Standup fest to continue in Aspen?

by Brian McKim & Traci Skene on December 17th, 2007

The Aspen Times has a story on the Wheeler Opera House and their plans to book a standup series– or maybe a festival– now that HBO has blown town.

Last week, the Wheeler unveiled a plan to keep the town in good humor this winter even without the HBO-sponsored U.S. Comedy Arts Festival (USCAF), which had become a marquis event over its 13 years in Aspen. The Wheeler will present a new four-part stand-up comedy series, “What’s So Funny?,” over February and March.

(We’re fairly certain they mean “marquee” event… although there are so many wealthy people in Aspen, there might be a nobleman or two in attendance.)

Also: We’re told that, “Each event will conclude with Brenner doing a 20-to 30-minute set of new material, with a fresh routine planned for each show.” How many times will the public be expected to fall for this scam? Brenner tells the media that he’ll be doing “material taken directly from today’s headlines,” then he ends up doing a set cobbled together with material from his last 12 appearances on The Mike Douglas Show.

(And we add the usual disclaimer: We got no problem with old material. We do have a problem with telling the media– and the public– that you’re going to do one thing, then doing the exact opposite.)

The article descends into that special brand of weirdness that only the presence of David Brenner brings about:

“David said to me, ‘Do you realize you’re going to have me working harder than I ever have in my career?” said Gram Slaton, the executive director of the Wheeler Opera House.

Does everyone have this straight by now? No one works harder than David Brenner! There are ways of getting this message out and not sounding ridiculous. Brenner has not mastered it. Nor has the Wheeler’s Slaton.

Slaton manages to wedge in a bunch of the classic Brenner-isms– the odd and slightly cranky medley of complaints, pretense and surliness that oozes from Brenner whenever he gets near a reporter’s tape recorder:

“David’s at the point where he’s seriously considering what his legacy will be,” Slaton said. “What we found is, he’s passionate about stand-up as its own art form, not as a way to get a TV series.”

Slaton was likewise concerned about Brenner’s legacy. He observed that Brenner, though he has remained busy as a performer, was little-known to younger audiences.
“George Carlin was cool, but he went through a period of being unhip before he became cool again,” Slaton said. “David’s the same way– he’s so funny, but there’s a generation that missed out on him.

“I was thinking, what can I do to introduce him to a younger audience? What to do about David and about the Comedy Festival?”

You better believe when we hear “younger audience,” we automatically think “Aspen, CO!”

This fairy tale has it all– A 19th century opera house, a 20th century comedian and… a 21st century Online Comedy Initiative!

A third partner in the series is Rooftop Comedy. The San Francisco entity began as a web-based comedy clearing house, a sort-of MySpace of comedy, where performers could post clips of their act. Rooftop has broken into working as an agency, and was looking for venues in which to place its comedians. While trolling the Rooftop website to look for talent, Slaton and Brenner struck up a relationship with the organization.

A splendid touch– “While trolling the Rooftop website to look for talent…” Yeah… we’re sure that’s how the whole thing went down.

Read the entire thing here.

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