We Cause Scenes
A huge thanks to the hundreds of agents who came out tonight to participate in our latest mission. The weather could not have been worse, and we can’t thank you guys enough for sticking with it in the rain and the cold. Agent Shafer will be working on the video footage very soon, so stay tuned. Tag your photos with “iebb” on Flickr, and post links in the comments. For now, here are a couple of shots of the meeting point from Agent Nicholson.
Here is the clip of last night’s Law & Order: SVU scene that fictionalized our Frozen Grand Central mission.
I don’t know why we went to all the trouble to synchronize our watches when we did the original. It’s so much easier to just have Mo Rocca stand on a stepladder and yell, “No sheep!” If you watch this video closely, you’ll notice they actually replicated several shots from our video: the woman eating yogurt, the guy tying his shoe, a man pre-freeze who is holding a train schedule exactly like Rob! is in our video.
Here’s a behind-the-scenes video we found on YouTube:
To reiterate, we had no idea this was happening and the show never contacted us. I guess it’s flattering to see our work fictionalized, even if we’re portrayed as murderers who yell, “Sheep!” at everyone. Too funny!
We didn’t see it, but we’ve received about 50 emails this evening about tonight’s episode of Law & Order: SVU. It apparently centered around a group of New Yorkers who stage massive public events. The leader of said group was played by Robin Williams.
(still from the episode)
There was footage of the group staging a freeze in Grand Central Terminal, which I guess makes it a fictionalized account of our Frozen Grand Central with a dose of murder tossed in somehow. The group also organized a public pillow fight (organized in non-fiction New York by our friends at newmindspace.)
For the record, we had no idea about any of this, and the show didn’t get in touch with us about it. Last year the Idiotarod was fictionalized (also with a murder!) by CSI:NY, so I guess crime drama writers are really plugged into the public spectacle scene in NYC.
If you saw it, let us know how it was in the comments. And if you have a link to video of it, post that too.
There has been lots of activity on our Improv Everywhere Global site the past few weeks. The Mexico City group Desordinarios staged a mission called “Train Rain.” Around twenty agents rode Mexico City’s metro wearing rain gear and holding umbrellas.
Other recent missions:
**Boston SOS held a protest to protest protesting.
**Plan B in Minnesota staged their version of our old Ted’s Birthday mission.
**Suddenly Midwest in Kansas City staged their version of The Moebius.
**Scene Diego put a giant button in a park labeled “Do Not Push.” The planted agents began to dance whenever the button was pushed.
**The DC Defenestrators have been busy down in our nation’s capital. They staged a concert on the mall using rock band instruments and created a fake celebrity for a day.
**Improv Jakarta had their first mission over in Indonesia, causing random folks to look up into the sky.
**A couple of Improv Everywhere agents from New York are traveling to Manchester, England next week to assist with an Improv Manchester mission at the Futuresonic conference. The event will be at 9 AM on Thursday, May 1. Here is the facebook invite.
Interactive Map of Freeze Events
The “freeze” craze started by our Frozen Grand Central mission has now reached 70 cities in 34 countries and 6 continents (come on Antarctica, get with the program!) Agent Piskvor from Prague made a very cool map showing the locations of all the freeze missions. It’s a Google Map, so you can interact with it and click through to see the video for each city.
A couple of recent freezes of note include the first freeze in the Middle East:
Beirut, Lebanon
…and a freeze in Hong Kong where legislators and councilors from the local government participated.
Frozen Hong Kong, Councilors Version
