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SXSW Comedy lineup posted
South By Southwest Comedy posted its full lineup today - and it’s as stacked as always.
I counted more than 60 comics in all, including Reggie Watts, Marc Maron, Doug Benson, Mike Birbiglia, Kristen Schaal, Wyatt Cenac, John Hodgman and Eugene Mirman, and that’s just for starters.
Local comics (and Austin alums) include Brendon Walsh, Chris Cubas, Howard Kremer, Martha Kelly, Mike MacRae and Nick Mullen.
The comedy portion, which runs from March 10-17 will include showcases, panels as well as some big-name comedy podcasts, including WTF with Marc Maron, Doug Love Movies with Doug Benson and You Made It Weird with Pete Holmes.
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Individual tickets, dates and times for Moontower headliners announced
Tickets for the three Moontower Comedy Festival headliners go on sale Thursday at 10 a.m.
Tickets start at $38 for Aziz Ansari’s two shows at the Paramount Theatre on Wednesday, April 25. Seth Meyers performs at 7:30 the following evening, with tickets going for $40. Steven Wright will perform Saturday, April 28, at 7:30 p.m. at the Paramount, with tickets going for $41.
New additions to the Moontower lineup include “Parks & Recreation” writer and master of the Twitters, Chelsea Peretti. She will perform Thursday, April 26th at 7:45 p.m. at The Parish, with tickets going for $15.
For more information about individual ticket sales, passes and VIP badges, visit MoontowerComedyFestival.com.
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‘Hey I wrote that! I’ll sue these guys for everything they’re wor … oh right, the contest’
Attention funny people: The Onion and Esther’s Follies are holding a writing contest. Write a comedy sketch/musical parody and you could win $200 and see your sketch performed on the Esther’s Follies stage.
Details:
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Andy Kindler coming to Moontower
The Moontower Comedy and Oddities Festival today announced the addition of several comics to the lineup. Self-deprecating Andy Kindler leads the list that includes “Saturday Night Live” writer and scribe behind the brilliant character Stefon, John Mulaney, W. Kamau Bell, Tom Rhodes, Holly Lorka, and Jonathan Pace .
Twitter feeds for: Kindler | Mulaney | Bell | Rhodes | Pace.
The Moontower Comedy and Oddities Festival takes place at about a dozen venues in town, including the Paramount and State theaters, on April 25-28. For more information about the festival, visit MoontowerComedyFestival.com.
- Previous coverage: New festival aims to cement Austin’s comedic standing
Picture of Kindler taken from NBC press day for “Last Comic Standing” in 2010.
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Kevin Smith’s Austin comedy special airs Saturday
Quick note: Kevin Smith’s one-man show, “Burn In Hell,” which was filmed at the Paramount last fall, premieres on EPIX this Saturday at 9 p.m. For more info, check epixhd.com.
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The New Movement turns 3 this weekend
Henry Linser photo
The improv gang at The New Movement turns three years old this weekend with a bash at The 29th St. Ballroom at Spider House and more shows on Saturday at their East Austin theater (go here for more info).
I chatted with TNM’s Artistic Director Alexandria Berry about the scrappy theater’s upcoming anniversary.
Three years is an impressive milestone, how have you guys managed it?
Through our amazing community and our “all hands on deck” mentality, honestly. From the large outside events that we get to participate in like FunFunFunFest, to the more internal, like Megaphone Marathons, all of it is due to the students and alumni of TNM for devoting their personal time to make things awesome. Even this weekend is a great example of everyone working together. Jenna Marie Carey, an alumni of TNM, is spearheading the birthday celebration which is bringing 16 troupes to the 29th St. Ballroom on Friday from all three TNM cities (Houston, NOLA, and Austin) and that couldn’t have been done without a supporting and loving community.
One thing I admire about improv is the camaraderie and the passion it generates. There’s also the “yes, and..” rule that is nicely applicable to many parts of life. What do you love about improv?
I love that it is so easily translatable. Whether you are a writer, performer, or audience member, we are all a part of this journey. Its a state of mind, in many ways. We are in the business of making dreams come true, about saying yes to those far-fetched ideas, and seeing how we can pull it together through teamwork and support. Personally, my bucket list has been thinned out over the last 3 years because of improv and for that I’ll always be grateful. Its been life-changing. Sorry if I’m towing the line on hyperbole.
What’s the best scene you’ve ever been a part of? Let me clarify: what’s the best scene that’s suitable for print in a newspaper?
I have a group that I work with often called Handbomb, and its a great feeling to work with your best friends because they know what you are going for in a scene and just run with it. We did one that was very slow to start, just mostly greetings in these odd voices that were heavy with insinuation, but then it started building and everything just fell in to place. We kept the same basic dialogue but the drama got to this absurd level. It was so good I felt like I almost blacked out. I stepped off stage and thought about how easy that seemed and I wish I could remember how it happened because it was all a blur.
What does the future have in store for The New Movement?
In the near future we are very excited for our New Orleans branch to open. That’s happening the first week of March and some of us are going to NOLA for the festivities. Here in Austin we are pumped for our comedy festival Hell Yes Fest to be a part of the Moontower Comedy and Oddity Festival in April. After that we have events all year round that bring together our 3 communities like the Megaphone Marathons and Hell Yes Fest NOLA. In general we try to live by this code that keeps us present and ready for whatever comes our way, so the possibilities are truly endless when it comes to the future and we wouldn’t have it any other way.
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SXSW comedy podcast lineup announced
South by Southwest Comedy announced an impressive list of live comedy podcasts that’ll be recorded at the festival in March.
The lineup includes:
WTF with Marc Maron
Doug Loves Movies with Doug Benson
Comedy Bang Bang with Scott Aukerman
You Made It Weird with Pete Holmes
The Smartest Man In The World with Greg Proops
Sklarbro Country with Jason and Randy Sklar
Who Charted? with Howard Kremer and Kulap Vilaysack
Kevin Pollak’s Chat Show
The comedy portion of this year’s festival includes two additional nights of showcases (they will run from March 12-15, and conclude on March 18th and 19th, according to the SXSW website). The full lineup hasn’t been announced, but check sxsw.com/comedy for more info
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Two Austin teams finish second and third in Geek Bowl
When hundreds of geeks descended upon Austin last weekend for the nation’s largest pub trivia competition, local geeks proved to be tough.
With more than 100 teams playing, two Austin-based teams (Team Dong, and 5 Geniuses and a Fall Guy) destroyed the competition and took second and third place respectively. Geek Bowl VI, which featured official Geeks Who Drink trivia, sold out and event organizers even had to turn folks away.
Team Dong tied for first place with Philadelphia-based team, Independence Hall & Oates. “After a tense sudden-death tiebreaker, Philly won and the whole hall booed,” said Josh Johnson, marketing director for Geeks Who Drink.
In the weeks leading up to what’s been described as the Super Bowl of pub quiz dorkdom, Team Dong member and pub trivia scene regular Bobb Ha had stepped up his training. And it definitely paid off. Ha and his team won $2,000 and local bragging rights. Third place winners 5 Geniuses & A Fall Guy took $1,000 home.
View photos from the geek bowl.
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Moontower Comedy festival badges on sale tomorrow
REMINDER: Badges for the Moontower Comedy and Oddity Festival go on sale at 10 a.m. tomorrow. You can get them online at www.moontowercomedyfestival.com or at Paramount Theatre box office, or by calling 512-474-1221.
Regular festival badges are $99 and all-access VIP badges are $799.
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Sorry, did you say something? I was thinking about Cameron Fielder
Cassie Wright photo
I love comics with initiative. Guys like John Ramsey who not only are funny on stage, but come up with awesome side projects.
Of course, not everyone is that industrious, but it’s cool to watch comics apply their humor skills to different endeavors.
Which brings me to Cameron Fielder. Not only does he have a master’s in creative writing, Fielder made the finals in last year’s Funniest Person in Austin contest. And he’s recently launched a side business in greeting cards.
That might seem like a weird mix, but Fielder manages to translate what works in a comedy club into card form. Here’s a taste:
Funny, right? His cards are now carried in a handful of local stores, including Cream Vintage, Monkey See Monkey Do and Atown, and he’s branching outside the area as well.
We chatted a bit about the new endeavor. Why greeting cards? What gave you the idea? My girlfriend was having trouble with her boss at work and it kind of seemed like she was getting thrown under the bus by somebody she considered a friend. For some reason, the idea of a card with a drawing of a cute cow on the front and the words “Holy Cow!” and on the inside the same cow taking a gross dump above the words “What a (terrible) thing you did. I expected more from you, but can’t remember why now.” I drew the most basic little sketch of that card and stayed up all night making up others. I named the imaginary company Marginal Sentiments because I wanted to make cards for situations that people don’t associate with greeting cards; some of the earliest ones I can remember making up were “Sorry that thing I said seemed racist” and “Our first date was awkward but not so awkward that I wouldn’t consider going on another.” I never actually made those cards and decided to go in a different direction by actually making birthday and holiday cards, but kept the name because I still think it’s pretty fitting for what I’m doing and because I like having a company name that’s self-deprecating. It’s kind of novel. I’d love to see a restaurant called Terrible Chicken. You’d probably eat there. “They must have some great chicken if they’re confident enough to name their restaurant Terrible Chicken.” I also like that the name doesn’t sound badass. In fact, it’s a really blah sounding name, like if you’re not paying attention it just sounds like a line of Hallmark cards. So to actually answer your question, it was a fluke, but it turned out with my background in writing and comedy, the greeting card is a perfect medium. You get a set-up and a punch, and subject matter mainly concerned with aging (aka dying), religion, relationships. Also, I like how people give you money for them. How did you go about selling them? What’s the response been like? I sold some to people at work, and I’m still really grateful for the encouragement they gave me back when I was hand-drawing each card on computer paper and coloring with crayon. The cards have evolved aesthetically, I’ve gotten them into three stores around Austin. I just walked in. I also cold called stores all around the country and asked if I could send them samples. That’s how I got them into a record store in Cincinnati and some hip artsy store in Boise. I think people really like them. They’ve sold well everywhere I’ve placed them. The orders have gotten bigger and more frequent and I just sent off 12 of one design to the store in Boise, because a woman came in and bought all of them and said she was going to come back and get the rest. That’s heartening. It validates my feeling that my people are out there. I face more failure than successes, but people that like them seem to love them. I’ve had to fight against some card-selling orthodoxy. When I first show managers my cards, one of the first things they say is that’d be great if I had more birthday cards or holiday cards, but when they see that the non-event, random cards sell so well, they don’t bring it up again. It reminds me of this old Deep Thoughts from SNL that goes: “It makes me mad when I go to all the trouble of having Marta cook up about a hundred drumsticks, then the guy at the Marineland says, ‘You can’t throw chicken to the dolphins. They eat fish.’ Sure they eat fish, if that’s all you give them. Man, wise up.” So I feel like trying to expand consists of getting Marineland employees to understand that some dolphins like chicken. That being said, the people at Monkey See Monkey Do on South Congress have been amazing allies, and seem to understand where I’m coming from. They were the first store to sell the cards and I can’t seem to make a card too silly or perverse for them to sell. And in general Austin is a good place for a thirty-year-old man to hand color greeting cards and not catch any flack. Well, other than from (Austin comedian) Andrew Tompkins. You’ve got a master’s in creative writing, right? Has the job market gotten that bad? Was that a joke? I think that was a joke. Well, I’ll go ahead and answer the question given the slim chance that you’re asking it seriously. Remember that joke you tell about video game controllers and masters degrees in English? I did a joke once or twice about how I’m grateful for the terrible economy because it’s better than attributing my failures to incompetence. There’s some truth in that. I have a BA in philosophy and an MFA in creative writing. They’re not the most useful degrees in the world, but I think I would be doing the same if I’d gotten them in econ or business. I haven’t applied to any real jobs. Not after undergrad and not after grad school. I don’t know how that stuff works. Sometimes I get inspired to find a real job but just end up scanning through Craigslist postings for flower delivery men and pre-school teachers. I don’t think comedians are the most pragmatic bunch. It’s hard for a lot of us to do stuff. And that’s funny. I lived in Korea for a year teaching English. There’s a lot of humor when you’re bumbling and can’t work your washing machine or use the utensils properly or buy deodorant. I think that’s kind of what comedians are like, but all the time and in our own countries. I love the idea of pulling myself out of debt and squalor with the least practical thing imaginable, because what’s less practical than selling hand-colored greeting cards? I’ve understood my whole life that I’m free to do what I want, but in an abstract kind of way. Making and selling these cards has allowed me to actually feel that freedom. Like, “Oh, I really can do whatever I want and nobody’s going to come and stop me.” It’s really beautiful. You had an impressive foray into the Austin comedy scene, landing in the FPIA finals your first year. What got you into standup? Thanks. I’d wanted to be a comedian since I was really young, like first or second grade, like when we had assignments about what you want to be when you grow up I said comedian and drew a stick figure on stage and circles for the audience. It was never athlete or astronaut. It seems weird from this vantage point, realizing how short six years actually is, that this ambition crystallized after being alive such a short time. My dad communicates in jokes and is loud and my mom is also really funny. Maybe that was just the best way to communicate. I finally got on stage when I was 21 and still in college. I worked at a cafe in Berkeley where they had a weekly open mic. That was my introduction to that world. I did it off and on for about a year or so, not too seriously. A few times every few weeks. I was out of the country for a year and a half and then was in Phoenix for four years, so maybe did ten open mics over all that time, mainly in LA when I was home visiting my parents. So coming to Austin did feel like I was starting over at comedy. I was brand new in a way, but also had been thinking up bits over all that time. It’s hard for me to say how long I’ve done stand-up. I did my first open mic over ten years ago, but have probably only done it for like two years. On the heels of yesterday’s big announcement, here’s the lineup that’s been announced so far for the April 25-28 Moontower Comedy and Oddity Festival. Seth Meyers
The Austin Theatre Alliance is launching an ambitious comedy festival this spring, one that organizers hope grows into both a major comedy event and a revenue generator for the nonprofit group. The Moontower Comedy and Oddity Festival will feature more than 60 comics performing at about a dozen venues in town, including the Paramount and State theaters, on April 25-28. That size and scope already places it among the larger festivals in North America. And organizers have lined up some big-name headliners: Saturday Night Live’s Seth Meyers, Aziz Ansari and Steven Wright. The festival, which is sponsored by The Onion and Funny Or Die, will also include improv and sketch acts, as well as film. “I think the event will put Austin on the map as a real seat in the United States, as a seat of comedy,” said Jim Ritts, executive director of the alliance, the parent organization of the Paramount and State theaters. “I think over three years … there will be two North American festivals that people will be looking at in comedy — one will be Montreal (Just For Laughs festival) and I think the other will be this one. That’s the goal.” In starting the festival, a first-ever move for the alliance, organizers are betting that comedy is an unfilled entertainment niche in Austin. They pointed to a nationwide resurgence in standup, with the success of Louis C.K.’s television show, as well as popular podcasts from comedians such as Marc Maron. Alliance officials said they’ve also had years of good experiences with booking sold-out comedy shows, featuring headliners like Louis C.K. and Kathy Griffin, as well as hosting several HBO and Comedy Central specials. Those successes prompted them to consider a large comedy-based festival. “We looked around at what was not being done in this town,” said Paramount General Manager Lietza Brass. “Music was obviously completely covered, books were covered… and we said, ‘OK, we do comedy really well, comedy’s not being done here in town, we know we can do this.’” Organizers are expecting to draw some 22,000-25,000 people across all shows, but that estimate doesn’t account for repeat customers. Ritts said that for the first year, he expects many to come from Austin and surrounding cities like San Antonio, Dallas and Houston. What sort of economic impact the festival will have remains to be seen, but downtown leaders say they’re encouraged at the possibility. Downtown Austin Alliance executive director Charlie Betts said he’s been impressed with Ritts’ leadership and the festival will be “very positive” for downtown, especially if it grows. “Look at what South By Southwest is for downtown — and certainly I realize it’s not in that category yet, but it may be someday,” Betts said. For the alliance, the festival is attempt to create a new property (and revenue streams) to supplement its existing donor base and ticket sales. The alliance has fared the recession well, with revenues increasing more than 50 percent over a five-year period, to $6.3 million in fiscal year 2009-2010, according to alliance officials and IRS documents. Officials wouldn’t say how much the alliance is investing in the festival. Ritts acknowledged the financial risk, but said the upside is worth it. “Is there financial risk in this? Yes,” he said. “Have we been prudent in looking at it and planning for it? Absolutely. (But) the potential benefit to the organization so outweighs the risk, because, in some ways, we are altering the model in how you potentially do some of your business to achieve (the organization’s) mission.” Ritts and other organizers said they plan to spotlight home-grown comics with local and regional showcases to go along with the national headliners. While comedy is often overshadowed by the local music scene, Austin has a reputation — especially among industry insiders — as a breeding ground for talent. Comedy Central network executives regularly judge the Funniest Person in Austin contest, and scouts from late-night shows and major festivals also come through town. Several local comics have national TV credits, and two recent Funniest Person in Austin winners, Bryson Turner and Andy Ritchie, were lured to Austin from larger cities because of the strong standup scene. Colleen McGarr, an owner of the Capitol City Comedy Club, is a booker for the festival, which she called the culmination of a lifelong dream. “We wanted to get this going in a big way,” she said. “I think this year is going to be a tremendous launch to this event. I mean, there’s no one that knows about this that isn’t totally excited.” There have been smaller comedy festivals in Austin, but the Moontower festival promises to be the biggest showcase of its kind.
Austin comedian Mike MacRae, an impressionist who has appeared on the “Late Show with David Letterman,” said he’s excited to perform in the festival. It remains to be seen what lasting effect the festival might have on Austin as a comedy town, he said, but potentially growing the comedy audience is a good thing. “I can’t see any downside to it, that’s for sure,” MacRae said. Austin comedian and KLBJ radio personality Matt Bearden said the festival means that Austin “as a city, has arrived nationally as a place where there’s an interesting population of thoughtful, fun people, who like to be entertained.” “It’s the first festival of this size that treats standup not as an also-ran, but as the main event,” he said.
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Lineup (so far) for the Moontower Comedy festival
Aziz Ansari
Steven Wright
Amazing Jonathan
Baron Vaugh
Bob Biggerstaff
Brent Weinbach
Brendon Walsh
Brody Stevens
Chase Durousseau
Chris Trew
Duncan Trussell
Erin Foley
Erin Jackson
Hannibal Buress
Jackie Kashian
Joe Mande
John Ramsey
Matt Bearden
Maria Bamford
Mike MacRae
Paul Varghese
Rachel Feinstein
Sean Patton Paramount launches major new comedy festival in Austin
Latest comments
Do I know you? Your humor is familiar.
... read the full comment by Jerry | Comment on Sorry, did you say something? I was thinking about Cameron Fielder Read Sorry, did you say something? I was thinking about Cameron Fielder
Good article and great exposure for an upcoming comedian and artist. We proud to say we knew you “back in the day”.
... read the full comment by Emily Wakefield | Comment on Sorry, did you say something? I was thinking about Cameron Fielder Read Sorry, did you say something? I was thinking about Cameron Fielder
That’s my boy. John, or Cameron, you are one of a kind. You have always been funny, even as a very little boy. Not only are you funny, you are very thought-provoking. What an honor for you to be interviewed for this article. I loved the article.
... read the full comment by Nancy Fielder | Comment on Sorry, did you say something? I was thinking about Cameron Fielder Read Sorry, did you say something? I was thinking about Cameron Fielder
Nice!
... read the full comment by Derek | Comment on Sorry, did you say something? I was thinking about Cameron Fielder Read Sorry, did you say something? I was thinking about Cameron Fielder
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