[This review is part of the Mercury’s 2021 Portland International Film Festival (PIFF) guide. You can check out all our PIFF reviews here.]
While often scorned (aaaaand sometimes for pretty good reason!), improvisational comedy gave birth to nearly all your favorite movies and TV shows, and it’s where your most beloved comic actors got their start. Amy Poehler, Tina Fey, Bob Odenkirk, John Belushi, Bill Murray, Kate McKinnon, Nick Kroll, Stephen Colbert, Aubrey Plaza… all these and many, <emmany more kicked off their careers and trained with such famous improv troupes as Second City and the Upright Citizens Brigade. But the concept and practices of longform improvisational comedy in its current form sprung from a single, deranged person that you’ve possibly never heard of: Del Close.
In the documentary For Madmen Only, director Heather Ross attempts to dig deep into the life and mythos of this seminal, mysterious figure, and the result is just about as messy as Close himself. (But that’s not always a bad thing!)
