Interview: Groundlings Alum Jim Rash Always Comes Back to COOKIN' WITH GAS

Groundlings alum/Oscar winner Jim Rash will be guesting in The Groundlings' January 6th edition of COOKIN' WITH GAS. The actor/comedian/filmmaker took a moment from the set of Bros to answer a few of my Groundlings and Oscar queries.

Thank you for taking the time for this interview, Jim!

You became an alumnus of The Groundlings in the 2010s. What lucky stars first brought you into The Groundlings' universe? Referral? Audience member?

I arrived in Los Angeles in the fall of 1994. I would say within three months, I had gone to a Groundlings show, sat in the audience. I would imagine (within a day) had signed up to audition to take classes there and would be in my first class within those first three-month period. I was waiting tables and someone I worked with mentioned they were taking classes. I went to watch a show, a COOKIN' WITH GAS show and, from my recollection, Kathy Griffin was on stage with Mike McDonald (pre-MAD TV for him). I had done questionable improv in college. It might be offensive to label what I was doing in college improv because it was probably bad, or in my mind it was brilliant. We were getting huge laughs, but probably violating every rule of improv. But I fell in love with the idea of taking classes there and what they were doing up on stage. I immediately signed up for the audition to get into the first level. Five years later, like fall of '99, I was invited into the main company where I would be a company member until 2013. But I haven't stopped directing or teaching every blue moon and definitely have not stopped improvising around the COOKIN' WITH GAS shows since then. I have been in The Groundlings or involved with it as an alumni or active member for the total time I've been in Los Angeles.

You'll be guesting in the next COOKIN' WITH GAS January 6th. Do you try to squeeze in improvving with The Groundlings into your busy film and television schedules?

Absolutely. I haven't stopped improvising. And I can't imagine a world where I would stop. It's such a playground and a home for me. It really took Los Angeles and shrunk it down into something manageable and wonderful. Pretty much most of my friends that I've met have been through The Groundlings. So, to go there and see familiar faces and just to get up on stage and continue to improvise is I think necessary for my own sanity. And improv works its way into every facet of what I love to do. Whether I'm writing, even working with actors in a directing capacity or acting myself, improv bleeds into all of it. It's such a necessary tool for all of those things. I can't imagine not doing it until they maybe one day lock the door and say that I'm not allowed to come inside.

Can you single out the one most important lesson you've learned from your experience with The Groundlings?

I'm gonna have to say two pivotal things. And one is not necessarily just that I learned from The Groundlings, but I think it's universal to the rules or the understanding of improv. Improv is truly a time of being very present with your scene partner, to be on stage. There's a blank slate in front of you and you're working with other performers to create this story, to create the scene. You are at your utmost in a good improv. You are staying present, listening and you're giving and taking and you're following the story. And you're 'yes, and?' doing all these core principles that you know that you realize, 'Oh, that's how we strive or want to strive to live our lives, to be present with people that we're with, to listen, to give and take in those moments to celebrate the 'yes, and?' of life. Open to these adventures. And I think just in the world where we have obviously technology and phones and stuff that can rob us of those moments, to be able to go up on stage and be free of that and just be present with in that moment; it's like a lesson that I try to carry into my own life, but we struggle with.

As far as from a writing perspective from The Groundlings, again, it's not just one single lesson. It's more of the experience of writing. I lucked out. My first five main shows were, or most of my first five shows, were directed by Deanna Oliver, who is a Groundlings alum, and I just lucked out with it. I think I had fundamentals of writing. I'd written and like taking classes in college. I enjoyed creative writing in general, but there was something about the process of The Groundlings or any place where you're writing constantly. Deanna really opened my eyes to something so simple within writing a sketch, this three-to-five-page story you're telling with a beginning, middle and end. It is a challenge to write a beginning, middle and end in three-to-five pages. Once you sort of start to do that over and over and over again, it really did open my eyes to expanding that to something larger, to write a pilot, to write a movie and beyond. I think just having somebody to guide me through that, at that point, was instrumental in me wanting to continue to write. I'm still to this day, obviously evolving as a writer with the ups and downs and pitfalls of the love/hate of writing in general. I learned through The Groundlings or at least got practice and then just the act of writing continuously and throwing things against the wall. Some things work and some things don't.

I've seen many a Groundlings sketch in which a performer just can't contain their own laughter at the antics going on. I love it when you see a Groundling unsuccessfully hide their uncontrollable guffaws. Do you have a trick to not break character in a sketch?

I wish I had a good trick, you know, save for maybe trying to bite your lip. But at the end of the day, it just happens. I think the bigger trick is just getting your shit back together and continuing. Whether it's an improv or a sketch, I marvel that all of us pretty much choose to just turn our head upstage as if that's a great way to hide what's already... the floodgates are already open. It's such a joyous moment. I mean, laughter is contagious, so it makes sense that we break. Then it's infectious to the audience. The bigger trick is just trying to reset and keep going. Sometimes in private, I think I've tried to justify the laughter, and explain why I broke out to a fit. The reason is never better than what broke me in the first place. Those things happen. You try to limit them because at some point then it just keeps happening. The audience is just waiting for the next time, rather than just enjoy the rest of the show. That said, some of my fondest memories will be watching someone else break from the audience floor during an improv show or being up on stage when it's happening to me or somebody else. I will say just for a big FYI. When I was in the company with Will Forte. Will Forte, at least in my opinion, would probably go down in the history for me as the person who never broke. You couldn't get him to break. You could try, but he was impenetrable. It was quite, quite an amazing feat to watch. No matter how the sketch was going. He would stay a rock.

Do you have a favorite Groundlings sketch that you've done?

It was something called 'Name Game.' I wrote it with David Hoffman at the time, and it was simple sketch. It was casting a big callback session for a Gap, like those winter-themed Gap ads where they would dance in their khakis, scarves and stuff. David and I played casting directors running a session with the clients up in the booth who were just voices. We had a ton of Groundlings on stage, who were all dressed in very Gap-like clothes. It was simple setup of where we're saying that we're going to move fast, and we're going to just mix and match the actors, and we wouldn't have time to learn names. It was strictly excuse for us to call people like they do is. Like 'Let's get guy with the glasses and woman with the scarf.' We would mix and match them just jumping and doing this really quick bit. Basically, it's us calling everybody by just names and they didn't understand who we were calling for. As I'm describing those to you, it seems like booff! This doesn't sound funny. But we had a blast and the audience was just enjoying because they could see why we were calling someone. For example, I remember Nat Faxon. We would scream, 'The Poor Man's Owen Wilson' and everyone would look at each other trying to figure out who it, and eventually Nat would slowly step out. We're like, 'Yes, hi, Poor Man's Owen Wilson.' It was that kind of thing. Anyway, again, as I describe it in when people read this in the article, they'll go like, 'I don't get it.' I think the other one for me was something I did called 'Under the Elm Tree' and it was just me on stage by myself. It was a character who was doing his one-man musical. He'd wrote this original one-man musical, and it was all acapella.

With no music, it was just me running around doing bad pun-riddled lyrics with this theme of sitting under this elm tree. At one point I have a huge dance break, again to no music. I just had a blast. I'm usually exhausted by the end of it. I just remember those two sketches in particular. Typically with Groundlings, a show would run about three months with you doing the same sketches for three months. Those are ones that I just remembered never got old for me.

What's the craziest audience response you've ever witnessed from The Groundlings audience?

Two particular moments come to mind, polar opposite of each other. The show changes every three months or so. You're constantly writing and trying sketches in preparation for a brand-new sketch opening a show. We normally have workshop and in this particular workshop, this was many years ago, Deanna Oliver was directing. I put up a sketch called 'Big, Big Office.' At least that night at workshop, which is just the director and the cast of the show, the cold readings of our sketch went incredibly well. And Deanna was very excited to try it that weekend, because normally we would just try some new material and see what sticks. Well, she opened the show this particular night, with 'Big, Big Office.' Immediately from the beginning to the very end, it was complete radio silence. I mean, the audience didn't even chuckle. As soon as the hook happened, I knew as I was performing, 'This is going to be a long road for both me and this audience.' To the point where at one moment in that radio silence a lone audience member, she said out loud, 'What is going on?' That thing bombed so bad, and we kind of laughed, that happens all the time. It's kind of a badge of honor to go, 'Oh, there you go.' It happens. But to be in complete silence from the beginning to end, not even one moment was interesting. That felt crazy.

I would say on the polar opposite of that, from silence to just ruckus laughter, goes to Melissa McCarthy. Of course, I wish my story was on the other polar. Melissa was doing a sketch that she ultimately would do when she was hosting Saturday Night at some point. She was in a Hidden Valley Ranch test group, and she was a member of these people trying out this dressing. She was just a character who was blown away by it to the point where she was squirting ranch into her mouth. In this bottle was yogurt, not ranch; but the audience didn't know. You didn't want to follow that sketch because everything was going to pale in comparison at that point. But those are the probably two biggest opposite ends of the spectrum reactions - mine being the bomb and Melissa's be the hit. Those are the things that make being a Groundling so very enjoyable.

Did you want to become an actor or a writer growing up?

I would say actor. I don't think writing for me. I didn't get bitten by that bug until I was in The Groundlings. I like actively writing and really understanding telling story. Writing day in and day out just opened that up for me. I definitely as a kid did my fair share of questionably bad plays throughout my childhood and into high school. I loved it. I knew from a very early age that I don't know if I would say I wanted to be an actor, I just knew I loved performing. After college that's got cemented as far as I was on my way to Hollywood with a suitcase of dreams, (I say sarcastically, hopefully because that will not come through). Jumped in a car and drove across the country. So, yeah.

What gives you more gratification, performing live on stage or in front of the camera; or being a creative offstage or behind the camera?

Live on stage has a little heightened advantage over front of the camera. And that's mainly because there's just something about the instant gratification of being on stage. With an improv show or the show you're doing as a normal run, that audience that particular night is just for them. So especially when an improv, you're going to do it once and this improv will exist only for these 99 people and the performers on stage and the band and the crew. Then it's just gone. it was just for that moment. What's so great is the gratification of that but also the idea of, 'Well that didn't go so well.' But that also is gone and only these 99 people will ever remember that terrible improv. Whereas in front of the camera, you end up driving home and questioning everything you just did. Just something about being with an audience and the energy of an audience has a little slight edge for me over front of the camera. And as far as gratification between being creative, off stage or behind the camera, that's kind of a draw for me. I love every facet of writing and acting and directing. If I was going to say had an edge, it's writing and that's only because the journey you take with us, you know a screenplay or a pilot or anything substantial where you have spent a greater part of a year sometimes working on. The gratification of watching it come alive at the hands of other performers and the crew and everyone involved with the making of a TV or a movie or stage production. To watch all these people come to the table and heighten your writing or to bring it to life. I feel like that's probably going to have a little bit more gratification because it's a beautiful thing to know that all these people came here to bring your vision to life and they find things you didn't even see on the page that you can spend all this time, or an actress find moments that you spend all this time and in your head you heard it this way and then they had have a different take on it and it brings a whole new life to it. I would say gratification of behind the camera when it comes to writing. It might have a slight advantage on everything.

If financial compensation was not a factor, which entertainment medium would you prefer to concentrate your talents in?

Quite honestly, my answer at this moment where you are catching me, would be in theater. And that is only based on the idea of during the pandemic, I wrote my first play. It's just sitting there. It hasn't been produced. I haven't even had a reading of it. But I had the time. I like writing it. Whether it's good or not, doesn't matter. Because I do know this, I enjoyed my time at The Groundlings and still enjoy my time at The Groundlings. I still love live theater. When I go to New York, and I try to go at least once a year and see stuff. I just lean forward in my seat. I have not been onstage save for The Groundlings and performing improv or sketch for a long time since maybe doing one play when I first got to Los Angeles. That was a play a friend of a student in one of the classes from The Groundings wrote and so I did that. So, this is only based on the idea that in my mind, and also the fact I should say that I've always wanted to live in New York and still plan to at some point. It isn't a world I had been in, say for The Groundlings. It is a world I just started writing in. But if you asked me today, if I could be making a living moving to New York, writing plays, walk into the theater, either watching plays... You're catching me at a time when something new is really exciting me. That's not to say that I don't love writing screenplays and pilots and acting all of it. It's a tough question to say you limit it to one. But at this moment where you're catching me, I would totally embrace a new adventure right now.

Was it a safe bet for you and your co-writer Nat Faxon to agree to be able to deliver all the acceptance speeches for The Descendants writing awards except for the Oscars, which would be Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor's to make?

Well, the only conversation I remember having was around the time we were getting ready to attend the Independent Spirit Awards. 'If we win tonight, Nat and I would take lead.' Alexander wanted to take lead if we were fortunate enough to walk up to the stage at the Oscars. Mainly because, from my recollection, he wanted to specifically address his mom. We ended up winning both of those. Nat and I spoke at the Independence Spirit Awards, and Alexander obviously took lead at the Oscars.

Where do you keep your Oscar?

Everyone asked this. I wish I had a funny answer. I'm sure some people say their bathroom and that's it. But mine is not my bathroom. It is just on a bookcase. It has its own little cubby on a bookcase. But other than that, I can't imagine when people ask this question where they think it will be. Maybe some people sleep with theirs in their bed, I don't know. But mine is just set a bookcase has a nice spot. But you know, nothing, nothing out of the ordinary.

What's in the near future for Jim Rash? More voiceovers as Gyro Gearloose in the Duck Tales reboot? Writing another potential Oscar-winning script?

I just finished shooting a role in Billy Eichner's movie Bros, which they were shooting in New Jersey. I got to spend a lot of time in New York, and it was lovely. I believe that comes out in the summer of 2022 (perhaps, question mark). It was a lot of fun to be a part of that. Other than that, it's writing like I mentioned, my next play, and I'm turning the play into an independent movie. So, I'll have it on both fronts and see what comes to the finish line as always. But other than that, just enjoying getting back to some creative writing.

Thank you again, Jim! I look forward to see you COOKIN'.

All right! Thank you!

For tickets and scheduling for the live performances of COOKIN' WITH GAS, log onto www.groundlings.com

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