SOBERING TIMES FOR COMEDY
JFL guests sound off about a PC era
It wasn’t his onstage shtick that killed Bill Cosby’s career — it was his criminal offstage behaviour, recently resulting in a conviction for aggravated indecent assault against several women.
It was also the outrageous offstage behaviour of Louis C.K. — accused by five women of sexual misconduct — that has since stifled his career.
And allegations of sexual impropriety long dodging Woody Allen and more recently aimed at Aziz Ansari have virtually brought their careers to a halt.
It’s worth noting that apart from some R-rated material on the part of Louis C.K., the other comics have/ had some of the more squeaky clean acts in the business.
Trevor Noah works fairly clean, too, but an offensive joke he made about Indigenous women in 2013 has come back to haunt him as he is set to tour Australia next month. The Daily Show Host, at the helm of a JFL gala on Saturday, has since removed the clip from social media, but some are now calling for a boycott of his shows in Australia.
On the subject of Australia, there has been nothing like Hannah Gadsby’s Nanette to hit the comedy world in recent years, particularly for a piece with its roots Down Under. A winner of a heap of comedy awards, Nanette, which Gadsby will perform for the final time at JFL, Friday at L’Olympia, and which is now streaming on Netflix, is really not a comedy. But it’s certainly changing the conversation on what constitutes comedy.
Nanette is more a staggering confessional. Gadsby announces she is reassessing her life and métier. She states she just doesn’t feel comfortable in comedy anymore, because she has built her career on self-deprecating humour, which is tough for someone already feeling marginalized: “It’s not about humility. It’s about humiliation.”
On the homefront, Just for Laughs, just prior to the launch of this year’s festival, unveiled a new workplace harassment policy in light of allegations of sexual assault and harassment that surfaced last October against its founder and former owner Gilbert Rozon. The charges resulted in the departure of Rozon from JFL and the sale of all his shares in the company. Rozon was later hit with a class-action lawsuit by more than 20 women.
These are clearly sobering times in the comedy world. And there is a palpable sense of cautiousness on the live comedy front.
This year’s JFL Nasty Show, once the bastion of political incorrectness, is not nearly as nasty as it was. Funny, to be sure, but hardly filthy. The show, wrapping Saturday at MTelus, is not much different from most other comedy shows — with just a tad more emphasis on sex — and it’s highly doubtful anyone, even your grandma, would be offended.
Local audiences can always count on Brit wit Jimmy Carr to provide the highest level of lewdness, and he doesn’t necessarily disappoint in his latest spectacle, The Best Of, Ultimate, Gold, Greatest Hits World Tour, wrapping its eight-night run Sunday at the Gesù. Yet his show doesn’t have the same shock value as it used to — either because we’ve heard much of the material before or he punctuates some of his jokes with his disarming heehaw horse-laugh.
Carr even makes light of the current comedy morality in his act. He suggests that political correctness means only the mentally and physically challenged, minorities and gays can make jokes about themselves. On that note, Carr cheerfully adds: “So two pedophiles walk into a bar …” But doesn’t finish the gag. You get the point.
Also worth noting is that Carr later remarks: “I was watching porn last week and thinking … that bed looks so comfy.”
Surely, Québécois enfant terrible Mike Ward, a former Nasty Show host who can offend in both official languages, wouldn’t be caught up in a wave of political correctness? So, it was a little unnerving to hear Ward announce he was striving to go “mainstream and become the franco Ray Romano” at his JFL show, Infamous, on Wednesday.
Relax. Ward was as hysterically crude as ever. But Ward — who is appealing a 2017 Quebec Human Rights Tribunal ruling that he pay $42,000 after making discriminatory comments about singer Jérémy Gabriel — was also quick to point out that it’s entirely kosher to tell sordid tales about invented characters. And so he continues to do.
“There’s no question that some comics are afraid about their material these days,” said Ward offstage. “But I think things are swinging back now. From personal experience, I can say that some jokes I was telling last year which weren’t going over with some audiences are now going over just fine, and people are thanking me for staying politically incorrect.
“Look, audiences know what they’re going to get when they come to my shows. If they don’t like the material, they can stay away. I can’t worry about those who hate me. I have to do what I do best.”
Ward and Carr have been talking about putting together a King of Nasty tour around Canada with JFL.
“But this would be really nasty,” pledged Ward, who has a hit anglo podcast, Two Drink Minimum, with local standup Pantelis. “Times change. Comedy swings one way, then it swings back the other way. I’m still fighting the good bad fight!”
So is Bobby Slayton still fighting that “good bad fight.” The former long-term Nasty Show, affectionately called the “Pitbull of Comedy,” concurs with Ward about the cyclical nature of their business.
“People have been giving me a lot of s--t in clubs about material that is not politically correct,” Slayton said in a phone interview. “But now there are people who are so sick of that. They want to hear me make fun of all people and movements and President Pumpkin-head. They find that refreshing.
“Offensive for the sake of just being offensive is not funny for me. It’s a question of knowing how to walk that line. But there’s no question that political correctness is killing comedy now. On radio, even at clubs, comics are being told they can’t make fun of certain groups. People are just so f--king sensitive, and I think that’s hurting comedy a lot. But I’m also hopeful people will move on. But by then I’ll be dead. So why should I give a s--t?”
Up-and-coming American standup Candice Thompson hopes the situation will change, and soon. Thompson, who will be doing five shows at JFL, agrees with Slayton about the supersensitivity of comedy audiences these days.
“I’m having to play it a lot safer,” Thompson said at the JFL nerve centre, the Hyatt Regency bar. “Even before saying anything, there are certain trigger words that will get a crowd going. The last time I just mentioned the name of Hillary Clinton, the crowd started to boo — and this was in California, a blue state.
“I very rarely talk politics or other controversial issues now. I don’t feel the freedom I used to have. Now I have to anticipate crowd reaction and perform accordingly. People are just so polarized these days, and, frankly, I don’t want to alienate audiences.”
This is the MO successfully employed by this year’s JFL stars Kevin Hart and Orny Adams. Like Jerry Seinfeld, they tend to focus on life’s minutiae in an effort to appeal to all.
Thompson feels the #MeToo movement may have affected her male comic cronies more. “It’s reached a point where some are asking me if they should avoid doing certain material. That’s a first.
“The point is most of us feel we do have a social responsibility to discuss the big issues. We have to be the voices.”
Tom Green won’t be silenced, no matter which way the winds blow. The veteran Canuck comic, who performed Wednesday at JFL, feels it is his mission “to speak truth to power.”
“I like to think that I’m speaking for the defenceless, so I don’t feel I have to watch out what I say. That includes making fun of the president,” Green said at the Hyatt Regency bar.
Green has a connection with U.S. President Trump. The Donald fired him on The Celebrity Apprentice 2 in 2009, apparently for drinking with Dennis Rodman.
“Let’s just say I know Trump and Trump knows me. And anyone who knows me shouldn’t be president.”
Jessica Kirson, the breakout star of last year’s JFL, puts it all into perspective: “I don’t think political correctness will kill comedy. It is very heightened right now, because of the politics in the United States, but I truly feel like it will turn around. We will not allow others to silence us. No matter how hard some people try, it won’t happen.
“We are truth tellers, period.”