On Friday, we had the great pleasure of hosting writer/director/actor Christopher Guest on campus. Guest held court to a packed house of Writing, Film, and Acting students. With the moderator stuck in traffic, the evening took shape as a casual, intimate, and often hilarious two-hour Q&A.

Among many other things, Guest discussed his long career, which includes favourites like This is Spinal Tap, Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, and A Mighty Wind, breaking into the industry (“Tonight is actually my big break,” he joked), and his unique brand of improvised documentary-style comedy.

His process – creating histories for the characters which are given to the actors and carefully outlining the story beats while writing no dialogue – may be out of the ordinary but contains many lessons for filmmakers, writers, and actors alike.

For writers, one of the key points is just how completely Guest believes in traditional three-act story structure, that every scene has clearly defined goals that, even improvised, must be achieved for the story to work. “Improvisation is not just people messing around in a room. It’s incredibly strict,” he said.

“When you’re writing comedy, there’s about three good hours in a day,” he said about his daily writing regimen. “The rest of it is a myth.”

His process – “We shoot in 26, 27 days – then I edit for a year” – as well as his tendency to cut down his own part in a film surprised the filmmakers and actors alike.

Guest discussed all his films at various points in the evening, and frequently returned to 1984′s This is Spinal Tap‘s long road to production and 1996′s Waiting for Guffman’s memorable characters. “All the people in Waiting for Guffman are narcissistic and untalented,” he said. “My favourite combination.”

While he prefers to work on his own material, Guest is actually in Vancouver shooting a role in Night at the Museum 2. “The part they offered me is Ivan the Terrible, and I read that and thought, ‘I can make that funny.’”

To most, his career began with Spinal Tap, but he’d toiled for years with National Lampoon and had paid his dues on the road to carving out his own place in the industry: “It was a series of steps. It’s not usually one big thing.”

Before wrapping up the evening and spending some time one-on-one with students outside the theatre, he had important advice for young artists. “If you want to be a writer, director, or actor, there’s nothing to think about: you do it. There’s nothing that will stop you from doing it.”