Stand-up in the Prairies
So Funny It Hurts: Why Canada's comics can't wait to leave home
Calgary Herald
Monday, June 9, 2003
Page: C7
Section: Arts & Style
Byline: Nick Lewis
"They say about New York, if you can make it there,
you can make it anywhere,"
says 34-year-old stand-up comic Dez Reed.
"That's (expletive). Because the guys that make it in
New York -- Jerry Seinfeld,
Paul Reiser, Colin Quinn -- would get the (expletive)
kicked out of them trying to
work through the Prairies in Canada.
"And I don't mean figuratively, I mean literally.
People would beat them up. They'd
go, all right, you're not funny, we're going to beat
you up now."
Reed should know. He's been in more fights in
small-town Alberta comedy
rooms than he cares to remember. He's had colleagues
beaten -- actually
beaten -- out of the comedy business. His friend Ron
Brown got jumped in
Chatham, Ont., by a few guys and was left in a
hospital room for three days. He
never returned to a stage.
"I've been in fistfight after fistfight, it's unreal,"
Reed says without a trace of humour.
"What happens is, you get heckled. So you insult the
dude. He heckles again, you insult him harder. He's not
getting any funnier with his, 'You suck!' shouts, but
you're getting funnier and edgier with each insult. By the
end of it, they realize they're not going to win the
verbal battle so they initiate a physical battle. So you have to
knock them out."
Canadians are world renowned as some of the funniest
people in the world -- Jim Carrey, Mike Myers, Martin
Short, Dave Foley, Dan Aykroyd, Catherine O'Hara,
Eugene Levy and Leslie Nielsen are all Canadians.
But Canada is one of the worst places to start as a
stand-up comedian say a couple of veterans performing at
FunnyFest, Calgary's annual comedy festival.
"If it was about money, I could have made much more
doing anything else," says Ron Vaudry, a 25-year comic.
"The average comedian doing first-year stand-up, they
make nothing." The 46-year-old Vaudry performed on
the Yuk Yuks circuit for 20 years before becoming an
independent comic. He says Canada's full of "hell gigs"
-- what the comics call venues that aren't meant for
comedy (Legion halls, bowling alleys, parking lots).
But the bigger problem, Vaudry says, is the rife
plagiarism in the business.
"Trouble with the comedy industry is that 10 per cent
is at the original quality level and the other 90 per cent is
trying to be," he says.
"There's huge plagiarism in this business. It used to
be policed at Yuk-Yuks in the '80s. But then the comedy
boom came and they had 16, 18 clubs at one time. And
they needed bodies to fill the spaces and they didn't
care where the jokes came from, who had the goods."
He notes the regional markets are especially
difficult, especially when "some local clown" copies an
out-of-town comic's style and material, "playing the
same rooms like 20, 30 times a year before you get there
and when you do . . . 'Hey, did you write your own
stuff?' "
Reed is one of Canada's best comics, but he's
virtually unknown. Prior to Sept. 11, he'd mostly perform
lucrative gigs in the U.S., but ever since, work
permits have been tougher to secure. Now he travels around
Canada playing everything from country clubs to Hells
Angels clubhouses.
Reed says he prefers American audiences to Canadian,
and explains why in a joke he sometimes performs
onstage.
"Here's the United States," he says. "I go to a bar
gig, just a regular bar gig. And people afterwards will come
up to me, shake my hand and go, 'You were the funniest
guy I've ever seen, that was so funny. Let me buy you
a drink. Keep your money in your pocket, we're buying
everything tonight.'
"And in Canada -- and this is if you kill -- I've had
this happen. I've had a standing ovation. And then, afterwards,
people will come over and go, 'That wasn't too bad. So
you get paid for this?' I go Yes, I get paid for this. 'You
get paid tonight?' Yeah I got paid tonight. 'Well, you
should buy a round.' "
Vaudry has a similar assessment.
"Canadians assume that if you're very good, you should
be in the States. 'If you're so good, what are you still
doing in Canada?' "
Both comedians say Canadians don't acknowledge their
best talent until someone else does. The
best-known Canadian comics -- Carrey, Howie Mandel,
Mike McDonald and the late Gilda Radner and John
Candy among them -- have had to make it in the U.S.
before they were acknowledged here. What that means
for upper-echelon comics like Reed is that they're
stuck in purgatory. He says he's done everything there is to
do as a comic, except star in his own sitcom. And
that's pretty much all people care about.
"We could grab the next 50 people we met at Chinook
Centre," Reed says, "and list the top American
stand-ups, and everyone would know who they are. Jerry
Seinfeld, Bill Cosby, Chris Rock, Robin Williams.
Everyone knows them. You ask them about the top
Canadian stand-ups -- Dez Reed, Ron Vaudry, Brent Butt --
and they wouldn't have a clue.
"In Canada, the most famous comic is Mike Bullard, and
he's one of the worst. He was a terrible stand-up. He
was a terrible live act, just awful. At best he was a
good MC . . . and look what he got."
The trouble, says Vaudry, is that there's no media
exposure in this country for comedians, which means there
can be no star system.
"Until (Open Mike with) Mike Bullard, there was no
showcase for comedians," he says. "They tried the show
Comics! for a while, but after they ran through the
top 20 acts, the second season got lamer and lamer."
Reed says Bullard's success doesn't help.
"No one watches Bullard," says Reed. "That's the
problem. Anything that helps comedy also hurts comedy. In
order to be recognized, you need to be on TV. Stand-up
comedy doesn't belong on TV, it never did. It's a live
forum, that's where it's good. You can't watch it on
TV.
"And the worst thing is, what's the general
perception? If it's on TV, it's the best. I don't know how many people
come up to me and go, 'Have you been on TV?' That's
the first question, no matter where you are. And I ask,
'Why, what difference does that make?' Well, I have
been on TV, but that's a ridiculous concept, just because
it's not televised doesn't mean it's not good."
Both acts say, though, that comedy festivals are an
incredible blessing. FunnyFest, in its third year in Calgary,
presents some of the best Canadian talent in 11 days,
and brings out people who wouldn't go to see comedy
in dingy, smoky bars.
"Having a comedy festival is a huge help to everyone's
cause," Vaudry says. "It's huge exposure. It's good for
the industry, it's good for the comics and it's good
for the audience."
