Variety recently published a column by Brian Lowry about stand-up being in decline. It’s painfully obvious from the column that Lowry has no understanding of the current stand-up renaissance and boy, have my fellow bloggers been letting him have it: here, here and here. (WhipItOut has a slightly different tact here.) They all make great points, so I fear my post might possibly be just that final kick or stomp to something that’s beaten and left for dead anyway. But it looks like too much damn fun not to talk about it.
Lowry’s column states that stand-up is in decline because its no longer a career hop for sitcom stardom. At best, a comic can hope to host a game show. He concludes with this:
Given the potential payoff, there remains a strong incentive to get standup back on its feet as a feeding tube to TV.
And this is the key sentence, because, if anything, this generation of comedians looks at stand-up and television the other way around. Having a TV show is a feeding tube for your stand-up, allowing you to widen your audience and attract bigger crowds. Most emblematic of it is Mitch Hedberg, who, naturally, put this manifesto as a joke:
I got into comedy to do comedy. But when you’re in Hollywood and you’re a comedian, everybody wants you to do other things. They say, “Alright, you’re a stand-up comedian, can you act?” That’s not fair. It’s as though if I was a cook and I worked my ass to become a good cook. And they said, “Alright, you’re a cook. Can you farm?”
Mitch may be gone but that attitude is still going strong. Stand-ups are sticking with the person that brought them to the ball. Many comics who are in stand-up generally aren’t doing it because they want to be famous for doing something else. Those people are gone, now auditioning for reality TV. Stand-up is its own art form again, not one in service to another.
Lowry is measuring on a ruler and seeing failure. Stand-ups are using the same ruler, they’re just at the other end.
This isn’t news to some of you people, because you’re coming to the blog exactly because of this kind mention on Tuesday’s episode of G4’s Attack of the Show. But here it is for the rest of y’all.
Even before winning a comedy Grammy for their EP “The Distant Future”, Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement of Flight of the Conchords were at work on their self-titled debut album. If they can wake up not-with-it Grammy voters to award them for an EP, what will they get for a full length CD? Here’s a preview track which might be familiar to those who watch their HBO sitcom, as it was featured in Episode 10. It’s called “Ladies of the World.”
“Flight of the Conchords” will “drop” in stores on April 22. More info available at the SubPop site.
Sometimes a blog post is held up around here because I can’t find exactly the right way to feature something I’m loving. I’ve been planning to talk about The Dana Carvey Show being available on the free TV site Hulu for about a week now, but I haven’t been able to decide which clip I want to feature. The talent involved in front (Stephen Colbert, Steve Carell) and behind (Robert Smigel, Louis C.K., Dino Stamatopoulos, Bob Odenkirk, Charlie Kaufman) made too many wonderfully absurd bits to choose from. So, do what I’ve been doing, start with episode two and work from there.
(Alas, episode one featuring Bill Clinton breast feeding puppies is not on the service. Still controversial today? Really?)
The entire issue of MAD this month in monkey themed. The parody of Monk is Monkey, with the Tony Shalhoub character replaced by an ape. Spy vs Spy becomes Spider Monkey vs. Spider Monkey. Even the staff has been replaced by monkeys, as illustrated by Tom Richmond. Even if there’s probably too many poo-flinging jokes (isn’t one too many these days?), it’s nice to see that they are beholden to this month’s movie or TV parody and can instead throw themselves into something completely ridiculous.
I mentioned that The Comedy Festival in Vegas lacked more low-fi shows. Besides the Garage Comedy show I attended, another alternative show going on at the time was a Backyard Comedy Show that I missed. But some footage of it just made the web. Here’s the video featuring Brody Stevens and Morgan Murphy, as well as the show’s founder Brandt Tobler.
Obviously, a little bit of this is had to be there stuff. But I dig the idea a lot. People getting together, probably mostly the comics and the comedy nerds, bringing a lawn chair (yep, it’s BYO Seat) and laughing. This show is something I can really see working over the web. So much of stand-up is presented cleanly - too cleanly. Seeing stand-up performed intimately, emphasizing the communal nature of laughter by making the show like a get together between friends. And then, if you’re going to share it with the world on the web, make it like that same group filmed it with handheld cameras, cell phone cameras, etc. all cut together.
Of course, some people’s backyards are bigger than others. The last show in February, which featured Doug Stanhope had 250 people at it, according to Backyard Comedy’s myspace page. How big is too big for something intimate?
With TBS now holding two comedy festivals, they need somebody to handle the production of them. Hence this listing. A couple of interesting passages from the job description:
Collaborate with Los Angeles-based originals group to develop and produce television programming for national network, VOD, broadband and wireless.
and
Create and lead business development plan to expand revenue sources for these properties (example scenarios: DVD sales, tours).
Which suggests to me that my earlier suggestion that TBS plans to compete with Comedy Central in stand-up might be accurate. It certainly says that TBS sees this fest closer to the business than Comedy Central currently does with its South Beach festival, which, to my knowledge, has not produced any programming or DVDs.
Couple this with Just For Laughs, which is co-producing the Chicago Very Funny Festival, stating frankly that they want to be on American TV. Add in that many stand-up specials are now independently produced and then marketed to networks (primarily Comedy Central, but also Showtime). A lot of these comics may now have another player, an apparently ambitious one, bidding for them.
My only question: how much have network execs learned from the 80s boom, where stand-up became comically ubiquitous at the expense of quality? Good to have a new player. Let’s hope they’re a smart one.
Mike Judge tells MTV he's kinda warmed up to the idea of doing a live action Beavis and Butt-Head movie. He just animated a short segment with the duo for the upcoming "The Animation Show."
Andrew Dice Clay: "I think girl comics are doing better than guy comics today. They're more exciting than guy comics." Later, tells interviewer about a girl coming over who a "10-and-a-half." (AV Club)
The good: CBS adds two sitcoms to schedule. The bad: Mike Birbiglia's show appears to have not been picked up. You can watch previews of what they did order.
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If they can wake up not-with-it Grammy voters to award them for an EP, what will they get for a full length CD? Here’s a preview track which might be familiar to those who watch their HBO sitcom, as it was featured in Episode 10. It’s called “Ladies of the World.”
The entire issue of MAD this month in monkey themed. The parody of Monk is Monkey, with the Tony Shalhoub character replaced by an ape. Spy vs Spy becomes Spider Monkey vs. Spider Monkey. Even the staff has been replaced by monkeys, as 
