This was a live presentation of the NPR radio show that usually broadcasts on Saturdays that was beamed by satellite to movie theaters all around the country. I have never seen any of the episodes of the show that broadcasts on Showtime (because I don't have Showtime), but I do love the radio show, so I thought this might be fun. I guess the initial big hurdle to get over is that the tickets were $20 a piece. Walking out, though, I definitely felt like it was worth it.Waiting for the broadcast to start, they were running these odd little anagram puzzles and hangman puzzles. That was different and fun. The show itself was really quite wonderful. I've never seen Ira Glass do his thing before, so he's doing his intro story and running the quotes and music cues himself on two separate machines. It actually reminded me of running lighting and audio boards back when I did theatre, but obviously he is a professional. There were both funny and touching stories from Mike Birbiglia, Starlee Kine, and Dan Savage. There was a little clip from the final episode of season 2 of the Showtime program. There was a peculiar little cartoon by Chris Ware. And, finally, it featured musical guest Joss Whedon. I was expecting an interview out of Joss, but no, he actually got on the piano and did a little number. Good stuff! They also played some clips from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, which was great to see on the big screen.
For those who missed it the first time and want to see it, there's an encore showing on May 7th. It also sounds like they'll air a trimmed down and "edited for radio" version on May 2nd as one of their regular Saturday shows.
