COMEDIC – & SAD
Film filled with laughs, poignant tale of terminal cancer
There is truth to the title of “It Started As a Joke,” the new documentary following the 10th and final Eugene Mirman Comedy Festival, as the film starts with footage and interviews surrounding the joyous event before shifting into something much more than your average concert film.
Mike Birbiglia describes how this beloved Brooklyn event got its start: he, Mirman and Julie Smith Clem (Mirman’s producing partner and the movie’s co-director) were “making fun of other festivals” one night and kiddingly conceived an anti-establishment festival. Then it became a reality, and a wildly successful one, drawing top comedic talent and appreciative audiences to the Bell House and Union Hall throughout its run.
Available on VOD platforms, the film features an allstar roster from the festival that includes Jim Gaffigan, Gary Gulman, Janeane Garofolo, Kristen Schaal and Michael Che.
“There was a great loving camaraderie with all those comedians,” Mirman recalled this week from Cape Cod, Mass., where he now lives.
The festival reflected Mirman’s absurdist sensibility: he got public radio host Ira Glass drunk onstage, gave away a jar filled with hypodermic needles used on his cat, booked shows like “Comics We Hope Don’t Move to L.A.” and “Comics We Think Ruth Bader Ginsburg Would Enjoy” and staged events like sessions with a licensed therapist in a bouncy castle. It became, as Reggie Watts recounts in the film, a festival for “weird comedians.”
Jim Carden, owner of Union Hall and Bell House, says the film captures Mirman’s influence on the Brooklyn
comedy scene. “Of all the performers we have had, Eugene was the most impactful on us and our business,” he says. “Through him we found an untapped world, an amazing community of artists that seemed to come out of nowhere. We’ve been able to maintain momentum since the festival ended because comedians know we get great audiences and we owe that to Eugene.”
But that title is also a hint to how the film reflects Mirman’s keep-audiences-on-their-toes sensibility by suddenly switching tones and styles. It started as an amiable, meandering comedy but becomes a moving, poignant love story, exploring how Mirman and his wife, Katie Westfall Tharp, handle her terminal cancer even as they live and create a life together — their toddler son, Oliver, is a major presence in the film.
“We spent a lot of time trying to live life the best we could; we went on trips, we had a son,” says Mirman, and he and Tharp wanted that reflected in the movie, which also shows him experimenting with comedic bits about cancer for the first time.
“Eugene wanted to find a way to talk about this and connect with people about what they were going through,” Clem says. His example prompts others to tackle painful topics in the film as well, including Schaal, Bobcat Goldthwait and Jon Glaser. “It’s better to talk about these things than not to,” says Glaser now.
Tharp had terminal cancer for six years, and in late 2018 was given a bleak prognosis that she outlasted by a year before dying in January. Clem says it was challenging merging these two parts of the movie together, but says Tharp was involved in the creative process and the edit, to emphasize what parts of her story she wanted told.
Clem’s favorite moment comes when Tharp talks in the film about how despite knowing her fate she had found true happiness with Mirman and their son and was reveling in the time they had together, even though Oliver would not remember her.
“We put this all on camera for Ollie to see when he grows up,” Mirman says now.
Clem says that while it’s strange promoting a film during a pandemic, she is “inspired by Tharp’s strength and courage and her ability to experience good things in bad times.”
“It feels weird to say, but this is the perfect film to watch right now,” Glaser adds. “It might resonate more strongly because of the pandemic — even though things are awful, what else can you do but make the best of it and try to find the joy and laughter.”