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Every year the Improv Everywhere crew executes some prank to make fools of us all on this day, but the one they put together this year at Greenwood Cemetery serves as an example of an April Fools' Day joke done well (because so often these things go horribly wrong). They announce: "For our latest mission, 30 Improv Everywhere agents found a random funeral in the obituary section of the newspaper and turned it into the best funeral ever. We picked a man who had very few surviving relatives and then showed up to his funeral to make it truly awesome."
The Ghosts of Pasha have returned! They might have had us were it not April 1st.
Update: Looks like the team at Channel 11 didn't get the joke:
For those who still don't get that it was an April Fools' joke, Charlie Todd, who heads up the improv group, Twittered: "hahahahaha CW 11 in NY just covered the funeral prank as a REAL news story!"
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not funny.
Right? Definitely almost funny, but too sick for funny.
I'm hoping the family was finally cool with this. If it were my grandad's funeral I would have laughed — and he would have too.
Gee guys, what do you suppose the odds are that this whole thing is um, a joke? Hats off to Improv Everywhere. They totally had me going until the end!
this must be a joke because nobody would do anything this disrespectful and tasteless.
I call shenanigans, that looks like a prop casket and where is the hole?
Uh....yeah. Agree with hummingbird 100 percent.
giving fake mournful sincerity isn't very respectful. If this is a real joke it sucks and if it's a fake "bad taste but not really" joke for april fools it sucks cause of poor execution they should have just gone all out with farting noises and drinking 40's too up the ghoul factor.
"bad execution"
How badly could it have been executed when you weren't even sure yourself whether it was real?
It was bad execution cause it wasn't funny. An april fools joke should be funny. It's half assed either way.
You're missing the point of the joke, and April Fool's Day pranks in general, which aren't supposed to funny on the surface and in fact can't funny if they're going to work. This one clearly did work, as your own reaction illustrates.
How the fuck did it work? it's like someone calling your house to say you've won a million dollars. You think maybe there is a slight chance you did but 99% of it as mostly a fucking scam. Everyone here mostly saw this with huge skepticism as it being april 1st which is the kicker. There is something called multiple viewpoints. you can have both. And april fools jokes are supposed to be funny to an extent. Like they should have taken a shit on the coffin and when they opened it up rickrolled everyone. also should have gangbanged all the mourning relatives and then eat their eyeballs while doing it like the end of event horizon. would have been classic. I'm just saying missed opportunity, that's all.
whole thing bullcrap christians do not say prayer by the plot..the jews do btw tired of the hipsters go back to Iowa
bullcrappiest comment of the day. you ever been to a funeral? many different types of Christians have prayers at the graveside/cemetery/mausoleum.
joke or no joke, improv people think they're far more clever than they actually are.
who do these people think they are that they can fuck with people lives like this?
one day one of these people are going to fuck with the wrong guy at the wrong time and one of them is going to get decked. hopefully all of them.
The point wasn't to be "funny," and this wasn't for April Fool's. It was to give someone with a depressingly small funeral a few more friends. If any of them had smiled or laughed it would have been terrible, but it seems they all gave the event the decorum it deserved.
I don't think the mourning was fake. The respect for the deceased was real. It had to be for this to work the way it was supposed to. And it did.
Chico - How long have you been involved with Improv Everywhere?
oh yeah? So if your dad died and then a whole bunch of sympathetic "friends" show up to offer their respects and you sort of feel good about it and then 2 days later it shows up on the internet for the whole world to see how it was all a sham and they could give a flying fuck about how your dad died and all the while you were mourning while they were thinking about how "awesome" this skit is going to look on the internet? Cool, right?
bh, completely agreed. These people are exploiting others at a time when they are most fragile. They are predators and one day they will get theirs.
ugh. man.
also it has to be an april fools joke.
there's no way anybody can be this awful.
Stupid...If they had a small funeral, ever think maybe they wanted it that way?
I'd be outraged if this were a relative
this is why they're doing hipster internet comedy.
another terrible sketch brought to you by brooklyn
idiots
not funny, interesting, or funny.
This is horrible and in such bad taste. It's not funny or interesting, but a little bit cruel to the family. I'm usually amused by improv everywhere's projects, but not this one. I just hope the whole funeral was a joke for the camera.
THEY'RE ALL IN ON IT. THE FAMILY. THE PRIEST. EVEN THE CORPSE.
The joke is on you.
what's more sad? that i didn't get the joke right away or that it seemed completely in keeping with their character to do something this retarded.
same
Not funny but I hope that they show up at my funeral!
To all of you feigning (self-) righteous indignation: the whole thing is a joke. Get over yourselves.
At the end he says I think the family had fun. I'm sure they had a blast. Tasteless.
Tasteless indeed.
This entire thing has to be an April Fools joke.
They'd be incredibly insensitive to say the least (but my Grandfather would have gotten a kick out of it) and they normally have good taste in the Gags.
holy god, that was the most NOT REAL thing ever. come on, people.
holy god, that was the most NOT REAL thing ever. come on, people.
IT'S ALL A JOKE!
This is entirely staged, and you all have been pranked. It's perfect. This is brilliant. The joke is on the viewer. You asses.
The family, the meeting, the gravesite- all fake.
WOW JUST WOW!!! 60% of people checked in their sense of humor before getting to this page. It is April 1st, and the whole video is staged to look like a real improvEverywhere event. The Improv guys did not insult anyone, they just wanted to play a prank on viewers on April 1st. I guess the actors playing the family did a very good job to make people believe this was a real funeral:)
C'mon. Its April Fools Day... Just look at the camera angles on this "real" funeral. Who, genuinely mourning, would not have noticed the camera sticking out of a tree directly behind the casket?!? To say nothing of the multiple handheld cameras circling the "family"... True hidden camera work does not look like this. Happy April 1st!
OK. Now I get it.
not a real funeral. they could have done something better.
I do like to see Gothamist colluding with ImprovEverywhere and adjusting their post from earlier so as to not ruin the prank.
Haha, internet. Had you going there! Now you are sorry you disparage our droll hijinks every time we publicize them. We showed you!
(P.S.! We still suck.)
I laughed and cried. only because their funeral had 3 more people than my old man's funeral. and we didn't have seats guess maybe because we didn't have a priest. it was close the vault, peep to make sure it's covered and be on your way.
channel 11 pix is doing a story on this.
This isn't a real funeral.
Check out the babe in the green jacket. She looks like she just got out of a club.
If you've followed Improv Everywhere from back before it was too well known as it once was when "underground," you recognize the inside joke in this thing. It's basically the "Ted's Birthday" mission from 2003, where they had about 30 people come in different little groups into a bar to approach a guy who had been picked randomly just before, and give him birthday presents, pretending that they're mistaking him for somebody named Ted.
It ended up being covered on This American Life something like two years later -- one of the first IE missions to get any real publicity. The "Ted" claimed it was very upsetting to him (though not so upsetting that he couldn't drink the free drinks and take home a couple hundred dollars worth of gift certificates, which was what everyone gave him at "his party") and people came out of the woodwork yelling about how insensitive it was to do that to the guy.
So obviously doing the same thing at a funeral would be pretty objectionable to anyone. Pretending to do so is a great April Fool's Day prank.
Media amateurs, both presenters and commenters.
Get some perspective, youngsters. Anybody show up for the parade today?
Check out:
www.joeyskaggs.com
Master of the "media".
"the team at Channel 11 didn't get the joke"
That's what happens when mainstream news journalists try to cover stories based on what they've seen on blogs.
Hey, maybe they saw it here... earlier in the day when most Gothamist commenters weren't getting the joke.
I hope this was a joke; I was at a funeral yesterday and would have tracked each and every fake attendee down to break their knees if this had been done to the family of the deceased whom I was with.
People here can't seem to agree whether or not everyone was in on the joke or it was a real funeral, so I'd love to hear an ultimate verdict.
100% a fake funeral. It was an april fools prank. A prank prank if you will.
If you JUST read the title of the video it seems real. If you watch the video, it's clear it's a joke. complete with laugh tracks.
I think the fact that the camera was filming BEFORE all of the "mourners" appeared is enough to answer the question of whether or not the people seated were in on it.
Hipsters must be really happy with all this unemployment. More "worker people" to play with during the weekdays! YAY!
wow, what a bunch of dumbasses - just watch the friggin video fro crissakes, of course it's a joke... besides gothamist de-bunked it at 2pm, WPIX news re-bunked it at 10pm, nice goin, WB11!
The humor in all this was later found in a shallow grave. Police are investigating.
I do love me a good April Fools Day joke, but was take out of this one immediately when I recognized one of the mourners (bald guy in trenchcoat, seated on right) as an actor.
Sure, actors have loved ones who die too, but not today.
Ya'll commenters are suckers!
More pathetic hipster trust fund bullshit.
Oh, man, all the anti-hipster comments make me enjoy this prank (and IE in general) that much more. While I understand that the realization that there are people more creative and humorous than you can sometimes be frustrating, you could at least take two minutes to come up with a more original and biting insult.
Trust fund? What are you even talking about?
It's not a real funeral, they're all actors, it's an April Fool's joke that apparently fooled most of you...
Hey, everyone who wants to bash the "mainstream media" over this: PIX is mainstream but it's not really media. Almost all their stuff is ripped off from newspapers or, in this case, blogs. The "newswriters" aren't even in the "newsroom."
It's fucking shameless, but welcome to the future you jerks
Hey, everyone who wants to bash the "mainstream media" over this: PIX is mainstream but it's not really media. Almost all their stuff is ripped off from newspapers or, in this case, blogs. The "newswriters" aren't even in the "newsroom."
It's fucking shameless, but welcome to the future you jerks
Sigh. Ch 11 is actually the most tolerable and human evening newscast we've got. Too bad they fucked this up.
It's not a real funeral. Do we agree on that?
One question: where do these hipster transplants pick up their fruitcake accents? Do they really talk like that in Ohio? I don't think so.
funny how many commenters are as inept at analysis as channel 11.
"they are predators and one day they will get theirs." i guess they're predators, in that they preyed on your stupidity by arranging a fake funeral, fake family, then a group of fake mourners, and having people believe that they crashed a real funeral. "who do these people think they are?"
Fake or not, this guy is kind of an ass clown and not half as witty as he thinks he is. I think that so many people jumped to the conclusion that this is real because this guy will do anything to get his name in the media.
What guy?
Not funny. Fake or not--not funny.
oh the casket is so OBVIOUSLY FAKE!
Did none of you read the article? It's ABOUT HOW IT WAS FAKE and most of you guys are posting as though it were real. No wonder it fooled Kaity Tong!
Everyone here who thinks this was real is really really stupid.
Where can I contact these people? I bet nobody else would come to MY funeral.
AHAHAHAHAHAHA
Don't these people have jobs ... get a life ... so lame
I really can't believe anyone thought this was real. It's so clear that the old guy in front is acting.
Man, people are so gullible; it just confirms my belief that even in New York, Americans are dumb as hell.