Comic produces "The Funny Man"

by Brian McKim & Traci Skene on October 30th, 2007

An article in the Columbus Dispatch from last week tells of a film written and produced by Dino Tripodis entitled “The Funny Man.” Tripodis is a comedian who also co-hosts a morning radio show in Columbus. The film premiered at that city’s Funny Bone club last Thursday night.

“I just thought, to get off on the right foot, The Funny Man should be shown at the Funny Bone,” Tripodis said.

The movie, he said, is “about a self-destructive comic struggling with where he’s at in life — not only careerwise but personally as well.”

“It’s a drama, not a comedy– even though there’s humor in it.”

Tripodis has submitted the film to the Sundance Film Festival in Utah.

We premiered at the Bone in Columbus last Tuesday and Wednesday night– and we would have stuck around to see the showing had we not been booked to appear in Erie the following three nights.

The Columbus Bone is a glittering, upscale club in the heart of the Easton Town Center, a sprawling complex of hotels and residential, retail, and commercial buildings constructed midway on the eastern part of the beltway that surrounds Ohio’s capital. We had healthy crowds (and a near-sellout– on a Wednesday!) and we also had the pleasure of working with Austin’s Doug Mellard and Rye Silverman (whose film, “Chasing Stroupe” was co-produced with Bill Arrundale). It was also great to finally meet 20-year-plus veteran and Cleveland native Rick Tempesta who is the house emcee. We’ve seen Tempesta’s name on countless bills over the years but never actually worked with him.

The Columbus Bone’s reputation as a top-drawer room is well-deserved. It runs like clockwork and the average Columbus standup fan has a blast. Attention all comedy club managers and owners: Spend a weekend at the Columbus Funny Bone and take extensive notes. Use this room as a template. It rarely, if ever, gets better than this.

We proceeded to Erie on Thursday to work at Jr.’s– that’s two clubs we’ve never worked before in one week. We worked with Rochester’s Ralph Tetta and the crowds are known far and wide as being attentive, comedy savvy and explosive. We will attest to that.

Jamie Lissow stopped in on his way back to his hotel Friday night, after gigging on the Penn State Erie campus. We kicked around the topics of college gigs, crowd demographics and his recent experiences on the Nobodies of Comedy tour.

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