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A Very, Very Short History
Dean Martin is credited with popularizing the celebrity roast in 1970; as famous friends pelted him with ribald and irreverant after dinner insults. Cleaned up and sponsored the event became an NBC-TV series from 1975 to 1984.
When an executive celebrity leaves a company the farewell dinner roast often includes an audio-visual retrospective – with roastmaster intro and transitions.
Roast Reasons
- Those hosting the dinner hope the man or woman leaving will remember them well and warmly. The dear departed may have residual clout when it comes to influencing the careers of those left behind.
- If the roastee is leaving for a better job, remaining managers may hope for a spot on his or her dance card for futures.
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Conclusion? Roasts are more nourishing for hosts than quests.
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Confidentiality?
If you're told, "Only two or three other people in the company will know you're working on this!" believe me, it never works. Lots of people will find out; including the targeted roast who then tries hard to act surprised later.
What You'll Need
Roast research and production involves three areas:
- Company archives: newsletters, annual reports, photos, slides, films and videos.
- Family, friends, office associates: children, secretary, spouse, relatives, board of directors, first boss, former teachers and classmates.
- Personal memoir's: photo albums, high school and college yearbooks, hobbies and trophies.
Obligatory Stuff
In my experience, an executive roast should cover:
- Career milestones: Early jobs and promotions.
- Outstanding achievements: mergers, acquisitions, new product R&D, employee day-care center and so forth.
- Exemplary outside activities: charities, volunteer work and contributions.
- The private life: behind-the-scenes with family, friends and hobbies.
The real trick is figuring out how to write and produce all this without blowing the budget and finding a sheriff at your door. If you're really conscientious about research you can be swamped with reference materials, appointments and production options.
Collector's Caveat
If you're responsible for collecting visuals, God forbid you should lose any. I once lost the only photo of a CEO, at nineteen, in the Yale banjo club. I then lost the client.
Roast Ideas (I've used) That Work
- Add cartoon balloons, or celebrity cutouts to graphics
- Super humorous titles over tedious company video sequences.
- Record a new audio track to use over existing clips.
- Introduce "nonsense" graphics, after you've set up the audience for a serious segment.
- Use conflicting sound and visuals. Example: We see the roastee at a board meeting, or executive conference, while the sound track brings us derisive comments by a golf partner.
- Find a running-gag sequence and drop it in every three or four minutes. Example: An outtake from a company video where the roastee blew his/her lines.
- Play the voice of someone the exec hasn't seen in 30 years. "The voice" then walks out to appear live, onstage.
- Look for those "internal interludes" which, while not funny to you, the corporate audience will find hilarious.
It Ain't All Shtick
No one's life is all laughs. Put in a few minutes of emotion and sentiment. Humorous interludes gain strength from contrapuntal style changes.
Staging and Rehearsals
Those responsible for reserving your roast room may forget about the three or four hours you need to setup equipment and rehearse presentation cues.
Target Timing
There's no hard-and-fast on how long a roast should cook. Twenty to thirty minutes of tape, plus twenty minutes of speeches, seems about right to me.
Candids Closing
The traditional candid photos technique (used often at sales meetings) is a good roast closing. Video verité of guests, taken during the cocktail hour, is edited during dinner. A favorite music track of mine used to be Sammy Davis singing If My Friends Could See Me Now!
Memorial Album
It's a nice move to later give the basted boss an album holding photos, the video, guest book signatures, etc. Plus a website page!
Coming up next: Qualifying Meeting Producers Finding meeting producers is easy. Finding meeting producers who won't use your business to learn theirs is a lot harder.
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