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 A Very Short History
Dean Martin is credited with popularizing the celebrity roast in 1970; as famous friends pelted him with ribald and irreverent 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 hosting 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 later tries hard to act surprised.
What You'll Need
Roast research and production involves three areas:
- Company archives, e.g. newsletters, annual reports, photos, slides, films, videos.
- Family, friends, office associates: children, secretary, spouse, relatives, board of directors, first boss, former teachers, classmates.
- Personal memoir's such as photo albums, high school and college yearbooks, hobbies, trophies, vacation footage, et al.
Obligatory Stuff
In my experience an executive roast should include:
- 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, committees, contributions, etc.
- 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 finding the sheriff at your door. Companies never have any budgets for this kind of thing. If you're really conscientious about research you'll 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. Then I lost the client.
Roast Ideas That Work
- Add cartoon balloons, or celebrity cutouts, to corporate graphics.
- Superimpose humorous titles over tedious company video sequences
- Record a new audio track for use with 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 an executive conference while the sound track carries derisive comments by a golf partner.
- Find a running-gag sequence and drop it in, periodically, when least expected. Example: a clip 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 and achievements. 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 with your roast master.
Target Timing
There's no hard-and-fast on how long a roast should cook. Fifteen minutes of graphics, interspersed with twenty minutes of four or five short speeches, seems about right to me.
Candids Closing
Video verité of guests, taken during the cocktail hour, is edited during dinner. A favorite background music track of mine was Sammy Davis, Jr. singing If My Friends Could See Me Now! (Get clearance rights)
Memorial Album
It's a nice touch 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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