Friday, Sept. 26, 2003 | 9:25 a.m.
Lisa Ferguson's Laugh Lines column appears Fridays. Her Sun Lite Column appears Mondays. Reach her at [email protected].
It takes a certain skill level to deliver stand-up comedy. After 17 years in the business, Jim David has learned, for example, it's usually best "to sneak the satire in through the back door.
"There's no art to coming out and saying, 'I hate the president,' " explains David, who headlines through Sunday at The Comedy Stop at the Tropicana. "But there is an art to saying, 'Last week, George Bush outlined his plan for post-war Iraq -- then he colored it.' "
Subtlety is especially key these days. "It's getting so it's very difficult to make a joke about the president without somebody calling you a traitor to the United States Constitution," David said during a recent call from his New York City home. Still, he persists. "How can you not make fun of a man who said, 'I think we can all agree the past is over'?"
But it's not all politics and funny business for the North Carolina native, who in July performed at the prestigious Montreal Just For Laughs Comedy Festival. David is also an accomplished stage actor who has appeared on- and off-Broadway and in regional theater productions, as well as in the 1994 movie "Radioland Murders," among dozens of other credits.
Actually, he was working as an actor when he stumbled into stand-up comedy on a dare. He and a friend were sitting at a New York comedy club one night, underwhelmed by the entertainment. "I said, 'I can do better than that,' and he said, 'I dare you,' " David recalls. Since then he has headlined at clubs throughout the country, and works what he estimates to be more than a thousand performances a year.
"I do theater whenever I can but ... comedy pays a lot more," he explains. "And also, I like the freedom of comedy." David performed in a play awhile ago and discovered, "I'm spoiled as a comedian because I can say whatever ... I want. The theater is wonderful and I love it, but you do a Shakespeare play for four months and then tell me you're not ready to slit your wrists. It's hard work. At least with stand-up, I can vary it all the time, night after night."
Still, there's just no shaking the theater bug. In the mid-'90s, David penned and starred in his own one-person show, "South Pathetic," inspired in part by his "long history" in community theater and the real-life characters who are drawn to perform on its stages.
"I thought, 'Why not write about them?,' because I love them," he says. "I don't make fun of them so much as I see the humor in them ... So it became about the worst community theater in the South, and the whole point of the piece is, well, that's fine ... It's OK to start your life over, and it's OK to start over from Square One."
If the premise sounds familiar, that's because it is similar to that of the 1996 mockumentary "Waiting for Guffman." But David is quick to point out that his show -- which was presented at the famed Williamstown Theatre Festival in Williamstown, Mass., as well as a small New York theater -- was created well before that movie.
David, who declines to reveal his age ("I am between 30 and a Wal-Mart greeter," he jokes), also works behind the scenes instructing others how to act. Earlier this year, he taught comedy and performance courses to students at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tenn. -- duties that accompanied his residence as a Tennessee Williams Fellow at the school.
It wasn't David's first time working with aspiring artists: He previously taught drama at a prep school for several summers, and at a high school on New York's Long Island. Then there was the stint he spent in the city's South Bronx neighborhood teaching the Bard's classics to middle-schoolers.
"It was horrifying; it was a nightmare," he recalls. "You're trying to teach 'Twelfth Night' to a bunch of kids who, if they weren't there, they'd be robbing a bank. It was rough."
His advice to would-be thespians: "Go into real estate." The stage -- be it at a comedy club or on Broadway -- is not a place for everyone.
"You have to be prepared to put up with a lot of nonsense. You have to be prepared to travel to places you don't want to travel to, and hang out with people you don't want to hang out with. But the rewards are very great. When it works, it's wonderful."
All appears to be working well for David, whose second comedy CD, "Live From Jimville," will hit store shelves in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, he's appearing all over cable's Comedy Central: His self-titled stand-up special is in rotation on the network, and he is a frequent guest on the show "Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn." David is also scheduled to appear in another Comedy Central special -- a gay-themed comedy/variety show called "Out on the Edge," hosted by actor Alan Cumming -- set to air early next year.
That's what being a little sneaky with satire gets you.
Out for laughs
Homage will be paid to the late, great Bob Hope at the upcoming Las Vegas Comedy Festival, set for Oct. 29 through Nov. 2 at Stardust. The Bob Hope Lifetime Achievement Award will be presented to an individual who "exemplifies what comedy is all about," according to Mary Thomas, executive director of the festival. The winner's name will be disclosed prior to him/her being presented with the award at a banquet on Nov. 1.
Meanwhile no less than a dozen comedy-related seminars and workshops are scheduled for the festival, which is open to the public. Among the topics titles: Basics of Comedy; Women in Comedy; Union and Entertainment Law; and What You Should Know About Doing a Talk Show. Several guest panelists and speakers have also been confirmed, including Las Vegas resident Pete Barbutti, comedian Norm Crosby and Eddie Brill, a stand-up comic whose day job is talent coordinator for CBS' "The Late Show with David Letterman." For more info, visit www.lasvegascomedyfestival.com
Dat Phan -- who in July at Paris Las Vegas was crowned the winner of NBC's reality show "Last Comic Standing," and went on to perform a short series of weekly gigs at The Improv at Harrah's -- has landed his first movie role. Phan will play opposite Oscar-winner Kim Basinger in the upcoming thriller "Cellular," which is filming in Los Angeles. No date has been announced for when to expect the flick to hit theaters.
archive
