The skies opened up and what appeared to be straight-line winds whipped through and tore the street festival asunder! The Place des Arts, just across Rue Ste.-Catherine, was, until that moment bedecked by two great red horns and, together with the giant eyeballs, it made the modern edifice look just like Victor, the green creature who is the Just Pour Rire mascot/ambassador. The mighty wind came and took one horn away. Shortly thereafter, crews removed the other.
The buildings have eyes. They turned the Place des Arts into a giant Victor. Yesterday, one of Victor's horns blew away!
On more than a few occasions over the past four days, we told people that we were absent from the ’08 and ’09 JFL festivals. And on more than a few occasions, we were told that we didn’t miss anything last year. This is meant to imply a number of things: Attendance was down, Industry didn’t show up in very large numbers and JFL seemed a bit smaller, a tad less intense. (We theorized that maybe U.S. Industry types chose to sample the recently launched Chicago version of Just For Laughs… and who wants to attend two festivals in the same year?)
Joey Elias (l) and Steve Patterson celebrate the end of a grueling festival week, at the Hyatt
On the flip side, this year’s fest seemed like old times. (We suppose this means that Chicago was found wanting.)
Or was it like old times? We’re not sure. We know that many of the usual suspects were up here performing (Festival favorites like Dom Irrera, Jimmy Carr, Christopher Titus, Andy Kindler and Harland Williams to name a handful), but were the Industry people here? Sad to say, we’re not sure… we’re dismally bad at ID’ing the Juice Dispensers, the Power Brokers, the Importantes, the Ones Who Sign the Checks.
The lobby bar at the Hyatt– the circular schmooze circus that rages every night from midnight to 3 or 4 AM– certainly seemed crammed. So there’s that. But we have no way of knowing if JFL is still the be-all/end-all for running into the people who can make or goose a career.
Left to right: Jimmy Carr, Bo Burnham, Noel Fielding
Part of this year’s JFL was the Comedy Conference… or was it called the Insiders Series… or was it the Comedy Conference/Insiders Series? We’re confused. It was supposed to be a bunch of panels and discussions and such. We only caught one small slice of one of the installments of the Pitch ’til Your Sides Split. And we caught a small hunk of Web Face-Off: Comedy Kingmakers. (A lot of the Comedy Conference events were held in the morning. At 10 AM, we were only capable of hustling down to the breakfast buffet and hurrying back to the room to file our analysis for our readers. So we missed all the “fun” (we use that word advisedly, thus the quotes). Heck we couldn’t even budget our time to catch the Networking Lunches! That was free food! Why didn’t they call it “Let’s Do Lunch?” (Does Pat Riley own the rights to that, just like he owns “Three-peat?”) Well, what do you expect from the gang who cooked up the ungainly “Pitch ’til Your Sides Split?” (Maybe it was named something mellifluous in French that just didn’t survive translation.)
Apparently, “Late Night: In the Writer’s Room” was well-attended. (But The Female Half had a bad case of “the whirlies,” so we had to pass on that gathering.) And though attendance may have been good, we can’t help but think that it might have been better had the description not been this:
Back by popular demand and after a tumultuous year in the spotlight, the world of Late Night television is on the hot seat in this panel.
Such a tortured sentence could not have been written by anyone who ever spent any time in a writer’s room. We question the credibility of the presentation… after all, there was a woman on the panel (Allison Silverman) and everyone knows there are no women in the late night writers’ rooms!
(The Whirlies, BTW, is a condition often brought on by malnutrition, fatigue and dehydration. It is easily cured by a honking plate of cuisine Indienne, a ninety-minute nap, an Extra Strength Tylenol and a snort of Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey.)
That Comedy Kingmakers presentation could be summarized as dealing with the issue of why comedy is popular on the web. Various execs from CollegeHumor.com, the Onion.com and other online comedy initiatives made up the panel. From what we saw, it was five guys sitting on a stage telling the audience that “that doesn’t make money,” and “this doesn’t make money” and “well, we tried that and we won’t know if it will make money for a couple or years or so” and “it’s terribly difficult to make money doing that.” Lots of talk of “insustainable models” and “revenue streams” and occasional dreamy speculation as to how the WWW might some day be just like television. (Weren’t they supposed to put television out of business? Where’s your pluck? Man up and get out there and shift the paradigm fer chrissakes!)
The Male Half poses with a SHECKYmagazine fan at the Hyatt last night at about 3 AM
We spent our Saturday evening dining at the legendary Dunn’s Famous Deli with the Vos-McFarlanes and Jim Norton (who was between shows, having just completed a “Bubbling” and on his way eventually to an 11 o’clock Best of the Fest at the Comedy Works). Also joining us later was Norton’s manager, Jonathan Branstein (who is rare among comedy management types in that he has… a sense of humor!)
Norton is a delightful dinner companion in that he is knowledgeable, introspective and passionate when it comes to discussing standup.
Had we actually attended any shows yesterday, this is probably what we would have taken in: “The CBC Radio’s The Debaters.” Hosted by Steve Patterson, “the festival’s best talent facing off in a verbal slug-fest of facts and funny. Attendees saw Andy Kindler vs. Harland Williams, Kristeen von Hagen vs. Pete Zedlacher, Pete Johanssen vs. David Hemstad, Mark Little vs. De Anne Smith and Andrew Maxwell vs. Michael Mittermaier. It was held at 2 in the afternoon… hmmm… something like that would be so much more fun at 2 AM, don’t you think?
Or we might have watched a bit of the Not Inappropriate Show– a Bob Odenkirk project– which is billed as a family-friendly (read: clean) sketch show for people 8 years of age and up. How odd and refreshing that a festival would even think of offering such a thing. And how fascinating that it’s Odenkirk who dreamed it up. Might clean become hip soon? Don’t bet on it.
Does it sound like the Fest is engaging in a bit of innovation? Attempting, perhaps, to shake up things a bit? Another show that sounded interesting was Comedy Leagues– a team standup comedy competition featuring the best comics form the top four cities in the northeast. NY, Boston, Montreal and Chicago were represented by Ryan Hamilton, Mark Normand, Ophiria Eisenberg, Bethany Van Delft, Joe List, Lamont Price, Eman, Mike Paterson, Tim Rabnett, Allison Smith, Darin Rose and Eddie Della Seipe. We hear that Team Boston led going into the final round, but were eventually defeated by Team NY. Ryan Hamilton (Last Comic Standing, Season 7) was MVP and was rewarded for his performance with a spot in Saturday night’s Bubbling With Laughter.
As always, there were standup- or comedy-related movies exhibited this week. SHECKYmagazine readers are already familiar with “I Am Comic,” the Jordan Brady-directed doc featuring Ritch Shydner. “Exporting Raymond” sounds like a must-rent– it tells the tale of the exploits of “Everybody Loves Raymond” producer Phil Rosenthal as he prepares the long-running sitcom for syndication… in Russia! “American: The Bill Hicks Story” is a movie that recounts “the amazing tale of Bill Hicks.” And Ahmed Ahmed directed “Just Like Us,” which features an international lineup of standup comics in live performances. One movie company held a sneak preview of the not yet completed movie’s trailer– “Eat Drink Laugh, The Movie” tells the story of the Comic Strip Live. The famed NYC club celebrates it’s 35th anniversary next year and Chris Rock executive produced the documentary that features Ray Romano, Judah Friedlander, Bill Maher, Colin Quinn and Paul Reiser among others. (And, of course, McFarlane and Vos were actually shooting some of their upcoming movie while up here. They, and the producers of the Comic Strip Live movie, hope to have their films completed by next year and, of course, are hopeful that their flicks will be in the lineup for JFL 2011.)
There’s always a buzzy gala, the one gala of the week that everyone anticipates or talks about because of the host. This year, it quite possibly could have been the gala hosted by Pamela Anderson, but it was nosed out by the Steve Martin gala. (Actually, there were two Steve Martin galas!) The lucky ones who got to be on them were Gerry Dee, Jack Whitehall, Nick Cannon, Jared Christmas, Steve Patterson, Rove McManus, Mike Birbiglia and Joe Koy (early show) and Godfrey, Tom Wrigglesworth, Todd Barry, Andrew Maxwell, Mark Little, Orney Adams and Whitney Cummings (late show).
And Dane Cook flew in from Utah (where he’s shooting a movie) and dropped in as a surprise guest. Cook told us he always wanted to share a stage with Steve Martin. Mission accomplished.
Cook came back to the Hyatt afterwards (which is where we encountered him). Near the end of our conversation, Cook said, to The Male Half, “You need to do me a favor… I always see pictures of you with comedians… so could you take a picture of you and me?” (Since 1999, no one has uttered anything close to the words to The Halves. Cook says he’s checking back to make sure we run it. Ha!)
Dom Irrera (on the left, missing one antenna) and Rich Vos, at the Hyatt
We left the Hyatt lobby bar at 4 AM. And, although last call was announced nearly an hour earlier, the party was still proceeding at a pretty good pitch when we departed. (It’s always a frantic party on Saturday night, due in part to the fact that many attendees are doing the dreaded “Stay Up”– the ol’ “My plane leaves at 7 AM, and I have to leave for the airport at 5, so I might as well stay up!“)
To which we reply: NO! Don’t do it! (But by that time, it’s too late. They are doomed to a hellish, hungover airline experience.)
We were on the elevator with McFarlane yesterday and she said, “You guys didn’t do anything today, what’re you going to write about?” Vos pipes up, “If McKim drops something on the floor, there’s five-hundred words right there.” The ticker at the bottom of the WordPress window reads “Word count: 1838.)