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Health & Fitness

Saturday Night Live Alums Bring "Films for the Ear" to the Wilmette Theatre

Saturday Night Live alums Nate Herman and Tim Kazurinsky bring their innovative new series, "Films for the Ear" to the Wilmette Theatre.

Describing the Wilmette Theatre's new "Films for the Ear" series is somewhat like breathlessly singing "Dayenu" at a Passover seder. The song lists blessing after blessing, concluding each one with "Dayenu!," roughly translated as "this one alone would have made us happy!"

In that spirit, any of the following would be reason enough to attend the "Films for the Ear" live staged readings which premier at the Wilmette Theatre on Monday, March 18th with Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb:

  • "Films for the Ear" is the creation of Second City/Saturday Night Live alums Nate Herman and Tim Kazurinsky.
  • Its cast, which includes Herman and Kazurinsky, is made up of nationally renowned members of the Chicago comedy, theater and music scene.
  • The American Film Institute lists Dr. Strangelove as the third funniest movie of all time.
  • The film was nominated for four Oscars and for seven British Academy Awards (of which it won four, including "best film").
  • London Evening Standard film critic Alexander Walker called it, "the most perfectly written screenplay of the post-war cinema."
  • The series' Wilmette premiere is a benefit for Chicago Actors & Musicians Without Insurance.


Herman and Kazurinsky believe that Dr. Strangelove, celebrating its fiftieth anniversary this year, is especially relevant today. (Some say that 2013 is actually the film's forty-ninth anniversary. The film, originally scheduled to debut on November 22, 1963, was postponed until early 1964 by President Kennedy's assassination). The movie, penned by visionary iconoclasts Stanley Kubrick and Terry Southern, asks the question, "When it comes to a nuclear-fueled arms race, what's the worst that can happen?"

If real-life events unfold as Strangelove imagines, the answer is that we'll all die laughing. The movie follows the madcap efforts of U.S. President Merkin Muffley (originally Peter Sellers), General Buck Turgidson (originally George C. Scott) and other assorted military types to recall a nuclear missile launched at the Soviet Union by Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper, a conspiracy theorist of epic proportions. As Herman and Kazurinsky point out, the human propensity for delusion, war-mongering and self-destruction has not changed much since a straining-to-stay-calm President Muffley phoned a drunk Soviet Premier Dmitri Kisov and told him, "I'm very sorry …. Alright, you're sorrier than I am …"

If anyone has the provenance to stage a comedy classic, it's Herman and Kazurinsky. Herman has written, directed and performed professionally in Chicago and New York since 1968. He won the Jeff Award for his work at Second City and was Emmy-nominated as a writer at Saturday Night Live (1981-1985). His work has aired on National Public Radio and The National Lampoon Radio Show. He was also a member of the '60s rock band Wilderness Road with Warren Leming, a fellow member of the "Films for the Ear" company.

Kazurinsky also got his start at Chicago's Second City and was an Emmy-nominated Saturday Night Live cast member and writer from 1981-1984. He returned to Chicago where he co-wrote the screenplays for About Last Night, My Bodyguard and The Cherokee Kid, among others. His screenplay for the film Strange Relations received a British Academy Award nomination. He has appeared in numerous movies, including three Police Academy films, Neighbors, Somewhere in Time, Continental Divide and I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With. His television appearances include Life According to Jim, Married with Children, Still Standing and Curb Your Enthusiasm. He is also a sought-after presence on the Chicago stage and recently appeared in the Chicago Shakespeare Theater's Midsummer Night's Dream, Hairspray at Drury Lane and The Odd Couple at the Northlight Theatre.

Herman and Kazurinsky kindly took time out to tell me about "Films for the Ear" and its upcoming Wilmette debut. The series' second performance will be Bedazzled (the 1967 version) on April 1. I spoke with Herman by phone and Kazurinsky via email after his "cold won the cold war," taking his voice down with it.

Q: Please tell us about the benefit cause.

NATE: We started out with it just for a friend of ours. Then we kept finding out about more people we knew who were in similar dire circumstances with hospital stays and medical conditions and limited medical insurance. So we broadened our horizons and decided to make this a benefit for the three of them. Hopefully in the future, we can do it for more and more people because there are just tons and tons of theater and musical folks around town who don't have any kind of adequate medical insurance.

All the actors in the company agreed to work for free and the Wilmette Theatre agreed to cut their price and it's going to work out wonderfully. We'll be able to hopefully raise a couple of thousand dollars, maybe somewhere between two and four thousand dollars for these folks.

Q: How did you choose Dr. Strangelove and Bedazzled to start the series?

NATE: Those are two of Tim's and my favorite films. We're both big Peter Sellers fans and Peter Cook and Dudley Moore fans, as well. British comedy from the Sixties. Just wonderful, wonderful stuff. I remember seeing both of them when they first came out. I think I saw Bedazzled maybe fifteen times. And Dr. Strangelove … it just knocked me out of the seat. It was so amazing. Peter Sellers was so amazing. There was nothing like it at the time when the movie came out. And we thought, gee, the Strangelove theme is awfully appropriate now with Korea, with the new fellow in place there whose name shall not come to my tongue lest I invoke his image and he appears.

TIM: These are classic films from our youth...and classic combinations of talent...Peter Sellers and Stanley Kubrick.....Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. Nate selected these first two and we all just agreed unanimously. Nate now has us voting on future prospects.

Q: So will "Films for the Ear" be coming to the Wilmette Theatre on a regular basis?

NATE: Yes, every two months starting April 1st. God bless the Wilmette. They're even putting in a new stage. I'd like to say it's specifically for us, but it's not. The folks there are amazingly nice and they're such wonderful people to work with. I'm just so glad we found a home to do this and it's great for us actors. We're basically just a bunch of friends. We've all known each other for thirty, forty years in Chicago.  All of us know each other's work. Everybody respects everybody else. Getting together is like getting together for a party and because everybody's so good you can get this done with a minute's worth of rehearsal.

Q: What will the audience experience?

NATE: The audience will see a semi-staged production. People are actually walking around on stage, but they're holding their scripts while they're doing it and after a couple of minutes you forget that they have the script. You just take it for granted and you're watching the performers on stage. You're watching a very Second City-style minimal staging, minimal props and costumes. The emphasis is on the dialogue and that's why we picked the shows we picked. Shows that are dialogue heavy and it's snappy, funny dialogue.

TIM: We don't get a lot of rehearsal time...so often what happens is a lot of what we hoped wouldn't happen. Snafus and kerfuffles. Oddly, we work our way out of these screw-ups and the audience seems terribly forgiving, thank goodness.

Q: How did you and Tim come to collaborate on this project?

NATE: Tim and I have known each other since the '70s. We worked together at Second City and at Saturday Night Live. We're old pals. We get together frequently for dinner and I just mentioned it to him and he said, "Okay!" It's one of these ideas that came together at a party at somebody's house. In fact, it was a party at one of the actor's houses, Gary Houston. Gary started doing one of the monologues from the movie and I said, "Okay, that's your part."

TIM: Nate said, "Tim, do you wanna do this?" I said, "You bet".

Q: You have both done so much: music, comedy, theater. What inspired you in the beginning to take that path and did you ever have doubts about staying with it?

TIM: Location... location... location. My gut told me I had a better chance of succeeding at being married with children if stayed in Chicago. So I've done whatever it takes to stay here.

NATE: Never had doubts about staying with it. Had a lot of times when we were subsisting on Ramen Noodles, but never had doubts. Always wanted to, both Tim and I. Actually, Tim started out in advertising when he first came over here from Australia. He originally wanted to do his Second City training to help him do better presentations and he just got so good at it that he got hired into the company at the same time that I was leaving the company. We became fast friends and then we worked together on Saturday Night Live and I don't think either of us ever, once we started doing it, ever thought of doing anything else. I'm really not equipped to do much else. I'm terminally unhandy. This is about the only thing I know how to do. I have no real skills in life.

Q: I can't think of anything better than comedy.

NATE: Comedy is wonderful. It's such a healing force.

Q: It really is.

NATE: It's a holy calling. You can do such good with it. Some evidence of it, this silly little show that we're doing. We're able to help some folks as a result of it.

Without [comedy], I think life would be unbearable. The Greeks used to think there were two forces in the world, levity and gravity. And they just kept counterbalancing each other. One went upward and the other went downward, so I think of levity in terms of that. It's what keeps us upward. It keeps us spiritual. It keeps raising us.

Q: Do you have a favorite story about the craziest or worst experience that you've had in comedy or in writing?

TIM: My two years on stage at Second City (1978 - '79) were the best two years of my life. Non-stop fun. The craziest moment was being thrown in a room with Jerry Lewis, Eddie Murphy and Joe Piscopo -- and told to create a scene with them. A dream come true? More like a nightmare.

NATE: [The worst] usually involves writing something and getting it up on stage and thinking, of course, that this is one of the funniest scenes that's ever been put on paper and then having the audience sit there staring dumbfounded. Those are pretty disheartening moments.

Q: They seem to be inevitable, though.

NATE: Oh, yeah. They will happen. Comedy is completely subjective.

Q: Do you have a favorite Second City or Saturday Night Live story?

TIM: I'm from Australia. I flew my mother to New York when I was on SNL. The host that week was Stevie Wonder. When I introduced her to him, she said, "Lovely to meet you, Mr. Wonder. My son tells me you're a musician." Stevie threw his head back, laughed, and said to me, "She has no idea who I am, does she?" I said, "Not a clue in the world." But Stevie loved her accent and thought she was sweet and all week long he'd say, "Where's Mrs. Kaz? I need a laugh."

NATE: I'm trying to think of a non-slanderous one. My favorite Saturday Night Live story was when Stevie Wonder hosted and we were upstairs in the music director's office and Stevie sat down at the piano and this was an old rickety piano that was basically used as a door stop. It was horribly out of tune and Stevie sat down at it because, "I have this song that I'm going to premier on the show that I've just written." And he played the song … do you know the song, "Overjoyed"?

Q: No...

NATE: Well, listen to it. It's one of the most beautiful songs ever written. He's playing it and there are four of us standing there, the music director, myself, my writing partner and a producer and I was thinking, "I'm so glad he's blind so that he can't see the four of us sobbing." And he said afterwards, "Do you like it?" And we all went, "<Sob.> That was nice. Yeah, that was great."

Q: I was surprised to learn that Stanley Kubrick originally intended to make Dr. Strangelove a drama. Why did he decide to make a comedy instead?

TIM: Satire delivers your message via humour. It makes the absurd notion of a global nuclear conflagration seem laughable. Preaching, warning, or threatening is just not as effective. Or as entertaining.

NATE: There was already another film out at the same time called Fail Safe which was pretty much the exact same film, but as a drama. Kubrick was working with a writer named Terry Southern who was a wonderfully funny anarchic writer and they just realized that it has a lot more impact as a comedy than as a drama.

Q: Did I see that you and Terry Southern were at Saturday Night Live at the same time?

NATE: Yes, both Tim and I were.

Q: What was he like?

NATE: A very normal fellow. The archetypical writer. Quiet. Nice to deal with. He wasn't the maniac you would think of when you read his writing.

Q: That's what I was thinking.

NATE: No, not at all. If you passed him on the street you would just assume, there goes some homeless fellow. Wonderful guy, wonderful guy.

Q: Why does Dr. Strangelove still resonate so much and what are its enduring messages?

NATE: That threat of us destroying ourselves is constantly present. It never goes away. Us as a species being stupid enough to annihilate ourselves. That exists in every generation. Now it's just easier.

TIM: War is hell. But nuclear war is totally insane. Why has it held up? Because nothing has changed. We have Iran...North Korea... Chernobyl ... Fukushima. So we are still dealing with nuclear madness every day.

Q: What was your impression when you first saw Dr. Strangelove? When did you see it and what did you think?

NATE: I saw it when it came out in '64 and I was blown away. It was one of the most wonderful films I'd ever seen.

TIM: I don't believe I saw it until the late '60s. Dr. Strangelove and The Mouse That Roared introduced me to satire...and the notion that perhaps the jester was the most powerful member of the king's court.

Q: What made Dr. Strangelove so unusual at that time?

NATE: There was nothing else like it. There was no other film that treated the subject in that way. This was in the early '60s when those types of dark comedies were just becoming standard fare and then as the '60s went on, more and more of the comedies got darker and darker.

Q: Do you have a favorite scene from the movie?

TIM: Dr. Strangelove trying to constrain his right arm from flying into a "sieg heil" Nazi salute.

NATE: I think my favorite scene, and it was the audience's favorite scene when we did it at SPACE in Evanston a few weeks back, is when the president is on the phone with the Russian president.

Q: Mine, too! I heard that Peter Sellers improvised a lot of that.

NATE: Yes, he improvised a lot. Our actor, Randy Craig, was so faithful to it and did the scene so well that the audience cheered afterwards.

Q: How did the cast come together?

TIM: By bus, train.... And Nate's machinations.

NATE: It was perfect in that I would have a friend and I would think, "He'd be perfect for the part. I'll ask him." Or, "I'll ask her." And they'd say, "Sure!" No one turned us down. We just put this company together based on people we knew and every person is perfect, perfect for the role.

Q: It sounds wonderful.

NATE: You're going to have such a good time. I can guarantee. This is one of the few things I've ever been able to say I can guarantee you a good time.

Q: Oh, I know it. Who is playing General Turgidson?

NATE: Our original General Turgidson was a fellow named Gary Houston who is currently rehearsing for another part. We replaced him with a wonderful Chicago actor named Danny Goldring who has been in a lot of films and a lot of TV and a lot of theater in town. Everybody in this show is a seasoned professional.

Q: Is there anything else you would like the Wilmette audience to know about Dr. Strangelove?

NATE: I just want everyone to come out to see it. (A) it's for a great cause and (B) I can guarantee the audience will have a blast. No pun intended.

"Films For The Ear" makes its Wilmette debut with Dr. Strangelove on Monday, March 18th at 7:30 p.m. at the Wilmette Theatre, 1122 Central Ave. Tickets are $25. This showing is a benefit for Chicago Actors & Musicians Without Insurance. To purchase tickets or for more information, call 847-251-7424 or visit http://www.wilmettetheatre.com/events/.

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