Mark Leveson: I think we should mention Ryan... cause Ryan Stiles was..... and always was..... fantastic on the show.
Dan Patterson: He was fantastic.
Mark Leveson: He was just -
Dan Patterson: But what we hadn't realized in the early days was that we didn't realize how important it was for people to be with people they improvised with a lot. And Ryan came over and did the show and he was really good. But it was only when we started putting him with Colin that we got this real magic. Because they have a telepathy, they worked - it was like Sweeney and Steve. They were good individually, but when they came together, they were very good, and the same with Ryan and Colin is that they were so used to working with each other and doing stuff, that.... we realized, suddenly, that you had to have them together throughout the - and Colin did two or three shows on his own, and..... wasn't that good.
Mark Leveson: When we first - when we, when we saw him originally, Colin was one of the funniest people I think we'd seen onstage. We saw him in Toronto, didn't we?
Dan Patterson: Yeah.
Mark Leveson: And he was - he really was hilarious, and he could do scenes like nobody else. And when we brought him over to Britan - and Colin's very shy - and.... he found it very difficult at first, didn't he?
Dan Patterson: Yeah.
Mark Leveson: And he.... I think other people were probably saying "Why are you keeping him on?" But we were just waiting for the magic to happen.
Dan Patterson: And it happened really..... but Colin always says that he came over, and I said, um, you know..... something like "Make sure your flight isn't 'til Monday" or something like this..... you know, in the idea that he may get another show, and he did a show and then didn't hear anything, so he just flew off again, and he's always said "Oh, I guess I didn't really do that well."
They later go on to say:
Dan Patterson: You know, people said we were quite ruthless, that people would come on and we just wouldn't use them again, but.... we - it was that fear, it was just that there was this thing of - you can't have somebody and - and, uh...... they're just okay for a long time and never do - the one exception was Colin, because he took a time to warm up, but we knew that he was just brilliant, and we thought that if we can get his -
And that's when they stopped talking about Colin and I lost interest.
I just find this so cool that A) They were able to recognize how amazing Colin and Ryan were together, and B) They gave Colin a few chances because he had impressed them so much at the audition. Isn't that cool? I think that's cool.
By the way...... I kind of have to do this.
Young Colin and and young Ryan. They're so cute.
P.S Colin actually documented Dan's story about the monday plane in his own words. I'll just put that here.
"My first performance on “Whose Line”…how can I put this? Oh, yes – it sucked. I met the other improvisers two hours before we shot the show. I totally psyched myself out. Before the show, producer Dan Patterson said “Colin, if the show goes well, you can do the Sunday show tomorrow.” After the debacle, he said, “So you leave on Monday, do you?”"
And I find that great because I'd read that before, and Colin makes it sound like they were, I dunno, taking a chance on the new guy they found or something, someone they'd try but wasn't all that sure about, you know? But if you listen to Mark Leveson and Dan Patterson, he was one of the funniest people they'd ever seen onstage, and THAT'S why they gave him all those chances - because THEY KNEW HE WAS AWESOME.
Again - a great mixture of fascinating and adorable.
