Looking for Laughs Can Be Serious Business

When it comes to comedy clubs, the San Fernando Valley is experiencing a laugh gap.

Clubs are booming in Hollywood and on the Westside, with several in operation and four new clubs set to open in the near future.

But a Comedy Store branch in Universal City folded last year, and one of the Valley’s three remaining clubs will close at the end of the month.

Maybe comedy entrepreneurs believe the old joke about people who live in the Valley: You can get them to laugh, but it’s easier to teach them to roll over.

Actually, there is an audience for comedy in the Valley. Although the Improvisation is giving up its room at the Hilton in Sherman Oaks at the end of this month, both the club and the hotel say the Improv has made money throughout its two years in business. The Improv--famous for its Melrose Avenue club--will open a Santa Monica outlet soon and hopes to return to the Valley.

And the two remaining Valley comedy clubs--the 200-seat L.A. Cabaret in Encino and the 55-seat L.A. Connection in Sherman Oaks--are long-standing operations that draw good crowds. L.A. Cabaret offers stand-up comedy, and L.A. Connection presents improvisational skits.

The comedy scene in the Valley also includes restaurants and bars that present occasional stand-up nights. Among these are Cheers in Simi Valley, Catch 21 in Encino and Gallagher’s Irish Pub in Chatsworth.

The Reasons

Comedians and club owners list a variety of reasons for the popularity of comedy: As live entertainment goes, it’s a relatively inexpensive night out ($20 to $35 for two people depending on the day of the week); television has become boring; people lead stressful lives and need a laugh; there is interaction between comedian and audience, whereas watching movies or TV is a static experience.

At the same time, the number of people trying to become professional comedians has grown significantly, which enables clubs to stage shows while paying entertainers relatively small amounts.

“This is the only place I know where I can work every day and still go broke,” joked Pat Miller of North Hollywood, a comic with five years on the road who moved here to shoot for the big time.

Tuesday night auditions at the Improv’s Hilton room regularly pulled as many as 80 aspiring comedians until management asked them to skip a week between tryouts because fewer than half got a chance to perform. The auditions will move to the new Santa Monica club when it opens.

Ray Bishop, owner of the L.A. Cabaret, said he also used to have 70 to 80 newcomers at his Sunday night auditions. Bishop’s solution to the overcrowding was to add an evening happy hour on weekdays when new talent can perform.

Both clubs use audition nights as the bottom rung on a ladder that can lead, eventually, to work that pays. If Bishop likes a newcomer’s shtick, he promotes him to the role of supporting comic on weeknights after happy hour. Only the headliner is paid on such nights. The 10 or so other comics get a chance to hone their acts and perhaps be noticed by a casting director or booking agent.

Some comedians complain about the arrangement, but only off the record. With hundreds of people trying to break into the business, few people will risk offending club owners.

Bishop said it is reasonable not to pay new talent.

“They can be a liability to a club,” he said. “You have to watch them and see if they’re getting any better, because sometimes they don’t justify being on stage.”

Different System

The Improv’s system is somewhat different. A promising comic will audition without pay at the Valley club several times, said manager Tom Spiroff, before stepping up to the next rung--an audition at the Melrose Avenue club before co-owner Mark Lonow. If Lonow is impressed, the comic tries out before co-owner Budd Friedman. If Friedman likes the work, the comic begins performing for money, but only at off times such as late Sunday or Monday nights.

Lonow said three years usually elapse from the time Friedman accepts a comic to the person’s first performance on a Saturday night. He said Improv comics earn $35 for a midweek performance and $50 on weekends, plus a percentage of the box office. The club presents 15 comedians a night, each performing for 15 to 20 minutes.

In contrast, the L.A. Connection resembles a repertory company. The 100 or so members pay the club’s operating expenses and share the box office proceeds. A revolving cast of six or seven perform Fridays through Sundays. The company’s most hilarious technique, dubbing irreverent dialogue onto old movies, can be seen Saturdays at midnight on the Nickelodeon cable TV channel.

Kent Skov, L.A. Connection producer and director, said the group usually sells out four of its six weekend performances. One recent Saturday night the room was about two-thirds full, mostly with people of high school age. The house specialty is bawdy humor, and the audience clearly loved it.

Despite the long-running success of L.A. Connection and the L.A. Cabaret, club owners believe that comedy is a harder sell in the Valley than over the hill. None of the four soon-to-open clubs are here. The Improv’s Santa Monica club and, nearby, a branch of Chicago-based Second City are scheduled to debut within a month.

A seven-club, New York-based company, Catch a Rising Star, said it plans to open a Los Angeles outlet within a few months. Although company officials refused to disclose the location, other sources said it will be in West Hollywood.

Mitzi Shore, owner of the Comedy Store on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, said she will open a new enterprise, the Comedy Playhouse, in April. The 250-seat theater will be at the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Las Palmas Avenue. Rather than offering a line-up of comics, it will feature top-name comedians in one-person shows, she said. Plans call for the Comedy Playhouse to include a cafe and bar.

Shore, who has outlets in La Jolla and Las Vegas, ran a Comedy Store in the Valley for about a year. The 150-seat club, in the Sheraton Universal Hotel in Universal City, closed in September. She said Saturday nights always sold out, but attendance was poor at other times.

Shore laid the club’s failure to insufficient promotion by the hotel. And, she added, “The Valley is more of a neighborhood area.”

‘More Outdoors Types’

“People in the Valley are a different breed,” agreed L.A. Cabaret owner Ray Bishop. “They’re more outdoors types. In Hollywood, people are more into night life and they spend more money when they go out.”

Bishop’s club was called the Laugh Stop when he took it over in 1983. He said he lost money for a year before turning the business around. Saturday nights are sell-outs and Friday nights near sell-outs, he said, but weeknights draw a crowd of 50 to 100 people.

Club owners proudly point out that their businesses are important links in the Southland’s entertainment industry. Talent is developed there, they say, talent needed by television and motion pictures. Bishop said that Jackie Mason, Joan Rivers, Gallagher and Sam Kinison all developed their craft in part on the L.A. Cabaret’s stage.

“Most of the comics are planning to be TV personalities, whether it’s hosts or actors or whatever,” said the Improv’s Lonow. “All the people who cast for shows come into the club.”

Lonow said the Improv--which has 10 outlets nationwide, some franchised and some company-owned--plans to return to the Valley.

“We’ve scored very well at the Hilton, but the Hilton has not been the ideal club for us,” he said. “There wasn’t a bar where you could hang out. We couldn’t build a regular trade. We didn’t control the room or the restaurant or the atmosphere.”

Lonow said the Improv will concentrate on developing its Santa Monica club, which will have a 350-seat showroom, a dance floor, a restaurant and a bar, before returning to the Valley, perhaps by the end of the summer.

Crowds tend to be younger in the Valley than in Hollywood, he added. Both the Improv and L.A. Cabaret are open to patrons 16 and over.

Lonow believes comedy clubs are successful in part because a long period of public fascination with television has ended.

‘Tired of TV’

“People are tired of television,” he said. “They want to go out, and a club is a great form of entertainment. You can talk to your date; it’s not like a movie.”

Still, a number of restaurants have tried and dropped comedy nights.

“The house is very important,” said L.A. Cabaret’s Bishop. “It doesn’t work in a place that’s not primarily designed for comedy. People have to be comfortable and know that it’s OK to laugh.”

Comedians agree that restaurants are tough assignments.

“It’s hard to compete with a plateful of linguine,” said Roubie Hart, 39, a woman from the Bay Area who has been hitting audition nights and working small clubs around California for seven years. “You’ve got to be pretty funny for some guy to stop chewing and laugh.”