FOS and frequent SHECKYmagazine contributor Paul Ogata (pictured above right with DL Hughley) taped his segment of Comedy Central’s Live At Gotham this past Sunday night in New York City.
He then slung us the following account of the evening
The scope of human effort that goes into producing a television taping of a live show is mind boggling. Now multiply that by eight and you have a sense of what went into making the third season of Comedy Central’s “Live at Gotham.” The production probably involved more computer and electrical hardware than there was in all the Apollo missions combined. That’s how mind boggling it is.
I was scheduled to tape my episode on Sunday night. The first of two that evening, and the seventh of eight in the upcoming season. Live At Gotham is unique amongst live stand-up television programs, in that it is shot in as close to a real club setting as possible. There is an audience ordering drinks for which they have to pay, and, yes, that also means there is a dreaded “check drop”. Luckily, or so I thought, I was going first. The reason was that there was a warm-up comic (KT Tatara from L.A.) and a hugely popular and funny host in DL Hughley. All the hosts for this season (Jeff Dunham, Jim Norton, Ralphie May, Tommy Davidson, Kevin Hart, Rich Vos, DL Hughley and Daniel Tosh) are damn funny, but I really like DL and was happy that he was hosting my episode.
At the pre-show meeting, I met the other comics on the line-up: Myq Kaplan (frequent SHECKYmagazine.com commenter!), Josh Homer, Liz Miele, Shane Mauss and Theo Von. Then I heard that DL wasn’t feeling well and would be arriving a little closer to show time. Oh well, I thought, DL is the man and he can do this on auto-pilot.
Among the myriad crew members hustling around was a guy who was in charge of getting our introductions and material bullet points correct for the teleprompter. (There’s a teleprompter! What? You heard me, a teleprompter.) I thought he looked very familiar, then I noticed the name on his production binder: Joe Bolster. No way! Joe freaking Bolster! Before I started stand-up Joe Bolster was everywhere on TV, and now he’s helping to make those shows on TV. Joe Bolster was, it seemed, the poster boy for stand-up. And the game could not have had a better representative: Joe was always clever, original and hilarious. He was one of the people I’d see on TV and think to myself, “Holy crap, is that awesome! I wanna do that someday!” Great to meet such a veteran and to see that he’s still involved in the sweet science of comedy.
DL arrived with time to spare, and that put me at ease a bit. But that was just a false sense of security into which I was lulled. It was just like on the Apollo 13 mission when everyone was thinking nothing could go wrong because everyone involved had done this many times before. DL took the stage and killed. I waited anxiously at stage left. He read my intro and said my name, “Please welcome Paul Ogata!” Then he walked off the stage. With the only microphone. Stage right.
Hughley, we have a problem.
I saw it happening in slow motion, but there was nothing I could do about it. The stage manager didn’t notice the missing mic and shooed me to the stage, “That’s your cue. Go!” So I headed to the stage trying to figure out a game plan. I clowned around with the empty mic stand for a few moments until DL brought the mic back and apologized. Fortunately, I have a bit about things not going according to plan, and put that in play once I got the mic back. What will it all look like in the end? The way I see it, there are three possibilities. They can leave in the botched mic hand-off, showing a natural side of live shows (ie. the occasional screw up). They can cut from DL’s intro to a crowd scene then back to me with a mic. Or perhaps they will just scrap the entire set. I vote for one of the first two scenarios! In Apollo 13, they fixed those CO2 scrubbers and got the crew home safely. On the other hand, Jim Lovell did come home, but never got to walk on the moon. Man, I suck at metaphors.
We’ll find out this summer what happens. The new season of Live At Gotham, from what I hear, is scheduled to start airing on the Friday after Memorial Day.