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Dec. 8, 2005- HBO’s “The Comedy Festival” Recap.

A month or so back, I entered “Wendy’s Comedy Challenge”. The contest was billed “Stand Up For Good Taste” which means only “clean” material. Some comedians get up in arms about censorship and restrictions but the contest was basically “no swearing, no dick jokes.” I can live with that. So out of a couple hundred comedians, I got picked as one of 15 semi-finalists. Pretty Cool! Then after online voting, I was chosen as one of the five finalists, even better! So I got to stay at Caesar’s Palace for four days and perform with the others at HBO’s “The Comedy Festival” in Las Vegas. One of the finalists of that show was chosen by Ellen DeGeneres to perform on her show. So here’s the big announcement……….I was NOT chosen by Ellen DeGeneres to perform on her show.

For those of you worried if I’m depressed…..The answer is yes, I’m a little down about the missed opportunity but I’m trying to keep everything in perspective. I’ve taken great strides in the last few months of my comedy career and that was always my goal, to keep improving and writing new jokes.

The festival experience itself was amazing. I have tons of people to thank for a great week. It was a lot of work trying to come up with the perfect 5 minute set. I can’t set my set was “perfect” but I think it was good. And while Ellen DeGeneres didn’t pick me to appear on her show, I won’t take it personally. Well, maybe that’s not true. I’ve got to take it kind of personal right? After all, she didn’t choose me. I have to at least stop watching her show right? Wait a minute, I don’t watch here show and I’m getting off track. The point is, I did have a good set. And this experience will be invaluable if I’m lucky enough to perform at another big festival. I’ll give you a blow by blow of the week of The Comedy Festival in Las Vegas.

Sunday Nov. 13th- I’m Los Angeles until Wednesday morning. I’m trying to practice my set as much as possible before then, so I ask the manager of The Improv in Brea if I can perform. He agrees as long as it’s okay with the headliner, Aries Spears of Mad TV. Aries says it’s cool, so I get to run through my 5 minute set. It goes well. I’m about 30 seconds short. It’s taking too long to get into my first joke, also might switch my closing joke. I just came up with a new joke about an ice cream sandwich a few weeks ago. When I was in Columbus, Jim Gaffigan told me it was my best joke and I have to put it in my Festival set. Jim is sort of my comedy role model so I take his advice. Thanks again to Aries for letting me do my set!

Monday Nov. 14th- Gary Cannon and Augi have invited me to be a judge and guest performer on their, “King of the Water Cooler” show at The Improv in Irvine. I perform my set again, it goes very well. I’ve cut about thirty seconds off my opening joke and it’s still too long. I added the ice cream sandwich joke, it got an applause break.

Tuesday Nov. 15th- I drive out to perform on the All-Star show at The Improv in Ontario. Another good set, and it’s exactly five minutes. The crowd is small but my high school ring and ice cream jokes get applause breaks.

Wed. Nov. 16th-

6a.m.- I’m awakened by an automated phone call from United, my 1p.m. flight is cancelled and I’m rebooked on a 7p.m. flight to Las Vegas.

3p.m- Kimmy flies home from Dallas, I pick her up at LAX.

4:30p.m- Kimmy drives me to LAX, I fly to Las Vegas.

8:30p.m.- I arrive in Las Vegas, check into my room at Caesar’s Palace.

9:00p.m- I walk over to Harrah’s Casino, to The Improv and ask if I can do a guest set on their late show. The manager says no, because Ralph Harris is dropping by to do some time already so the show is full.

11:30p.m- Kimmy calls, her 10p.m. flight was cancelled. Rescheduled for 2a.m! Thanks United!

Thurs. Nov. 17th

3:30a.m.- Kimmy arrives from the airport.

10:00a.m.- Meeting and breakfast with Wendy’s Comedy Challenge sponsors and festival producers.

3:30p.m.-Sound check and run-through at Second City Stage at Flamingo Hotel. “ESPN Hollywood” TV crew is there with Chicago Cubs pitcher Ryan Dempster. He interviews me about the contest and we make fun of each other.

5:30p.m Arrive at the Second City Stage for instructions, rules and regulations.

6:30p.m Makeup in the green room. HBO film crew arrives to interview us and shoot behind the scenes footage.

7:15p.m Show begins.

7:35p.m I go on second, the crowd is still not great but I get an applause break for my high school ring joke and another for my ice cream joke. Overall, not bad for my first festival appearance. I thought I had the best set of the night, but Ellen is the one who picks, not me.

9p.m.- In the strangest event of the week, on the walk back to Caesars, the pedestrian bridge is momentarily blocked by a TV crew filming an episode of “America’s Most Wanted.” The host, John Walsh- wearing leather jacket and all, repeats the same transition about ten times, then the crew packs up and leaves. My mom went through the crowd to shake his hand.

10p.m.- After hanging with my parents and cousin who all traveled from NY to come to the festival, I had tickets to the Dave Attell/Lewis Black show. I was exhausted but Attell is one of my favorite comedians and I haven’t seen him in awhile so we sat down for his segment of the show. He’s just a master with so much material. For those of you who think he’s the crazy drunk from the TV show “Insomniac”, your missing the big picture. He’s truly one of the great comic talents in the business and has been for a long time. And if you don’t believe me, ask Ray Romano who his favorite comedian is, answer: Dave Attell. In fact, Ray and his “posse” sat next to us just for Attell’s portion of the show and then left when he was finished.

Friday, Nov. 18th

5:30 pm – In my “Artist Packet” I had a free ticket to see the “Everybody Loves Raymond: Writers Room.” It was a panel of five writers, along with creator Phil Rosenthal. They all spoke about the creative process of writing episodes of the show. Each talked about how a specific event in their own lives was developed into an episode.

Every writer told his real life story, then they would roll video of the show so you could see how that story ended up in the actual episode. It was really cool and insightful to see that whole process. It was neat to see because most of the writers were former standup comedians and they talked a lot about the transition. I’ve been writing a lot of sitcom spec. scripts this year so I wanted to hear what adjustments they all made from comedian to TV writer.

At the end, the writers took questions from the audience members lined up at the microphones in the aisles. After several questions, a familiar voice says “You are talking about how talented and funny the writers were on the show. What about the actors? I think they were pretty funny too.” The familiar voice asking the question turned out to be Ray Romano. The audience cheered and he jumped up on stage and answered a few questions.

7pm- As I was leaving, I got a ticket to Jerry Seinfeld’s performance downstairs that had already started. I got into the showroom and watched the last 40 minutes of his set. I was really impressed. When I was living in NYC three or four years ago, he was working on his whole new act for the movie, “Comedian,” so I had seen most of his old material. But this new material is a lot more personal…. about his life as a father, husband. Still great observational stuff; still that Seinfeld delivery. To be honest I wasn’t expecting too much , but I was very pleasantly surprised. I know it sounds silly, me criticizing the most successful standup in the history of television but you always wait to see when those guys start mailing it in and lose touch with the audience. I would say I’m a bigger fan of his now than I was before. I’m sure he’s very happy to hear that. Now if he can just find something to do with all that money.

9:30p.m. I ran into Bobcat Goldthwait, who I hadn’t seen since Sept. 9th, 2001. The reason I remember the exact date is because we did a college show together at Binghamton University on Sunday night. We both drove to New York City on Monday night, September 10th, then….well, we all know what happened on Sept. 11th. We chatted for a few minutes which was nice. He’s a fellow upstate, NY native and when I worked with him, he couldn’t have been nicer. Plus, “Shakes The Clown” is still one of my favorite movies.

10p.m.- My wife and I went to a special screening of the movie, “95 Miles To Go,” a documentary starring Ray Romano and his opening act, comedian and writer Tom Caltabiano.

The coolest places at the festival were the film screening rooms. They were filled with the most comfortable couches and beanbags chairs. So we watched the movie with about 50 other people, which chronicled one of Ray and Tom’s comedy road trips from 2000. They performed at five really nice theaters in Florida, so they didn’t give you that “Ray Romano: Struggling Comedian” angle. It was about three or four years into his sitcom, Ray’s just starting to get famous, so it was an interesting look into that phase of his career. The opening of the movie starts with Ray’s audition night at The Comic Strip when he was in his early twenties. Every comic who’s ever lived in NY remembers that experience, so it was great to see at least a few moments of Ray at the very beginning of his career.

The guys did drive to all the gigs so it was funny to see them doing the comic-roadtrip-lifestyle; hotels, fast food joints, gas stations. One of the funniest parts of the movie was when Ray had just eaten and had to use the bathroom. He’s too neurotic to go “#2” at a rest stop, so they decide that a hotel lobby bathroom is the best bet for cleanliness. Turns out the hotel they stop at had no lobby bathroom but Ray had to go so bad that he paid 40 bucks for a room to take a crap. It was hysterical. After the movie was over, the lights came up and Ray and Tom were both in the front of the room. They took questions from the audience which they filmed for the DVD release. That’s when Romano told the audience that Dave Attell was his favorite comedian. Ray said he doesn’t do dirty material, so he gives all his dirty jokes to Attell. I think he was kidding.

12:30a.m.- My wife went to bed, so I snuck over to the Flamingo Hotel to catch Bill Mahar’s “Dirty Show” featuring Jeffery Ross, Gilbert Gottfried and Dom Irrera. Mahar did about 20 minutes to open, then brought up Jeffrey Ross. He really makes me laugh, and was basically the guy I wanted to see on that show. Curiosity kept me there for Gilbert Gottfried’s set. He had a bunch of one-liners, then started telling a bunch of street jokes. He begins doing an impression of Bill Cosby talking to David Brenner. Then, he proceeds to sing this song from the end of the Jerry Lewis Telethon, taking his bottle of water and pouring it on his face like tears, pretending to be Jerry Lewis- crying and singing. By the end, he has poured the whole bottle of water all over himself and is drenched. Then he leaves. One of my big regrets of the festival was leaving at this point in the show. I chose to leave as soon as Gilbert was done, as it was 1:30am. But I heard that when Bill Mahar came back out, he slipped on the water Gilbert spilled and fell right on his ass. How come I always miss stuff like that?

1:45a.m. As I am walking through the lobby at Caesar’s, James Gandolfini (Tony Soprano) speed-walks by me, talking angrily on his cellphone. A surreal moment. Glad I wasn’t drunk.

Saturday November 19th- This is the final day of the festival. I recognized a lot of faces around the hotel. I saw Chris Rock walking through the lobby with headphones, George Wallace, Ray Romano a few more times. Fred Willard a few times. It felt cool to be a performer at this festival along with all these great comedians.

3pm- Paula Poundstone bumps into my wife in the lobby. Not Paula’s fault, she didn’t she us. Kimmy’s only 5 feet tall.

5pm – “The Comedian Award” Show. This 1st Annual award was presented to Jerry Seinfeld. But before that, a panel discussion, moderated by Alien- I mean Anderson Cooper. The panel included Seinfeld, Garry Shandling, Chris Rock and Robert Klein. It was an hour and a half of great comedians talking comedy. It was absolutely inspiring to see those guys talk about the same problems I have with material, how they come up with jokes, what inspires them, what they think of comedy. I was hanging on every word. Of the discussion two things stood out for me.

The most interesting thing was that Seinfeld admitted that after not doing standup for most of his sitcom run in LA, he went to see Chris Rock at the Universal Amphitheater four or five years ago. He was blown away by Rock’s performance. Jerry said it was so inspiring to see how great Chris was at his craft, and how happy it made the audience. Jerry said he was thinking to himself about how incredible this whole experience is, and then he remembered,”I can do this too!” So he said that seeing Rock’s performance inspired him to start doing standup again. Shandling also added he was at that particular show as well and was blown away by it. So one show can make a difference!

The other thing that really stood out to me as a comedian was when Seinfeld came up with this great metaphor for coming up with new material. He said (don’t quote me, but this is it in a nutshell) that his act is like a baseball team, and his jokes are the players. Your act goes from farm team, to Double A, all the way through the system and develops. Once your act is at the Major League level, it’s harder and harder for your jokes to “make the team.” You can’t have single A or Double A jokes on a major league team or your act suffers-your team will suck. So you have to raise your standards for what you will put in your act when you reach a certain level. That means the better you are, the more difficult it is to come up with new material that fits in your act. I really thought that was a great way of looking at it.

I have even more respect for him because with guys like Seinfeld, Rock, Chappelle, the expectations of the audience are so high, that they won’t accept half-baked ideas and material. So it must be hard to develop new jokes when you are that famous. I wouldn’t mind dealing with that problem though.

Anderson Cooper asked ,”What’s the worst thing that can happen to a comedian onstage?” Seinfeld replied,”I heard Bill Mahar fell on his ass last night. That’s got to be it.”

After that show, I met up with my wife and parents for dinner. I decided to stop over to the New Marquee Show at the Flamingo. This show was basically this festivals version of “New Faces” like they have at the two other huge industry events: the Aspen Comedy Festival and the Montreal Comedy Festival. Getting on the “new faces” show at any of these events can be a huge break in your career and puts you on the map with managers, agents and networks. Comedians have gotten six figure development deals off of a seven minute showcase at one of these festivals. That’s one my goals, I’m really hoping to land a spot on “new faces” this year in Aspen and/or Montreal. I caught two really funny comics on the New Marquee show, Ryan Stout and Aziz Ansari. Both guys had real solid sets.

After that, I was going to try to sneak into the “Triumph The Insult Dogs: Poopapalooza Show.” Luckily, I scored a ticket for Kimmy, so I called and woke her up. We got a booth in the back of the showroom and got to watch Triumph pick on a Neil Diamond Impersonator and a couple of circus acrobats. My old buddy, comedian David Feldman did his thing to the crowd like only he can. Then special guest Jon Stewart surprised the audience by singing Conan O’Brien’s part in Triumph’s song, “Cats are C—ts.”

The big surprise of the evening was that not only did Penn & Teller show up, but the other two biggest Magicians in town, Lance Burton and David Copperfield were all sitting together in the front row. It was already passed 1 a.m. so all of them had finished their own shows to come to this one. Only David Copperfield stayed in his seat. Penn & Teller along with Lance Burton, stood up on stage to be insulted not only by Triumph the Insult Dog, but then were surprised by Gilbert Gottfried as he inserted their names into a spontaneous rendition of the filthy “Aristocrats” joke. What a great show to end the festival!

So we headed back to Caesar’s and got about six hours sleep before checking out. Overall, a great experience and resume builder. Just from this festival I’m appearing on TBS, HBO, ESPN Hollywood…..but not The Ellen Show. Oh, well, not too shabby.

Sorry this was so long but I wanted to get all these memories of the festival down before I forgot. I hope it was mildly interesting.

Thanks For Reading!

Paul Morrissey