Avery Schreiber was a funny man. This afternoon, an overflow crowd of funny people filled the Improv on Melrose in West Hollywood to swap Avery stories. The tales were all different and yet they were all the same. In each, Avery was very nice and Avery was very funny. Especially moving were the closing speech, delivered by one of Avery's sons, and the opening and hosting by his long-time friend and partner, Jack Burns. (Mr. Burns is, by the way, very much alive and well, in spite of what a couple of Muppet Show websites seem to believe.)
Jack opened by saying, "My name is Jack Burns and I'm a Schreiberholic." He spoke of having become addicted to Avery when they were both in one of the legendary Second City troupes in Chicago. They teamed up and became rather successful but — and this is no secret — things went awry and they broke up due to Burns's fondness for alcohol. Later, when Jack had reformed, he went to apologize to his ex-partner and everyone present today was moved by (and totally believed) how forgiving and non-judgmental Avery was about it all.
That was a recurring theme in the stories. Avery was an eternal (but not naïve) optimist, always finding the good in everyone and everything, never speaking ill of anyone. It may seem like a hopeless cliché to say that he was loved and respected by all who knew him and, in this case, it happens to be true. But any cliché at all flies in the face of some words of advice that Avery always gave to students in his classes on improv acting. He said, and I quote…
"If you are going to lay an egg, make it brightly colored and fresh…for God's sake, FRESH!"