Witness… The World of Espionage

I’ve never been gaga over spies in fiction. I’ve yet to read any le Carré or Ludlum or, hell, even any Fleming. However, I’ve always loved James Bond (in spite of him being a fucking creep of a character; we can never have nice things). In fact, just before writing this, I was watching Casino Royale while folding laundry. I, like millions of others, have always found his movies entertaining as hell, though like the classic novels, I haven’t seen every Bond entry. Pierce Brosnan was my first Bond, so, oddly enough, when I picture the character, I don’t picture Connery or Moore, or even our current 007 Craig. Brosnan has that Bond look in my imagination: the charm, the jawline, the suaveness, the voice. I’m don’t mean to suggest he’s the best Bond there ever was, so save your blasphemy accusations. In retrospect, only one of his Bond outings is really any good, and it’s honestly only good due to N64 nostalgia. But that’s the fun of nostalgia, I guess: it squeezes special places in your heart for crap. I guess that’s why I love Tomorrow Never Dies and The World is Not Enough so much. Not Die Another Day, though. Never Die Another Day.

But again, I don’t spend that much time fretting over spies in fiction.

Although, I admittedly had plans to write my own Bond-ish spin-off series, following the adventures and exploits of Jack Winters, Agent 132, the American great-grandson of James Bond in the year 2072 or whatever. I didn’t plot out every story, but I did get the basics down right away: the titles (which were honestly Bond flavor-lite fare, like More Valuable than Gold or the brilliant Winter for Winters— can’t you hear the Dua Lipa theme song for that one?!), the villains (with ominous and memorable names like Fredrick Davender and others I can’t remember), the henchmen (including one who double crosses the “main” baddies by blowing them up and smokes a cigarette outside the smoldering building, à la Gary Oldman in The Fifth Element), and the women (because I was 10 years old and didn’t fully understand what chauvinism was; oh, young Andy, you little shit). I even coaxed my parents into buying me twenty, yes, TWENTY empty Mead notebooks (wide-ruled) with the intention of filling them all up with Jack’s tales. I managed to get a prologue and a single chapter down before I likely moved onto other things, my impatient pre-teen mind bouncing from one unfinished project to the next.

But again, spies? Always been take ‘em or leave ‘em for me.

In fact, when I first conceived of “The Wrong Button,” spies were the furthest thing from my mind. My original idea had to do with space exploration, and some NASA-esque techie was the one who hit the wrong button, destroying a space station or something other expensive thing. The same skeleton of a story followed, his coworkers banning together to cover up the mistake, but it was a whole other world. I don’t think I explicitly decided to delve into the world of espionage until I started writing the script.

One thing that was always assured was that this story would be for my friends in the improv team Dammit, Carol (see Graham Ross’s accompanying, amazing, Saul Bass-inspired poster). Not much thought went into their casting: I simply assigned the title to them and went from there. But the story ended up being the perfect match for their brand of performance: silly, a bit manic, and always fucking hysterical. The Carols had a biweekly show at Endgames Improv titled It’s Lit, a fake book club involving fake book titles delivered from a real audience and a real discussion about the fake novel. This was based on an improv form titled The Living Room, where the performing team essentially has a normal, free-form conversation and then bases the scenes that follow off of that conversation. The fun of The Living Room is that it is easy for the audience to become invested with the improvisers once they see them as real people and less like false gods on a stage. With It’s Lit, the anecdotal aspect would arise from the book club discussion and improvised details about the fake literature, so the empathy and unconscious sainthood worked hand in hand.

Dammit, Carol in the midst of their It’s Lit book club.

Photo: Lilly Conboy (even though she’s sitting on the right. Magic?)

I started writing the script for “The Wrong Button” before “The Homecoming Queen” debuted on stage in August 2017, and was shooting for a November/December premiere for this second episode. I had aspirations toward putting on a live Imagine if You Will… every two or three months on the Endgames Improv stage, if for nothing else but to keep me honest when it came to writing— no slacking off, because it’s noises off/curtains up in sixty days! Although I was shooting for the moon, the show did manage to get on the calendar for mid-December, only to be pushed to February 2018 because that December date happened to be Anastasia Vigo’s (Marsden) birthday, and I believe she had family coming in to SF to celebrate.

Rehearsal for “The Wrong Button”: Childs (Luke Kahovec) raises a toast to Agent Epsilon.

Photo: David Adams

Now, the life of an improv team is a fleeting one. No matter how many people are involved, that number of work schedules and overall every life getting in the way can take its toll every now and then. That’s all to say that the lineup of a team is an ever-evolving entity. So while I wrote the roles for specific members of one iteration, by the time rehearsal came around, a new iteration had already arisen. Lilly Conboy, for example, was in the process of saying goodbye to the team, and David Adams, who was cast as Watts, had a lot on his plate and understandably had to bow out; thankfully, Caitlin Harrington, who had just joined the team, was up to the task. This is kind of funny when you learn that Caitlin was unable to sit in for the recording session for this episode, while David was available, so everything worked out in the end! (Don’t worry about Caitlin, though— you’ll hear her in next week’s episode.)

The process of putting this play together was a different monster than “The Homecoming Queen.” There were more characters, setting changes, props, vital blocking. But my belief that improvisers can do anything was firm, and my faith in the Carols ran deep. This all sounds like I’m setting it up for them to massively let me down, so let me assure you, and them, if they’re reading this, that THEY DID NOT LET ME DOWN. Having said that, the act of line memorization in such a short timeframe is not always the easiest thing to do, and when you’re dealing with a script with long stretches of dialogue like the one I had written… well, things can get mixed up. Come show night, some lines were dropped or switched around. One moment, the revelation that Watts believes Marsden is a double agent based on seeing her mail, came a whole TWO SCENES before it was supposed to, thus warping everything around. Marsden wasn’t even present when the lines were uttered! Again, believe me, there is no malice nor spite in me as I type all this, and in fact, the team will be the first to admit to and apologize for the blunder; they apologized to me during the curtain call, for crying out loud (seeing as though apologies play such a big role in the story, I found this very fitting and very funny). Today, the whole thing makes for much amusement, but in the moment, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t frustrated. And scared. Maybe because a woman I liked said she might come to the performance and I wanted everything to be perfect? She ended up not being able to make it, though, so no harm, no foul (except for the part where my heart shattered into a million pieces, my dreams of having three children and a house with a white picket fence crushed along with it... She wasn’t aware of all that, though… c’est la vie).

Rehearsal for “The Wrong Button”: Turtletaub (Lilly Conboy) longs for her lost love, Epsilon.

Photo: David Adams

But today, “The Wrong Button” is and forever will be a podcast episode, and Dammit, Carol knocked it out of the park, no, the city where the park is located, no, the state where the city resides. “Button” is most definitely the lightest episode of this first season, and I couldn’t imagine a funnier bunch of folks that could help bring it to life.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I paused Casino Royale to write this, so I’m gonna go finish it. Then I might watch Skyfall. I’m skipping Quantum of Solace and Spectre, though, because UGH, such disappointments. Man, I really want to see No Time to Die, though. I’m glad they pushed it to fall for safety, and yet, I need me some new Bond! But I swear I’m whatever on spy movies. I swear.

—Andy

Clockwise from left: Anastasia, Lilly, Caitlin, Steve, Me, Luke, Maggie.

Photo: David Adams