JIM CRANNA used to tear out bizarre newspaper clippings and put them in big box. But when the box got too stuffed, he quit. “The Chronicle must have a guy whose only job is to find weird stuff”, said Cranna, pausing between forkfuls of toast and eggs at Curley’s Cafe in North Beach.
Cranna was referring to such strange but-true items as the three sisters who stripped down to their shoes, smeared mustard on their naked bodies as a salve against sin, and hijacked a United Parcel Service truck because “we were trying to find God.” Or the story about the man who killed his mother-in-law with a hatchet because he mistook her for a raccoon.
The last straw came when he was watching a TV news segment on a mass murder. “They were getting desperate,” he said incredulously. “They interviewed his TAILOR! People had theories on why CLOTHING makes you kill!”

Cranna came to the conclusion that there was simply too much time for news – such as all-news cable stations, and KRON’s commute-time expansion to 90 minutes – and not enough hard stories. So last March he founded the National Theatre, the deranged, an eight member, troop of new sadist who take the days headlines and run them through a sort of lampooning Veg-O-Matic. 

Cranna, a member of the Committee from 1968 until the famous San Francisco comedy group went belly up in 1974, gathered together Diane Amos, Geoffrey Bolt, Danny Delk, (the voice of ads for Clorox, Safeway, etc.), Nancy Garrett-Nash, Michael O’Brien, Chris Pray who was with Cranna at the Pitchel Players and Committee and Kelvin Yee. Every Wednesday at the Open Theater at 441 Clement Street, the Deranged group improvises from audience suggestions. Cranna doesn’t like to rehearse or perform more than once per week because it saps the group’s energy. Also, he sees the group as more of a hobby than a job since he already makes a living from radio ads (Fotomat, Marriott’s Great America, McDonald’s…), film, acting, (“The Sunshine Boys” “Who’ll Stop the Rain?” “Time after Time”) and TV writing three Flip Wilson shows, one Paul Lynde show and two “Laverne and Shirley” shows. 

Cranna also teaches an improvisational acting workshop every Saturday for about 15 students, including Deranged members Delk, O’Brien and Bolt. “There’s a lot of people very interested in improv who have been in San Francisco since the Committee and have day jobs,” he said. “The whole idea of improv is that if something is going  wrong, you can change. If you’re doing Macbeth and the audience hates it you can’t stop and sing and dance and tell jokes. A stand-up comedian will get his 20 minutes down, and, if by a minute 10 it’s not working he can’t change the next 10.” 

“In improv most of the audience doesn’t come to watch it fail or succeed they come to watch the process, to see it happen and to become involved. You can do stuff you’ve done before you don’t let them know it. You pretend you’re making it up so you act sloppy. It’s the ultimate recycling.”

Cranna teaches the students to be themselves and discover what makes them unique. “When Robin Williams hit big,” he said, “there were so many clones who weren’t him, so it didn’t work. The point is to do who you are.”

Cranna’s father wanted him to be a welder but his high school aptitude tests showed he should be a lawyer. Since the only lawyer he knew of was Perry Mason, he liked the idea. “I thought that once a week you go into a courtroom and point at the murderer and say, ‘You did it, “ said Cranna. “So they told me to take speech and dramatics: I couldn’t do speech-talking in front of a group, but I loved dramatics. The first time I went onstage and got a laugh, I was hooked.”

Eventually. Cranna heard about the Committee and moved from his native Portland in 1967 to join up. He saw them perform, decided “it was magic,” and took one of their workshops before being hired as stage manager.

Now 38, Cranna is regurgitating what he learned with such famous Committee alumni. as Mimi Farina, Howard Hesseman, Carl Gottlieb and Garry Goodrow. He likes spoofing the news because it’s a change of pace from the other improv groups in town and because he believes the weirdest stuff is only as far away as your corner newsstand. Who could have made up the exhumation of Lee Harvey Oswald?

Although Cranna’s favorite humor is British goon shows, he doesn’t like to perform zany bits he would be tempted to laugh at. He keeps his acting deadpan and intellectual, and doesn’t really live up to his troupe’s Deranged title (a take-off on the National Theater of the Deaf). After all, when you’ve got headlines like “Nun, 63, Elopes With Her Sweetheart” and “Bare Breasted Fencer Scolded,” it’s hard to be any more deranged than that.