Carey-ing On

Kimberley McGee

Saturday, Jan. 20, 2001 | 10:55 a.m.

Drew Carey and his hand-picked cast of comedians take a free fall into live television this Saturday at the MGM Grand.

In the middle of "Drew Carey's Improv All Stars," which runs Thursday through Sunday in the Hollywood Theatre, Carey and Co. will perform unrehearsed skits and games for a live pay-per-view special on Showtime Saturday at 6 p.m. and again at 9 p.m. (Cox cable channel 51).

Scheduled to join Carey, star of the ABC sitcom "The Drew Carey Show," and host of ABC's "Whose Line is it Anyway?", are 10 cast members: Ryan Stiles, who plays Lewis Kiniski on "The Drew Carey Show" and also performs on "Whose Line Is It Anyway?"; Colin Mochrie, from "Whose Line Is It Anyway?"; Kathy Kinney, who plays Carey's tormentor Mimi on his self-titled show; Chip Esten, Sean Masterson, Julie Larson and Brad Sherwood; Greg Proops, Julie Larson and pianist Laura Hall, also from "Whose Line Is It Anyway?"

Carey commented recently on why scriptless comics on a bare stage are funny:

Las Vegas Sun: How did the pay-per-view special come together?

DC: Almost every Thursday we go to the Improv on Melrose (Avenue) in Hollywood -- me, Ryan Stiles and Kathy Kinney from the show. The pay-per-view came from that originally.

Actually, I had started a production company, International Mammoth Entertainment, and I wanted something to do and thought pay-per-view was something easy to do. Boy, was I wrong. It's like starting your own network. It was hard to sell because it was comedy and improv and nobody had done it before. Nobody thought it would sell.

Finally we got Showtime. They gave us a really good deal and so did Doritos, who gave us a good deal to be (our) sponsor. And also thanks to Doritos, they gave us advertising, and I agreed to do this ad for them that's (airing) now with (former football stars) John Elway and Jim Kelly.

Sun: Are you nervous about performing live, without a script, to a television audience?

DC: It goes real well every Thursday at the Improv, so something will have to go incredibly wrong for it to be bad. We have some of the best improv-ers in the world and everybody is excited about being in Vegas at the MGM and everything.

Sun: How well do you think it will be received?

DC: I heard that the best nonfight pay-per-view was 300,000 buys for Howard Stern's New Year's Eve (program). If we get 100,000, it's a home run.

Sun: You really believe in this project, don't you?

DC: Improv is such a bastard child of everything -- a bastard child of comedy, of theater. But I think the audience is a bit more hip to how it works because of the show.

Sun: How did you choose this cast?

DC: Everybody in the (Las Vegas) show, I've worked with them on stage at the Improv on Thursdays. That's the genesis for the whole thing. We do these little shows for free and it turns into something.

Sun: Why improv?

DC: The great thing about improv is that you have so many other people to depend on. I really can't lose up there. With stand-up you have your jokes and you know your act. You really have to lock yourself into this act you do and you are all by yourself.

With improv, what you have to rely on is that you are a really funny person (laughs).

I've gotten so much better. I'm still not as good as everybody else. Ryan (Stiles) and Colin (Mochrie) and (Greg) Proops -- I don't want to leave anybody out -- but Ryan in particular is incredible. Improv is so natural for him. He's been doing it since high school. If he is not getting a joke out he is setting up a joke so well. That's really important to improv. We work as a team.

Sun: How do you prepare?

DC: I joke around before the show and relax. I have a mental ritual I go through, just normal stuff. I take some deep breaths.

Doing improv, you get really excited because you don't know what's going to happen. To keep doing good improv, for me, is to have a clear head and not think. You can't think, "I can't wait to get this in or that in." You have to be open.

Sun: Do you have a favorite skit?

DC: The New Choice game is one of my favorites to watch. Someone gives you an occupation and a relationship, like an architect and a brother and sister. They'll make something up (onstage) and they'll do a (skit) and then somone throws something out -- "New choice: you're a doctor," and they have to take the last line they said and change.

It forces these guys to go off in different directions. The audience is amazed watching it. You can't believe people (comedians) are thinking this fast.

Improv has been around since the '60s, so that's 40 years that people have come up with new games for Improv, so that's a lot of (material). When we've done Vegas, people bought tickets for every show because they never see the same thing twice.

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