I am ready for some seriously wince-inducing stand-up comedy. And when I see the sweater-clad, rigidly coiffed, achingly suburban white couple excitedly sipping their Zimas directly in front of center stage, the anticipation of truly painful hackery ratchets up a notch; I know I’m in the right place.Star Search, that 1980s talent showcase/ game show/cavalcade of mediocrity recently resurrected in the wake of American Idol‘s success, has dispatched a film crew to Ybor’s Improv Comedy Theater in search of potential contestants. While the revamped program carries little of the cachet its earlier incarnation boasted, 15 professional comics from the Bay area, Sarasota, Orlando and even Atlanta have nonetheless shown up to do a cleaned-up, five-minute version of their set for the crowd and cameras — Star Search‘s status as a reality-TV dinosaur aside, it certainly can’t hurt the resume.
“I think money is money, and getting on TV any way you can is what most of them had on their minds,” says Improv Promotions Director and house emcee Gary Menke. “I don’t know if it carries as much clout as it did in those days, but anyone’s gotta be happy shooting for $100,000, right? It’s a TV credit, and a lot of people who don’t win still get something out of it.”
The Improv is an amiable smoky cavern, a gargantuan take on the brick-walled comedy club, updated and Super Sized to theater dimensions. The beers are fairly cheap, the food is fairly good, and its stage regularly hosts A-list talent. But given both Star Search‘s penchant for wholesome middlebrow entertainment and the fact that I’d actually caught a couple of their stand-up contenders on TV the week before (including a physical comedian who couldn’t have been less funny if he’d died of a stroke onstage), tonight I’m expecting the kind of clichéd observational banalities that make you slide down in your seat to hide your grimace behind the menu. I want to be asked what the deal is with VCR timers. I want to know what the differences between white folks and black folks are. I want to hear about how somebody’s ex is crazy.
In short, I want to be made torturously uncomfortable by shitty, predictable, lowest-common-denominator comedy spewed awkwardly by people who have no business wielding a microphone.
I am both pleasantly surprised and vaguely disappointed when this doesn’t happen.
The initially sparse crowd swells to respectable size just in time for Menke’s warm-up set, the contents of which are familiar to anyone who’s attended more than two Improv events. He keeps it short, and segues into an introduction for Brian Bradley, the first on the 15-comic roster.
And wouldn’t you know it, the guy is actually funny, riffing with a self- deprecating and slightly cynical style that stops well short of revelatory, but is engaging and creative nonetheless.
The vast majority of those who follow also are surprisingly adept. Nobody breaks into the sort of rants or socially acute commentary that typify contemporary stand-up’s sharper edges — it’s all pretty mainstream fare — but then again, nobody stoops to impersonating their parents’ misunderstanding of the answering machine or why they’re called apartments when they’re so close together, either. Most of the brief sets are polished, rhythmic and expert.
Tony Gaud puts a new twist on sex at the end of a rather unfulfilling blind date. L.C. mixes racial stereotypes with some material that borders uncomfortably on the homophobic. Indian (no, the Eastern kind) comic Naresh brings the house down early, his accent and demeanor giving his material some help. Southern belle Jody Kearn skewers her marriage with a sophisticated twang. Merv Seymour turns in a spookily accurate Robert Stack voice-over. Thirteen-year veteran Tim Wilkins works the stage like a pro, and venerable Bay area sick ‘n’ twisted comedian “Pretty” Paul Parsons gets off the evening’s single best one-liner:
“I like to spoil my wife, so every once in a while I take her out of the freezer and let her sit on the counter for two or three days.”
There are no Bill Hickses or Janeane Garofalos here tonight, but nor are there any Amazing fucking Johnathans. These are professional club comics, and their acts, while rarely blindingly innovative, are tight and entertaining. The varied crowd responds appreciatively, and the 15 sets pass quickly; the whole thing is over in 80 minutes or so.
Hanging out in the Improv’s lobby bar afterward, the comics I speak with all reveal that tonight’s biggest obstacle was tailoring their respective acts in anticipation of the Standards & Practices department over at CBS — no swearing, no anatomical slang, no gratuitous floor humping. Most of them use at least a bit of vulgarity regularly, and trying to get one’s personal style across without that added emphasis can be daunting.
“You had to keep it clean — I couldn’t do most of my stuff,” laughs Tony Gaud, who flew back from a road gig in Arkansas to take part in the showcase.
“I had to make it kosher. I can’t say ‘fuck,’ ‘shit,'” concurs crowd favorite Naresh, over the shrieks of the two girls trying to buy him shots and adding, deadpan, “I’m actually much funnier than this.”
They also all agree that the words Star Search could’ve been substituted with the title of just about any television program out there, and they would’ve showed up. An opportunity is an opportunity.
Tim Wilkins had to rush back to Tampa after opening for Belinda Carlisle (“I didn’t even get to meet her and reveal my 20-year crush”) in Clearwater to make his slot, and he’s heading out of town shortly to open for Julio Iglesias. He doesn’t believe that the program is as pivotal as it once was, but that certainly didn’t stop him from taking a shot.
“No, it’s not,” he says. “But, come on, I think getting raked over the coals by Naomi Judd and Ben Stein on national television would be well worth a trip to L.A.”
Scott Harrell can be reached at 813.248.8888, ext. 109, or by e-mail at scott.harrell@weeklyplanet.com.
This article appears in Mar 12-18, 2003.
