By Ernest Hoffman. First published on ALMEMAR.ORG
Andy Nulman is the co-founder of Montréal’s Just for Laughs comedy festival, the first (and still the biggest) comedy festival in the world. He’s helped kickstart the careers of comedic legends including Tim Allen, Chris Rock, and Kevin James, among many others. From an underage start in rock reporting to an erratic trajectory through the comedy business, Andy shares the insights and outrages of thirty-plus years in show business.
EH: Is Purim the Jewish people’s Just for Laughs festival? I mean, the book of Esther is basically slapstick, we dress up like clowns, we get drunk on purpose, we act like fools… what you think about that?
AN: I think in the whole Jewish way of life, there’s a strong component of humor. To survive pogroms, inquisitions, holocausts, annihilations… it’s given us the power to laugh at our oppressors. So to have a celebration such as Purim where you’re really celebrating the foolishness of the fool, it’s really part and parcel of the Jewish heritage. There are very specific components that make Jewish humor unique… it was used as a form of defiance, there was that element to it, the last bit of defiance any Jew had during the Holocaust. And also, the first mention of humor at any point in time is in the Bible, when God goes to Abraham’s wife and she’s 93 and he says she’s going to have a son, and she laughed, and that’s why his name was Isaac, it was based on a reaction to God telling her she was going to have a son. So when you have that much of an inbred sense of humor in your religion, having it come out the way it does on Purim is very natural.
EH: Yes, and it’s fun too, because right embedded in the holiday is the idea that the absurdity and the celebration is very much about something that should’ve been a complete catastrophe, and the very thing that was constructed to be the catastrophe for the Jews becomes the catastrophe for the people who are trying to harm the Jews.
AN: Exactly, well put!
EH: So I read that you got started in the arts very young, actually you were an arts reporter… Can you tell me a bit about that? How old were you at the time?
AN: I was 16, and it all came from, I’ll never forget this, but at my high school, Sir Winston Churchill, we had this little newspaper, and I said I wanted to write for it. They said, ‘what would you like to write about?’ I said ‘bands and stuff.’ So they said ‘great, the Wagar High School band is coming here,’ and I said ‘I don’t want to write about the Wagar High School band! Aerosmith’s coming to the Forum, and that’s what I want to write about!’ And they said ‘no, we’re doing this stuff, we’re doing…’
EH: …high school level stuff!
AN: Yeah, but then a few months later I was waiting for the Sunday Express, which was a Montréal newspaper, and covering entertainment. It took four months for it to happen.
EH: But you already had your sights set on that. It took a while for it to happen, but you were thinking bigger than the Wagar High School band, in other words…
AN: Yes, but again, you can think big, but thoughts are a dime a dozen. It’s the action that changes everything. Now I started off as a sports reporter, because I just wanted to get into the newspaper business. I used to love to write, and I was way more of a rock ‘n roll guy than a sports guy, but the opening at the newspaper was in the sports department. So it taught me a very important lesson, that you may have a goal, and that goal might not be open, so take what’s open and work your way towards that goal. Even though I was more of a music and entertainment writer, I applied for sports. Then once I was in the door I said ‘okay, now let’s change direction.’
EH: So what were some of the acts that you covered while you were at the Sunday Express? This would’ve been a pretty exciting time in Montréal, and in general… what are some of the bands you got in to see, and how was the experience?
AN: Well, it was a pretty crazy lifestyle. If you’ve ever seen the movie Almost Famous, that was my life. I was going to CEGEP at the time, I was going to Vanier, and I was writing for the Vanier paper, but I was able to do articles on bands like Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Kiss, Electric Light Orchestra, Genesis, Styx, Fleetwood Mac, because I was spending time with them backstage… It was crazy!
EH: That’s incredible. What a position to be in!
AN: Yeah, it was really nuts! Genesis or Styx would do these two-night runs at the Montréal Forum, and I would go the first night and sit in the press seats that were very generously given to me by Donald K Donald. Now, the second night I wanted to go back, and they knew I was going to school, so they said, ‘we’ll let you in, but you’ve got to do your homework.’ So they would give me this office in the Forum, this little dressing room, and they would sit me in the dressing room, and I would do my homework. They would give me a set list, and I would sort of hear the muffled sounds, go out through the back exit, go up to the side of the stage, watch the songs I wanted to watch, and then go back and do my homework. I would sit there doing my homework at the Montréal Forum!
EH: That’s awesome, and they would give you an office to do it! It’s almost like you got better accommodations than the guys who weren’t in school, because you needed them!
AN: Yeah, that was really a cool time. And what was also cool is here I was, this short, kind of overweight kid with acne and long hair to my shoulders, but because I had this entrée, I was able to basically go to these girls and say, ‘listen, you want to have a really special time?’ I still remember there was this girl, she’s a friend to this day, actually, she’s a nurse who lives in Hawaii, but there was this girl who everyone was afraid to approach, she was just this goddess, and I’m this squat guy, so I went up there and I said, ‘listen do want to go meet Ron Wood of the Rolling Stones?’ and she said ‘okay’, and we were friends ever since. Those were good times. It was also a different era in Montréal. There were tons of shows coming through. It was also the beginning of the disco era, so I was invited to all these openings… I wasn’t even 18 yet, and I was going to these crazy openings, these insane all-night parties, and my parents had no idea what I was doing…
EH: You’re like, ‘Yes, there will be a string quartet performing, and I will be covering it…’
AN: …wild, wild parties, a lot of drugs. I was always very, very straight, but I would watch this crazy stuff go on and think ‘I can’t believe I’m part of this!’ I met so many wild and interesting and insane people, like Chubby Checker, James Brown, Divine… he was this huge transvestite actor who would do all these John Waters movies…
EH: So you’re right out there on the edge in your late teens, that’s crazy!
AN: Yeah, it was really a lot of fun. So 16, 17, I still remember these crazy stories. With this girl Pam Katz, we went to this Electric Light Orchestra concert at Place des Nations, and this band Trooper was opening up for ELO. It was an outdoor concert and it was raining, so the concert was kind of postponed. So we just hung out in Trooper’s dressing room, singing songs. I mean, where do you get this? Those were pretty wild and crazy days.
EH: So now how did this feed into comedy, and you getting involved with Just for Laughs?
AN: Well, I was ready to be a journalist the rest of my life. I was enjoying the lifestyle and I thought this is what I wanted to do, but then I had a fight at the paper… I was entertainment editor and also promotion manager, because I was going to McGill and so I knew a little bit about marketing. There was this promotion I did, I was 22, I put this big event on where I invited all of our readers. It was about 200 people, and we did this cruise on the St. Lawrence, and one of the guys who was working with me, the sales manager, he got drunk and he thought it would be funny to cut my tie. He basically cut my tie with a pair of scissors. and one of the rules is you don’t screw around with my clothes, which is a rule for the rest of my life. So I thought at that point in time, ‘what is equally funny as cutting someone’s tie?’ And I thought perhaps a glass of red wine on someone’s white sweater would be the equivalent, so I threw wine at him…
EH: And this was probably a pretty quick calculation…
AN: yeah, it was one of those mega-computer-with-incredible-calculation-speed…
EH: …you went through all the variables and this was the perfect response.
AN: Yes, exactly, except that three weeks later when the editor was fired, he took over and the first thing he did was fire me!
EH: Aaaaaah, three weeks later! That’s bad luck!
AN: …or great luck, because I would perhaps still be a journalist today! But I was unemployed, so I had to go ahead and do things. I thought I was a major find, with all this experience behind me, but I couldn’t get a job anywhere. I graduated McGill and I had no offers. So I started my own little marketing and promotion business. A friend of mine who was good to me growing up, a guy named Ruben Vogel, was a promoter. I was good to him when I was at Sunday Express, so he was good to me, and he said ‘you know what, I’ll give you some things to do.’ So I would do press releases, PR for his shows, and a lot of them were comedy shows. We did Jay Leno, Stephen Wright, Yakov Smirnoff, a whole bunch of comedy shows over at Club Soda. Then he wanted to meet Howie Mandel, and rather than just PR, he wanted to do a co-promotion. So I said ‘what does that mean?’ He said ‘well, you give me $10,000, I put in $10,000, and if it makes more than $20,000 we split the profit.’ I said ‘okay, that sounds fair.’ All I had to do was go find $10,000, which obviously I didn’t have, so I borrowed heavily from my family…
EH: And you’re telling him ‘this Howie Mandel’s gonna be big, you gotta believe me…’
AN: Well, he did the Saidie Theater, and I knew him because I did a lot of stories about him when I was at the Sunday Express, so we became friends. In fact I put Ruben together with Howie, so that’s why he said don’t just do PR, co-promote this…
EH: Oh, that’s very nice of him, in that case, because you’re bringing the opportunity, he’s giving you a chance to get a piece of it.
AN: Yeah, I just knew Howie from growing up, and actually I met my wife through him, she was Howie’s brother’s ex-girlfriend. So we co-promoted this show, and we made money. Then we caught Howie’s tour promoter at the time scalping tickets outside our show. We brought it to Howie’s attention, and Howie fired him on the spot. Then he said, ‘why don’t you take over the rest of the tour?’ So we ended up doing his whole tour, and when we did the Canadian tour well, he said, ‘I’ve never done an American tour, would you want to do that?’ So we did a big American tour, we played Carnegie Hall, did a bunch of pretty big shows. And then Gilbert Rozon started Juste Pour Rire in French, and he wanted someone to run it in English. He wanted someone with a bit of comedy cred, who’d done some shows in the States, who could speak a bit of French, and I was really the only guy who had that credibility. Ruben Vogel again introduced me to Gilbert, and the rest is history. I was never really a comedy guy so much as I was a showbiz guy, an opportunist.
EH: So Gilbert started it a couple of years earlier, and it was relatively small, two days, all French, and then you came in, and you guys really expanded… What was it like building it up? What was it like raising money in 1985?
AN: Well, no one believed in it because no one knew what a comedy festival was at the time. One of the beauties of getting involved in something that nobody knows, is that it’s harder sometimes to get through, but then again at other points in time it’s easier, because people have a curiosity, I mean, what is this thing that they’re talking about? So it was really tough because nobody understood what a comedy festival was, no one had any idea of a comedy festival because it didn’t exist. That’s why I tell my kids to this day, if you’re doing a business idea and someone says ‘oh, that’s fantastic, I get it, what a phenomenal idea, it’s wonderful!’ When you hear that, I say run like hell, but if you’re speaking to someone and they say ‘I don’t get it, I’ve never heard of anything like this before…’
EH: Yeah, that’s got to be a good thing! So you guys basically ran around and tried to convince people that this strange thing that they’ve never heard of might actually be a great idea?
AN: Yes, and financing is one part of it. The other part of it is trying to convince performers and TV networks of the viability of the project we’re putting together. You may have tons of money in the bank, but if you can’t convince the performers to come to your event, you’re not going to have an event. That was really the challenge, trying to convince managers, and agents, and agencies to take us seriously. It’s funny… we used to have to beg people to let us spend money on their clients…
EH: I guess it’s a different formula than just booking shows… you have to try and tell them ‘look it’s the same thing, people show up, they pay money, and you get money…’
AN: Yes, but this is 20, 30 years ago, so it was a different ballgame.
EH: So I guess at this point, you guys are under way… now at what point did you know it was going to work, that you were going to have a big festival?
N: Well, what happened was we got lucky. The comedy boom happened at the same time as we launched the event, so suddenly comedians were hot! For a while, the top show on television was 60 Minutes, and sitcoms were sort of dead, and then there was a resurgence. I remember people coming here and finding talent. A few years after I started, in 1990, Tim Allen was discovered here, and became the star of Home Improvement. So we were there in 1988, when comedy was really taking off, and people were looking for comedians to build TV shows around, and comedy movies started to kick in again. John Candy was massive, with Planes, Trains and Automobiles and Uncle Buck, Steve Martin was huge. So the fact is, we were there right at the beginning of the comedy boom, which was a massive help.
EH: So you’ve seen a lot of comedians on their way up. Who did you see early on, who was relatively unknown when you were booking them at Just for Laughs, and you thought, ‘you’re awesome, and you’re going to be big?’
AN: Oh, there were so many people. First of all, Chris Rock. He had just turned 18, and people in New York wouldn’t put him on stage for me. I had to beg Carolyn Hirsch at Caroline’s Comedy Club to put him on, just for me to see him. Chris Rock, I knew from minute one. He had this raw energy. Tim Allen, seeing him at the Improv in LA and thinking, ‘oh my God!’ The character he built… he used to talk about building washing machines and putting an outboard motor in the washing machine for MORE POWER, and we realized right there and then the guy was going to be massive. Kevin James was another one, I just remember seeing Kevin, seeing his energy. Bill Hicks was phenomenal. There were so many people, there was such a massive level of talent, you’d just be knocked out by people every night. I remember seeing Paul Reiser really early. Gilbert Gottfried is still one of my favorites, and was always quirky. Rowan Atkinson was another one. Mr. Bean was, of course, huge in Britain, but not known here, and he broke Mr. Bean in Montréal…
EH: That’s interesting, because it shows a lot in Québec, and the fun thing about Mr. Bean is it’s not tied to language. He’s such a strange character, but there’s no words in it…
AN: …which is why he broke out in Montréal.
EH: I was wondering also whose success was most surprising to you… I remember reading about Jerry Seinfeld early in his career, where people were looking at him and saying, ‘well, this guy is way too Jewish, way too kvetchy, and no one outside of New York is ever going to go to his shows,’ and then he blows up. So who would you look at and think “wow, this guy’s huge, how did this happen?”
AN: Well I don’t really have someone like that. You look at a lot of performers, and you may not get it, but the fact is there’s an audience, and that’s the beauty of performance. There’s a lot of comedy I don’t get, but there is an audience that sees things a different way. Jeff Foxworthy, he’s carved out a great niche that may not be the urban sophisticated, city-dwelling niche, but he’s got the middle American audience, and he scored huge. Now that may not necessarily play in sophisticated cities like New York and LA, but who cares? He’s got a massive career by going after middle America.
EH: Yeah, a show is a show, a special’s a special, and he gets them, absolutely. Of course, if you go to one of his shows, you might be a redneck… So what are you most excited about these days? What is it that keeps you getting out of bed and being excited about what you do?
AN: The future of comedy. I’m waiting to see how people are going to properly use technology in comedy, because right now it works, but when you look at any technological comedy… Marshall McLuhan once said technology of the new is hampered by content of the old, and you see all this stuff work on the Internet, but in essence it’s TV stuff. It’s fine, it’s great, it’s popular, but what happens when people really start to understand technology, and understand that comedy is more than just the written word, or a video… what will it be? So there are guys like Chris Hardwick, who is perhaps a leader in this, people who understand technology and understand comedy and want to reinvent what comedy is. Is it experiential? Is it gamification? I don’t know, but it’s more than just rebroadcasting videos, which is great, I love it. But how do you re-create for the Internet audience? How do you re-create comedy that isn’t necessarily something that’s been done before? And that’s what I’m most interested in finding, that link between our technological world and the comedic world.
EH: And finally, there are so many performers, comedians and others, who keep their day job and they basically devote their nights in their weekends to their art. What advice would you give an aspiring comedian or another artist who wants to make a career of it?
AN: Jump before you really can, because it’s better to jump a little early than a little late, and you can always go back to your fallback position, but you can never go back to an opportunity that’s lost. If you want to make it your full time profession, make it your full time profession. You can do things part-time to fuel your full time profession, that’s fine. It’s better than the other way around, where you’re a part-time comic and a full-time waitress. If you’re a part-time waitress and a full-time comic, life is different. Sometimes it’s just a shift in your mind. Jump before you’re ready, because if you jump when you’re ready, great, but the timing is very, very precarious. If you jump after you’re ready, sometimes you may have missed the train, you may be left standing on the platform. So if you don’t feel ready yet, you’re ready, perfect, go! If you feel ready, you’re late.
The post ALMEMAR: The Original Kingmaker of Comedy! Andy Nulman on Chris Rock, Backstage Homework, and Jumping Before You’re Ready appeared first on A Bit Off the Top.
