23 shows in 21 days: What I saw (and laughed at) during Just For Laughs 2016

On the evening of Saturday, July 30, around 11 p.m., Sarah Silverman concluded her solo show in front of a large crowd at the Maison Symphonique. It was the second Just For Laughs show of the night for me (I caught the Mega Stars of Comedy gala earlier that evening at Place des Arts), and the 23^rd for me during the whirlwind three weeks that was the 34^th edition of the world-renowned comedy fest. After spending about 90 minutes at the Hyatt Hotel bar doing a final round of schmoozing, I wrapped up my 30^th year at the festival.

Me pictured with JB Smoove (left); Alonzo Bodden is on the extreme left

Although a previous commitment in Milwaukee didn’t give me the opportunity to catch Carrie Fisher’s festival debut as a gala host and P.K. Subban’s official farewell to Montreal as host of his own all-star gala, I got to enjoy a well-rounded comedy experience at Just For Laughs hopping from one show to another, and trying to catch as many of the best names in comedy ply their trade to consistently packed houses. Here are some of my favorite highlights from Just For Laughs 2016.

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Biggest Surprise of the Festival: Comedian Kevin Hart, who agreed to accept all 10 proposed TV comedy projects that were vying to be part of his new comedy streaming network at his Laugh Out Loud Network Pitch Panel, which attracted over 300 people to the Hyatt’s Grand Salon Opera. The line-up of proposed projects was a very strong one, and it must have difficult for Hart to choose just one or two, so as a firm believer in developing up and coming comedy talent, he decided to accept all 10 projects.

One of them was “The Review”, which was pitched by Montreal comic Abdul Butt. The show is described by Butt as a comic version of CBC’s “Marketplace” newsmagazine show. “It involves real stories, real people getting ripped off and going after the people who are ripping them off, but this time using comedy,” said Butt during an interview at the Hyatt bar the night after the pitch panel. “I had the idea for two years and I pitched it across Canada. There was interest in it, but never any real money to do anything with it. When I heard about what Kevin Hart was doing, I decided to give it a shot, so I tightened it up and out of 500 applicants, I somehow managed to make it to the top 10.”

Butt admitted he was shocked when he found out about Hart’s decision to accept all of the projects. “It’s something that doesn’t happen very often, and it’s a huge milestone in my career,” he added. While he waits for the next step in this process, Butt will be competing in the Sirius XM Top Comic competition, in which the online voting process is underway until Aug. 23, and the comedians with the most number of votes will compete in a special showcase during the JFL 42 Festival in Toronto on September 29, which will be hosted by Tom Green.

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The Most Emotional Moment of the Festival: This belongs to Australian comedian Adam Hills. During his set at the Nathan Lane Gala, he talked about a video segment he did on a show called “Naked Tuesday” with a British fan named Craig, who was diagnosed four years ago with thyroid cancer. After the video was finished, he told the audience that Craig was now cancer free, and appeared onstage with Hills, which ended up with an emotional standing ovation. He even gave Craig an opportunity to tell a couple of jokes to the crowd, to help him kick off his new ambition of being a comedian.

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The Spirit of ‘86 Revisited: It was exactly 30 years ago that I attended Just For Laughs for the very first time. And in a somewhat coincidental JFL time warp, two of the comedians that I saw during that first year in 1986 – Louie Anderson and Emo Phillips – returned to perform a series of solo shows and gala appearances. I have to admit, that their comic timing and styling hasn’t changed a bit over the past 30 years; they seemed to get even better with age.

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Cause Celebre of the Festival: Quebecois comedian Mike Ward. Just as he was about to embark upon his second year as Nasty Show host, this controversial comic found out he lost a case with the Quebec Human Rights Commission, who ordered him to pay a total of $42,000 to the family of a disabled boy that was a target of one of his jokes. Although Ward took the decision with a great deal of class and humour, his fellow Nasty Show comics quickly rallied by his side, and Just For Laughs decided at the last minute to hold a “Free Mike Ward” bilingual benefit show on July 30 at the Metropolis to help pay his legal fees for the appeal that he will be launching. The show, which quickly sold out, included Jeff Ross, Jimmy Carr and Brad Williams on the line-up.

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Poster for Jeff Ross Roast Battle outside the L'Astral

The Best Show I Didn’t See at the Festival: Jeff Ross Presents Roast Battle. Ross, known as “The Roastmaster General”, has taken the art of insult humour that was mastered by the Friars Club to a whole new level, and that was quite evident with his series of Roast Battle shows, which were introduced at last year’s festival. Tickets for this year’s Roast Battle shows at the L’Astral quickly sold out and became one of the hottest tickets at JFL this year (next to the Midnight Surprise shows that were hosted by Piff the Magic Dragon). And to make this raunchy insult fest even more interesting, an impressive roster of celebrities such as Judd Apatow, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Rogen, David Spade and Whoopi Goldberg served as judges for this four night spectacular. Luckily, Comedy Network aired these Roast Battle shows every morning live to tape, so I got to see what all that roasting excitement was all about.

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Discoveries of the Festival: British comic Nish Kumar, whose routine about board games was one of the highlights of the David Cross gala; and Piff the Magic Dragon, who proved that comedy and magic (not to mention dragon costumes) can work when it’s done by the right dragon costume-wearing individual.

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Podcasts, Podcasts Everywhere: Spectators who got the chance to catch what the annual ComedyPro Conference had to offer, got a wide choice of comedy podcast live tapings to experience (with about 15 of them to choose from). My favorites were Greg Proops’ “The Smartest Man in the World”, “The Industry Standard with Barry Katz”, in which he interviewed Howie Mandel (his story about a fundraiser he did for an organization of Holocaust survivors in L.A. was hilarious), and “Unmasked with Ron Bennington”, with featured an in-depth interview with comedy bad boy Andy Kindler.

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The Three American Comedians whom Montreal will certainly welcome with open arms if Donald Trump is elected President of the United States: Lewis Black, Greg Proops and Andy Kindler.

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Favorite Personal Moment: Showing JB Smoove the interview that I did with him for the July 23 edition of the Montreal Times, and the boisterous, characteristic reaction he gave when I presented a couple of copies of the paper to him (and in the presence of fellow comics Alonzo Bodden and George Wallace).

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Favorite Festival Freebies: The endless supply of Schwatrz’s smoked meat sandwiches (with all the fixings) and poutine that were offered at the Hyatt Bar for two nights in a row thanks to Netflix; the endless supply of St. Viateur bagels (plain or dressed) offered by TruTV for three nights in a row between 11 p.m. and 3 a.m.; and the sharp, understated looking TruTV/JFL tuques (which will look great once another cold Montreal winter comes around).

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Other Festival Highlights: the Nathan Lane Gala, the Mega Stars of Comedy Gala, the solo shows of Derek Seguin and Tom Green as part of the Zoofest/OFF-JFL series; Brad Williams, Beth Belle and Ralphie May at the Nasty Show; the entire line-up of this year’s Ethnic Show; An Evening with the cast of Veep; Allan Carr; Colin Mochrie & Brad Sherwood (who proved that improv comedy is indeed alive and well); James Mullinger’s film “The Comedian’s Guide to Survival”; witnessing the birth of Kevin Hart’s LOL comedy streaming network; seeing French comic Gad Elmaleh perform in English for the first time with a killer set; Lewis Black, Greg Proops and any other comic ripping apart Donald Trump.

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Finally, a big thank you to festival COO Bruce Hills and his programming team led by Paul Ronca for putting together another memorable festival; Jamie O’Meara and his JFL P.R. team (Leisa, Danny, Talar, Dane, Chana, Alex, Erika, Alexandra and Michelle) for all of their help and guidance in helping me churn out a lot of great JFL-related material for my Montreal Times columns throughout this spring and summer; and to the following people who made my 30^th Just For Laughs festival another fun and memorable one: Allan, Bill, George, Neil, Jeffrey, Victoria, Anastasia, Katerina, and Sophie. See you next July for Just For Laughs’ 35^th anniversary edition.