Dear Montreal,

It’s never easy to tell someone this. But… you’re probably going to get dumped. It’s all over town. It’s all over North America. It’s all over the internt. The festival was dating Toronto last week. And I hear she was hanging out with France. And last month, she was doing Chicago. Ain’t it always this way? The boyfriend is the last to know.

The word on the street is that attendance by industry is off by about 70 per cent. Now, that’s just a rumor. We haven’t verified it, but it certainly sounds plausible. After all, if you were industry, and you just attended the Chicago edition of Just For Laughs (last month!) would you hump your ass all the way up to Montreal (in another country, no less, with only an eight per cent bump with the exchange rate!) to attend yet another festival?

And why ever would the folks who run the Montreal version of the fest think it’s a good idea to keep secret the identities of the comics who perform on the New Faces and Masters until just prior to the fest’s opening? We know it’s a tradition of sorts to keep that stuff under wraps, but in the age of the internet, it seems… quaint. And it seems like yet another industry-unfriendly thing to do.

And (maybe this is just us), it seems that Montreal keeps booking the same core of acts over and over again. (Perhaps they’d like a different set of industry figures to show up? Puzzling.)

We’re of the opinion that they could put on a fascinating (and wildly entertaining) slate of fest shows using people who have never once been in the Just For Laughs festival. The entire affair could be a giant New Faces showcase night after night, on stage after stage– the performers having anywhere from one year to two or more decades under their belts. It would be a might task to book such a roster, but a task made much easier these days with the use of the internet and DVD’s. (And certainly no more gruelling than holding countless New Faces auditions.)

We also heard (and read with our own eyes, via Facebook) that the fest was giving away tickets. To New Faces! (It was giving away tix to other events, too, but handing out free admission to New Faces is a sign that something is terribly awry.)

One year ago March, we said this:

(The fest organizers face the same dilemma that Canadian comics have faced for the past 25 years– If you want that American TV exposure, ya gotta relocate to L.A. or NYC! In this case, Chicago will do just fine. Or so they hope.)

Will this mean that Montreal will cease to exist? Probably not. But it will probably shift its emphasis to Canadian and international acts (U.K., Australia, France, etc.)

Aspen was abandoned by HBO in favor of Vegas. Then that Festival seems to have abandoned Vegas (and HBO) in favor of some sort of JOA with JFL (and TBS) in the Windy City. Now Montreal is being stiffed, it would appear, by the industry in favor of Chicago.

Maybe the Chicago fest will morph into a “consumer-oriented” festival and the Montreal fest will emphasize new talent. Nothing but starstruck comedy fans show up in the midwest every June, while the industry heads north. Just one scenario to keep both alive, if that is indeed the intention.

In any event, it’s a damn shame that Montreal seems to be in such shape. It’s been around for 27 years now. Perhaps the economics of the entertainment biz (read: the lure of television revenue) was too much for it.