Elle - July 1998
Funny Business
THESE DAYS, A FEMALE COMEDIAN HAS TO KILL OR SHE'S DEAD ... AS FIVE UP-AND-COMERS FOUND OUT AT THE ASPEN COMEDY FESTIVAL. WHO GOT BOOED? WHO GOT A SITCOM? MERYL GORDON REPORTS FROM THE TRENCHES

(Click on images for larger version.)

Standing by the stage at the Aspen Club Lodge, waiting to go on, comedian Bonnie McFarlane is a portrait in terror. She's so jittery that her body is in perpetual motion: She paces nervously, runs her hands through her hair, checks her fly, dashes out of the room to try to regain her composure, returns and presses her hands together as if in prayer.

Waiters move around the noisy room, delivering drink orders. Finally it's McFarlane's turn. Gripping the microphone stand as if it's a life-support system, she starts by describing her childhood on a Canadian farm. "We didn't have running water and TV," she says. "My sister and I begged our parents to take us on vacation. They finally took us camping. It was so disappointing, because it was just like being at home."

The audience chuckles. McFarlane beams with relief as the first tentative laughter. At least they aren't going to boo her off stage. Then she continues making fun of herself. "I have a tiny, shitty apartment. Everyone I bring back to my apartment, I have to say--Oh my God, I've been robbed." Ba-de-boom. Now she's on to how her neighbors have sex seven times a day. "I can totally hear it," she says. "It's really frustrating, because I only like to masturbate three times a day." Finally, the crowd is roaring.

For comedians like McFarlane, the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, launched in 1995, offers an invaluable chance to impress a crucial cadre of Hollywood and New York talent spotters. This four-day comedy version of the Sundance Film Festival, sponsored by HBO, draws such top TV execs as CBS president Leslie Moonves and ABC entertainment chairman Stuart Bloomberg, who take in up to sixteen different live shows daily, searching for the next Jerry Seinfeld or Ellen DeGeneres.

A great performance here can jump-start a career. Two years ago, comedian Ray Romano's stand-up show was so well-received that CBS green-lighted his sitcom pilot, Everybody Loves Raymond, now a top-ten hit. Stu Smiley, the executive producer of Raymond and one of the festival's founders, says, "This is the middle of pilot season, so every network executive is concerned with the stack of scripts on their desk. A lot of people who perform at Aspen get cast into pilots and put on the air."

To add celebrity buzz, famous faces are also flown in for the occasion. Bill Maher moved Politically Incorrect to Aspen for four days. Woody Harrelson, Ted Danson, Kelsey Grammer, and other Cheers cast members came for a televised staged reunion, as did John Cleese and fellow veterans of Monty Python. At the St. Regis Hotel, the sprawling lounge became a prime spot to view former Saturday Night Live regulars Jon Lovitz, Janeane Garofalo, and Catherine O'Hara.

But the real drama at the festival is watching talented rookies in their twenties try to steal the spotlight from the stars. Although comedy clubs multiplied as quickly as Starbucks in the 1980s to an estimated 450 nationwide, that trend has faded, and with roughly seventy-five clubs left, few comedians can make a living on the circuit. Bonnie McFarlane performs at least three nights a week in L.A. clubs including the Improv and Luna Park, but takes home as little as $7.50 for a seven-minute set. These dismal economics present young comics with a stark choice: sitcom or starve.

McFarlane stands out just by being among the dozen women chosen to perform in Aspen. There is no Title-9 equality here--the women are outnumbered three to one by male comics. It's been more than a decade since Roseanne proved that a funny woman with a prime-time show can leave network executives laughing all the way to the bank. Brett Butler and Ellen also made the successful transition from stand-up to sitcom. Yet the perception endures that comedy--especially the edgy and irreverent realm of stand-up--is as much a man's world as an old-time Elks Club.

"Audiences are more dismissive of women," says HBO's Lowell Mate. "Women have to have a lot more bravado to be noticed." Although no statistics are available, agents and talent managers claim that fewer women even at the lower levels of the comedy circuit. "You're going onstage at 1:30 in the morning, performing before drunks," says Mike August, a William Morris agent repping two female comedians at Aspen, McFarlane and New Yorker Amy Poehler. As he puts it, "it's very hard for women to hang in there. But the women who break through can be huge."

SARAH SILVERMAN STEPS TO THE MIKE insouciantly chewing a wad of gum. The lone woman in tonight's lineup of comedians, Silverman, slender with long dark hair, looks like the ultimate nice Jewish girl. That is, until she opens her mouth.

"I was licking jelly off my boyfriend's penis the other night," Silverman says demurely, "and I thought, Oh my God, I'm turning into my mother." The crowd roars. She only gets raunchier.

It's all about defying stereotypes. What works about her act is the surprise factor, since no one is prepared for Silverman to come on like Eddie Murphy. "I can't avoid shock value," Silverman says the next morning over coffee. "I don't feel like my act is dirty at all. I'm being myself." But then she adds with an embarrassed laugh, "When people repeat back to me a joke I've said, sometimes it grosses me out."

At twenty-seven, Silverman is one of America's most successful young women comedians. She has performed a toned-down version of her act on The Late Show With David Letterman and appeared on Seinfeld as Kramer's girlfriend.

Silverman was the class clown as a kid in Bedford, New Hampshire, and as a teenager was desperate to make a name for herself. "I was single-minded," Silverman says. "As soon as I got my license, I started driving down to Boston to do open-mike nights." The sex jokes were a way of strip-mining her own life for material. "I didn't start having sex until I was nineteen," she confesses. "How can you not use new experiences and the rites of passage in life for what you say onstage?"

After dropping out of New York University in 1990 to perform in comedy clubs, she spent a season as a writer for Saturday Night Live, then moved to Los Angeles. Yet the same restless energy and neurotic needs that fuel her comedy also prevent her from following a linear career path. Silverman stubbornly insists that, unlike most performers at Aspen, she's not here to land a sitcom. Just mention the idea of canned laughter and a guaranteed paycheck and her mood darkens. "I've passed on every [screen] test deal I've been offered because of fear," she confides. Her nightmare is that she'll sign the requisite five-year contract and be stuck doing a part she hates. But there's an obvious cost to her rebellious approach to stardom. "I have no steady income," she says. "I earn enough to pay my rent," which is $1,100 a month. She pauses for a moment, wondering aloud how long her independence will last. "I have commitment problems. I'd like a boyfriend, too. I hope my feelings change."

FOUR YEARS AGO AT A COMEDY FESTIVAL in Montreal, Bonnie McFarlane walked offstage and was surrounded by network talent scouts. "It was like something out of a movie," she recalls. "I went from having no money at all to a lot of money, overnight." She got a development deal with CBS, then her own sitcom on UPN, Social Studies. It was a heady climb for a woman who grew up on a farm in Cold Lake, Alberta (population 2,500), where she had her own cow, Bessie. A chance to visit a comedy club at age twenty-one sparked her interest; shortly afterward she was fired from her job as an advertising copywriter. "I didn't have anything to do, and I started working in a comedy club in Vancouver, bartending," she says. Once she dared to start telling her own jokes, the high from performing proved irresistible. Making an audience laugh is, she says, "a completely self-centered, 'I am king of the world' feeling." McFarlane honed her act touring the bars and dives of rural Canada--now that's paying dues--and then lived briefly in Harlem before being whisked off to Hollywood.

End of fairy tale. After just six episodes her sitcom was canceled and she went through a rough patch. "Bonnie lost her confidence," says her manager, Cindy Schultzel, who adds that McFarlane became so afraid of forgetting her lines that she'd bring notes onstage. Those days are over, but McFarlane's life has been quiet as she waits for paying work: "I jog and ride my bike and write, and perform at night." She's working on a script about--what else?--a comedian who grew up on a farm and finds fame and fortune in L.A.

McFarlane's place in the entertainment pecking order is evident by where she's staying: Festival officials booked the TV stars at the deluxe St. Regis, but McFarlane is with the other stand-ups at the Beaumont Inn, a no-frills lodge on the outskirts of town.

"It's harder the second time around," McFarlane says, sounding discouraged. "Last time I was a fresh face. I don't know if anything will happen."

JENNIFER MacLEAN DIDN'T GET TO BED until 3 A.M. on Wednesday night--at 7 A.M. she had to take a gondola ride to the top of the ski mountain to appear on Good Morning Aspen.

"It was horrible," she says, her eyes glazed with exhaustion. "The host is an idiot, one of those guys who wears $80 reflector goggles." Once he learned MacLean is from Oshkosh, Wisconsin, he wanted to talk football rather than comedy.

One of the few real novices at Aspen, MacLean, twenty-five, is still trying to figure out how to handle such moments. After performing the previous night, she fled the stage as if leaving the scene of a crime: "I hate standing around waiting to collect kudos," she says. Better to avoid the conversation than risk the chance that no one has anything good to say.

But her act had been touching and funny. Riffing about your parents is a time-honored topic in stand-up comedy, but few people come to the profession with such good material. "My father is a lounge singer," MacLean announces to the crowed at the Mill Street Club, an upscale bar at the St. Regis Hotel. She pauses to let that sink in: "Oh, how I wish that were just part of the act."

As a child in Oshkosh, she sang duets with her father at lounges. "Imagine the adolescent angst," she tells the audience, "of wanting to hang out in your room with friends playing hard rock, while your father demands you go off to sing 'Bye, Bye Blackbird' at the Kiwanis Club."

There's something about MacLean's girl-next-door act that makes you root for her: She's warm, she's got great comic timing, she's deeply insecure about her body, and she's having a hard time. "Casting people keep telling me, 'You're very likable,' "she says. "What I want to say is, 'That's nice but I'm also unemployed. Can you do something with my likeability?' "

MacLean never really considered any career other than performing. "My father was always very funny, and I had to be very funny to keep up with him," she says. At the University of Minnesota, she took comedy classes and joined an improv troupe. "Some people really enjoy improv," she says, "but after a while, I thought, I can't stand it, I don't want to be at another bar with someone yelling out, 'Penis!'"

So she developed her own stand-up act, migrating to Los Angeles two years ago. "When I first got out here," she says, "I would do open mikes almost every night because I was so lonely I could hardly bear it."

She's walked dogs and worked at temp jobs and piled up debt. Just when the calls from the collection agency got particularly unpleasant last year, she landed a short-term writing gig for an MTV show, Austin Stories. Her luck continued this fall when HBO's independent-production unit signed her to a three-month deal for a possible one-woman show (MacLean's fee was $10,000, but, after taxes and managerial fees, she got $4,000).

Her contract is up a week after the Aspen festival; if HBO doesn't renew, she'll be scrambling again. "My mother sometimes asks me, 'Why don't you get a real job?' " And give up the chance to go on Good Morning Aspen? No way. At least not yet.

BY FRIDAY MORNING, DAY THREE of the festival, word-of-mouth is spreading rapidly about the new must-see show, a hilarious performance by the Upright Citizens Brigade, a New York-based sketch group.

The Upright Citizens--Amy Poehler, her boyfriend, Matt Besser, Ian Roberts, and Matt Walsh-- are performing their Saigon Suicide Squad act. Racing on-and offstage, Poehler is a virtuoso quick-change artist. She morphs from a blond matron to a Patty Hearst-like moll to a member of the Hong Kong Danger Duo, complete with Chinese accent, pink tutu, and long braid. "We're a very physical group, we like to fight and run around," says the five-foot-two Poehler. "I'll get punched and realize that I'm weaker than everyone else.

"I was always a look-at-me kind of kid," Poehler says. Her parents encouraged her, since horsing around was the family's way to let off steam. "In our household, any tense moment or awkward silence was filled by inappropriate jokes." A theater major at Boston College, Poehler tried out for dramatic roles but was always cast as the comic relief.

In 1993, she moved to Chicago to attend the famed Improv Olympic workshop, hooking up with the already-formed Upright Citizens troupe. Two years ago the group made the tough transition to New York. "I thought I was going to become a professional waitress," she says, rolling her eyes at the memories.

Thanks to Improv Olympic alum Andy Richter, Poehler recently landed a recurring role playing his cute kid sister on Late Night With Conan O'Brien. It's a great showcase, but only pays $150 to $600 per appearance, depending on the number of her lines. She also teaches comedy classes at Solo Arts Group and performs twice a week with the Upright Citizens Brigade.

Given Poehler's pixieish appeal, casting agents have urged her to consider a solo career. "People keep trying to pick us apart, but we're a really tight group," she says. There are advantages to being the only woman: She feels like she has three bodyguards, protecting her from hecklers and rejection, and "When you fail, you all fail together."

IT'S 1 A.M. AND PEOPLE ARE STILL crowding into the St. Regis ballroom, elbowing each other to get into Friday's late-night anything-goes performance. Expectations are so high that this cavernous room, which seats roughly 1,000, is jammed. The draw? Alternative comedian David Cross has invited his fellow comics to put aside their well-rehearsed acts and do an impromptu show.

Talk about hit-or-miss: The acts are alternately deadly and riotous. The crowd cheers as Janeane Garofalo takes the microphone, but she bombs so badly, reading a fake Monica Lewinsky letter, that she's reduced to apologizing for being drunk.

Ben Stiller does an amusing walk-on. Then Jennifer MacLean appears, as a funny loser talent manager who introduces lowlife acts, including two male comics who do an entire unintelligible shtick while wearing oxygen masks. Then she brings out two folk singers: Sarah Silverman and her older sister Laura, a comedian who provides the voice of Laura the receptionist on the animated Dr. Katz: Professional Therapist:. With a nod to sibling rivalry, the sisters wail out an exuberant version of "I'm the Cute One," the theme song from the TV show Full House.

By 2:20 A.M., the crowd is fading, the ballroom emptying fast. "I couldn't keep my eyes open," says Mike August, who cannot bring himself to stick around to see his client, Bonnie McFarlane perform. Finally, it's her turn.

With strobe lights flashing, she fumbles her way onstage, walking backward, wearing sunglasses. So much for McFarlane's usual just-down-from-the-farm act: In this spoof of bad comedy performances, she is playing a blind comedian, making jokes like, "My favorite color is corduroy." It is a simultaneously angry and funny performance, as she yells at the crowd--"What are you staring at?"--and crawls around on the floor after dropping a sheet of Braille notes. "So few women do physical comedy," says Amy Poehler, in admiration. "The way Bonnie moved, the way she walked--everything worked."

The next morning, when McFarlane sleepily came down for breakfast at the Beaumont at 11 A.M., her fellow comedians showered her with praise. "That was hilarious," says Kermit Apio, a Seattle comic. "The audience really got into it." Jennifer MacLean chimes in, "Bonnie was hysterical."

McFarlane, tucking hungrily into an omelette, looks startled and embarrassed by the praise. Today is Saturday, the last day of the festival, and now she doesn't want it to end. "I keep thinking, It will be over soon," she says wistfully. Then it's back to L.A. and waiting for the phone to ring.

AND NOW, THE ENVELOPE PLEASE: The Upright Citizens Brigade won the Aspen jury award for best sketch group. Amy Poehler called excitedly from the set of the Conan O'Brien show, a few days later, to pass along even better news: Comedy Central has ordered at least ten episodes of the Upright Citizens Brigade show to air in August, in the choice time slot after the popular South Park. Enthuses her agent Mike August, "This puts the group on the map."

For Bonnie McFarlane, the buzz about her late-night triumph paid off, too: She's been invited to do her stand-up on the late-night Louie Anderson TV show, the Letterman show is interested in booking her, and she's going to be a character on the Dr. Katz show, doing her stand-up act while on the therapist's couch. "I'm going to be animated," she says gleefully. She's amazed that her two-minute Aspen shtick would make such a difference. "What's great is that my performance in Aspen gets better and better as people talk about it," she says. "If they'd actually come to see me maybe they wouldn't think I was so amazing."

Sarah Silverman taped an episode of The Larry Sanders Show, told her agent that she still wouldn't audition for any sitcoms or pilots, and began rehearsing for a workshop production of a play she co-wrote and is acting in, Susan Says Cheese. Sounding uncharacteristically upbeat, she said simply, "I'm really happy to be doing my own work."

Jennifer MacLean, alas, did not fare well. Lowell Mate was disappointed with her Aspen performance and put her HBO deal on hold. "People weren't responding to her material," he says. "I think Jennifer has a great one-person show in her, but she needs a breather, to build her confidence and stand-up routine."

Easy for him to say--how much confidence can you have when you've just been rejected and have no money. "I could go on unemployment, or go back to walking dogs," MacLean says, outlining her fiscal options. But after seeing so many careers take off in Aspen, she is determined to persevere: "It's amazing how you can be just a day away from it all happening."