Laughs fest offers serious exposure
The cliche of the young performer vaulted into overnight success by a talent scout is as old as show business itself. However corny, that dream will be alive at least in part this weekend when scouts from Montreal's Just For Laughs festival come to three local clubs searching for talent for their 23d annual show next July.
They will visit Giggles in Saugus tonight, the Emerald Isle in Dorchester tomorrow, and the Comedy Studio in Cambridge on Sunday.
''The mandate is really to find the next up-and-coming stars of comedy or people who possess the ability to become those people," says Evi Regev, manager of programming and touring for the festival.
The path from discovery to stardom is a bit slower these days, compared with the years when comics such as Lenny Clarke and Tim Allen could walk out of the festival with a sitcom deal. But the festival still attracts scouts from every major network in North America and around the world, as well as managers and agents. Just getting in front of someone who could change your career is a big first step.
Tonight at Giggles, the roster is filled mostly with veterans hoping to prove their savvy, such as John David, Kevin Knox, and Paul D'Angelo. For a 15-year veteran like David, 44, who has been through the audition mill for the networks and HBO, a major audition such as this can be an epiphany.
''Being around for this long, I think I finally realized not to try to tailor-make the set to what you think they want, but just to do my thing," he says.
David has supported himself and his wife and child with comedy for nearly a decade, working the road but staying mostly in New England. But he still measures success in some degree by making it in television and movies. He's glad to have the chance to audition now, when he's comfortable onstage and off, rather than when he was younger.
''I probably wouldn't have appreciated it back then," he says. ''If I got it two years in, 'Hey, I'm a big shot.' This proves that persistence and hard work pay off. People take notice."
Most of the younger talent will be at the Isle and the Studio, shooting for a slot on the ''New Faces" show. Nicole Luparelli and Elaine Schulbaum, both 25, will be performing at the Studio as musical comedy act the Steamy Bohemians. They're looking for their first break.
According to Luparelli, the pair have spent the time leading up to the auditioning trying to tighten their normally improvised set and even making T-shirts to give to strangers that night to attract the judges' attention. She's hoping the Bohemians can become regulars at smaller festivals around the country.
''I'd like to get on the festival circuit," she says. ''I've heard that once you start doing them and if you do well at them, you can start getting work at all the other festivals."
Most of the comics won't know if they made the festival's final cut until spring, when the producers sit down and compare notes on the roughly 30 cities they will have visited. Though the competition is tough, Regev insists everyone has an equal shot, if they perform well.
''I'll put them all on one piece of paper and kind of look at them. And where they came from, what city, is really irrelevant to me," Regev says. ''All I care about in the end is, is the show going to be good and will they get something out of it?"
After that, each comic's opportunities are up to them. There are hundreds of shows over the week of the festival that they can make it into if they catch a producer's eye.
''They either rise to the occasion when they get here or they don't, unfortunately," Regev says.
On television
Patton Oswalt is usually good for at least one teary-eyed, gasping-for-breath laugh per set. On his one-hour Comedy Central special, ''Patton Oswalt: No Reason to Complain," premiering Sunday at 10 p.m., there are a couple of them, most notably routines on NPR's background music and open mikes. Fans might bemoan the slightly toned-down language, since Oswalt is a poet of the profane, but the material doesn't suffer much. . . . Jon Fisch, who made a splash on the New Faces show this past summer in Montreal, will appear on Comedy Central's ''Premium Blend" tonight at 10.
Around town
Robert Schimmel plays the Comedy Connection tonight and tomorrow. . . . The Connection hosts a ''Sopranos"-themed holiday show Sunday starring Boston's Frank Santorelli, who plays Georgie the bartender on the show.
