We Cause Scenes

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So Cody, do you want to start

passing out the flashlights?

Here's how I'd like you guys

to hold it.

I'd like you to hold a flashlight

with your left thumb on green,

your right thumb on red,

and your right index finger

on white.

And if you want to get fancy,

you can press them both at the

same time and it'll switch.

Right?

Uh... or you can you know, press

one quickly and press the other.

Is anyone definitely

afraid of heights?

Ready?

One, two, three, on.

On my cue:

One, two, three, green.

One, two, three, go.

Now with both lights up and

down in an alternating pattern.

Now move both lights

in random directions.

Start dancing.

Now start switching couples

randomly.

High energy.

This is the finale.

You're going about

your business,

maybe you work in a nine-to-five

job but on Tuesday night,

you know you've gotta go meet Charlie

Todd and his Improv Everywhere group

and... you have no idea

what this mission's gonna be.

When everybody's kind of in

on the joke,

everybody gets to feel like,

"Oh!"

That empowering feeling.

That is... why people

do Improv everywhere.

People are going

through their life,

in a very routine way,

and a very normal way.

And all of a sudden, there is

this thing that makes it "Now!"

This like, exact moment that's like "Oh!

I am very alive now!"

That's the end goal,

is that somebody goes home

and they're like,

"You'll never believe what I

saw on the subway today. "

I've never seen Charlie

drop sweat or look nervous

and yet he's accomplishing

all this things.

It's unnerving.

It's weird.

Welcome to the running

of the Bright Park Steaks.

Italy, and Sweden, and France.

Charlie Todd has planted

his seed, for sure.

When I first met Charlie,

he just told me

"I really like

organized fun. "

And that's all

Improv Everywhere is.

It's just him organizing fun.

I moved to New York

in... July of 2001.

I graduated college and then just

took two suitcases to New York City.

Directing, that's gotta be

an interesting thing.

How did you get into doing

that?

Well um...

I wanted to be a Drama major.

Wanted to be a movie star

when I grow up.

So um... decided

I'd audition for a play.

I moved to New York

to be an actor.

I thought maybe I'd... act in

plays or I'd direct plays.

Media now

is-is all sorts of things.

It's like your CD-R.

Uh... your, um, CD-RW.

Um, they got this new thing, it's just hitting

the shelves this Spring, called DVD-R.

I quickly realized that

that's a difficult thing to do.

You're absolutely nobody when

you arrive in New York City.

And there's hundreds, if not

thousands of people just like you.

I was in New York literally stuffing

envelopes all day at temp jobs.

But... every moment

when I was not doing that

I was trying to express

myself in a creative way

so that I could...

feel good about myself.

Almost every night that I went

out, I would do something weird.

I was constantly trying

to amuse myself.

And I was taking advantage

of the fact that nobody knew me

and that I could...

make a fool of myself

and there would be

no consequences.

About a month

after I was in New York,

my friends Brandon Arnold and Jon

Karpinos were visiting one weekend.

So when I went to meet Brandon,

he said "What's up, Ben Folds?"

And I was like,

"What are you talking about?"

He said

"Oh, that shirt you're wearing,

it makes you look

like Ben Folds. "

Right then, just a little, like

light bulb went off in my head

and I said "Let's see, if we can make

people think I'm Ben Folds tonight. "

We produced uh, cocktail napkins

that we just happened to have,

as a desperate attempt to get

this celebrity's autograph.

You guys... thanked me

and I think just walked-walked

back to the table.

I purposely sat down

next to two attractive girls

and they immediately

turned to me was like,

"Oh my God! My brother is like,

a very big fan of yours!"

It was kinda cool when other

people were responding

to stay-in, like, the character or

the idea that you would set up.

The conversation

with Kristen like,

definitely got

a little bit more personal.

She ended up making me promise

the next time I was in Los

Angeles, which is where she lives,

that I would call her

when I was on tour there.

That I would give her a call.

I said "Yeah,

that-that'd be great. "

And she wrote down her number for

me on a, on a cocktail napkin.

I mean, I remember like, we didn't

like, have it all planned out.

We were kind of like, "How are

we gonna get out of here?"

We had... given them

this crazy experience.

And we've given them this

story that they could tell

about the night

that they met Ben Folds.

That next Monday morning,

when I was back to work at a temp

job, working at a reception desk,

I was emailing

my college friends.

Emailing high school friends.

The full version of everything

that happened that night,

you know, would take me like fifteen

minutes to tell that story.

And... I had a blast telling

it, two or three times.

And I was like "All right, I don't

always want to tell this story. "

So, I'm gonna write it down and then

I can share it with people that way.

In 2001, you couldn't

just start a blog.

To have a website,

was... complicated.

You had to know HTML.

And I knew

some rudimentary HTML.

That's when I... made a lot of decisions

that would go on to affect...

you know, my life.

Where I decided, "Okay, well.

I wanna write this story down.

I need a website.

Like what's my group called?

Well, what about, what about

Improv Everywhere?"

I typed it up

and I had this website,

and I put like, a little picture

of Ben Folds on the top of it.

And I emailed it out

to all my friends.

And then, I just kind of saw

the roadmap from there.

I was like "Okay well, I did

this unique, unusual thing.

I'll go do more weird things.

And this will be the venue

where I document it. "

The first few things I did, were

with people who I knew from college.

In the earliest days,

it was pretty much, uh...

we would... just talk to each other

in person, most likely over drinks.

Ideas started generating, and 90% of them

are crap, but the 10% that are okay,

you know, you end up with something

kind of fun, kind of silly.

It wasn't a really,

like something to be part of.

It was just something

we were doing.

It was fun.

The website

was really mostly text.

And then I figured out how to

upload some tiny photos.

There wasn't such thing as a

blog but it was a blog, I guess.

And he started putting up all

this things on his website.

So I would check it out

all the time.

And see, he was the

first friend that I had

that had any way of keeping in touch

with him electronically and passively.

I remember Rich Lovejoy

saying like "Oh!

My new roommate, this guy Rob Rosenbum.

He's got a camera. "

"Oh, wow!"

These guys are looking at me like

it's something funny going on.

Well, it's 'cause you're

acting, like, really paranoid.

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