A friend invited me to watch her perform at the Comedy Store. Generally I avoid the Store for a cumulative variety of reasons: Don’t like the shows, bad (expensive) parking, expensive drinks, ridiculous open mic, and they’ve never had any interest in booking me.
I do however like the “Original” Room as a place to perform. I get to the Comedy Mall every couple of years when a friend is performing in the “Belly” Room. The Belly Room is about a 50 seat room upstairs that usually host “bringer” shows, as we comics call them. A bringer show essentially requires each comic to bring a certain number of paying customers to be allowed to perform or to be booked back. Comics are less required to be funny if they are “bringers”. If a you bring enough people you don’t have to be funny at all. Some clubs don’t even require you to be a comic. So bringer shows can be very hit or miss. Bringers tend to have few working professional comics since real comics don’t have many non-comic friends who haven’t seen them and, comics rarely pay to see other comics, especially comics who can’t get booked in a real show with a real audience. As opposed to a bringer audience who came because the guy from work says he’s a comic and he’s been bugging them to come to this show for the last month. Some of the performers in even a bringer show are very funny people. Most are amusing at best because the merits of their inclusion aren't necessarily comedic. Sometimes a good comic gets to do the show if the bringer requirement is waived. That way the promoter knows the show won’t completely suck.
If a comic is lucky he’ll get up in front of a packed bringer house and rock it. Sometimes one comic brings a large portion of the audience so, the promoter doesn’t put them on stage until the end so that comic’s crowd has to fight the impulse to cut their losses and, go home to their flat screen. Most times the audience is forced to sit through one bad “comic” after another, praying that their friend will be good and make it all worthwhile.
So my friend invites me to see her perform at the Comedy Store, on a Friday night, in the “Main” Room. Suddenly I’m impressed. Possibly because I hadn’t been to the Store in a couple of years and, I hadn’t been to the Main Room in about a decade. It’s a large room that seats around 300. That’s where I saw Sam Kinison, and Richard Pryor (He was sick and not very funny). Where Nicholas Cage asked me where he could find Carrie Snow. (I didn’t know her then, but I do now.) It was a room with a little star power. All of these moments over 20 years ago. Still seemed like a big deal to me that someone who’s been performing for 2 years would have a spot in the Main Room on a Friday night. She must be doing something right. So she put me on the guest list and I went to the Comedy Mall hoping to see some magic. Before the show she introduced me to some of her other friends, Garry Marshal, an actor, a video producer. Things were looking promising. When I get to the box office I tell the guy my name, he finds it on the list and charges me $15 “But I’m on the guest list.” “Right. $15.” I had already invested $15 in parking- might as well stick it out. As we were led to our seats in the quarter filled Main Room, I realized that I had been sucked into a bringer show. On a Friday night at the Comedy Store. The Guest list was about who gets credit for my $15
That’s what the business has become. Comedy clubs have to find a way to put butts in the seats and keep the lights on. It’s not just the Store. The Improv does it too. So why not put some of the pressure on the comics. Not how it used to be but, it’s how things are now. Yuck.
