These comedy club owners think so

Netflix is producing too many stand-up specials, some of North America’s leading comedy club owners have said.

The on-demand service has committed to releasing one filmed live performance a week. But a panel at Montreal’s Just For Laughs festival said that led to inconsistent results.

‘Lots of specials are produced by Netflix – and not all of them are great,’ said Marc Grossman of the five-strong chain of Helium Comedy Clubs. ‘That can do comedy a disservice.’

Erin Von Schonfeldt of Levity Live, the company behind clubs such as The Improv agreed. She said: ‘There are a lot of specials and that is making them feel not special.’

She added that agents use specials to ‘jack up the money’ their clients demand, but that’s not always reflected in more ticket sales – suggesting many of the shows were just not having an impact.

And Wende Curtis, of Comedy Works in Denver, also warned Netflix against ‘plucking people too early’ to make specials. ‘You need to hold back a bit and wait until they are ready,’ she told the broadcaster

Some commentators have suggested that such widespread availability of stand-up specials online could dilute the demand for live comedy – but Mark Breslin, founder of the long-established Yuk Yuks chain in Canada disagreed.

He said: ‘In 1982, when Evening At The Improv aired, we all thought that was the end - now you can sit at home and watch comedy in your underwear and smoking a doobie.

‘But nothing will ever replace the live experience of going to comedy and seeing things in three dimensions.’

And he borrowed a sporting analogy to conclude: ‘There’s nothing like going to the game.’

He also said he wanted to promote his club as a good place to go, regardless of how famous the comedians on the bill were, rather than relying on marquee names to draw in audiences.

Breslin added: ‘I think a good producer should surprise their audience. You don’t want to give them what they want, you want to give them more than they ever dreamed.’

He said he used the bill supporting the headliner to introduce more exciting comedians – to the envy of the American club owners who said they were constrained because headliners south of the border usually brought their own support acts, giving promoters no say except in the case of last-minute dropouts.

Breslin said his booking policy was that he was ‘always looking for someone who’s trying to move the needle of culture a little bit. And that means I worship at the altar of good writing.

‘I want comics to touch an audience’s hearts and minds so when they leave the club they have something to talk about,’ and he told comedians they should strive to be ‘as unique as your fingerprint.’

The panel also touched on the issues of diversity in clubs, and all said they booked solely on whether an act was funny. 

Curtis said many new acts concentrated more on politics than on learning the craft. ‘We have a lot of trolls in Denver,’ she said, dismissing some of her critics by saying: ‘If you are 168th out of 173 acts [in a competition], you are not a comic. Instead of focusing on all this, why not focus on being funny?’

And Von Schonfeldt said the #MeToo movement meant people sometimes lost sight of reality. ‘There’s so much noise that what’s important doesn’t get heard,’ she said.

Published: 26 Jul 2018