".. I heard the Smother Brothers being yelled at by a customs lady in the airport's immigration room..."
Just the Facts Ma'am, July 29, 1997
The Montreal Comedy Festival is all about Industry, with a capital I. Lots
of Industry at Montreal. When you meet many of them individually, they're
nice, friendly people with high art ideals and good intentions. As a mob,
though, the Industry is always of a collective opinion and you hope that
when it comes to you, the Industry approves.
My first celeb citing was when I heard the Smother Brothers being yelled at by a customs lady in the airport's immigration room. Dick, the one who doesn't look like Johnny Carson, bore the brunt of this Quebeccer's merde-filled French spaz attack, and he was polite during the whole mess. Tommy, the guy who looks like Johnny, sat and waited for Dick to take care of it. Brothers Smother finally passed inspection and later when they performed at Club Soda, their timing was perfect and they killed.
My two five minute sets were at a club called Cafe Campus, which is right off the trendy Rue St Laurent. There were 24 comics in the New Faces division and we were split into three groups of eight. My friends, fellow San Francisco comics Kevin Kataoka and Arj Barker, were also New Faces. We were each in a different group and we each went up second in our group. It was the good luck spot. The Faces emcee, Dom Irerra, gave me a quick dry hump for luck and I was off. My second set on Saturday was better than my first set on Friday, but I was happy with them both.
The paying crowd at Cafe Campus got ground floor seating. The upper deck was filled with Industry. Each Industry table had a tiny lamp and a show list, allowing the Industry to make notes on each Face. I was told by several different tentacles of the Industy octopus that I have "good energy." In the neighborhood of attributes that I hate in most people, "good energy" is two doors down from "perky."
My favorite shows were Danger Zone and the Comedy Lab. On Friday, they competed with each other and I went to Club Soda's Danger Zone. A partial lineup included Nick DiPaolo, News Radio's Joe Rogan, Patton Oswald, Dave Atell, Greg Behrendt, Marc Maron, Todd Glass, Harlan Williams, Doug Stanhope, Hugh Fink and Bob Zany. Stanhope's Friday night set was a near disaster when he opened with a JonBenet Ramsey joke. The audience booed and shifted uncomfortably and just when I thought his career was over, he pulled himself out of the hole with a Flight 800 chunk. You gotta admire the balls of any comic who turns his set around with plane crash material.
Actor Jerry Orbach came to the festival purely as a fan of standup. As the band played the Law and Order theme, he arrested Hugh Fink and Todd Glass for being unfunny during a killer Danger Zone sketch. He then announced that standup comics were the bravest performers in show biz. We all went nuts.
Andy Kindler hosted the Lab at a club called Le Swimming. Comics hot in the LA alternative scene like Todd Glass, Greg Behrendt, Kathleen Roll and,of course, Patton and Andy, each did seven minutes. Moon Zappa also did some time and as a result, I know a great deal about her vagina. Patton slammed hack comics, alt comics and industry in the Piss 'n Moan, the festival's newsletter put out every morning.
Andy gave his brilliant 2nd annual State of the Industry address on Friday afternoon. He rightfully slammed Comedy Central for reviving the awful Make Me Laugh show, by announcing that the network was starting another show called Comedy Morgue, in which comics would be forced to perform at funeral homes, getting paid only if they crack up grieving families. Make Me Laugh pits a comic against an audience member. The audience member wins money if the comic doesn't make him laugh in sixty seconds. Musicians never suffer these indignities. Why not just take a big shit on standup comedy and then bury it under a Tonight Show monologue?
The gold medal in the Insincerity Olympics went to a woman who, after a forced introduction by a friend, pronounced herself to be both thrilled to meet me and a great fan of my work. She shook my hand with a Clintonesque flair and she did it all without once looking me in the eyes. The silver medal went to me, after I said "good set" to someone who tanked it so hard I had to leave the showroom until I was sure she was finished. I'd have loved to have said, "hey, I saw your set last night and you really sucked. Were you ever funny, even once? You're not still in the business, are you," but I was working it, honey.
Each night, the comedy would wind down at around 2 am, and everyone would reconvene at the Delta hotel for two hours of drinking and schmoozing. We rookie New Faces stayed around the corner at L'Apartmente. The rest of the Festival's participants were at the Delta. Drew Carey hung out awhile. He and Denis Leary were usually surrounded by cameras, lights and people. I spied on Ray Romano for a few seconds and Lea Thompson's limo guy was making noise in the lobby. Richard Jeni stared at me like he remembered that we worked together a few years ago, but that was as far as it went. Roseanne was there to collect an award, but I didn't see her at the Delta and I sure as hell wasn't gonna pay thirty bucks Canadian to attend the ceremony.
Comedy Central gave a midnite breakfast on Friday night. Several years ago, one of the festival's comics and I had a twenty five minute relationship against a tree at Oakland's Lake Merritt. I saw him at the breakfast, but I was too shy to say hello. (See, I've been wild).
I had a great time. I was inspired. I wasn't plucked hard like I wanted to be, but I made good connections, got some agent interest and I am much closer to a pluck than before.
Them's the facts as I see 'em.
