699: Fiasco!
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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 a play.

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 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 like one company and a handful of these apparatuses. And so to get them was a major coup. This is a story not just of a mediocre play or a terrible play. When it comes right down 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 fiascos is that great, massive, heart-wrenching chaos and failure are more likely to occur when great ambition has come into 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 were

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 had sort of cooked around. You know, there was this huge crew. There were lots of things being painted. See, but 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, Fiascos, 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 fiascos in this hour. Stay with us.

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This American Life, today's show is 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, almost everybody in the area, in the 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

Peter Pan comes flying in the window. And in this particular production, 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 has a little speech where he says...

Anybody can fly. Why? With just a little magic dust, one can fly. 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 kids sort of sailing, you know, gracefully to and fro, they sort of hang in the air like puppets, just sort of dangling there, sort of getting jerked up an inch or two or back and forth. And then sometimes they're just stationary? Yeah, just hanging there like a spider. And then several of them start to...

sort of circumscribe these circles in the air where it's clear that the people running 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, there was clearly a sense of fear on the faces of these people.

Of the actors? The actors. The actors actually, you could sense their lack of confidence, shall we say, in the people running the machines in the back. Wait, 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 is 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. We identify with them. We are become them.

And so the audience, I think, was very forgiving and very understanding of this moment. But there was one moment 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 and swinging back and forth and sort of going around in these ovals, at one point, the littlest one, the little boy, is sort of being flung around a little too...

a little too hard. Well, he has the least mass to resist whatever the machinery is doing to him. Right. Okay, so and? And so he's flying around in this circle, and the audience sort of sees this coming, and there's a real sense of pain and gripping of the chair and white knuckleness as the kid suddenly does just an enormous splat into the wardrobe. I mean, and it's clear that he's hurt, you know. And

And he comes off of it sort of, you know, a little dazed. And then, of course, he's jerked up in the air a little bit and often a little too high. So he's suddenly sort of in the workings. He sort of left the stage itself. He's now up there with the lights, you know. And then all of a sudden he just sort of suddenly he would just plummet back down to the stage and be caught up just before he hit the floor. And...

It was hard to watch because, as you can tell, it's an incredibly funny moment. 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. And there's that weird tension of being in the audience thinking, oh, oh my goodness, they have gotten off to a very bad start. Oh, this is not good. Right. And we feel for them.

May I just interrupt for just a moment? Yeah. Just to say 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 one or two mistakes, even big ones like this, they're going to let that ride. Yes, they are. We did. We did. We were very good. So we are not yet at Fiasco. We are at a sort of normal level of mishap. Right. What happens immediately after this? They disappear to Never Never Land, and if you remember, 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 harms people and hates children. 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 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, he's got a bad mustache, and he is certainly evil. Yes. And the audience is totally in his pocket. 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 is very 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. Yeah.

A tough moment for any actor. Very, very hard. If the premise of your character is that you have a hook, your name is Captain Hook. Literally, all that's going to happen for the rest of the show is people are 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 it. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,

Then the lights come up and we are in Never Never Land. In Act 2. Yeah, this is like Act 2. And Captain Hook might have stood in front of this set, but you didn't really see it because he spoke from shadow. And now the lights come up and this is supposed to be a very dramatic moment.

The rumors of all this crew and the painting and everything that was going on and all this construction all worked towards this one moment. Because when the lights came up, here was Never Never Land, this sort of psychedelic set. There were papier-mâché mushrooms everywhere of different sizes. It was absolutely wonderful and surreal.

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. 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 mops and wipe out all of the mushrooms. ♪

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 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. 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. And 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...

Tinkerbell appears for the first time around this moment. And Tinkerbell is essentially a light bulb on an extension cord. What? Yeah. And this was the director's idea of being raw, being very modern. Tinkerbell was just going to be...

you know, this literal light bulb dangling from an extension cord. Whereas in other productions what they'll do is that someone will shine a light. Shine a light or they'll just... A beam of focused light and then that pinprick of light is supposed to be Tinkerbell. That's right. 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 white bulb. Just hangs around and people are talking to it.

And I think Tinkerbell must have had an appearance in the first act, but it was somewhere in here that people just started laughing at this. Then another thing that happened was later on in this scene, if you remember, Wendy gets trapped on an island.

And, uh, 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, it gets closer and closer to her. She's standing on this little paper mache hill. And, um,

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 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. Yeah.

So now there is this big loop of wire hanging in front of the stage. And there's Wendy holding the kite. And she ad-libbed as best she could, as I remember. 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, you know, it's just...

Any instigation for laughter is just enough for this audience. And now the old people have given it up. Everyone has quit being nice. Now there's 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 realize 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. Oh, yeah. If this play proceeded perfectly, they would be disappointed. Oh, 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 play for 25 years. Towards Act III, I remember.

the director had decided that she wanted to break down the fourth wall.

You know, this was cutting edge theater as far as 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. You know, usually it's impermeable, but then there came a point in the late 60s, early 70s where a lot of theaters, basically the actors would come out into the audience. That's right. And interact with the audience 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 move among the audience and frighten us. Anyway, I knew about this scene because 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. Oh, my God. A good fall. That's horrible. Yeah. And he landed on both of his feet and sprained 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 that 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? 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 miles. And then, of course, three minutes later, busting through the door of the theater are these 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 on a call. Right. And to sort of add to the chaos, the director, of course, has...

sort of flog the actors that the show must go on. No matter what. So no matter what. So while all of this is happening and people are sort of, several people are attending to David and other people have just now like decided that since the firemen are here, he's going to be fine. They can start laughing. And now the audience 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 in the production. Yeah.

And they won. Somehow that's how this entire play ended. What's interesting about this as a fiasco, I feel like the thing that makes me understand about fiascos is that the fiasco itself is an altered state. That is, all the normal rules are off. You have left 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 wonder, like, when you think about what people go to theater for, like what kind of release people want. I mean, people want an experience that will take them out of themselves. We all want an experience that will 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 the old theater critics, 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 get in touch with these greater tragic emotions, right? But of course what happened here was the exact opposite. We got transported directly in touch with our animal being. Our baser selves. Right. But, you know, that's almost as rare if not more so than a great production. Yeah.

Jack Head, he's 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? He says he just tells them to go onto YouTube and search for Peter Pan and fiasco. And if you try that yourself, the Peter Pan fiasco is that you're going to see. And there are more than one. Happened after we first broadcast this story back in the 90s.

suggesting that fiascos are not an exception when it comes to productions of this show, but maybe kind of a trend. Act two, squirrel cop. Well, human error is often at the heart of a fiasco. But what happens when you combine human error with what we will call in this case, animal error? We have this story from a police officer in a 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 a house. And it was on my post. It was about five minutes away. So myself and another car were assigned the call. And we show up there. And luckily for me, it was another guy who was 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 nine yards. And the door opens and the guy who is behind the door, he's about 30. I was 23 at the time.

He's about 30. He looks like a broker, a lawyer. He's just really well put together, a nice guy wearing glasses. He's wearing these, like, silk pajamas with a monogram. Got my attention. Wow. 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 him what the problem is. He says, well—

We were having kind of a romantic evening down in the living room, and we heard this 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. It could be a squirrel or 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 a...

But we do have numbers of these private contractors who'll 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 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 seemed really nice, so I was going to be like Galahad. So I just threw my arm back into this guy's chest, into my partner's chest, and I said, Mark,

We can handle this. It'll be okay. And she just was just, you know, oh, thank you so much. And she was really sweet. And I was, like, struck dead. So we walk inside. And she goes, I'm going to 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 a staircase that folds out. Right. And we do hear...

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 trapdoor down, and we unfolded the ladder. And I have this big, heavy flashlight, you know, like your cop flashlight, 4D cells, the metal case, the whole thing. I shine 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 base of the ladder right behind me. So just before I stuck my head through this, like, black hole, I just kind of paused. Like, I crunched my body up underneath because I'm realizing, gee, you know, I don't know where this thing is. The second we pulled down the trap door, 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 popped 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 going to be hiding somewhere it's going to be terrified of me it was six inches away from me and it really startled me so I kind of went ah and jumped 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 pancake. We're both on our backs. He's on his back. I'm on his stomach on my back, scuttling around 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, boink, lands on me and takes off down the stairs. How undignified. It was terrible. It was terrible. So we're wondering, gee, where is the squirrel? And 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 hadn't 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? And I start going, oh, it was an accident. And I just stop 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 beaten yet. I always have another idea. So the squirrel 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 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 squirrel's moving down along. You can hear it. It's chittering and I'm trying not to hurt 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. 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? It was on fire. Yeah, the tail, the bushy fur, the whole bit. I mean, it wasn't like flaming or anything, but 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 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, it starts up and we're patting it out and it's sort of getting away from us. So we grabbed the only thing that's really available. And those are these really nice, um, silk pillows. And we have one in each hand, the 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, uh, uh,

It was just, it was a disaster. The couch is upside down. The bottom of it is burnt. The house is filling with smoke from the couch. The squirrel, when it went into the couch in 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 have you done? What have you done to my house? You could see her just like clicking things off on her fingers. Okay, the dead squirrel ruined 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 did this to his house over nothing really. And

He just goes, you know, you really haven't done anything wrong. 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 score. I'll end up with like $3,000, $4,000 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 would make that particular mistake. I mean, you make plenty of mistakes. You make plenty of mistakes. That's just part of that job. You just try not to make the same one twice. But there's such variety that if you're going to make hundreds, you're going to make thousands of mistakes. You're going to 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 get involved in things that aren't your responsibility or that you're 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 mention that, yeah, that's right. You walk into the house thinking, okay, we'll get the squirrel. Like, how were you going to 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 pyrrhic victory for the squirrel, but the squirrel definitely won. You know, the squirrel...

really, you know, kicked our ass. That is not what you want to be saying at the end of the day. No, no. I mean, it took me a long time to even tell people about it. You know, it was so new. I didn't want to know, you know, what a bonehead I was when I first came onto the job. Our interviewee, who asked not to be named on the radio, had been on the force 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 on Chicago Public Radio when our program continues.

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It's Just American Life, Myra Glass. Each week on our program, of course, we choose a 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 mishap, stumble, human error, and you enter into the much more rarefied realm of fiasco, we have arrived at Act 3 of our program, Act 3. Tragedy minus comedy equals time, specifically a long, long time between laughs.

So Mike Babiglia is 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 happened 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 yet. 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, and...

So I went and I played golf, and I brought my brother Joe. And Joe is kind of like a bad entourage member. He's never like, you're the man, Mike. He's always like, I don't know what Dad would think about this. Do you think they have any more shrimp? You know, that kind of thing. But we showed up to play golf, and they paired us up with these two other people. And it was a celebrity tournament, and the people were like, who do you think our celebrity is going to be? And...

And I was like... And Joe and I were like, yeah, who do you think our celebrity's gonna be? And then I'm like, oh no, I think it might be me. And then I'm apologizing to these people. I'm like, I'm really sorry, I'm your celebrity. If you think this is disappointing for you, you can't imagine how I feel. 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, performing 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, uh...

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 the 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. Um...

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 exciting, because I've never opened for a raffle. And I'm trying to stay optimistic, you know, and 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, and 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. Because 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 one fan here. Uh...

But 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. It was like watching the last drops of my joke canteen drip out onto a desert of cancer. 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 quarterback Phil Simms. But wait, there was. It was Mike Birbiglia, 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 around the building, you know, that kind of thing. I've 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 plate going, I don't know about this one, Mike. 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 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 and looking to the side. And sometimes that's okay. I'm like, I like jazz. 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 Jean it up, you know. For ten minutes, just... Just blowing 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 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. Thank you.

I had that thought on stage for about one second and then I said to the audience, a true story, I said I 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 of times. It's called Working It Out. You can find it wherever you get your podcasts. ♪

Act 4, Fiascos is a Force for Good. George Clooney, Barbara Streisand, Jennifer Aniston, Vidal Sassoon, Jodie Foster, Jason Momoa, Brad Pitt, Keanu Reeves, Sharon Stone, and John Travolta. Also, George Burns, Bob Hope, Gene Kelly, Gina Rowlands. Also, Quentin Tarantino, John Waters, Nora Ephron, 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 youthful 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 vowel speak that no one had ever heard before. And it was considered really exotic. 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 Argot. Exactly. And 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. Yeah.

I'm going to 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, because you had a tape recorder rolling during this. Yes. What are some other hangouts in the valley besides the Galleria? Um...

Boeing alleys with big arcades are very popular. Oh, I'm trying. At this point, I'm sort of at that rock-bottom level that everyone can get at in an interview where you're just saying, you know, like, what's your favorite color? And she's trying to help me along. Kirkwood's is gone. It's now the Sports Center. Oh, it's the same thing? Yeah, it's still very, yes. 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...

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 out your nose? Shooting right out my nose. Are you okay? Are you okay?

And I was really embarrassed, but simultaneously, 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 I don't think they, I think that they didn't know what was going on, but the mother began chasing me. 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 she began sort of chasing me. And at a certain point, she got behind me and she gave me the Heimlich maneuver. Wait, put your arms up. No, really, seriously. Okay? Give me the Heimlich maneuver. Oh, God. 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 while I've been on the story. Okay.

Well, I always say that it's a benchmark. It's a very low benchmark. And I can do any interview. I can get thrown off a set. 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 of my nose. Now, 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 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 a 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. The mom gives you the Heimlich maneuver. Yeah.

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 we both burst into tears. I mean, I really felt like a little sister of mine had a loss. And I, you know, the starting point was, you know. That moment. That moment. Yeah.

To me, the thing about it that's useful is that it shows the useful purpose of a fiasco. That is, when social order breaks down, that can be a force not just for chaos and for entropy and for evil, but in fact, that can be a force for good. Right. 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 or put together.

And... Of Valley-speak terms. Of Valley-speak terms. And then it was syndicated. And most of the quotable stuff that you ended up using in your story happened after the incident. Happened, yeah. Happened after squirting the coffee through your nose. Right, exactly. It's a technique I don't suggest anyone try. It's like so niche because everybody's like,

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 it. Sort of like my logo. I am sure.

Margie Rocklin. She covers film and television in Los Angeles. Moon Unit Zappa's memoir, Earth to Moon, was published in August. Today's program was produced by Nancy Updick and myself, with Paul Toffoli, Spiegel, and Julie Snyder. Attributing editors for today's program, Jack Hitt, Margie Rocklin, and Consigliere Sarah Vow. Production up for this rerun from Henry Larson, Stone Nelson, and Matt Tierney. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the public radio exchange.

to become a This American Life partner. We teach 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 thisamericanlife.org slash lifepartners. That link is also in the show notes.

Thanks as always to our program's co-founder, Mr. Torrey 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, ruined pillows, need a new couch. The walls are covered with soot. The fire alarms are going off. I'm Eric Glass. Back next week, there's more stories of This American Life. ♪

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