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Here's the full interview I conducted with the Upright Citizens Brigade (sans Matt Besser, sadly.)
Please excuse any typos or errors I may have made. 
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THE UPRIGHT CITIZENS BRIGADE
CONFIDENTIAL INTERVIEW LEVEL 4 SECURITY CLEARANCE ONLY

The Upright Citizens Brigade was once headquartered here in Chicago. It’s membership was vast and the elite covert pranksters managed several events that garnered animosity from reporters, police and innocent bystanders alike. Talented improvisers all, they also put up several sketch shows at the ImprovOlympic and in the Second City etc space.  In 1996, the UCB (Matt Walsh, Ian Roberts, Amy Poehler and Matt Besser) moved to New York City in order to bring more of their sketch comedy madness to the people.

The group still remains devout followers of late improv guru Del Close and his teachings. Though they now have their own sketch comedy show on the Comedy Channel, they still mention Del in all of their interviews and strongly encourage others to do so.
They have enthusiastically returned to Chicago for the Chicago Improv Fest for the past three years and will once again visit our stages this April. Though they have finished shooting their third season, the cast remains extremely busy. I managed to track down three members for phone interviews, though I missed an opportunity to speak with Matt Besser, the most vocally strident of the quartet.
Amy Poelher puts both peanut butter and butter on her English Muffins. I spoke to her as she prepared “to carbo-load” for the day. Ian Roberts and his wife, Katie Roberts a Chicago improv alum herself, just recently had a baby girl named Josie. Matt Walsh still has strong ties in Chicago with his family still residing here. I spoke to all three separately and the sometimes the conversation wandered. Here are the results:

HOW DID YOU END UP IN CHICAGO AND IN IMPROV?

AMY: I was in college at BC (Boston College) and it was time to graduate and I didn’t know what to do with my life and I was a theater major with a communications minor which means I was in all these classes with all these football players who thought they were going to be sports announcers. My roommate, Kara McNamara (of the ImprovOlympic team, the Tribe, now a “counselor” on MTV’s “Blame Game”) and I had been in an improv group at BC for the past three years (“My Mothers’ Fleabag”) and we loved doing it. We had a great time doing it and we   found a brochure that said that “Hey, you can keep doing this” by taking classes at Second City. We wanted to postpone our adult choices so we decided to move out there just for Second City. Kara moved out there a year before me so by the time I got there she was like “Hey, take these classes, go to ImprovOlympic, do it this way…” So, that’s why.

IAN: I went to college in Iowa, then I followed a girlfriend out to Milwaukee. When I was in Milwaukee, I started doing ComedySportz for lack of anything better to do and also did a bunch of plays. Once I felt that I had exhausted the possibilities there I headed to Chicago sort of thinking I would get into Second City the moment I got there. I auditioned, did not get in right away, but I did get involved with ImprovOlympic. ImprovOlympic was the first place where I started doing the improv that I wanted to do. When I saw a show there, it was like “Ah! That’s what I want to do!”
It drove me crazy doing the kind of improv I was doing with ComedySportz because it was just doing games and you couldn’t get out original concepts and want-not. That was my slightly circuitous route to doing what I call “real improv” with ImprovOlympic.

MATT W.: I got affiliated through my brother Pat. He was doing ImprovOlympic and it was just when Del was back from being in L.A..
ImprovOlympic was over on Chow and I started taking classes with Noah Gregoropolous and Charna and Del. Then it moved over to Papa Milano and I started to hang out with Besser and I told him to check it out. I did (Second City) TourCo., and I did the Annoyance. I stopped doing ImprovOlympic for awhile and I did the Annoyance where I learned how to improv full-length plays, more as a tool than as a performance piece. We did some late night shows like Puptent Theater and ScrewPuppies. I was in the original cast of that.

TELL ME ABOUT YOUR FIRST MEETING WITH DEL.

AMY: I had seen him around, but the first class I had with him it was me and Tina Fey (head writer for Saturday Night Live) . God, when was that? ’93? I was really anxious to meet him and I was very nervous to improvise in his class because I was afraid he was going to hate me.
The first day we had him he had just got his new false teeth so for the next three or four weeks all he did was swear, and bitch and moan and tell us all these horrible stories about how he ruined his life and look at his fucking teeth and he’s so pissed about his false teeth. We were in awe and scared of him because he was grouchy. He used to call me by the wrong name all the time. I got to know him a little bit better when we did this pilot for Second City that was really ill-conceived (“RV TV”). It was fun because we got to go to Toronto with Del and hang out with him. Hanging out with him in the airport was really fun.

IAN: I can’t tell you about the actual first meeting, but I can tell you about the first meeting that sticks in my mind. It sticks in my mind because it’s negative. I was doing a scene that was going fairly decently and then I started to throw in some pop references and he said, “Alright, alright, stop. Well, you had a perfectly good scene that you then proceeded to ruin with your inane pop references. Just slow down and trust yourself. Let’s have some original ideas, for God’s sake.” That’s the first thing I actually remember of Del among many, many memories. (laughing) The first thing I remember is a negative one! I wanted so much for him to think I was great in the second class.

MATT W.: It was at Chow, down on Wells. He just got back from LA and he was talking about driving around town chasing auditions all day and how horrible Los Angeles is, how soulless it is. Then he talked about tossing some runes or dice or whatever they’re called to help him make the decision  if he would stay in LA or come back.

WHAT WOULD YOU SAY ARE THE DIFFERENCES, IF ANY, BETWEEN CHICAGO AND NEW YORK IMPROV?

AMY: We talk about that all the time actually. It’s changing all the time and I’m sure Chicago improv has changed. I’m sure New York improv was a certain way; I don’t know. I only know what I remember and what I’m experiencing now.
In reality, it’s not really that different. Improvisers love to talk about the minutia of things, but the Harold translates here as well as it does in Chicago. There’s equally as much talent.
When we first got here in New York there were more natural performers. There weren’t as many businessmen taking classes to learn how to write better presentations. So, the stakes were a little higher in New York. There were a lot of people here just for that; to perform. There was this sort of heightened sense of performance, but that also sometimes came with a heightened sense of pressure. For a while we found that the commitment level in Chicago, just the basic raw commitment to things, was hard to match here in New York. We tried to figure it out, because it wasn’t that they didn’t want to commit or that they were fucking each other, but it seemed that there were less chances to perform so less chances to fail, so people put a lot of pressure on performing. Therefore, when you put a lot of pressure on yourself to perform, for example like in Los Angeles where improv is usually quite awful, it becomes an individual showcase like “How can I be funny”. Any improv show like that is doomed to fail.
So, we found that for a bit and there wasn’t much long-form happening here which was exciting. When I left Chicago people were tired of doing Harold and taking it apart and they still couldn’t do one. When we came here people  already knew about the Harold and were doing it. It wasn’t like we brought it here and nobody knew about it. I was excited about that and the simplicity of it. It was nice not having to back everyone up from doing their crazy openings. It’s changing now, but audiences here in New York don’t really see that much improv so they’re really excited by it.

IAN: They’re becoming less since we moved out here. Before we got here there just wasn’t a lot of long-form improv; there were people who wanted to do it, but they didn’t know how to go about it. Since we started our Training Center there’s becoming less and less a difference. Of course, there’s less shows here, but I think you’ll find similarly good work here in New York.

MATT W.: I don’t know much about New York improv, only what we do to be honest. My impression is that there’s not a lot of variation. I think there’s not a lot of long-form. There’s a lot of musical stuff because of Broadway. Shorter stuff, quick stuff, so long-form’s pretty new, maybe not new, but had a resurgence since we came out here.


ARE YOU STILL TEACHING AND PERFORMING?

AMY: We have over 250 students at our school. We teach, (Chicago alums) Kevin Mullaney teaches, Pat McCartney, Armando Diaz teaches… a teacher here in New York Michael Zelany… students perform shows on Thursday nights. Students have New Team Harold shows and other shows. The UCB Proper does sketch on Saturday nights and ASSSCAT (improv) on Tuesdays.

HOW MUCH OF THE UPRIGHT CITIZENS BRIGADE TELEVISION SHOW IS CREATED THROUGH IMPROVISATION?

AMY: Third season, quite a bit. The first season not too much. We had written two shows that we had performed at Second City and when we came to New York we wrote two more sketch shows so we kind of culled most of our shows from that. The third season is mostly from improv.
We tape all of the ASSSCAT shows and all of our sketch shows; we also improvise after each of our sketch shows. We go back and look at the tapes for ideas or premises we thought were funny or we bring in half-written scenes and we improvise the rest on stage.

WHEN THE SHOW IS IN PRODUCTION, WHAT’S YOUR TYPICAL DAY LIKE?

AMY: Get up at 5:30 in the morning, realize you have 10 minutes to get to the van, get in the van at 6am, drive to the location, which is usually in New Jersey. Get out, start getting in hair and make-up which can take from half an hour to three hours depending on what we look like. Block the scene, rehearse it and then shoot it, just that one scene until 9-10 at night.
And that’s pretty much every day for, our shooting season is about five months. The season we just wrapped we shot seasons two and three back to back. For the past year, out of twelve months, we were shooting for about 9 months. It was pretty intense.

IAN: When we’re not shooting, we have prep weeks. We come in about every day for about five hours and that’s rewriting and polishing up scripts that are coming up.

WHAT ARE YOU DOING AT THE IMPROV FEST THIS YEAR?

IAN: What we’ve put together for our touring show is sort of a “Best of” of all three seasons. If we’re going to do our current sketch show we’d have to modify it. We usually do a set show, and that ends up becoming one of the episodes, and afterward we put up new scenes every week. We’ve had shorter shows to accommodate putting up a bunch of new scenes to see how they work. This year we had “Town Meeting” that was the base show and we moved things around. If we do the same thing we did before, probably just the town hall part, and then improvise afterward.
It’s such a blast coming back to Chicago, both times we’ve had a blast. We know everyone, it’s where we came from. Actually, we know less and less people each time, because more and more people keep taking off. I hope that it’s inspiring for people to see people that were there so recently who have a show and are doing well.

YOU MENTIONED A NATIONAL TOUR?

IAN: It was put together really quickly towards the end of the season. It’s national, but not in the sense that you think of the Rolling Stones National Tour. It’s kind of all over the place, single dates; Connecut, Georgia, Tennensse, NYU here in in New York. There’s only about seven dates.
I think if we got organized and planned ahead we could do a nice big one.

ARE YOU GUYS DOING THIS YOURSELF OR THROUGH COMEDY CENTRAL?

IAN: It’s not through Comedy Central, it’s through our management group. We actually just talked to Comedy Central about that being a real possibility. We’re the only show, if you look at their network, where they could take the show and take it on the road. They’ve got some other good shows, but they’re not like that. So, we said why don’t you guys get involved with us, sponsor it, organize it and we can go around under your banner, but that’s not what happened this time around.
It was real last minute thing. We were “Hey, we should tour after this season!”

WHO ARE, OR WHAT ARE, YOUR CURRENT INFLUENCES?

AMY: Elaine May, Julie Kavner. Who else do I think is really funny? I always hate this questions because it’s like ‘What are your favorite bands?’ and you think “What are the coolest bands?”

IAN: I don’t know if there are many people who influence me currently. I’d have to go back a bit… Monty Python influenced me. I used to watch them and think I could die happily if I could do something like that.  I thought it was so neat that they wrote everything and performed everything and had so many solid shows.

MATT W.: My dad. My dad is a very silly person. Boy, I could give you a million and you pick whatever you want. As a child I was a big fan of the Stooges, the Marx Brothers, all Brothers comedy actually, Hudson Brothers, Mark Brothers, Martin & Rowan Brothers.

ALRIGHT THEN, WHEN YOU HAVE TIME WHAT SHOWS DO YOU SEEK OUT? WHAT DO YOU WATCH ON PURPOSE?

AMY: I used to love Mr. Show. I think Janeane (Garafalo) is a really funny stand-up. I still watch “The Simpsons” every week because it’s the funniest show on television. I read the Onion which I think is hilarious. What else is really funny? I watch so little TV. I can’t watch any sit-coms; I think they’re all really terrible. I usually watch my Muppets movies and my Monty Python movies. There are tons of people I think are really funny who I’m forgetting. I think Christopher Walken is hilarious.

DO YOU HAVE ANY ADVICE FOR IMPROVISERS?

AMY: Yes. Keep studying, don’t ever think that you need to stop because you’ve got it. Commit, I guess is my biggest thing. The difference between people who are going to be good and people who aren’t is commitment. That means committing actually in the scene means believing that you  are in that place even if the scene is tanking committing to it is to me impressive. It shows courage, intelligence and respect.  And commit to the craft. If you sign up for a class, go to it. If you going to be in a class, be in it. If you going to perform, perform all the time. Don’t be distracted by the five hundred other shows you’re doing. People do too many shows! (laughs) Do a couple and commit to really hard to selling them and pushing them and making them work. Don’t spread yourself too thin. It happens in Chicago all the time. People are doing five million shows in five million theaters. It happens in New York constantly too. It’s hard to focus.

IAN: Advice on improvising or getting ahead and getting a career? Getting ahead and getting a career, my main advice would be do exactly what you want to do.  Because you don’t want to have some career that everyone else has and maybe it’s just a job. I know I made that conscious decision at certain point. I was driving myself nuts going to all those agents with the rude woman at the front desk who doesn’t look up from her paper and says, “Nothing for you today.” It sort of bummed out. I said You know what? I’m going to do what I want to do and I ended up committing to the Upright Citizens Brigade and doing all these shows for fun and getting better. You develop your own voice. As far as improv… there’s too much stuff. Go to ImprovOlympic, listen to all the stuff they say and do it. Or if you’re in New York, come see us. Work with an ensemble. You can be good as an individual, but what makes a good team is getting to know each other’s moves like it’s second nature. If you’re not lucky enough to have a friendly relationship with the people you perform with then you really need to be rehearsing just as much as you all can commit to. I’d say that three times a week is a bare minimum to get to be a really good improv team.
Par that down to a sound bite, please.

MATT W.: Yes. Get an apartment with a bunch of your friends and start a sketch group and live together and then start performing all the time. That’s what I did. Find people you think are funny and try to do shows with those people. Take advantage of all the theater and stuff that comes through Chicago. Take advantage of all the amazing teachers; Noah, Mick (Napier), Charna (Halpern).

DO YOU THINK THERE’LL BE AN UCB MOVIE?

MATT W.: Yeah. Will anyone ever see it? I don’t know. Yeah. I think we will probably make a movie. We have acouple of ideas already. One’s about the Apocalypse. Adam McKay (former UCB member and creative consultant to Saturday Night Live) actually has been kind of working with us on a few ideas, written a few treatments. Yeah, that’d be great.

A PARTING MESSAGE FROM MATT WALSH:

Tell my Mom I might be staying at her house when I come in to town.

DOES SHE GET PERFORMINK?
Yeah. She’s a 64 year old mother of seven who’s looking to break into improv. So, if anyone’s looking to put her on a team...  Tell Charna that I said she’s funny and she should be on a team by now.