It looks rather like one of those engagement pictures in the Times, does it not? Actually, it’s just that Gary Gulman and Traci Skene are good at posing. Both appear to be the color of eggplants. Neither are, in reality, the color of eggplants.

The identities of the New Faces has been leaked.

W. Kamu Bell
Joe DeRosa
Rachel Feinstein
Joe Koy
Jamie Kaler
Jay Larson
April Macie
James Smith
Michael Somerville
Ryan Wilner
Craig Baldo
Andy Campbell
Alan Carr
Dan Cummins
Felipe Esparza
Rhod Gilbert
Louis Katz
Natasha Leggero
Jasper Redd
Sugar Sammy

A couple of those names are rather familiar, no? We’ve seen Craig Baldo‘s name somewhere… and didn’t Ryan Wilner come in second in the Homegrown competition in 1999? Mind you we’re not complaining. Maybe the criteria are changing… or the aim of the showcase. Hmmm… And Sugar Sammy was one of the pitchers in Just For Pitching last year, we think. Maybe Just For Pitching is a back door into the JFL. Is “back door” a pejorative term? No. Just a term.

Franz Harary (left) in intense, post-pitching mode with Moses Znaiman. Harary’s “Beat the Chimp” game show idea was a hoot!

Speaking of Just For Pitching, the bleachers at Delta ballroom jammed with the usual “sellout” crowd for this year’s edition of the pitch party. As usual, Pat Ferns, the mastermind of the whole thing, was dead center. The panel of suits had changed somewhat, with only Brent Haynes, from CTV, the only repeater from JFP’s past. The other were, from left to right (if you were a pitcher), Anton Leo (CBC), Moses Znaimer (MZTV), Graham Smith (Channel 5/U.K.), Samie Falvey (Fox) and Stuart Krasnow (Krasnow Productions). We were disappointed that there was no Anne Maney (Fox), as she usually provides the most yocks from the Exec side of the aisle. But Znaimer, a Fest rookie, more than made up for Maney’s absence with his droll delivery, his weary demeanor, his astute observations– and he provided actual belly laughs when he repeatedly antagonized colleague Haynes, who was on Znaimer’s immediate right. (Znaimer’s delivery is Eeyore meets Garrison Keillor, to put it in the pitching vernacular.) Their back and forth was worth the price of admission. It’s always fun to see suits get into a somewhat philosophical discussion of the biz. Even more so when one of the suits (Haynes in this case) regularly spouts puzzling– and somewhat horse manuric (is that a word?)– statements. Haynes isn’t the only one, of course. They all spin out a steady stream of such statements– they all seem to be quoting from a sort of an I Ching of television production. (“The days of taking a fat guy, giving him a hot wife and building a successful sitcom around it are gone.” “The current situation is liberating but overwhelming…it’s an inspiring time to be in comedy… but it’s scary.”) At least they all got through the afternoon without once using the word “interstitial!” (Whither Comedy Central’s Lew Wallach?)

Jay Malone & Mark Bennett, Franz Harary, Gord Paynter, D.C. Benny & Jason Sokoloff, Peter Grumbine, Julia Morris, Carole Ducharme and Joe Matarese & Matt Bellace were the eight pitchers/teams and the eight pitches moved quite well. Overall quality was up from last year.

The sitcom is the hardest thing to pitch in this setting. Four sitcoms were pitched with varying degrees of success– “Hostel House,” “Blind Faith” “The Home” and “Over The Rainbows.”

Julia Morris (wearing a tiara!) and illusionist Franz Harary used their personalities very well to sell their ideas and both pitches were peppy in the execution and garnered lots of laughs and much positive feedback. They may have been the only two who didn’t complain about the five-minute time restriction for pitches!

D.C. Benny and Peter Grumbine did a swell job of selling themselves. And, as we opined in this very feature last year, selling oneself might be the most important thing one can do in these types of situations. (And, if they get even the slightest whiff that today’s idea might possibly be your only idea, you are pitching toast!

Aristocrats produder/director performs bloodless, open-heart surgery on Lewis Black at the Delta Bar. Here we see Provenza deftly installing a shunt. With a smile!

So andrenalinated was Peter Grumbine that he used the word “shit” in his pitch. He also managed to coin a new term, “two-joke pony.” (In response to a criticism that his sitcom might be, in Fox’s Falvey’s words, a “one-joke pony.”) But our favorite moment in his pitch (and quite possibly in the entire afternoon) was when he said, with complete sincerity, “When one senior citizen gets the clap, it’s not that funny… but when all the senior citizens get the clap– it’s hilarious!” In context, that actually made sense!)

The only show that had actual standup in it was the one envisioned by Joe Matarese and his third cousin, psychologist and comedian Matt Bellace. Their trailer for “What’s So Funny” (described by the two as “Premium Blend meets Dr. Phil”) featured comics Jim Norton and Artie Lange. The premise is that the comics do standup and then get psychoanalyzed on the spot by Bellace. Their underlying premise being that all comics are fucked in the head and that America would like to look over Bellace’s shoulder while he peers inside their skulls. Matarese serves as the liason between the world of psychoanalysis and standup. Of course, we here at SHECKYmagazine are constantly trying to stamp out the notion that standup comics are, as a rule, narcissistic and self-indulgent. Bellace told us (on a later shuttle ride) that he was aware of our crusade. We good-naturedly busted his chops for holding that opinion, even though it was the lynchpin of their entire project.) In spite of our opposition to the nasty stereotypes it might help to perpetuate, we still thought that most of the criticism of it were unfounded. (We think TV execs are narcissistic and self-indulgent! So there!) And that video was well-produced. One more thing: To the exec who doubted that people would find the show entertaining? Uhh… in their quest to create the pitch video, Matarese and Bellace actually did the show at least twice, in front of live audiences and what they showed Thursday afternoon was videotaped evidence that their show was indeed entertaining. All those people howling with laughter and applauding on the tape was our first clue!

Joe Matarese and Matt Bellace at National Monument for the screening of Jeffery Ross’ Patriot Act

One annoying tendency: Like we said, complaining about “only having five minutes,” in which to pitch. Hello? We comics only have 4:30 to essentially pitch ourselves and our standup acts when we appear on nationally televised late-night talk shows. It is possible to get a lot done in that short window… and it is best to consider every possibility and, well, get ‘er done. Another annoying tendency: Being defensive. We hasten to distinguish between defending one’s idea and being defensive. Taking offense at the sometimes less than diplomatic critique of a TV exec is pointless, counter-productive and exactly what they want. (It is best to consider what is said with bemusement. Try to remain calm and try to recall that they use terms like “factual entertainment” with a straight face.)

It was fascinating to see that there were eight pitches and eight different approaches to pitching! Some people took the barebones approach, some had taped packages, one combined a verbal presentation supplemented with a videotape of… opening credits!

Brian McKim (left) and self-portrait with Jeff Ross. (With cropping input from Ross himself)

Jeffery Ross has made a tremendous film called “Patriot Act.” Drew Carey, Kathy Kinney, Blake Clark, Kyle Dunnigan, Andres Fernandez, Rocky Laporte and Larry Gelbart are featured in this travelogue/documentary about a USO comedy tour of the dangerous Sunni triangle just months after the fall of Baghdad.

The film, written and directed by Ross, invokes the memory of the recently departed Bob Hope in its early minutes and hearkens back to him in song throughout. In the voiceover, he admits to being blissfully ignorant about matters military. He quite honestly states that, if he had any preconceived notions about the men and women who fight wars for America, they were notions that were fuzzy, ill-defined or based in outright falsehoods. The film isn’t just a home movie of a bunch of comics entertaining weary soldiers in a battle zone, it’s a startling and eloquent account of one man’s acquisition of an entire set of ideas– about war, about the people who fight it, about the people touched by it. In the Q & A afterward, he states his transformation thusly: “Going through this experience didn’t change my politics about the war… it gave me politics about the war.” Ross is a fine documentary filmmaker. He tells the story that the MSM has, by and large and for various reasons, neglected to tell.

And Ross isn’t the only one undergoing a transformation of sorts. We were touched by Blake Clark, a veteran of two tours of Viet Nam, and his metamorphosis. In the early going, he’s Blake Clark– no different from the Blake Clark that one might encounter during a week at the Punchline in Atlanta. By movie’s end, after an intense four days of hopping through the desert and performing on the back of flatbed trucks and chopper hangars in some of the most desolate outposts in Iraq, it’s obvious that he’s opened up a couple of old wounds, but that he’s healed a couple as well.

Drew Carey’s efforts on behalf of the USO and the servicemen and women are staggering. All the moreso when you consider the low profile he’s fought hard to maintain with regard to these dangerous and grueling tours. Bob Hope, it can be said with certainty, did more than any human being to comfort and entertain American troops. But Hope’s modus operandi involved newsreel cameras and, later, television specials. Perhaps this isn’t so much because of who Hope was, but because of the public’s attitude toward war and service. Times change, Hope passes on and people like Carey carry on with his mission but in a decidedly low-key way. We suspect that Carey might be a bit uncomfortable that a film such as this one might bring too much attention to his efforts! We, however, are glad that such a record of these acts exist. They might inspire others to do the same. (We’re certainly inspired! We’ve done some stateside military show,, of coure, but we’ve told Carey’s management that we’re in if they need us, if they’d have us.)

Did you know that comedy actually happens in other locations when Just For Laughs is going on? It’s true. We have, as evidence, a straight.com article by Guy McPherson on Toronto-based comedian Derek Edwards, who is playing Yuks in Vancouver this weekend.

Edwards, who is as naturally funny and likable off-stage as on-, has no desire to enter the computer age. “I just don’t need another thing I gotta do all day. Somehow, with all the time I have off, I feel pressed for time. I’m often winded for no reason. So I don’t need 15 e-mails I gotta reply to because somebody thinks I’m an asshole [since] I didn’t get back to them.”

Ohhh… so that’s how that works!

Curious Lighting: Eddie Izzard (right) and his spiritual advisor Marc Ryan. Actually, Ryan’s a comic… it’s just that, in this picture, he looks to be… glowing… beatific, even. Photoshopped in, to be quite honest! (At the Delta, of course!)

Etan Vlessing, writing for Reuters, filed an error-filled article from the Festival, “Sitcom Downturn no laughing matter for comics.” He misidentifies Kelly Taylor as “Kelly Thomas,” misspells Angelo Tsarouchas (understandable, maybe… we’re not even sure if we got it right!) and calls Frank Spadone “Frank Spadino!” Other than that, it’s a boo-hoo piece about how nobody gets signed to sitcoms immediately upon dismount. There’s lots of attention paid to one-man shows and this gem from Stuart Krasnow:

“If Hulk Hogan can carry a sitcom about his life, then comics should also consider possibilities for work in hybrid reality/comedy shows,” Krasnow said after participating in the Just For Pitching session Thursday afternoon.

Huh? Wha? Krasnow actually made sense during Just For Pitching… perhaps he was misquoted. Judging from the oodles of misspellings, it’s a distinct possibility.

“Evil Traci!” That’s right, the Female Half of the Staff is in disguise this year. Lots of double takes as folks fail to recognize the formerly blond editrix of SHECKYmagazine. General consensus: Traci gets brass balls point for bravery. Blondes never go the other way (we mean hair color wise), especially 48 hours before a major Fest. The Male Half of the Staff is also getting points… for seemingly acquiring a new spouse! So far, Traci has been likened to Betty Page, Cleopatra, Natasha (from Rocky & Bullwinkle) and a “Ooh! I like the Elvira look!” Traci told CJAD listeners that it she was going for the Goth Soccer Mom look that’s sweeping the suburbs. (Self indulgent? Actually, we’re running the pic in response to a request!)

Take me to FRIDAY’s Update!