826NYC Superheroes Celebrate Our 10th Anniversary with Very Special Guests!

John Oliver, Chris O’Dowd, Ken Burns, and one of my favorite comedians, Eugene Mirman from Bob’s Burgers talk with WHAT THE DOOST!? backstage at the Town Hall in Times Square.

On Wednesday March 5, 2014 826NYC celebrated our 10 year anniversary of helping the Brooklyn community with a One-on-One Chat Spectacular! A radiant collection of intellectuals came together and interviewed one another. It was an extremely entertaining event ranging from hilarious banter to tackling tough topics like modern day Russia and the Central Park Five.  Eugene Mirman, “Gene” from Bob’s Burgers and 826NYC volunteer, summed up the evening for us backstage after the show:

I’m a proud Superhero tutor with 826NYC at their secret layer location in Brooklyn, disguised as the Superhero Supply Co. in Park Slope. The Superhero kids consistently blow my mind with their creativity, knowledge, and curiosity.

Throughout the school year I volunteer my time and enjoy the after school one-on-one sessions as well as the in-house ‘field trips,’ where students come in as a class and we create a storyline together. We then help turn the story into books that each student gets to take home.

Upon arrival, the line stretched all the way down the block, and we knew it would be worth the wait especially seeing Olivia Wild and Jason Sudeikis in line in front of us until the expecting mother was whisked inside. The show opened with Executive Director Joshua Mandelbaum and the lovely Mariama Lockington, Education Director, offering a heart warming welcome to the talented volunteers and comedians Sarah and Eugene took the stage to lead us through the night.

I feel bad for ?uestlove, he has to talk to John Oliver.  He just brings out the worst in people. – Sara Vowell

John Oliver? Yeah, his friendliness is literally debilitating.  Like, I get it, you’re genuinely lovely…and I’m exhausted. – Eugene Mirman

The interviewers and interviewees:

• Ken Burns, documentary filmmaker
• Kurt Anderson, author
• John Oliver, writer, comedian and host of HBO’s upcoming “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver”
• Ahmir “?uestlove” Thompson, musician
• Fred Armisen, actor, writer, and performer
• Chris O’Dowd, actor and comedian
• Jon Ronson, journalist, humorist, and documentary maker
• Masha Gessen, Russian author
• Robyn Hitchcock, musician
• Anand Giridharadas, author and New York Times columnist

?uestlove was hilariously still overcoming the effects of nitrous oxide, also known as laughing gas, from his morning trip to the dentist for a root canal.  He managed to laugh himself through explaining how he manages to hold down a number of high-profile jobs while including that this event was the fifth major thing he had done during the day and he’s got one more thing to go to…and his surgery didn’t count! Listen to John Oliver talk about it backstage. Masha shared a beautiful angle on recent politics in Russia when journalist Anand Giridharadas asked about what makes Pussy Riot so effective as a catalyst of social change.

You talk about, again to quote from the book, ‘all public rhetoric involves some measure of lying, and history – political history and art history – is made when someone effectively confronts the lie.’…that there are a lot of ways to confront a lie.  What is it about a punk band of young women that was able to confront these lies better than novels, or journalism, or TV shows, or whatever else?

Masha responds:

Well actually, that’s what we were just talking about because what happened in the Soviet Union, in Russia, is that language… it was corrupted, so for decades the people had been using words to mean their opposite. You know, when they said ‘democracy,’ they meant ‘an Authoritarian society;’ when they said ‘freedom,’ they meant ‘prison;’ when they said ‘affluent,’ they meant ‘impoverished.’

Even worse, there was a brief period in the late 80s and early 90s when language suddenly seemed rehabilitated. It seemed like you could use words to say what you mean again…and then that got shut down.  So this was a language that had been corrupted twice and it felt like there was nothing left. There were no words.

As Nadia Tolokonnikova said in her closing statement and of course, she said ‘we were looking for a place of maximum sincerity and we found it in Punk.’ I think there’s something about going to a very primitive form of expression and to screaming that maybe it begins to penetrate… –

Ken Burns spoke about his trademark style of bringing history alive starting early in his career while working for public television: 

…this idea how we might wake up a photograph, to treat it like a feature filmmaker would. A master-shot that has a long, a medium, a close, a tilt, a pan, a reveal, inserts, but also not just look at the photograph, to try to trust that it was once alive, representation of a frozen moment that had a past and perhaps a future, but listening to that photograph, you know, and try to make the sound effects, the music, not just the third person narration, the voice of god, which is…telling you what you should know, but also the first persibles as a kind of proof to you that it was alive that people were both very similar to how we are now, human nature doesn’t change, but also very different from this small an articulation to help ground you in abnormality so I just felt liberated there…and I hope that each film subsequently is an improvement on that.

I had a chance to catch up with Ken Burns backstage: Thank you to all the great people who came out to support 826NYC. Working with the kids at 826NYC has been a memorable and learning experience for myself. I’m a big believer in their mission and believe that their strategy of one-on-one learning will help make the world a better place. The kids have even encouraged me to read more so I too can share grand stories with them. Anyone interested in becoming part of the family please reach out HERE! Thanks to Chris O’Dowd for giving us a special shout out.