[MADtv] Keegan-Michael Key

[MJB12]

They were alright last season, but please, Keegan, no more obnoxious yelling this time around (Shot in the Head!!!!!, Crazy as hell!)

[MJB12]

Then what do you have? A bag full of squirts?

[Dartanian]

KEEGAN-MICHAEL KEY ONSTAGE IN HOLLYWOOD

Regular cast member Keegan-Michael Key can be seen every Tuesday night improvising with his fellow Second City alums in “The 313” (for those not in the know, it’s Chicago’s area code). Word is quickly spreading all throughout Los Angeles about the depth and brilliance of this improv team – they are not to be missed. Tuesday nights at 9:30 at The Second City Theatre: 8156 Melrose Avenue. All ages, valet available.--Asterios Kokkinos

- www.madtv.com

[Scorpiogrrl4405]

Ahhhhhh the bank robber sketch. I actually liked that one.

[Dartanian]

Originally posted by Scorpiogrrl2003
Ahhhhhh the bank robber sketch. I actually liked that one.

Me too. I liked how he teased the Judge for being retarded, and how he ran out at the end. Very funny sketch.

[MysterE]

One of the other staff may decide to post this as front page news, but I'm done starting news threads for these obscure events that nobody ever seems to go to. Anyways here it is...

The Second City Stays up Late for Santa w/ 24hr Benefit
posted: 12/2/2004

The Second City is proud to announce the third annual benefit event: “The Second City That Never Sleeps: Letters To Santa” – 24-hours of improvisation by Second City performers and special guests – to provide holiday presents for needy children beginning at 8:30p on Tuesday, December 21 through the night til 8:30p on Wednesday, December 22, 2004 in The Second City e.t.c. (1608 North Wells in Piper’s Alley). Tickets are $10.00 and can be purchased at the door.

For the third straight year, a group of improvisers take the stage for an entire 24-hour period to benefit “The Second City That Never Sleeps: Letters to Santa” providing presents for needy children and families in the Chicago area. Playing improvisational games, long-form scenes, monologues, and anything else to keep them awake, this group of Second City improvisers will be supported by special guest appearances. Confirmed cast members include Second City alums Dan Bakkedahl, Joe Canale, Andy Cobb, Shelly Gossman, Pete Grosz, Paul Grondy, TJ Jagodowski, Keegan Michael-Key, Mick Napier, Pat O’Brien, and Sue Salvi. This core group of performers will participate for the entire 24 hours.

Special guests scheduled to appear are Recording Engineer and Musician Steve Albini, Near children’s rock band The Blisters, country musician Robbie Fulks, The Mekon’s Jon Langford & Sally Timms, and Wilco's Jeff Tweedy. More special guests will be added to the line-up in the coming weeks.

During Jeff Tweedy’s set on Tuesday, December 21, a very special silent auction will be held for a private show (in your own home) with Jeff Tweedy and twenty of your friends. Jeff Tweedy will perform 20 songs of your choice.

The admission price of $10.00 will guarantee you entry to the event for the entire 24-hour period. Raffle prizes will also be offered during the event. For more information, please call 312.337.3992.

http://secondcity.com/news/article.asp?nid=1183563009

[lilkeem45]

-The funny thing is that he was not supposed to come back for Season 10,but i guess he impressed the casting agents

[MJB12]

Don't trust that kid, he doesn't know what he's doing.

He originally only signed on for eight episodes or something, with an OPTION to return if they wanted him too, which obviously they did and it was a good decision.

[elscorcho]

EIGHT QUESTIONS WITH KEEGAN-MICHAEL KEY



What's the one thing that makes you laugh without fail?
People falling down no matter what the height.

Who is the one person you consider a genius?
Peter Sellers.

What type of career to you secretly desire but would never pursue?
Carpenter.

Who do you wish you looked more like?
Nobody, really.

If you could push one person off of a cliff, who would it be?
Satan.

What pisses you off the most?
Just plain ol' meanness.

What's your favorite bad movie?
Dolemite.

What is your motto?
Do unto others.

[Raphaela]

He got his MFA in Theatre @ penn state the same year *I* got MY BA in Theatre @ penn state!

[lilkeem45]

Originally posted by MJB12
Don't trust that kid, he doesn't know what he's doing.

I read his page on the tvtome website and that's what it said.

[I_Love_Nicole_P]

I hope Keegan comes back for another season. Cool guy and funny actor. Except for his "Man-UP" routine, everything else is always fresh!

"Just a burrito!!!"

[Undertow69]

He is awesome! I hope they make the Coach character a regular.

[MysterE]

Keegan is commentator Gator Jones on the video game “NFL Blitz Pro 2004.”

[Dartanian]

MADtv Exclusive Access: Keegan-Michael Key

"Coach Hines"

Interviewer: What was the inspiration behind Coach Hines?

Keegan: The inspiration -- I lived two doors down from these three kids, who were my best friends growing up, and they go on the website all the time actually, it's funny, and their father is the inspiration for Coach Hines. When we were little kids, he was a football coach at two schools, I mean when we were kids he was a football coach at one school, which was an all boys, private, Catholic school, just like Saint Francis is in the sketches. And because the writer, John Crane, went to an all-boys private school, De La Salle, and you know, there's De La Salle's in every city in the country. So he taught at the University of Detroit, Jesuit High School and Academy, and then as all of us got older and went to Shrine of the Little Flower High School (I mean, I was a good Catholic boy growing up), so he was the offensive co-ordinator at Shrine High School, and I think he was the defensive co-ordinator at U of D, so he was a coach and its really just the eyes (does Coach Hines eyes and pretends to chew gum), and he's a much mellower guy now but he used to have these piercing eyes, these really intense piercing eyes all the time, so yeah.

Interviewer: And how about the outfit? Is that -- did he inspire it?

Keegan: The outfit is an amalgam of three other coaches.

Interviewer: Oh okay, cool.

Keegan: Our Dean of Students in High School used to tuck his tie into his pants, and the bike shorts is what every coach -- anybody who is over 25, or 28, 29 years of age knows that coach, who wore those bike shorts (starts laughing), you know like, "why were you wearing them?"

Interviewer: Yeah!

Keegan: So my gym teacher from grade school, Mr. Kendigan was his name, and he wore those shorts. Yellow, man I loved them. And the first pair of those shorts that I wore were yellow actually, when I created the character at The Second City, in Detroit.

"Beginnings"

Keegan: I started doing drama in high school, and I was in Godspell when I was a junior in high school, and I was in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat when I was a sophomore. I played Jesus in Godspell and after that I was like "forget being a veteranarian!" I mean I love animals, but then someone told me I had to do alot of math to be a vet and I said "forget that, I'm doing this. I'll just do this from now on, this is awesome!" But then the comedy stuff didn't really come until -- I mean, I didn't think about being a comedian, I just wanted to be an actor. And then I got out of graduate and made a film, it was a drama and I got killed in the film so it was all dramatic, and dreams unfulfilled and all this, and two of the guys in the film were friends of mine, they're my very dear friends now, and they were like "you should come down to Second City and audition" and I did and a whole new world opened. It was like I got three degrees: I got my Bachelors Degree, Masters in Fine Arts and Masters in Comedy. It was so awesome.

"Sketch Ideas"

Interviewer: Has it [rejected sketch] happened yet?

Keegan: Yeah ... It happened earlier this year, there was a sketch we read at the table called "Yemen" which was about a waiter in a Greek restaurant who is Yemeni, it happened to me in real life, the person who is sitting at the table asks him where he's from, and he's just positive that they're not going to know where he's from, and he tells him where he's from and the guy at the table knows exactly where Yemen is, and the guy freaks out because he knows where Yemen is. So he's like "You know where Yemen is? How do you know Yemen? I do - this - I - halalalalala!!" and he can't believe that they all know where Yemen is, and so the guy at the table is sitting there talking to his friends drinking his water and as soon as the glass hits the table, the guys there to give him water, and he gives him extra hors douvres, gives him his daughter, and they sacrifice a goat for him because they can't believe the guy knows Yemen. And they didn't pick it, you know what I mean? And I had a writer who liked it, and he said "write it" so I did, and that kinda -- did it break my heart? I guess you've gotta have thick skin, and there's always a chance that its not going to get picked, and sometimes things get picked and you go, "really? I had no idea that was gonna get picked" you know? You're surprised.

"Improv"

Keegan: Right now it's pure improv, its what we call long form improv, where we'll usually take one suggestion and we'll go all the way through and just kind of let it morph and new ideas will happen, and its very stream of consciousness. We tried to create this little world that can get as far reaching as it wants, but then it somehow thematically comes back to that suggestion. Improvisers love it, its a big thing to do in the world of improv, as opposed to short form improvisation, which is what you see on Whose Line Is It Anyway?. So its a different kind of experimental -- but its funny, its funny, its not just weird, its funny. Our aim is to make it as funny as we can, "finneus! Coem down from the mount! (*makes tribal African noise that I refuse to transcriber*). Every Saturday, 8 pm, at the Improv on Melrose. We need audience!

"Jovan Muskatelle"

Keegan: He's from Second City too, but he's actually a character that was created by somebody else. I mean he was not created by somebody else, the impetus of him was given to me by somebody else. There was a sketch we wrote about the war right as we were going into Iraq. And one of the members or the 313 wrote this sketch about border skirmish between Illinois and Indiana, and we did this whole scene that kinda played out exactly like some of the field reporters who were in Iraq qould play out. Illinois was attacking Indiana because Indiana had nerve gas in it, they had nerve gas plants in Indiana, so its like "theres this place that has nerve gas, we gotta go get it!" so they went into Indiana to get the nerve gas, and one of these reporters is saying "I'm here in Gary, Indiana" and this guy, Jovan Muskatelle comes up behind him and he's like "It's crazy as hell! It was crazy!" so that very first sketch that you saw, was almost word for word what happened at Second City.

[MysterE]

University Park, Pa. -- In his second season on the sketch comedy show "Mad TV", Keegan-Michael Key has become best known for such comedic characters as "Crazy-as-Hell Guy," "Coach Hines," "Brake-Hex-Guy," "Snoop Dog," and "Ludacris."

Now Key, a 1996 Master of Fine Arts graduate of the Penn State School of Theatre, is adding another notable accomplishment to his acting career as he takes over as host of Animal Planet's "Planet's Funniest Animals."

In the all-new "Planet's Funniest Animals," Key promises to pull out all the stops while capturing the "natural" comedy that takes place anywhere from our own back yards to the Australian Outback. Key will add his own unique style of commentary and clarification as the clips continue to roll in front of a live audience. The show, which over six years has become one of the network's most popular, airs Thursdays at 8 p.m.

Also a performer and instructor with the famed comedy theater Second City, Key has established a successful career in comedy. But during his three years at Penn State, comedy seemed an unlikely professional future.

"Absolutely not," he said. "I was planning to be a Shakespearean actor who'd move to New York eventually, maybe be on some episodes of Law & Order, but I just assumed it would all be dramatic. I thought I'd be doing Shakespeare and absurdist theater until the day I died."

After graduating from Penn State, Key took a dramatic role in an independent film, after which he was encouraged by castmates to audition for Second City.

"I said to them, 'What about my performance in that film made you think I should do that?'" Key said. "I guess I was always funny, but when I came into this, it wasn't a matter of me being a comedian. I looked at it that I was an actor doing comedy. That's how I approached it."

Even though he wasn't planning for a comedy career, he emphasized that his graduate education at Penn State left him well-prepared for his professional work.

"One thing that stands out to me was being a graduate assistant for Theatre 100 classes, and that experience really equipped me for what I do know in sketch comedy and hosting," he said. "I really learned the different styles of theater. We had things where we'd get the scripts on Monday and perform it on Friday. At 'Mad TV' you have to work at that pace and that goes directly from what I learned at Penn State."

Raised in Detroit, Key attended the University of Detroit as an undergrad.

"Having been raised in an urban area and attending college in Detroit, I always thought that if I ever had the opportunity, I'd like to study somewhere sylvan, somewhere bucolic," he said. "I don't think I could have picked a better place than Penn State."

From the moment he first auditioned for faculty through his graduate career, Key found that Penn State had more than scenery. He credits the program and Penn State faculty for his development.

"Then and now, one word comes to mind when I talk about Penn State, and that is 'nurturing,'" Key said. "I knew from when I first auditioned that everyone seemed nurturing and sweet. But with the whole staff there is the balance between being nurturing and being firm about what you needed to do. No one could be surprised if they were cut from the program. You either improved or you didn't and if you didn't it was because you weren't paying attention."

Key admits, however, that Penn State was first on his radar for non-academic reasons.

"I grew up a huge fan of Penn State football," he said. "So I knew about them for this one thing, but then Penn State turned out to be the most pleasant surprise of my career."

http://live.psu.edu/story/14697

[cartman2002]

Forgot to mention this but the turkey got to me yesterday.

If you watched the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade, Besides the embarrasing M & M Balloon flight around Times Square,

Keegan Michael-Key was one of the celebrites appearing on the parade promoting his other TV project "The Planet's Funniest Animals"

If safe to say, The producers of the TV broadcast on NBC never mentioned Keegan involvment on MADtv.

[Scorpiogrrl4405]

Originally posted by cartman2002

If safe to say, The producers of the TV broadcast on NBC never mentioned Keegan involvment on MADtv.

of course they wouldn't....MAD is a rival to SNL which is on NBC. Its just naturally a given.