‘I Am Comic’ fun for stand-up fans
If you love standup comedy — I mean, really love it — then I Am Comic is a flawed must-see.
If all you know about it is that you are always part of a wonderful audience, then much of I Am Comic might as well be in Esperanto, but it’s still worth a look.
Put together by an ex-journeyman comic named Jordan Brady (whose own mother describes him as a “hack”) and hosted by a down-at-his-heels ex-A-lister named Ritch Shydner, I Am Comic is a messy collection of soundbites from more than 100 working comedians, most of them respected, some vilified (Carrot Top, Carlos Mencia) some transcendently brilliant (Louis C.K.).
Their observations, rants and space-cadet free-associations (hello, Tommy Davidson) often seem random, though the doc is separated into categories like hecklers, the Internet and the road (including the horror that is the “comedy condo”).
Almost despite itself, however, I Am Comic eventually reveals a journey much like that in the stellar doc Seinfeld: Comedian. Shydner was once a Johnny Carson-favoured son. In the ’90s, he quit and turned to anti-depressants. In I Am Comic — in between interviewing more comedians in 88 minutes than Jay Leno has in his career — Shydner decides to try a few painful open mikes. It is like watching an aged Wade Boggs swing at a T-ball and miss.
His arc is interesting, and ultimately redeeming. Beyond that — although I Am Comic sprawls from mid-West road-stops to New York’s Comedy Cellar and Catch a Rising Star, to L.A. institutions like the Laugh Factory and Improv, to a Jeff Foxworthy arena show — the movie is much like taking a camera into the hotel lounge at a comedy festival at 3 a.m. It is chatty, largely unguarded, and every so often you need subtitles to hear.
Comedy aficionados could gossip for hours over things in I Am Comic, including:
- Carlos Mencia’s proud admission that, yes, he is a joke thief (he likens it to sampling in hip-hop).
- A thin, grey-haired Roseanne looking like an old school teacher.
- Robert Schimmel — who died in a car crash recently — giving an hilarious, scandalously unprintable riff on the Make a Wish Foundation.
- Janeane Garofalo, still angry, except older and angry.
- Lewis Black being way funnier playing at being angry.
With space running out, let’s just drop some more names: Rick Overton, Blaine Capatch, Dana Gould, Bobcat Goldthwait, Paul Rodriguez, Franklyn Ajaye (a long-ago fave of mine who seemed to disappear off the face of the earth), Sarah Silverman, Phyllis Diller, Kathy Griffin, Greg Giraldo and Brian Regan.
It’s the closest thing to the whole mirth catalogue.
(This film is rated 14A)