LATE NIGHT: IN THE WRITERS ROOM
Moderator: Bill Carter (New York Times)
Panelists: Steve Bodow (Head Writer, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart), Tim Carvell (Writer, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart), Mike Gibbons (Executive Producer, The George Lopez Late Night Talk Show; Co-Creator/Writer/Executive Producer, Tosh.0), Barry Julien (Head Writer, The Colbert Report), Tom Ruprecht (Writer, Late Show with David Letterman), Meredith Scardino (Writer, The Colbert Report)
This is it! Saturday afternoon, the final panel of the 3-day Just For Laughs Comedy Conference.
There was an awful lot of general information culled from this group. What a typical day is like, how big the writing staffs are, what their professional backgrounds are, etc.
And of course, the requisite acknowledgment that Meredith Scardino was the only female on the panel. Mike Gibbons joked that even having it as good as 1 in 6 was “disproportionate, really.”
The consensus – which I’ve heard often – is that women simply don’t submit to the late-night shows that often. Scardino offered a theory that “men, when they’re standing around joking with each other, make fun of each other, which is a skill that you need [in satire].”
Overall, though, she feels the writers’ room is “an asexual environment.”
The subject of stress and nerves upon joining a writing staff was a big topic of conversation. “When I first got to Colbert, I was pretty scared,” Barry Julien admitted. Tom Ruprecht says it takes a few months for a new Letterman writer to settle in. And Tim Carvell remembered witnessing a co-worker harshly criticizing everyone’s work and thinking “oh man, J.R. hates our boss”. [J.R. Havlan has written for TDS since the beginning, and having had my own material judged by him, I laughed alarmingly loud at this.]
Gibbons shared a jaw-dropping tale of producing Talkshow With Spike Feresten. They would tape two shows on Thursday, one of which would air that Saturday and the other to air 5-6 months later. So they wrote a full season of shows within half a season, with half the episodes being topical and the other half not. Geez.
Does material always translate perfectly into a host’s performance? Can a host make material better? Bodow answered with a tentative yes. “Nobody can make something better all the time,” he said.
Julien was more definitive, saying that he’s seen jokes that aren’t strong on the page, but Stephen frequently makes them significantly better through his performance.
In a conversation about writing for a performer’s specific voice came the quote of the day: “Imagine writing for Leno, who’s a smart guy who aims low,” said Mike Gibbons. [Trust me, huge laugh on this -- perhaps a case of a joke not working on paper as well as it was delivered.]
Another big laugh came when discussing the packets submitted, and Bodow characterized many of the Daily Show submissions he reads as “clinically crazy garbage”.
This is another panel that I would have liked to see delve deeper for the benefit of those who are already familiar with the process at shows like these. Keep in mind, this is an industry conference, not a public event.
There was, though, a fascinating point when moderator Bill Carter (who happened to write the book The Late Shift) grilled Ruprecht on David Letterman’s reputation for being difficult to work for. Ruprecht is no idiot — he kept his comments diplomatic (save for a few we had to collectively pinky-swear would “never leave this country”). But doing the math and reading between the lines painted a very intimidating picture of what it’s like to really write under pressure.
It was during the q&a of this final panel that I finally acted like the journalist I am and asked a question.
A few months ago, the LA times ran a story about freelance joke writers who submit to Leno, Letterman, SNL, etc. These writers are often referred to as “faxers” because – yep – this practice has been around since people actually used fax machines for things other than collecting ads for $299 Mexican cruises. And while it’s against union rules, it’s absolutely common knowledge. It seemed a little silly that this suddenly became an issue worth devoting ink to, complete with a Writers Guild rep promising an investigation.
So what’s the end result going to be? Are freelancers going to go the way of the Dodo due to union rules, or is the idea of a freelancer controversy just a tad contrived? I posed the question to Ruprecht , as he was the only panelist to represent a show that uses freelancers.
He noted that there seemed to be a wrong impression that freelance writers are essentially treated like slave labour. Which didn’t answer my question. He also downplayed the show’s use of non-union non-staff writers, reiterating his earlier point that only 10% of the jokes staffers write make it to air so there isn’t much need for extra material. Which didn’t really answer my question either.
“They should be union jobs,” he said. Which still didn’t answer my question. But that’s ok – I probably shouldn’t have expected one in the first place.
While I absolutely support union writers, I think freelancing is an opportunity that a lot of young writers have benefited from — and technically it’s one of the few high-profile credits a non-American could score if they don’t qualify for entry into the US to become a staffer (which is a whole other story). If any freelancers out there noticing fewer checks coming in from Letterman in the last few months? I’d be interested to hear about it, purely for my own curiosity.
[In writing this recap, I realize how brutal Ruprecht's questioning was. Sorry, brother!]
I should offer the disclaimer that I’m probably the least qualified person to be scribbling down notable quotes during a late night writers’ panel. I’ve sat through a lot of these things (I love ‘em). Plus there’s that minor detail of me taking writing classes from TDS and TCR writers, which were essentially 6 weeks of discussion about each show’s writing processes. Needless to say, I may have mistaken some interesting points for “common knowledge”.
As supplemental reading, I humbly suggest the following reports from yours truly, on recent panels I’ve attended:
Conan writers at the Paley Centre, Nov. 2008:
http://backoftheroom.wordpress.com/2008/11/09/deconstructing-conan-panel-discussion-with-the-writers-of-late-night/
Daily Show writers at the Paley Centre, Nov. 2008:
http://www.theapiary.org/archives/2008/11/the_daily_show_1.html
Political Humor at the New Yorker Festival, Oct. 2008:
http://www.theapiary.org/archives/2008/10/the_new_yorker.html
Stephen Colbert at the New Yorker Festival, Oct. 2008:
http://backoftheroom.wordpress.com/2008/10/05/stephen-colbert-at-the-new-yorker-festival/
(I may at some point even do a little retro-writeup on the 2005 Daily Show panel at Just For Laughs that I went to, as it is woefully underdocumented online).
UCB THEATRE PANEL
Moderator: Paul Provenza
Panelists: Matt Besser, Ian Roberts, Matt Walsh, Neil Campbell, Andy Daly, Lennon Parham, Horatio Sanz
Good turnout for this one, presumably from nerds like myself who enjoy anything and anything to do with the UCBT. Paul Provenza was absolutely the best choice possible to moderate this panel. He does standup at their Los Angeles theatre, and is incredibly passionate about sharing good comedy with people.
From L: Sanz, Roberts, Parham, Daly
Provenza asked how they had the confidence to enter the teaching marketplace back in the late 90s, and Matt Walsh pointed out that nobody was doing longform in New York back then, never mind teaching it.
“I went through the Players Workshop in Chicago, for a year, and realized ‘oh, these guys don’t know what they’re talking about’,” said Matt Besser.
Ian Roberts noted that “we’re not a bilking organization” with endless levels of classes like a “9th Eagle level” or a “Silver Bear level”.
The discussion turned to the concept of the “game of the scene” which is the UCB’s focus above all else and sets them apart from other schools. Besser noted that this comes in very helpful for actors who are instructed to improvise with a script. They’ve been trained to immediately identify the “game” within the written scene and build upon it, which generally will improve a writer’s idea rather than take it in a completely different direction.
Provenza pointed out the unique business model of the theatre: nobody pays to do a show there, and nobody gets paid. Roberts confirmed that “the theatre, if you took away the classes, isn’t a money maker.”
“We have a really low [ticket] price and that’s a decision we made way back,” Roberts continued, saying that that goal was to be seen by as many people as possible, and keeping the price low accomplishes that. They would rather have a lot of people paying a little, than have half the number of people paying more.
Neil Campbell, Artistic Director of the UCBT-LA, said that there was no real place to do sketch in LA until UCBT opened its second location there in 2005. It was easy to gain a following in LA because everyone was “so happy to have a place to do it”.
Besser recalled opening their original theatre on 22nd St. in New York, a former porn theatre where they had to scrape condoms off the floor and throw bricks at the mirrors on the wall because they couldn’t get them down any other way.
He then mentioned going through a similar process (sans condoms) currently for their secondary New York location in the East Village, which will be opening in November of this year (“I think that’s news”). The new venue will feature mostly standup and sketch shows, while the main location on 26th street will continue to focus on improv.
Lennon Parham remembered her first time going to a show at the old space on 22nd, and feeling like an outcast because everyone seemed to know each other (of course, she became a part of the community, and is LA-bound for her role in the new CBS series Accidentally On Purpose).
She also spoke about the common vocabulary UCB performers have, so everyone knows how to play with each other. Also, “there are so many UCB people in the world, it’s inevitable you’re going to work with them,” she said.
An audience member asked about bailing on scenes that aren’t working. Andy Daly said that the back line can almost always bail you out, and Roberts said that “sometimes the only way to play a scene real is to walk off the stage, but it’s up to your scene partner to keep you there.” The don’t-kill-your-scene-partner lesson followed.
Daly confirmed that for a short period, the theatre experienced a “mild Robin Williams infestation.” When he would drop in for Asssscat, he would naturally start a scene at the very front of the stage, making it hard for the others to interact with him.
“Once he realized we were going to make whatever choice he made funny, he relaxed,” said Parham.
Horatio Sanz noted that despite the difference in styles, “he’s like the Pope. If he shows up, you have to invite him into your house.”
From L: Besser, Campbell, Walsh, Provenza, Sanz, Roberts, Parham, Daly
WEBCAST TO BROADCAST
Panelists: Josh Faure-Brac (Creator & Executive Producer, SuperNews), Steven K.L. Olson (Director of Animation, SuperNews)
There’s no way around it: I completely bailed on this one. I even bailed on the thing I was intending to bail on it for (the Artists vs. Industry ball hockey game).
Funny thing about Just For Laughs: your perception of time kinda fades throughout the week. The day goes fast, the evening is full of so many shows that you lose track of what time it is, and before you know it you’re back at the Hyatt bar sitting and chatting with an array of really awesome people who totally trump sleep. When people start to trickle in for round 2 after the big Russell Peters dance party around the corner has shut down, and you realize it’s almost 4 a.m…. Oops.
I asked a lot of people if they made it to hear the SuperNews guys speak on Saturday morning, and they hadn’t. Shows went late. The midnight party went late. Kibitzing around the hotel bar went late.
On behalf of all of us who overdid it the night before, please accept the following linkage with my apologies.
SuperNews: http://current.com/supernews/
SuperNews blog: http://blogs.current.com/supernews/
Steven K.L. Olson: http://www.sklomotion.com/
Josh Faure-Brac on Twitter: http://twitter.com/super_Josh
——
IN CONVERSATION…WITH TODD PHILLIPS
Speaking of heavy drinking and the morning after… JFL’s Comedy Director of the Year Todd Phillips was interviewed by Bill Carter of the New York Times, spending a very entertaining hour talking almost exclusively about directing The Hangover.
He was recently out for lunch in Los Angeles, when a firefighter recognized him from his part in Old School, and yelled “I’m here for the gang bang!” The kicker: he was at lunch with his mom.
Phillips takes public feedback to test screenings very personally, recalling an instance of him “lying behind the back row of a theatre in Burbank” listening to an audience react to a screening. The studio told him that the only person to be more angst-ridden over test screenings is Oliver Stone.
For test screenings, they rarely bother to look at “the cards” (the written surveys the participants fill out), because the general consensus from the type of people who see his screenings is that he needs more scenes about pot. He says they use nightvision to film the audiences’ faces, which doesn’t just measure when they’re laughing and how hard, but also shows them when they’re getting bored and fidgity.
Fun fact: The original draft of The Hangover had no stolen tiger, and no missing baby.
Reluctant to answer questions about Mike Tyson’s acting skills, Phillips would only say “he’s a boxer”, and “he really likes fucking with people’s perceptions of him.”
The epic story of how Ed Helms removed his dental implant for the role is well known, but Phillips provided a few extra details. At first, they tried various methods of covering his tooth, including blacking it out and greenscreening it. Nothing was working, and Phillips was stressing over it, when Helms finally revealed it was an implant. Being the good friend he is, Phillips made him feel bad about it, telling him “it’s so much smaller than your other teeth”. (You be the judge.)
He convinced Helms to have it replaced (courtesy of the film’s budget) and even debriefed the dentist (who happened to also be his own dentist) to not make a big deal of it to Helms. It would be easy! While he was without an implant, Helms wore a retainer-type device with a single tooth on it, and even had to wear it well into production of The Office in case there had to be additional shooting for The Hangover.
On judging whether something is funny or not while shooting it, and not always relying on crew laughter as a barometer: “sometimes they laugh because they want you to stop and go for lunch.”
On Zach Galifinakis: His comedy is so subtle, “unless you play to that, he can really get lost in a movie.”
On Bill Carter reciting a list of his in-development projects: “You can’t treat IMDB like it’s the Wall Street Yournal. You realize it’s some 14 year old in Tampa writing those.”
The famous promo shot of the guys in the elevator was not re-staged for still photography. Phillips loved that shot so much while filming, he had them stay put and called the still photographer over to shoot it.
When he’s shooting, he can sense when a scene is not working, and just stopping and taking a walk with the guys to figure it out can help significantly.
There are always a few days scheduled after wrapping for reshoots. For the Hangover they didn’t have to reshoot any scenes to make them better, just shoot new ones for continuity (ie. to bridge scenes A and D, when B and C had been cut).
On doing movies that have real characters in plausible situations: “I like Austin Powers as much as anyone, but it’s not the kind of movie I want to make.”
Alright, let’s tighten these things up, shall we? The balance of Thursday’s seminars weren’t quite as rockin’ as the not-all-that-rockin’-anyway development panel in the morning, but here’s the gist of what went down:
COMEDY’S NEXT GENERATION OF WRITERS
Moderator: David Bernath (SVP Programming, Comedy Central)
Panelists: Kristofor Brown (Writer – Drillbit Taylor, Beavis and Butt-Head), Etan Cohen (Writer – Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, Tropic Thunder), Tami Sagher (Writer/ Executive Story Editor – 30 Rock; Writer/Producer- MADTV), Rob Sheridan (Writer and Story Editor – Corner Gas; Co-Executive Producer – Little Mosque on the Prairie), Dan Sterling (Executive Producer & Head Writer – The Sarah Silverman Program)
Changes in the industry lately? A few panelists cited the work of Judd Apatow and Todd Philips making it possible to make films that aren’t star-driven.
Does writing for the internet require a different type of pacing to account for shorter attention spans? Etan Cohen says that pacing has increased in general, and everyone is packing more into a shorter timeframe. He cited the Comedy Network series Hotbox as an example of a good fast-paced show.
Tami Sagher said that on 30 Rock, they will write subtle jokes into the background to reward fans for paying attention. And as for that McFlurry product integration controversy? They really did just do that on their own, without receiving any money (just permission) from McDonald’s. Sagher admits the staff may have been naiive to think audiences wouldn’t automatically assume there was a cash deal in place.
Etan Cohen is working on the film adaptation of the Candy Land board game, and has found one unforseen quirk in the writing process: some Candy Land candies are specific to the US, and they need to be excluded from the script so the film can play internationally.
Best advice for young writers? From Dan Sterling: “Become a director.” No, seriously. Put your own stuff online, he says, because people are more inclined to watch a Youtube video than read your Office spec script.
Best quote, I believe from Kris Brown: “We can talk about all the shows we love, but Paul Blart and Two and a Half Men will stomp the shit out of those.”
Comedy's Next Generation of Writers
THE WEB: COMEDY’S NEW WILD WEST
Moderator: Simon Assaad (Co-Founder / Co-CEO, Heavy.com)
Panelists: Michael Buckley (Host/Writer, What the Buck!), Michael Farah (Producer, FunnyOrDie.com), Darrin McAfee (Principal, E-Comic Branding/Levity Entertainment Group), Avi Rothman (Creator, The Inappropriate Yoga Guy), Ricky Van Veen (Co-Founder / Editor in Chief, CollegeHumor.com)
I’ll be honest — I was tardy in my arrival for this one, but thankfully there’s a very detailed recap available at The Comic’s Comic.
Two quick things I took away from this:
Funny or Die doesn’t run ads before each clip on their site. But Michael Farah expects this to change within the next year. You have my sympathies, nerds.
And yes, Darrin McAfee from E-Comic Branding did talk about how easy it is to get artists’ “superfans” to do the “heavy lifting”. I think we’ve all seen this in action for quite some time. I’ve been a journalist for 10+ years, and always find it adorable that people who run fansites or fanblogs get all proud about their new best friend at some publishing or film company, who generously hooked them up with the thinnest of promotional content. It keeps working, though I think E-Comic is aiming to make it work on a more substantial level.
Just hours after this, E-Comic sent around the “customized” Jim Breuer insert-site-name-here promo, encouraging a select group of bloggers to post it on their sites. On the list of reasons why I didn’t post mine, getting my blog url wrong is at the top. Feeling like I was asked to show up at a party in the same dress as 5 other girls is a close second. And the assumption that you guys don’t come here to watch an ad would be third. If I were Jim’s biggest fan, I would have squeed heavily over the (mangled) mention of my site’s name and posted it everywhichwhere. But I’m not, so I didn’t, and I haven’t. (Am I too jaded? Don’t answer that.)
Etan Cohen accepts JFL's award for Comedy Writer of the Year
COMEDY WRITER OF THE YEAR AWARD: Etan Cohen (Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, Tropic Thunder)
I almost didn’t stay for this, because people are usually only given awards as a way to lure them to your event. Whether this was the case with JFL or not, it didn’t matter, because it was actually fun and not at all as false as I’d predicted.
Dianna Schwalm from Warner Brothers Canada gave a slick introduction to Etan Cohen, who opened his speech with “I would thank God, but I’m not sure he approves of what I do for a living.”
By contrast, Bryan Callen took the stage for a hilariously awkward tribute to his Hangover director Todd Phillips, who reminded the young directors in the room that “if you’re getting into comedy for accolades and awards, you’ll be disappointed.”
If Just For Laughs does anything well, it’s giving the appearance that their laminate-clad guests are VIPs. Through a hidden entrance beside the Hyatt bar was a red carpet, leading the way around a corner and into the dimly-lit and beautifully dressed conference room.
Not a bad place to spend three days. But you wonder if you have the wrong day or something, because… uh… where IS everyone?
Ah well, we had plenty of room to spread out, and no trouble having our questions answered during the q&a (which was executed by conference emcee Joey Elias). Though the lighting is my excuse for my crappy notes. Let’s go with that.
Panel number one….
THE CREATIVE BUSINESS OF COMEDY ON TELEVISION, July 24
Moderator: Michael Rosenberg (SVP Creative Affairs, Blueprint Entertainment, E1)
Panelists: Anton Leo (Creative Head, CBC TV Comedy), Gary Mann (VP Original Programming & Development, Comedy Central), Julie Pernworth (SVP Comedy Development, CBS), Renate Radford (VP Comedy Programming, NBC Entertainment & Universal Media Studios), Nick Weidenfeld (Director of Program Development, Adult Swim), Marcus Wiley (Co-Head of Comedy Development, FOX)
This was obviously the development panel, essentially a replacement for the Just For Pitching seminar of years past where brave creatives would get infront of the room and have their show pitches torn apart for the benefit of the rest of us. As someone deeply interested in the television development process, I found I learned so much more about a show’s marketability from that than I did from this.
What I did learn: however much money it takes for someone to defend Two and a Half Men with a straight face is precisely what CBS is paying Julie Pernworth. Sure, it’s a big moneymaker for them, but there isn’t even a vague hint in her eyes that indicates a realization the show is anything but edgy and brilliant. That’s right, edgy. I know.
The consensus on the panel was that multi-camera isn’t dead, even at Comedy Central where they’re developing a multi-camera comedy for Jon Heder (along with a Nick Swardson sketch show and an animated series with Judah Friedlander). Michael Rosenberg posed the World’s Most Overasked Question to Gary Mann, about how young people get their news from the Daily Show and Colbert Report. He deflected, but offered up that “lately, we’ve seen Jon get a lot more passionate about certain issues.”
Discussion moved to the recent trend of Canadian networks entering into co-productions with US networks, such as Howie Do It (Global/NBC) and Flashpoint (CTV/CBS). The tardy Anton Leo arrived fresh from his late flight to talk about CBC’s struggle to replicate the success. Because CBC isn’t prepared do simulcasts with US networks (shows run at local times in all Canadian markets), they’re limited to partnering with US cable stations that don’t have reach in Canada.
Another key contribution from Leo, in the discussion about networks’ web content competing with with their own broadcasts: CBC views it purely as a way to develop loyalty for a show, and simply doesn’t worry about taking away eyeballs. (That sounds kinda nice, doesn’t it?)
During the audience q&a, The Core’s Howard Lapides asked about how Leno is going to affect everything just discussed, considering he’ll be taking up the equivalent of 10 half-hour comedy slots per week on NBC.
NBC’s Renate Radford tried to dance around the issue by claiming that everything prior to 10pm is going to remain the same, but to his credit Lapides didn’t let her get away with it, pointing out that all the dramas will just move up an hour. No true answer was forthcoming, with Radford simply citing money as the driving force behind the decision (shocking!).
“There some real financial concerns in the networks,” she said, citing the problems of pouring money into dramas that “don’t support themselves on the other side.”
Nick Weidenfeld jumped in to make the oddly comforting point that this is why comedy on tv will never die. “You can only replay comedy. That’s why it won’t go away,” he said.
The Alternative Show is one of those “sure things” of the festival, and with its midnight start time typically ends up capping off my week in Montreal. All the comics have gotten to know each other and are slightly loopy from the lack of sleep, and the paying audience usually only fills the main level, leaving the balcony for us laminate-clad folks who just didn’t get enough of host Andy Kindler at the State of the Industry address.
It became clear off the top that Kindler has a following in Montreal, something certainly not lost on him.
“This is a very vocal crowd and I don’t enjoy that,” he said.
Reggie Watts & Jon Dore double up at Saturday night's Alternative Show
Jon Dore kicked things off alongside surprise guest Reggie Watts. They each did their own standup set simultaneously, ignoring the existence of each other. It went on just long enough to start being enough, and then they came back out for an encore. Hilarious.
“Maybe I’m old school, but I found that very distracting,” Kindler said.
If slapstick is included in the Alternative Show does that mean it’s cool now? I sure hope so. Josh Fadem fell down, got tangled in the mic cord, split his pants, got stuck while taking his sweater off, fell down some more… and did manage to get some jokes out in the process. Hooray for physical comedy, and a secondary hooray for having a special mic brought out for him to screw around with instead of causing problems with the normal one (is it wrong of me to notice these things?)
Aubrey Plaza, who is new at all this from having to learn standup for her role in Funny People, had some good stuff about old people on the internet, and New York City being “the only city where I’m afraid of having trash blown into my mouth.” During the week many were hailing her fast progress, but as should be expected there’s some work to do on the presentation side. Her awkward/blase/depressed tone works, but we could do without all the “umms” and then breaking that character by giving us a relatively chipper thanks/goodbye at the end.
Matt Besser brought out his Jason Yellow character (the no-armed deaf and blind comic) from North America’s Best Comic, one of my favourites from that show the night before. It was weird enough to work well, although Besser seemed to have forgotten about one of his characters traits. His “braille” setlist was taped to his leg so he could read it with his bare foot, but he kept looking down at it instead. But I think everyone was laughing too hard to care, so let’s move on.
Nick Kroll’s initial “what’s uuuuup Montreal!” gangsta schtick was hilarious unto itself even before he promised his set was “goona be a lot more Goldblum-y than that.” I can’t wait to see his newly pitched show about a bilingual hat called Fedora the Explorer.
And while I’m at it, allow me to burn one of Matt Braunger’s best lines: “Wild boys! Wild boys! Sorry, I have Duran Tourettes”. Runner up: “Since you guys have 15 sex shops for every 1 sex shop in this town…”
Marc Maron began the final set of the night with a tale about himself, Kindler, and Eugene Mirman getting lost while driving to a Target in the outskirts of Cincinatti — wherin we learn that he does a fantastic Kindler impression.
Maron moved onto a chunk very close to my heart, about his experience in Winnipeg a few months ago. “What the fuck is this? how many times can someone show me the windiest corner in North America?… I fought the urge to go up to people and say ‘you can just GO. Get on a bus or a plane or a train and just GO someplace where there’s coffee shops and black people…’” (I’m a former Winnipegger and did finally realize a few years ago that I could indeed just GO.)
He closed with a story about what must be the craziest woman he’s ever met on the road (I hope), who wanted him to help deliver a letter to the Governor at 1:30am because he’d saved her from Mormons. Or something like that. The crowd loved Marc, cementing my suspicion that everyone who loves Andy also loves him. A great way to bookend the evening.
Metropolis is the venue set aside for only the most rockin’ of Just For Laughs shows (my first experience there was in ‘04 for Rob Smigel’s 3-hour Triumph the Insult Comic Dog Live so I became quickly initiated how insane things can get there).
The lineup was, as expected, wrapped around the building upon my arrival. Tip: it pays to make friends with someone with one of those $25 JFL membership cards that gets you to the front of the line. When the doors opened, it was like the Winnipeg Folk Festival tarp run as people fought each other for a position as close to the stage as possible.
A francophone-accented voice came over the PA system to make seemingly standard announcements, revealing otherwise upon promoting Cher’s upcoming run of shows at the same venue, and that flash photography would be permitted only every 14 minutes and in increments of 14 minutes. The tone dropped and the voice was revealed to belong to Louis himself, of course. We didn’t have a chance to cheer appropriately before he introduced his opener, Jimmy Carr. Yep, you know you’re at a good show when Jimmy Carr is the opener.
Louis opened by telling stories about coming up to Montreal from Boston with friends when he was 17 to “get drunk in the park and bother Canadians.” He also marveled about the plethora of punk kids in Montreal who drive around listening to French rap.
The arc of his material through the show seems to go from observational, to social commentary, to personal relationships and kids.
He started with a bit he did in Toronto a week ago, about the inability to have fun in Buffalo no matter how much money you have. From there, a piece that has me laughing harder than I ever laugh: the impatience and drama of getting off a plane once it lands.
“There’s only room for 20% of people to stand in the aisle, and the other 80% of the people are standing sloped.”
He did a truncated version in Toronto last week, and this lengthier one gives me even more joy.
The social commentary in a few of his bits is heavy-duty stuff, even on paper, but somehow doesn’t feel weighty in the moment. One of my favourite newish bits is about how his friend’s cousin from out of town and saw a bum on the streets of New York. She offered to help him, which Louis and his friend immediately corrected her on.
“Oh no, he needs you desperately, but we don’t do that here… Just a little cultural nuance that we ignore suffering constantly.”
Further on that theme, there’s the “there are people staving, and I drive an Infinity” bit. He could trade his car in for a Ford Focus, make $20,000 and feed thousands of people, but “every day I don’t do it and I choose to let them die with my car. I’m a piece of shit.”
He can say something like “I think about killing myself sometimes, but it’s completely narcissistic. I just picture people crying and shit,” and get a huge laugh off it. I can’t even begin to analyze that.
20somethings dominate his fanbase – at least the group that came out to last night’s show – and it’s incredible how relatable his large chunk of material about being a middle-aged divorced guy with kids is. These people haven’t lived through half of what he’s lived through. Is knowing they would be equally frustrated with that lifestyle that makes it connect? Is it the relief of hearing him say things about parenting that parents never have the balls to say?
The cool thing about watching a guy like Louis do shows a week apart is that you can note the differences in wording and inflection in jokes. It struck me last night that he isn’t married to any particular precise wording in a lot of cases. Example: in Toronto, he said milk cartons had been “invented by some Dutch faggot in 1740″. Last night, he said “that some Dutch fucking loser invented in 1783″.
It doesn’t have to be 1783. It doesn’t have to be 1740. It doesn’t have to be “loser” or be “faggot”. And if he wanted, it probably doesn’t even have to be “Dutch”. So many comics make definitive choices down to that level of detail, and program their autopilot to whichever seems funniest. But Louis doesn’t memorize down to that level of detail, and it’s primarily the ideas themselves that do the heavy lifting. When you think about it, doesn’t that sound like… I dunno… the correct way to do this? No wonder other comedians love him so much.
He returned to the stage for a lengthy encore, treating fans to his already-classic “everything’s amazing and nobody’s happy” bit.
“I’ve been looking forward to this show for a long time,” he said in the end. Same here, Louis.
When an improv nerd walks into a theatre and sees UCB Theatre co-founders Matt Walsh, Matt Besser, and Ian Roberts standing in the centre of the stage, the reaction is almost physical. These are the guys, and unless you live in LA, you’ll rarely see them on stage together outside of their annual Del Close Marathon appearances.
While there was an unjust supply of empty seats (which the Montreal improvisers I met in the lobby afterwards called the “Zoofest effect”), there was definitely a core group of young improv nerds with this-is-so-effing-cool looks on their faces that indicated that they knew the importance of these shows, even if the majority of Montreal didn’t.
So what is Asssscat? I’ll hand it over to Wikipedia:
“A guest monologist, often a celebrity, gets a suggestion and tells a true story inspired by it. Then the improvisers create scenes inspired by the monologue. If the improvisers feel they want another monologue, they call the monologist back onto the stage. There’s two halves of about 25 minutes each. Each half has only one, maybe two, or (rarely) three monologues, through the structure only requires one. It’s based on the Armando.”
The three welcomed Horatio Sanz, Lennon Parham, Chad Carter, and Andy Daly to the stage, with Chris Gethard as the monologist. I would have much rather seen Gethard in the regular cast, and some effort made to get a non-UCB person in the monologist role. The city is teeming with comedy stars right now, so to not see that opportunity taken was a bit disappointing.
From the audience suggestion of “radish”, Gethard offered up a few different stories about food, leading to first beats about a talkative customer at a restaurant, and ice cream parlour owners deciding to be mean to customers.
His second set of stories about being pursued online by gay guys, and being enticed to a girl’s bedroom on the pretense of watching a movie inspired innuendo-heavy scenes, and brought back the talkative-restaurant-customer game in a scene with Parham and Sanz on a blind date.
Gethard’s third story was about meeting Morrissey, and how his blog entry about it went viral (I’ll admit to having shared the link on my Facebook myself). The comments about him and his appearance were brutal, and this inspired a final batch of scenes mainly about people commenting on each other’s appearances.
It seemed shorter than a typical Asssscat in New York (the show has run every Sunday night for over a decade), but nobody can really complain. Whether 100% of them knew it or not, this was the best improv that audience may ever see in Montreal.
Following this was North America’s Best Comic, a show out of UCBT-LA. The sparse audience (sparser after the 4 walkouts in the first 10 minutes) was witness to a stream of standup characters competing for the title including Walsh as a bitter comic screwed by the industry who turned into a Christian comic, Besser as a blind and deaf guy with no arms, Parham as a washed-up divorcee, and Daly as a high-energy comic who only spews out vague references.
Matt Walsh, Andy Daly & Matt Besser (r, as the Pope). Photo by Sharilyn Johnson
While I loved absolutely everyone involved as individuals, the standup part of me didn’t fall in love with this show. I do get that this is an exercise in character work (and it’s character work done well). And I do get that this is a parody of what became an awful, awful tv show. But there’s an ongoing perception among standups that improvisers don’t respect the art (and vice versa). Maybe it’s because I identify myself as a standup person slightly more than an improv person, but I felt like the performers didn’t have the perspective to warrant winking at the audience, which I think is necessary. The same would be true if a bunch of standups got on stage and acted like clichéd bad improvisers. You would suspect that deep down, they kinda meant it.
Was it bad? No, certainly not. Did it warrant a primetime slot on Friday night? I would have rather seen Parham and Gethard have another chance to do their one-person shows, or a lengthier Asssscat in its place. It’s definitely more of a show for that late-night-at-DCM mood.
