After my junior year of college, in 2001, two Quipfire teammates and I spent the summer in Chicago. Our improv team had embarked on a tour of the Midwest the previous winter, including three days in Chicago, where we had performed two shows: one at an elementary school and the other at a rich woman’s cocktail party. I grew fascinated with the city—not because the rich woman offered to pay us in parsnip-wrapped devils on horseback rather than cash, but because the shows that we saw at the renowned ImprovOlympic and the Second City theatres were simply brilliant. I had laughed so hard I wet my pants, sure, but I had been losing control of my bladder since track meets in high school. No, the new and exhilarating experience here was witnessing the sheer skill with which these improvisers performed. It was like watching a magic show.
iO and Second City had turned out such luminaries as Bill Murray, Mike Myers, Joan Rivers, Amy Sedaris, and, in the years to come, would launch the careers of Steve Carell and Tina Fey. Maybe you’ve heard of them? Frankly put, the city was a goddamned hotbed of comedy and I felt giddy just being there. A small part of me wondered if I, too, could throw my hat in the ring. By now I had been improvising for two years at college, and I had thought about continuing to do comedy after college, but I was too insecure about this idea to admit it. Even to myself, Reader! But now I have just admitted it to you! Anyway, the still far-off notion that I could keep doing comedy after college is exactly what inspired me to join my teammates in Chicago that summer.
At the same time, being a polite teacher’s pet from the Midwest, I figured I should also gain experience in a more practical field while I was there. Accordingly, I found one of those incredible opportunities that do not pay money. The advertising internship at Leo Burnett in the copywriting department welcomed me, and I reminded myself how brave I was to allow my parents to cover my housing, food, and improv comedy classes that summer.
My teammates, Scott and Brian, enrolled in the Summer Intensive Course at iO, and I signed up for a Level One class taught by T. J. Jagodowski. T.J. was very famous in the world of improvisers both because he is a genius and also, for reasons unknown to me, he supposedly did not want to work in movies or television. He only wanted to improvise. This made him infinitely more mysterious and also more handsome. The Quipfire alums who then lived in Chicago had given me the scoop on T.J., and they couldn’t believe that I had managed to get into a class with him; this would be like taking a painting class with Georgia O’Keeffe, they told me. Actually, I might have told myself that, because I don’t know many other painters. Oh, but how I do love Mary Engelbreit!
I was looking forward to working in a more conventional environment during the week, while seeing improv shows and taking classes at night and on the weekends. I would be like a yuppie Jekyll and improviser Hyde, except there would be no serums involved and also no murders (I hoped!). Like a true professional, I knew that I needed a major wardrobe overhaul for my new life as an unpaid businesswoman. I bought three new skirts from Banana Republic (two khaki and one with green flowers), a three-quarter-length sleeved cotton shirt from Talbots, and three white blouses from Ann Taylor. All of my purchases were completed at Plaza Frontenac in St. Louis during the Memorial Day sales, and—when asked if these clothes might be too fancy—all saleswomen assured me that these items definitely fell within the parameters of “business casual.”
The Leo Burnett summer interns were put up in the Northwestern University residence halls; room rental was $24 per night, plus $150 for an air conditioner. I had my own room with an en suite bathroom, and I said yes to the Huskie Refrigerator Micro-Fridge Unit that was being offered at a substantial summer-only discount. I was delighted to have a spot to store my Philadelphia Cream Cheese Cheesecake Snack Bars, and I found Huskie’s claim that it would “transform your room to a micro apartment” to be unequivocally true. Though I had rented a mini-fridge from my own college for the previous three years, microwaves were not allowed in dorm rooms; the idea of heating up and preparing my own food, instead of relying on dining halls or pizza delivery, was intoxicating to me. I walked to and from my internship on Wacker Drive every day, I took the L to ImprovOlympic on Clark Street, and I was responsible for my own meals. It was my first whiff, however faint, of independence. Or, pardon me, was that just the aroma of the Lean Cuisine Café Classics Glazed Chicken warming in my Huskie?
One afternoon, a few weeks into my internship, I was invited to join a creative team working on a radio commercial for the McDonald’s Triple Bacon Cheeseburger. I welcomed this opportunity. Up until that point, I had spent a great deal of time pretending to be busy in the cubicle that had been assigned to me. This was an elaborate act that consisted of moving folders back and forth, shuffling and reshuffling pieces of blank paper while sighing, and writing long letters on yellow legal pads about how bored I was to my sister, Carrie, and my college roommate, Jo. Occasionally, a supervisor would ask me to make photocopies, but most afternoons were devoted to brainstorming sample headlines for The Onion: “Dairy Company Introduces Lots-of-Pulp Milk,” “Junior High English Student Reads Everything as Metaphor for Acne,” “Wife Noticed.” I had never heard of The Onion before, but there were hard-copy dispensers on every corner in Chicago; I could not believe how incredibly funny it was. Like Sally Hawkins with the creature of water, I seemed to have developed a crush on something that wasn’t exactly a person, but was definitely smarter than a fish. I wanted to write headlines so sharp The Onion would fall in love with me—have I mentioned that I didn’t date much in college? The McDonald’s ad arrived as a promising chance to channel this creative energy into work.
Meanwhile, my improv classes were going well. After I received the McDonald’s assignment, I felt slightly more confident in class; I wondered if any of my fellow students were as busy a young professional as I was. I knew that Shannon was an attorney, and that David did something with plastics, but beyond that, I might have been the only student juggling both a passion and a successful career.
In Quipfire, we mostly performed games; this is known as short-form improv. For example, in a game called Acronym, two improvisers start a scene, and the host interjects periodically with an acronym gathered earlier from the audience. The improvisers then have to form a sentence using words that start with each letter in the acronym; the suggestion “YMCA” might be followed by “You Might Consider A job in the circus!” Hilarious, right? In T.J.’s class, we were doing longer scenes without as many jokes or punch lines. I found this style to be freeing because it felt closer to how people behaved in real life. T.J. placed great emphasis on simply listening and then responding to our scene partners. While watching shows at night—The Armando Diaz Experience, T.J. and Dave, The Harold—I quickly learned that listening and responding formed the core of Chicago improv. “Yes, and ” is the first rule of improv anywhere; the idea is that you accept what your scene partner gives you (“yes”) and add to it without taking anything away (“and ”). Instructors discouraged stage hogs, and jokes in shows got audible groans. I looked forward to these classes and shows as a soothing respite from my grueling volunteer days at the office—especially once I had added the McDonald’s gig to my workload.
For the McDonald’s assignment, I would shadow a kind-seeming thirty-something copywriter named Jack. We laughed about how his previous account had been Tampax; I asked what that had been like for him, a grown man who doesn’t get a period? Philip Morris was also a client of Leo Burnett, and because of this, employees were allowed to smoke indoors. I made some joke about this open smoking policy, then tried to tie in Tampax by pretending to smoke an imaginary tampon, at which point Jack and I both grew quiet.
A couple of days in, Jack told me that I could take a stab at writing copy. I was flattered but felt unqualified; most of the copywriters at Leo Burnett had attended advertising school, and I had no specialized training. “Ellie,” Jack said, after I voiced my concerns, “this is a commercial for a cheeseburger.” His point was not to make it a bigger deal than it was; who couldn’t relate to eating a cheeseburger, after all? A vegetarian socialite might have had trouble with this assignment, but I was a meat-eating businesswoman. And so, I rolled up the sleeves of my three-quarter-length-sleeved shirt, making it a short-sleeved shirt, and got to work.
The main idea behind the McDonald’s Triple Bacon Cheeseburger was that there was a ton of bacon. In promoting the sandwich to prospective eaters, I was told to really zero in on this feature. I wrote a script that evening in my dorm room, excerpted below:
Sam: Hey, Sue, what’s shakin’?
Sue: Nothin’ . . . want some bacon?
Sam: Oh, is that what you’re makin’?
Sue: Yes, I am makin’ bacon.
Sam: Well, for goodness’ sakin’!
Sue: Hey, Sam, the leaves need rakin’.
Sam: Well, my back’s achin’.
Sue: Are you for real?
Sam: Nah . . . I’m fakin’!
I once heard Stephen King say that ideas flitter and flutter about, and he just hopes to be at his typewriter when one passes over. That’s kind of how I felt about my idea to rhyme a lot of words with bacon. Genius is sometimes inexplicable, and I consider myself lucky to have been sitting next to my Micro-Fridge with a chewed-up Bic in my hand when this idea floated over me. Otherwise, it would have missed me entirely—bobbing onward past Lou Malnati’s Pizzeria, forward to the fields of Grant Park, and then ultimately meeting its death by drowning in the ice-cold waters of Lake Michigan. Phew!
We read our pitches to McDonald’s the next day over the phone, and they selected my script. This immediately made me feel both overjoyed and worried. I knew that this was not the correct order of things; we had been learning about status in improv class, and I understood that I had the lower status in my relationship with Jack. I did not mean to embarrass him in front of his colleagues. After all, Jack had a wife and children to feed (or, at least I imagined that he did; as a twenty-one-year-old Catholic, I assumed that all men over the age of thirty were both faithful husbands and dutiful fathers). Who was I to rob him of his manhood, his welfare? I thought of the humiliation he must be feeling and decided to say a prayer for him that night.
In improv scenes, I often played cheerful, optimistic, martyr-like women. These were sort of amped-up versions of myself, and they insisted on seeing the positive side of all events. I summoned this character the next day when I met Jack in his office. While I was always upbeat with him, I figured he would be feeling low after his defeat, and so I decided to bring more than my usual dose of jolliness. “Jack!” I exclaimed when I saw him at his desk. “Your necktie is so beautiful!” Jack smiled and thanked me. Then he handed me a list of actors who were coming to audition for the voiceover that day. I wasn’t sure where his sadness was. Instead, it was business as usual as he and I drove to the casting session, selected the “happy, walking bass” music that McDonald’s had asked for, and decided which lines to cut from the copy. That evening, as I watched Jack pack up his things and head home to the family he may or may not have had, I gave him a sunny good-bye. “So long, Jack of All Trades!” I called out, using the name “Jack” in a fun way. Jack looked at me, confused. He congratulated me on the radio spot and got on the elevator. I caught my reflection in a glass door and smiled. I was amazing.
One Saturday afternoon in August, a couple of weeks after the McDonald’s recording session had been completed and the commercial had been locked, I was driving with my friend Adam; two years ahead of me at school, he had also been a member of Quipfire and now lived in Chicago as a musician. Scott, Brian, Adam, and I had all just gone to see A.I., that Steven Spielberg movie about a robotic boy who tries to be a human boy. I was trying to figure out how Haley Joel Osment never blinked, and Adam was comparing A.I. to a different Spielberg movie that I had never heard of. We passed a KFC, briefly considered going in for some Popcorn Nuggets, and then suddenly, my McDonald’s commercial came on the radio. As that old familiar bass line began to play, I gasped and reached for the dial. “That’s me!” I told Adam. “This is my commercial!” I had never heard the spot on the actual radio, and I felt like screaming.
“Hey, Sue, is this seat taken?” the radio chattered. “No, Sam, it’s vacan . . . t.”
Adam laughed out loud. “We love to see you smile,” the jingle rang out, and we both whooped uproariously. I was famous! I wondered if I might get discounts at McDonald’s for the rest of my life; I wondered if I would have to pay for my hamburgers, at all! Adam and I didn’t end up getting any deep-fried Popcorn Nuggets that day, but my feeling of pride was food enough.
When I walked into T.J.’s class the following weekend, I put my head down and avoided eye contact. I was sure that people had been listening to the ad all week, and I didn’t want to be hounded by fans. Had my name appeared anywhere in the local radio jingle? No, it had not. Still, I knew that Chicago was a small town—and news like this had a way of traveling quickly.
I sat quietly until it was my turn to do a warm-up scene. T.J. gave us the word sunset as a suggestion, and I began staring wistfully out of an imaginary window. “It’s nice outside,” my scene partner, Peter, said. “We should take a walk before dusk.” I turned to look at Peter. “What do you mean?” I snapped. “It’s already dark.”
The student audience gasped.
T.J. interrupted us then, gently reminding me that I had negated Peter’s opening statement. I nodded and apologized. I hadn’t even noticed myself doing it. Had fame made me a monster?
That Monday, I was sent with Jack to attend a focus group just outside the city. The idea of the Triple Bacon Cheeseburger was a good one, but what did the people actually think? We weren’t sure, and so we went to find out. But actually, Jack went to find out. I just handed out the forms to the focus group attendees and then entered their answers into a computer in the lobby afterward, while Jack hopped on a call with McDonald’s. I wasn’t sure what was happening. I was a power-hungry advertising executive now. Why was I keyboarding in the lobby?
I casually mentioned this reversal of fortune to Jack on the ride back to Leo Burnett. “Crazy, isn’t it,” I said, pretending to adjust the air-conditioning. “Writing ads one day, entering data the next.” Heat started blasting out of the vents, and I realized I had turned the dial all the way to red. “Not that crazy,” Jack pointed out. “You are the intern, after all.”
I stared at Jack. The car was quiet. He was right. I was the intern.
But I wanted to be the star.1
1 Not really. I did want to keep getting better at improv, though.