Just For Laugh's Festival: Day 3
[Our friend, comedy publicist Kambri Crews (above, with fiancé and client Christian Finnegan) will be guest blogging this week from the biggest comedy festival in the world - The Just for Laughs Festival in Montreal, Canada. Kambri will be sharing festival highlights, anecdotes and photos from her unique insider perspective. Note: Kambri's opinions of Christian's sets are clearly double-triple-super biased, but ours aren't: the dude is funny.]
First: Video of Christian on MySpace.com interviewing festival participants.
Last night’s Gala, the first of four major shows televised for the CBC, was mostly good. The 2,000 seat theater was filled to capacity and backstage was humming with nervous energy. Craig Ferguson was an adept host darting from Stage Left to Stage Right at least 50 times for his various entrances. I was surprised to learn that not only was he doing stand up, he had two big sketches and a very long production number as the show finale.
The “mostly” part of my “mostly good” assessment had nothing to do with the comedians. They all killed. Demetri Martin and Christian Finnegan were crowd favorites and Canadian comics Joey Elias, Tim Nutt and Shaun Majumder (Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle) did just as well (See the Montreal Gazette review.)
The lowest points actually came from two acrobatic performers that slowed the pace of the quick production – it’s a Gala, so I guess they figured they needed more entertainment that plain old stand up comedy – and in a pre-intermission sketch which had Ferguson introducing the audience to his “adopted children” who all happened to be barely dressed hot chicks of various nationalities. Audience shots showed open mouths and scowls on every face and at its conclusion, they booed. Booed! Congratulations to them for being smart enough to hate it and tough enough to show their displeasure. I have never booed anything but at such a steep price for a Gala ticket maybe I would have. Ah, the French!
Luckily by intermission’s end the audience was ready to forgive and forget when Ferguson took to the stage to introduce the second half of the show. He closed with a song entitled “Scientology” sung to the tune of “Personality” with 20 dancers/back up singers.
I left the theater with Rick Dorfman, his assistant Ali and New Faces comedian Pete Lee to dine at Milos, a schmancy Greek restaurant which happens to have a location at 6th & 55th, where we were joined by Christian Finnegan, Mike Birbiglia and his brother.
Of course comedy gossip was the topic of choice. Ali shared a funny story of an intern they have in their office who learned the hard way that comedians will sometimes be funny. Case in point, Intern looked quite upset at a note she had just scribed from a caller. “Who was that?” Ali asked. “Jim Florentine (Crank Yankers) called for Rick,” Intern replied. Ali sensed something wasn’t right so asked, “What’s the message?” Intern tensed up and said, “It was very personal.” Ali convinced Intern to turn over the note which read “Got test results back. Positive for genital warts.” Ali now proudly displays the actual message on her bulletin board.
This morning I caught some of “Just for Pitching” during which selected participants have five minutes to address a panel of real life international TV executives with their new show ideas. I don’t know if a development deal has ever arisen from one of these panels but it is a true learning experience to hear veterans of the trade pick apart concepts.
Afterwards I passed by Michael Cera being interviewed for CTV and later walked in with Todd Barry who was rolling luggage fresh from his flight from NY in time for his performance in “The Masters” tomorrow night. Jimmy Pardo is omnipresent but I have yet to lay eyes on Drew Carey, Margaret Cho or Bill Cosby.I am scheduled for a 4:00 interview with CBC where we will finally wrap up our requirements to be followed around by a film crew. Then it’s off to ComedyWorks to watch the “Best of the Fest” where the breakout performers of the last few days will get another chance to perform in front of the industry. More to come!
Throughout the week Christian will be followed by a camera crew for television show on the CBC. They will drive us around and film our every move. This has the earmarks of disaster all over it. Just how am I supposed to bust Christian’s balls when it’s all being recorded?
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