What Christopher Guest Can Teach Us About Emceeing

Last week Matos linked to this Slate piece that reads exactly like the rant I always rant, about misguided purists who devalue written rhymes while exalting off-the-top flows as the true measure of a "real emcee."

The Problem With Christopher Guest

...my biggest complaint goes to the very heart of Guest's method. To read his reviews, you would get the idea that improvisation is a funnier—and more authentic—form of comedy than conventional mirth-making. Anybody can deliver a line written by Mel Brooks, the thinking goes, but Guest's players are out there winging it, creating "high-wire" comedy on the fly. To hear a studious guy like Guest wax about his technique ("I take seriously this craft, and to break that down into an improvisational craft … ") is to be taken with him. As USA Today once put it in a glowing profile, "Real. A good word to describe Guest and his art."

This is nonsense.... what's most important about comedy is whether or not it's funny, and I would argue that Guest's method often begets a kind of dullness. He's content with his actors "jamming," when tireless preparation—the tedious writing and rewriting of scenes and gag lines—would have served him better...