Rollie Williams
patreon
The final Inconvenient Talk Show
🕑 Added 2024-04-19 18:37:49 +0000 UTCHey Patreon!
Okay, I got clearance to post some photos, so here goes: I got to do a comedy show in character as Al Gore with actual Al Gore as the special guest. It was part of the Climate Reality Project's leadership training in New York last weekend. It was SO fun, but more importantly, it has a fun multi-year arc to it that you may enjoy if you're unfamiliar.
1) In 2016, I wrote a show about Al Gore going on an I-Told-You-So tour of America. I think there were 3 people in the audience. It was not well-received*.
2) That show morphed into An Inconvenient Talk Show at Caveat Theater in Manhattan. It was a monthly show, and I would regularly spend 50 hours writing jokes and making video clips and researching climate change for monologue jokes and deep dives. I met dozens of climate scientists and experts, and their endorsement of the material meant the world to me. After 18 months, I decided the best way to make the show as good as possible was to go to grad school to get a degree in climate science and policy. It was a VERY expensive way to improve a comedy show, but these things happen.
3) The pandemic turned the live show into a YouTube series you may be familiar with called Climate Town. I stopped doing my (admittedly undercooked) Al Gore impersonation and just hosted the series as myself.
4) Largely due to everyone here on Patreon, that little YouTube channel has grown into a company with employees & healthcare, and a pool table (the big three).
5) Over the years, people who remember An Inconvenient Talk Show have asked if I was ever going to do the Al Gore show again. I would always say, “only if Al Gore is the guest.” It was not a serious thought, but a tiny part of me was secretly hoping somehow Al Gore would find out about me impersonating him, think it was funny, and decide to come on the show (like the time Nicholas Cage went on SNL to confront Andy Samberg's Nicholas Cage impression).
6) A few months ago a representative from The Climate Reality Project contacted me about appearing in Al Gore's climate conference, and last weekend I achieved the weirdest dream I’ve ever had. The real Al Gore is a brilliant and funny dude, and I am forever grateful to him for letting me host An Inconvenient Talk Show one last time for 3000 people. Never meet your hero unless your hero is Al fuckin’ Gore.
7) There is a LOT of footage of this show, and I will be dropping clips right here on Patreon when I get a copy of it.
Thanks for everything,
Rollie
*If you ever see me in the wild, ask me what happened during the second show (it went bad).
Comments
Christian Kent
That's amazing dude. AND HEY THE PANDEMIC MADE A GOOD THING, just looking for upsides, that's all. It's actually unlikely to have got to here any other way.
Spencer Delamore
That first photo is EVERYTHING
