Modified On July 26, 2006
As we catch up on our sleep and recover from five days of Festival (five, if you include travel, which we do), remnants of information, rumors, etc. float to the front of our brains. We sift through the pile of papers, business cards, postcards and Gazetter clips and recall various items, theories and impressions that didn’t make it into our formal updates.
We heard from more than one source that the New Faces shows were strong from start to finish, front to back, top to bottom. Consistent. No grumbling about a lack of preparedness or inexperience. And we hear that their sets are going to be uploaded to MySpace.com’s Comedy section. (That’s unconfirmed, but we wouldn’t doubt it, knowing that the Fest and MySpace.com have struck some sort of alliance.)
There was talk that the Fest organizers had flown members of Mitch Hedberg’s immediate family up to Montreal so that they could see the city, the fest, the people and the places where Mitch had some of his biggest triumphs in his short life. Nice gesture, if it’s true. (We had an eyewitness– someone told us they shared a shuttle with a family member.) We speculated last year that a memorial show/tribute show was a good idea, but this sounds even better.
Speculating on the size of the Festival is a popular pasttime– How many people are here? How healthy is the Fest compared to last year or years past? One measure is how hectic and sweaty the Delta’s mezzanine gets in the midnight to 4 AM time period. This year, it was civilized– populated, but not scarily so; festive, but not frenzied. Low attendance? Probably not. We theorized that the Fest has instituted measures to spread out the party crowd– like holding a “discotheque” over at the Musee JFL every night to siphon off significant chunks of the Fest population. We heard that the venues were packed for the shows, so overall Fest attendance certainly wasn’t depressed. (The show we attended at the Works was SRO, that’s for sure.)
It sounds like it was a successful fest in every way. We forgot to listen to CJAD on the way out of town, so we didn’t hear the traditional news report that recounts how much money the organizers made on this year’s Festival. 2007 will see the 25th Festival Just For Laughs. And, even though the first two years of the Fest were French language only, we assume they’ll still be billing it as the Silver Anniversary, (They do that in Canada, right? Silver means 25, right?) so, if we’re in attendance, we’re certain that we’ll see special programming and whatnot.
Who was that young man with the $100 haircut and the funky Carnaby Street wardrobe? He was everywhere– even keeping score at the basketball game! We heard it was (JFL co-founder) Andy Nulmans’s son, although we never confirmed it. (In our only contact with him, we found him to be polite, professional, helpful, full of information– It wouldn’t surprise us if he ends up a Fest Bigwig some day. (If he isn’t already… hmmm…)
If we think of anything else, we’ll post it.