail the bushy fur the whole bit I mean wasn't like flaming or anything but there there was you know it was smoking and there was some there was some a little bit of fire coming
off the tail so it runs back under the couch and the couch it catches on fire in seconds I mean in seconds it had it must have had dust under there or something else but it just it caught on fire immediately and my partner and I just don't even talk we just grab the couch heave it upside down and now
there's plenty of oxygen now for the fire to really get going and it starts up and we're padding it out and it's sort of getting away from us so we grab the only thing that's really available and those are these really nice silk pillows and we have one in each hand both of us and we're just windmilling
away at this fire on the couch and we put it out but it's smoking terribly and the it was just it was a disaster the couch is upside down at the bottom of it is burnt the house is filling with smoke from the couch the squirrel when it went into the couch and its death throes just latched onto the bottom
of the couch it's like this smoking piece of gristle underneath the couch latched on there with its claws and we're pounding smearing it all over the place and the smoke alarms are firing away the guy's standing in his you know with handkerchiefs and paper towels up around his nose which is still bleeding
his pajamas are a mess they're covered with blood the front of them and we finally get the fire out and we're both completely red sweating because we're dressed for like zero degree weather and it's hot there by the fire we're mortified the house is full of smoke the wife just looks around and just
starts to cry she goes what what have you done what have you done to my house it you could see you're just like clicking things off on her fingers okay the dead squirrel ruins pillows need a new couch the walls are covered with soot the fire alarms are going off my husband's disfigured and then she
really kind of just lost it and he was just looking at us and shaking his head like he couldn't believe that these two idiots showed up and and did this to his house over nothing really and he just goes you know you're really you really haven't done anything wrong there's I can't point to any one thing
that you did that I have a reason to get angry about you really haven't done anything wrong I mean we did call you but I'm just I just I can't thank you for this they call for a squirrel they end up with like three thousand four thousand dollars worth of damage and a broken nose and this is all within about five
minutes could that have happened to you now 13 years later there's always a new mistake to be made I don't think I don't think I would make that particular mistake you know I mean you make plenty of mistakes you make plenty mistakes that's that's that's just part of that job I thought you uh you just
try not to make the same one twice but there's such variety that if you're gonna make hundreds you're gonna make thousands of mistakes gonna make thousands of mistakes until you really get a handle on what you're doing and with police work they afford you plenty of space to make mistakes but there's
things that just either they aren't your responsibility if you if you get involved on things that aren't your responsibility or that you really not equipped to handle or that you don't have a specific plan a plan that's thought through to a conclusion you probably should reevaluate what you're doing
yeah now that you mentioned that yeah that's right you walk into the house thinking okay what we'll get the squirrel like how were you gonna get the squirrel what was the best -case scenario that's a great question I guess I was thinking that I would go up there in the attic and find this cowering squirrel
and somehow kind of lure it into some kind of a trap and then walk out with it and be like a hero but as it turned out you know the squirrel it was a puric victory for the squirrel but the squirrel definitely won you know the squirrel really you know kicked our ass that is not that is not what you want
to be saying at the end of the day no no I mean I it took me a long time to even tell people about it you know I was so new I didn't want to know you know what a bonehead I was when I first came on to the job our interviewee who asked not to be named on the radio I've been on the forest for 18 years
when he spoke with me coming up what it's like to be invited to a big charity event that you then ruin that's in a minute in Chicago Boba radio when our program continues support for this American life comes from mint mobile who doesn't love a great deal and one with no hoop jumping mint mobile is making
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in a program of course we choose the theme bring you different kinds of stories on that theme today's show fiasco this is our own inquiry into the nature of what makes a fiasco when you have left the world of mishaps stumble human error and you enter into the much more rarefied realm of fiasco we have arrived
at a tree of our program act three tragedy minus comedy equals time specifically a long long time between laughs so Mike bigly as a comedian he's been on our show lots of times and years ago years ago he told this story about this one gig that he did relatively early in his career he says it was the worst
show he's ever done in his life it would happen this year I was asked to perform at a charity golf tournament in New Jersey so I woke up for this charity golf event and I have a I realized recently that I'm not like a good adult yeah like I think if you're a good adult you like plan your outfit according
to what will occur when you leave the house but I don't have that part of my brain I'm just like one outfit forever you know so I went I played golf I brought my brother Joe and Joe is Joe's kind of like a bad entourage member he's never like you to man Mike he's always like I don't know what dad would think
about this and do you think they have any more shrimp you know that kind of thing but uh we showed up to play golf and they paired us up with these two other people and it was a celebrity tournament that people were like who do you think our celebrities gonna be and Joe and I were like yeah who do you
think our celebrities gonna be and then like I'm apologizing to these people like I'm really sorry I'm your celebrity if you think this is disappointing for you you can't imagine how I feel so I'm like apologizing the whole day and then at the end of the day like sure enough my pants are all wrinkled
and I have to be at this perform in this semi -formal banquet and I'm like what about one outfit forever I thought that was a good plan you know and so here's what I do as damage control I go to the locker room to iron my own pants and yeah it's a pretty good plan and I find an iron but I couldn't find
a board so I take off my pants I'm just ironing them on a bench in locker room in my underwear which is a dead giveaway that these are my only pants and so I'm ironing my pants and I put them on and I go up to the event and this is where the trouble really begins it's important for me before I tell
you this part of the story to remind you that you're on my side I said to the woman in charge I go what's the format of the show and she goes well there's two speakers and then you and then a raffle and I was like well that's you know it's exciting because I've never opened for a raffle and I'm trying
to stay optimistic you know I'm sitting in the back of the room with my brother Joe and the first speaker comes on the stage and he's an 11 year old boy who survived leukemia I know he's not funny at all he focuses primarily on the leukemia everyone is crying literally everyone is crying I'm even crying
in the back of the room for two reasons one the kid and two for me cuz I have to perform comedy and it gets worse because Joe leans over and he goes this ain't looking so good Mike I said I concur the second speaker was Hall of Fame quarterback Phil Sims and yeah he's got he's got one fan here but he's
a he's a broadcaster and he gives an amazing inspiring speech and he even sprinkles in a few jokes about golf they were similar to jokes I thought of about golf that day he was like watching the last drops of my joke canteen drip out onto a desert of cancer and he gets a standing ovation which he should have clearly
the show is over surely there can't be anyone more famous than Hall of Fame there was it was Mike Burbiglia who had no business being at this event I know there are some entertainers who might have risen to the challenge and I would love to be one of those entertainers but I am NOT as a matter of fact
I have a habit in my life of making awkward situations even more awkward like I've said this before but a few years ago I was moving a new bed into my apartment and this woman who lived in the building opened the front door for me with her key and she goes I'm not worried because a rapist wouldn't have a bed
like that that's how she started the conversation now what I should have said was nothing what I did say was you'd be surprised and there's nothing you can say after that you're just like see you're on the building you know that kind of thing I thought about this a lot and I think there's something
wrong with my brain where I don't have an on deck circle for ideas it's just batter up you know and a lot of the ideas are bad and they're at the playground and I just turn into this drunk little league dad I'm like you go take some cuts son as a comedian when people laugh it's very it's very exciting
you know it's a very neat thing and when they don't it feels like you're performing jazz because they're kind of bobbing their head looking to the side and sometimes that's okay I'm like I like jazz you know but then I get worried because I'm like sometimes jazz sucks what if I'm the Kenny G of comedy
you know like what if I think I sound like this like and in fact I sound like this so I'm on stage at the charity golf tournament and I'm just Kenny G in it up you know I'm just for ten minutes just blowin that horn you know and and I don't want to fail I mean that's a really important point in this story
is that I what these are good people and I want to succeed for them but I just can't you know and so I think to myself why don't I cater my material to this specific event and everyone has been talking about cancer I know I'm in the future also I had that thought on stage for about one second and then
better off I said to the audience a true story I said it went to the doctor and they told me there was something in my bladder and whenever they tell you that it's never anything good you know like we found something in your bladder and it's season tickets to the Yankees that was the response I was hoping
for at that point I just threw in the towel I mean I was just devastated I thanked the audience and apologized simultaneously which I've never done I was like thank you sorry for ruining your event and I just kind of walked off and I was so upset and I walked over to Joe and I go Joe we are leaving
now and that's when Joe said and I quote Mike I can't they're just about to start the raffle and because everybody laughed my odds are amazing and that is the worst show I have ever done in my entire life Mike Birbiglia in addition to touring and having specials on Netflix he also has a podcast about how
to write stories and jokes I've actually been on it a couple times it's called working it out you can find it wherever you get your podcast at four Fiasco's is a force for good George Clooney Barbara Streisand Jennifer Aniston Vidal Sassoon Jody Foster Jason Momoa Brad Pitt Keanu Reeves Sharon Stone
and John Travolta also George Burns Bob Hope Jean Kelly Gina Rollins also Quentin Tarantino John Waters Nora Efron Margie Rocklin has interviewed all these people she's written big feature stories for all sorts of big magazines and newspapers but the very very first big feature assignment that she was actually
sent out on was by a publication in 1982 the Los Angeles Reader they sent out a very nervous very useful Margie Rocklin to interview Moon unit Zappa remember her daughter of Frank Zappa in this little bit that she does on the song she's using a lot of this language that you know sort of vowels speak
that no one had ever heard before and it was considered really exotic mm -hmm and so I was from the valley so I was sent to go talk to her she is one of your people speak to her in your secret private our God exactly of course what is so touching to me is that I totally bought that you're right I'm the right
person for the job I'm gonna go speak to her in the valley language and we will bond so you get there and you're a bit nervous and the pressure is on which is of course the setting for a possible possible triumph or a possible fiasco right and what happens next well what I noticed was that there was it
was not a it was a tense situation I just didn't feel like it was going very well and the mother was sort of hovering right well we have a recording of it that you because you had a tape recorder rolling during this yes hangouts in the valley besides the Galleria blowing alleys with big arcades are very
popular like well I'm trying at this point I'm sort of at that rock bottom level that everyone can get at an interview where you're just saying you know like what's your favorite color and she's trying to help you along it's now the Sports Center so we're seated in the den and the mother made me coffee
but I was too nervous to drink it but I sort of kept staring at it and she kept staring at it and I felt like it was pretty important that at some point I better drain that coffee cup and so what happened was Moon told me a joke and I didn't see the joke coming and right before she told me the joke
I had taken a big swig of the coffee which was now cold and when she told me the joke I burst out laughing and I started to choke and so I pressed my lips together so I didn't spit it out I didn't want to do a spit take and the coffee came shooting out my nose shooting at your nose shooting right out
my nose I was really embarrassed I couldn't breathe at the same time I was choking and I jumped up and I sort of started running around the room knocking things over and and I don't think they and I think I think that they didn't know what was going on and but the mother began chasing she began chasing
you she began chasing me because she could you know I was sort of running from corner to corner trying to catch my breath and and she began sort of chasing me and at a certain point she got behind me and she gave me the Heimlich maneuver you know I've been in the news business I've been a reporter for 20
years and nobody's ever given me the Heimlich maneuver well I've been on the story well I always say that it's a it's a benchmark it's a very low benchmark and I can do any interview I can get thrown off a set you know I can be cursed out by the subject but I can leave and get in the car and I can drive
home and think you know I didn't blow coffee out my nose now what happened what happened after that it was sort of like we'd all been in an earthquake together and all of the nervousness left the room and suddenly we were three gals just chatting and I remember and I sort of like hugged them both when I
left wow they were now my friends it's interesting you know because one of our criteria for fiasco is that all social order the normal social structure breaks down and literally that's what happens here the normal interview stops and the social structure of the moment completely changes she the mom
gives you the Heimlich maneuver and then suddenly it stops feeling like an interview yeah no it was really and I have to say that you know it was a very embarrassing experience and it completely made me feel close to them it was so interesting when Moon's father died a while ago I bumped into her somewhere and and I
am we both burst into tears I mean I really felt like a little a little sister of mine it had a loss and I think you know the starting point was you know that moment that moment yeah to me the thing about it that's that's useful is that it shows the the useful purpose of a fiasco that is when social
order breaks down that can be a force not just for for chaos and for entropy and for evil but in fact that can be a force for good right they can be can it can bring people together right you know it was actually this huge success to me I'd never been sent out you know under these kind of circumstances
before and I remember we beat the local paper the herald examiner followed us a week later and so we had the first story and it was sort of considered the definitive one because we had this glossary of terms that I had made her put together and Valley speak Valley speak terms and and and then it was it
was syndicated and most of the quotable stuff that you ended up using in your in your story happened after the happened yeah happened after squirting the coffee through your nose right exactly it's a technique I don't suggest anyone try for you know years afterwards moon would send me postcards and on the postcard
somewhere would be a picture of a nose and there would be liquid coming out of sort of like my logo ready ready to the max I'm sure it's like really nauseating like barf out gag me with the spoon gross I am sure Margie Rockland she covers film and television in Los Angeles moon unit Zappa's memoir Earth
to moon it's published in August well today's program is produced by Nancy update and myself we've bought toply Spiegel and Julie Snyder tripping editors for today's program Jack hit Margie Rockland and concierge Sarah Val production up for this rerun from Henry Larson Stone Nelson and Matt Tierney
this American life is over the public radio stations by PRX the public radio exchange to become a this American life partner which has you all kinds of bonus content ad -free listening and hundreds of our favorite episodes of the show right in your podcast feed go to this American life org slash life
partners that link is also in the show notes thank you so much programs co -founder mr.
Tori Malatia you know he walks into our studio at the end of each and every episode every single broadcast to grimly assess the damage dead squirrel ruin pillows need a new couch the walls are covered with soot the fire alarms are going off I'm a glass back next week there's more stories of this American life
this message comes from Sony Pictures Classics with The Room Next Door the new film by Pedro Almodovar starring Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton after years go by two friends meet again in an extreme but sweet situation now playing in select theaters
