STAGE TIME Magazine: George Sarris, Exec Producer of New York Underground Comedy Festival

DVDs
Richard Lewis -
Concerts from Hell:
The Vintage Years

Lisa Lampanelli -Take
It Like a Man (CD/DVD)

Dane Cook -
Retaliation (CD/DVD)

Tom Green - Inside &
Outside

Brother Sam: A Tribute
to Sam Kinison

Laffapolooza 1

Latinlogues, Vol. 2

Platinum Comedy
Series -Bill Bellamy
Deluxe Edition

CDs
Todd Barry - Medium
Energy

Rick Younger-Come On
N'ah

Steven Lynch - The
Craig Machine

DL Hughley - Notes
from the GED Section

Books
Billy Crystal - 700
Sundays

Tom Green and Allen
Rucker - Hollywood
Causes Cancer: The
Tom Green Story

Margaret Cho - I Have
Chosen to Stay and
Fight

Penn Jillette and
Mickey D. Lynn - How
to Cheat Your Friends
at Poker: The Widom
of Dickie Richard

Margaret Smith - What
Was I Thinking? How
Stand-Up Did Nothing
to Prepare Me to
Become a Single Mother

Bill Maher - New Rules:
Polite Musings From a
Timid Observer

Oliver Double - Getting
the Joke: The Art of
Stand-Up

Robert Klein - The
Amorous Busboy of
Decatur Avenue: A
Child of the Fifties
Looks Back

Dave Schwensen -
Comedy Faqs and
Answers: How the
Stand-Up Biz Really
Works

Depending on who you ask, how you interpret the events or venues or how you count
them, we are bordering on top, the biggest comedy festival in the country period. More
stand-up shows, more stand ups; Upright Citizens Brigade is our partner. You couldn’t
ask for a stronger partner. Improvolution is also doing sketch. The founder of
Improvolution is a former Groundling, so we have Groundling ties and UCB is our
partner. They’re putting up their best acts they have and we’ll combine them with stand-
up…

This year, the new addition is film. We’ve accepted film submissions - shorts which, we
went through them and a lot of them are very funny. They’re going to be shown at the
Pioneer Theater [and] The Laugh Factory, which has a brand new, state-of-the-art
screening room opening up; it’s absolutely a gorgeous room…

Once again, industry will be admitted free of charge; everyone will be issued a free
laminate unlike Aspen and Montreal, which charges a pretty hefty sum of money. And
we just grew the festival through the hard work of myself, Jim Mendrinos and a lot of
the New York industry professionals who saw the value.

Obviously, the mayor saw the value in it because I wrote him a number of times and I
wrote all of the city borough presidents, I wrote all the city councilmen saying, “You
know last year, the New York Comedy Festival was awarded to Caroline’s, which doesn’t
make any sense because the last time I checked, New York was five boroughs.”

So we’re told the borough presidents, the Brooklyn borough president, the Bronx
borough president, Queens and they’re like, “You know something, you have a point.
It’s totally ridiculous. They were supposed to make all this money...and it all went up in
flames.” It was a huge waste of taxpayer’s money.

The taxpayers paid for that?

The taxpayers put in a decent amount of the bill. They were given in the neighborhood
of $300,000 dollars of taxpayer’s money of which they just – they couldn’t give tickets
away. Their strategy was absolutely awful. They rented Carnegie Hall, all these huge
halls and then went out shopping for talent and found out that it wasn’t that large of a
demand.

Our philosophy is we like to win battles we can win. In our opinion, comedy is
something that happens, kinda like CBGBs and punk rock, in a messy little room or an
upscale place. Carnegie Hall and all these big, prestigious places and then you try to
put somebody in there and try to sellout 5000 seats. To sell out a venue like that,
there are only about five people on the planet who can do it: Chris Rock, Bill Cosby,
Seinfeld…

If you would like to get into what inspired me to start it –

My background is not comedy. My background is Wall Street. After high school, I didn’t
know what to do with my life and a friend of mine got me a job at the New York Stock
Exchange as a messenger. I was a messenger and I worked my way up to a seat on
the New York Stock Exchange after about 10 years. After 10 years of having a seat on
the Stock Exchange, I retired at the age of 40 and wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with
the rest of my life.

I always wanted to be a comedian, so I was a comedian for about a year. Then as I
was doing comedy, I didn’t realize it entailed going out every single night, waiting
around, praying to get on, praying to get passed and then you have to hit the road. As
Eddie Brill said, “It takes five years to find your voice.”

I have no problem working hard and paying my dues. It’s just the going out every
single night – that was the part that really didn’t thrill me that much. I made a lot of
great friends in comedy so after a year I didn’t want to just walk away…I said, “Alright,
let me stay in this business but get on the other side of the coin.” And I got on the
industry side as a producer.

I said, “Okay, there’s a gap missing here. Why don’t we start a new festival in New York
that focuses on emerging talent and we’ll pad it with established comedians to help
draw attention and we’ll fusion it together and we’ll make a comedy festival out of it?”

One of the reasons why it’s call the New York City Underground Comedy Festival is first
of all, the first year we held it at the Laurie Beechman Theater, which is underground.
The second one is that “underground” means that, it’s the people a little below the
radar. We have big names… They’re special guests and they’re helping us out and
we’ve grown to that point where we get big talent because they like the idea.

Eddie showed up every single night unannounced and went up and Jim Gaffigan came
one night and did a special surprise set, so I knew we were born after that.

I had no idea that it would be successful as it was and the next year, Jim and I – Jim
Mendrinos, the co-creator, took on a bigger role of really saying, “Okay, let’s grow this
thing instead of keeping it three nights, three shows in one venue and went to 106
shows (three were canceled) in all five boroughs. We did about 20 libraries and three or
four hospitals. At the Columbia Presbyterian Hospital show, they actually closed-
circuited, TV’d, the comedians into the rooms of the people too sick to go down and
see it and it was some line-up. It was Eddie Brill and Jim David –

Another highlight of last year was the Dean of the Friar’s Club, Freddie Roman
headlined a show at The Bitter End. The Bitter End used to be what The Comedy Cellar
and lot of these very hot clubs right now are. That was the epitome of where you
played: Woody Allen played there, Cheech & Chong, George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Lily
Tomlin and Robert Klein.

There’s a lot of comedy shows with quality people, people who have been on Comedy
Central and they’re playing in all these little rooms and run all these little rooms. What
we do is we run our own main stage shows and we also take under our wing
independently-produced shows such as The Comedy Social and Jewish Girls Gone Bad.

The philosophy of the festival is to help emerging comedians and we’ve done that.
Carmen Lynch was chosen the first year for Aspen. Wendy Spero went on to be named
“The Best of 2003” by Time Out New York. Last year, a few people were picked up by
Nickelodeon, some people are writing for Nickelodeon. One guy got picked up by a big
management company and college bookers saw a lot of people and made some
selections. A lot of work has been generated for all our efforts, so we’re pleased.

Usually when you finish your career, you kind of get into philanthropy a little bit so in a
sense, I guess it’s my way of mixing philanthropy and something I love – comedy. We
have shows to help cancer; shows for MS...We have shows for everything. We are a very
charity-oriented festival; we have everything from free events at the libraries and
venues.

Our highest priced ticket last year was $30 dollars. There’s something for everybody.
We accept tape submissions. We have the advisory board and we pick a lot of input
from a lot of people and try to put up the best people we possibly can to be seen by
both the industry and consumer.

When did you do stand up?

In 2003, I said, “Okay, my 2003 resolution: I’m going up. So around November, I
started writing and I got up the first time at Stand Up NY. You know how scary it is. I
wrote and wrote, I got up there and they hand me the mic, and it’s just you, a brick wall
and a microphone.

You think you know how to do it and you kinda do but it’s so hard…it’s like everything
else. The great ones make it look easy. There’s so much to it and I enjoyed that
challenge. I didn’t get the bug where I had to perform constantly; that’s why it was easy
for me to make a decision to walk away and get on the industry side. I was more like a
stressed-out, “I have to perform” type of guy, not “this is great kind of thing.” I
dreaded it actually.

It’s funny because Larry David out in Aspen had similar thoughts when he was like, “I
would tell the host when I got onstage ‘Listen Susie, stay close because if I start going
in the tank, I’m out of here.’” And as Larry himself put it, “When I was up there, things
weren’t going my way, which usually they weren’t, the crowd annoyed me, the clanking
annoyed me; everything annoyed me.”

It was interesting to hear him say it because he got on other side – he also acts but he
writes. He’s an incredible writer. I met him out in Aspen and he’s exactly like he is on
the show.

He was in the corner and everyone was scared to death to go up to him. I went up to
him because that’s just my personality. I’m like, “Larry, are you still eating at the
Westway Diner?” That’s where they came up with the idea for Seinfeld. So I started a
conversation with him that way and we just chatted for a couple of minutes.

I take out a little Kodak “instant-matic” and went “Larry, would you mind if we took a
picture?” And he looks around and he’s like, “Do we have to?” And in the back of my
mind, I’m like, “It’s not exactly the paparazzi here. It’s just a Kodak, $12 “instant-
matic” and I played reverse psychology. I said, “Absolutely not.” He's like, “Okay, let’s
take a picture.”

Favorite HBO One Night Stand
	Earthquake
	Bonnie McFarlane
	Jim Norton
	Bill Burr
	Louis CK
	Kevin Brennan
	Patrice O'Neal
	Caroline Rhea
	Omid Djalili
	Flight of the Concords

Free polls from Pollhost.com