A recent Thursday night audience at the Laugh Factory in Hollywood was about to get a special treat. Rodney Dangerfield had arrived at the club, and the legendary comedian, showing his age, was shuffling to the stage for an impromptu set.
The surprised crowd cheered wildly, but upstairs, in a lounge that doubles as a kind of peanut gallery, Dangerfield's appearance was hardly good news. The lounge is where "the industry" hangs out--assorted casting agents, talent managers and television development executives--and they had come to see a dozen comics audition, or "showcase," for a coveted slot in the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival, held in Aspen, Colo., in March.
Twelve comics on one bill makes for a long night, and now Dangerfield promised to make the evening even longer. If that sounds jaded, you need to understand what showcases mean in the world of stand-up comedy.
Held practically every weeknight around town, from cattle calls of 20 comics at the Improv or Laugh Factory to one-person shows at smaller venues like the HBO Workspace in Hollywood, showcases feed a mutual need. The TV industry needs comedians for late-night talk shows and situation comedies (never more than now, with pilot season around the corner), and the comedians need TV to pay the bills, unless they're content being on the road 40 or 50 weeks a year.
No comic should come to L.A. hoping to make a living in the clubs: Space is limited, and the major venues are usually given over to showcases, which pay a pittance. But ask a given performer if he'd rather headline in Des Moines, Iowa, or throw himself to the TV gods in L.A., he'll probably choose the gods, cruel or random as they may be.
"People don't come here to become comedians. They come here to stop being comedians," says Jeffrey Ross, a New York comic whose deal with Disney brought him west. "Right now, no one expects anything of me. If I were Ted Danson, they'd expect something."
The reason is simple: TV is where the money is. Comedy clubs boomed in the late 1980s, then dropped off a cliff, the result of a saturated market and a rise in cable comedy hours.
The bigger names can still do well on the road, the Rita Rudners and Jeff Foxworthys, but the club circuit isn't terribly fertile anymore. Sitcoms, meanwhile, including one starring a former club comic named Jerry Seinfeld, have proved to be the TV industry's most lucrative programming option. Which is why young comics will knock each other over to get into the Aspen festival and the Montreal Comedy Festival in July, where the audience is well-populated with industry people looking to sign promising talent.
But amid the gold rush for deals, say many, few stop to consider that someone like Seinfeld came to television after more than a decade on the road, honing his act.
"This is a very deal-driven business, which is why you see so many 25-year-old comics getting signed," says David Tochterman, vice president of creative affairs at the Carsey-Werner Co. and the executive producer of "Grace Under Fire." Back in 1992, Tochterman, searching for a comic who could play a single mother, found Brett Butler at a showcase in New York.
Unfortunately, the process isn't always that simple.
"I always say this is like kissing frogs," Tochterman says. "You've gotta kiss a lot of frogs, because you don't know which one is a prince."
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On yet another weeknight at the Laugh Factory, 20 comics are doing five minutes each for representatives from two late-night talk shows, "The Keenen Ivory Wayans Show" on Fox and "Vibe" on UPN. The comedians come and go in such numbing succession, it's hard to remember just who was funny two hours later.
Asked what she looks for in a comic, Pat Buckles, a talent executive scouting for "Keenen," says: "The audience is very energetic on 'Keenen,' so the kind of comic who plays well on that show is high-energy. Each show is different. If I were working for Jay Leno, I would be looking for someone who's more middle of the road."
Graham Elwood and Suli McCullough, two comedians on the bill, are both 28, their careers in that vast holding area between the open mike and Seinfeldhood.
Elwood, from Chicago, did the road for five years and then came to L.A. two years ago to get into TV and film. Nothing has come his way yet, so to make money in the midst of all the showcasing, he'll play what he calls "the perimeter"--dates at the Improv in Brea or Irvine or a week at Harrah's in Las Vegas. Elwood has particular disdain for what he calls "these L.A. comics"--comedians who put together five or 10 minutes of material and then try to skip straight to TV without paying dues in the clubs.
"You know, it's the old story," he says. "It takes 14 years to become an overnight success."
As a 19-year-old student at UCLA, McCullough opened for Seinfeld at the school's Ackerman Union auditorium; nearly 10 years later, he's had small film parts, and he's a sketch player on "Vibe," but he's not so far along in his career that he can eschew the showcase.
