Interviewing with humor: Exploring Banter and Interviewing Techniques with Mary Meyer
Join us for an exciting episode of Creator/Shift where our host, Erika Christie, sits down with the brilliant and entertaining Mary Meyer! In this episode, Mary shares her experiences of interviewing bands, bantering with them, and the creative process behind it all. From the origins of the term "bandter" to the challenges and fun of creating skits and improvising on the fly. Mary’s approach to interviews, imbued with the spontaneity of improv and the polish of a seasoned actor, offers a treasure trove of lessons for anyone looking to enhance their creative endeavors. Mary gives us an engaging peek into her world.
Discover:
- What "bandter" really means and how it became a show segment
- A hilarious breakdown of a live "bandter" session with Mary
- The behind-the-scenes process of setting up interviews that feed into improv sessions
- How Mary's acting skills enhance her interviewing abilities
- Mary also points out the importance of being an enthusiastic version of oneself while hosting.
A tip from Mary Meyer “Be an investigator and collect quirks from your guests—turn them into gold!” 🏅
Feeling the inspiration? Share this slice of creativity with someone who’d appreciate it! 🌟
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Erika Christie is the host of Creator/Shift and as a Filmmaker/Writer/Producer has worked professionally in many different fields. Erika will be interviewing all types of amazing art-folk and delving into the best ways that artists up skill themselves- meaning, what they do to better themselves and their artwork. We'll also be putting a special focus on transitioning your skills into new artistic mediums and how to best work and collaborate with artists who have very different skill sets from your own.
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TRANSCRIPT
Erika Christie:
Hello, Mary. How are you doing today?
Mary Meyer:
Hey, Erika. I'm doing good.
Erika Christie:
Fantastic. All right, Mary, we're gonna take a quick look at interviews you did with all the laughs live, and the segment is called bandter. Mary, what is bandter?
Mary Meyer:
Bantering with the band.
Erika Christie:
Fantastic. Did you come up with that?
Mary Meyer:
Yes, I did.
Erika Christie:
Yes, you did.
Mary Meyer:
I did come up with that, yes. Banter.
Erika Christie:
You've already shown the audience that you're brilliant. This conversation.
Mary Meyer:
There you go. Dominic was very stressed over the name of it, and I'm like, threw out some ideas, I think. Banter. Banter was. It is. It's cute.
Erika Christie:
Yeah.
Mary Meyer:
Little segment thing.
Erika Christie:
All right, let's. Let's look at this ad. Here we go. Bantering with Mary. We're just gonna kind of skip through this a little bit, just so we can get a little bit of a flavor of what it looks like.
Mary Meyer:
This is our little segment we like to call banter because we're gonna banter with the band.
Erika Christie:
Nice.
Mary Meyer:
That was.
Erika Christie:
There was a lot of groans in that one, Mary. They're only growing groaning nails that line so. Well.
Mary Meyer:
Yeah, a groan is as good as a laugh. That's what they say.
Erika Christie:
I think you were going for a groan. So that was mission accomplished. Like, that was. You nailed that. You got the timing on that one.
Mary Meyer:
Perfect. Okay, so Paul is variety stomp when he's doing his single app.
Erika Christie:
Let's skip through just a little award.
Mary Meyer:
Winning fresh air radio show on NPR. What's your favorite kind of sandwich or something? Oh, well, guess what? I have done some research, and I have other hard hitting questions like that, and I'm going to ask you one right now. Yeah. So, as you see on the screen, I know there's two cats. My two cats. Okay, tell us about one of their names. Okay. I wish I had a laser pointer.
Erika Christie:
Didn't you mention being, like, an investigative reporter in one of these? I'm pretty sure you made some comment about that.
Mary Meyer:
Oh, yeah, I think I probably did that one once. Hard hitting, investigative reporting. We're going to go to a socialist look at his cats.
Erika Christie:
Awesome.
Mary Meyer:
He only likes one of the cats. So it was. This is. This is very.
Erika Christie:
I forgot about that.
Mary Meyer:
Yeah, he only likes one.
Erika Christie:
Can you remember his reasoning for why he only liked one of the. I can't. I now remember this, that you're saying it.
Mary Meyer:
So much. Drama. Cat drama. I think one is nice and one is not nice, so.
Erika Christie:
Oh, my gosh, poor kitty.
Mary Meyer:
As cats can be.
Erika Christie:
All right, so here you are chatting with him, and then what do we go to right after that. And then it goes right into improv.
Mary Meyer:
It's based on what she doesn't Shay said at all.
Erika Christie:
So we got Freddie and Marcus, who are doing an improv session, and they got a good look at this. They got a good, what, 1213 minutes out of your interview area?
Mary Meyer:
Yeah.
Erika Christie:
All right. So my maintain couple questions for you, Mary, because I know you've done interviewing for a long time. You've had multiple shows. You've done it. You did it for banter a number of times when you know that there's going to be an improv session about your interview immediately after the interview. How do you approach the interview differently than you normally do?
Mary Meyer:
Well, I think you got to think through, like, the different pieces because you can create the questions to be. To have some. Enough meat to work, you know, to work together to create something afterwards, which I actually had done that in the show that I did in Nashville, but it wasn't improv after I created a skit afterwards based on my interview. So I pre created just, I pre created either a game or a skit with the two. With the two people that came in. It was usually like, it was a musical group and then, like an actor or something like that. So I had created something fun and silly as a segment. But this is like, I don't have to create the fun stuff afterwards.
Mary Meyer:
I just gotta toss them some softballs, I guess.
Erika Christie:
Did you, did you, when you were doing that in Nashville, did you do it backwards? Did you come up with the skit first and then figure out your questions? Or did you do the question first and then figure out what would make a better skit?
Mary Meyer:
Hmm. I think I, you know, what I did is I talked to both of the guests. The band, you know, can be more than one guest, which is like, here. So I would talk to them and I would just say, you know, tell me something silly about you and that kind of thing. You know, I get. I try to get something to work with. What's your hobbies? Whatever. And then I would find something that was common in between the two guests to create.
Mary Meyer:
Like, once I did it was. And these two, these guys knew each other, too, because Nashville's not that big of a city, but. So the actor and the musical group knew each other, so we created something based on the Princess bride. So I just tested them to see if they could say, if I said part of a line, if they could finish the line. So that was. That's when I remember. But when it was a game show thing based, you know, we just tried to just try to. I guess I knew enough.
Mary Meyer:
I don't know, I just knew enough about what I would ask for questions, that I would create something, and then I don't know how I made it work exactly, but, yeah.
Erika Christie:
Does being an actor help you be a better interviewer? Do you think your actor skills translate to kind of being yourself and asking questions?
Mary Meyer:
I think so, yeah. Well, it's because that's just, you know, on just knowing how to present yourself on camera, I guess, which a lot of people can do pretty naturally, honestly, I think it's probably not as hard of a skill set as people think that most people are still scared of it, but, yeah, just. Just knowing there's that you're on. So micro expressions or whatever, you manage it as your character, which when you're hosting, you're just yourself, but an upbeat version of yourself. You don't bring your pillow upbeat.
Erika Christie:
So I'm a little terrified of what Mary, like, super, super upbeat is because if it's even higher than Mary in the promo videos that we look earlier in the channel, and you'll see some promo videos with Mary, it's even more upbeat than that. I'm a little scared. Yeah.
Mary Meyer:
Well, it doesn't get too much for a beat.
Erika Christie:
Otherwise it'll run multiple times. You were so excited.
Mary Meyer:
Oh, my gosh.
Erika Christie:
Last question either. What is the craziest question you've asked someone in an interview? Or what's the craziest question you've been asked?
Mary Meyer:
Oh, gosh, that's a good one. You know, the crazy. I'll do the craziest question I've been asked, and I did a horrible job answering it. Someone asked me what we would just to kind of come up with, like, an example of a skit and how we would do that. And so, like, we. I tried to start role playing a skit with my interviewer, and I don't think it went well. Like, I signed a teacher roll real fast and, like, on the spot, and I was just like, oh, dear God, I hope he does not. That was a podcast.
Mary Meyer:
Like, I'm not gonna tell you what one it is now. I'm like, I'm just. Dear God, I hope he doesn't play this because that was really not good. But he did. It's included. Oh, that was really bad.
Erika Christie:
Would you like to improv right now and do a better version of it?
Mary Meyer:
Yes, I I would. I didn't know we were doing this. Okay. Um, do I have to come with the characters?
Erika Christie:
Uh, you're playing both characters.
Mary Meyer:
Oh, I'm playing both characters.
Erika Christie:
Yeah. Yeah. And you obviously do a better job of it this time. Don't suck, because. Or I will find the other interview and I will compare them. 25 seconds. Go.
Mary Meyer:
You know, missy, when I was your age, I had so many kitty cats, and, I mean, I. Like, I had a farm full of kitty cats. There was kitty cats outside on the farm, and there's some inside there that says, oh, my gosh, grandpa, that's amazing. Do you have any of them left anywhere? No, kitty cat people still have Kit Kats. I know they still have Kit Kats. Grandpa, my neighbor has a kitty cat. Can you get me one? Well, I reckon I can. Yeah.
Erika Christie:
My only question from the vowels of my improv, was that the good version or the bad version? Because I couldn't quite tell.
Mary Meyer:
This was so legitimately improv. There's no, like. Just so everyone knows, there is no warning that I was going to be asked to improv two characters, and there is no time to go think about what they're going to be. Just whatever came out of my mouth is what came out of my mouth.
Erika Christie:
That's all we were going for. That's it. I just. I just. I just wanted to get more fodder of Mary being weird. I mean, accomplished.
Mary Meyer:
I did the. I did the callback on the cat from earlier in the interview.
Erika Christie:
It was amazing. And I did catch it. I was waiting for a. Which kitty cat was a good kitty cat? Which kitty cat was bad kitty cat? But I'll take the weird grandpa. That was fine. All right. Thank you so much, Mary. People want to find you online.
Erika Christie:
Where do they go to find you?
Mary Meyer:
Oh, Instagram @MaryMeyerAct .
Erika Christie:
Awesome. Thank you, Mary.