Magners Comedy Festival - tix giveaway, interview - Boston Events INSIDER

Magners Comedy Festval - an Interview John Tobin

by Johnny Monsarrat

Events INSIDER: So I see online that you're not the John Tobin who's a Humphrey Bogart impersonator. Instead you're the executive producer of the Magners Comedy Festival. Is that a one-man show?

JT: There were 4 John Tobins my senior year of high school, and there's a whole team of folks helping to run the comedy fest. We're grateful to Magnersfor supplying the funds. They run arts and culture events across the world, and this is the 3rd year of the Magners Comedy Festival in Boston.

Events INSIDER: Let's do a favor for your sponsor. What's the role of Magners in the festival?

JT: They're involved it in at all levels, not just the funding. It's the Magners Comedy Festival all the way. They've spare nothing in terms of building this into a world class festival, including having people on the groud, ensuring that each venues is well advertised. It's a lot of work! We start to work on this festival in August and it happens in January. Magners's good name is on it, their investment is in it, but they also put in the blood, sweat, and tears to make it a success.

Events INSIDER: Obviously, you have a lot of nationally known comedians performing with names that everyone already knows. But tell us about the Magners Comic Standff.

JT:There are ten contestants who are in the actual contest who are drawn from 400 entires from around North America. The Magners Comedy Festival is differnet from a lot of comedy festivals in that we don't charge any entry fee for a comedian to have his or her video seen. We had Rooftop Comedy cull through the 400 entries and they gave us 75 semi-finalists, which we went through for 8 hours in a video room, cutting it down to 30 finalists and posted their videos on the Magners website. Then the public chose their favorite 10. To make it as fair as possible they will each perform the first night at Nick's Comedy Stop and then in front of 3 judges, with four categories: stage presence, originality, audience opinion, and judge's response. The winners get a trip to perform at the Glasgow Comedy Festival.

Events INSIDER: I see that you work at Nick's Comedy Stop. Tell us about that.

JT:We do what we're good at, and that's stand up comedy, I fell in love with comedy when I was 7 years old, listening to Steve Martin albums. So it was a dream come true to have the chance to come into Nicks Comedy Stop and produce their shows. We have standup on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights. Being one of the venues for the Magners comedy festival has only helped to solidify our reputation and Boston's reputation in general.

Events INSIDER: That's a good segue to my next question. Boston seems like it's smaller than Houston, but that's only because in the old-timey days that Boston was chopped up into Cambridge, Quincy, and other towns. If you look at metro regions, the Boston metro area is actually the 5th biggest in the United States. So, do we have the 5th biggest comedy scene?

JT:You'll notice that of the people who perform standup in New York and Los Angeles, very few grew up in from those areas. Chicago is more of an improv city. And Boston has a ton of locals who have become nationally famous: Denis Leary, Paula Poundstone, Norm Crosby, Steven Wright, Bill Burr, Dane Cook. Everybody's a wiseguy in Boston a lot and we've historically had a lot of big families where you had to fight for your supper and fight to get he last word in. So Boston produces comedians that are tough, tough, tough. We had the state champion of Idaho come perform here and curl into the fetal position after a few minutes performing against Boston locals. People are in a hurry around here, they want their comedy quick.

A lot of comedians go to school here, too. Greg Fitzsimmons went to BU, Conan O'Brien to Harvard. Whenever Chris Rock goes on an natioanl tour, he does a lot of his practice shows in Boston, because if Boston audiences laugh, the rest of the country will laugh. So New York may be at the forefront of what's fashionable in the fashion industry, but Boston is a great bellweather at the forefront of comedy.

I have so much respect for comedians, the men and women who do this job. It's the toughest art form there is. It's not like making a TV show or movie and then waiting for the review. The response that you get from the audience doing standup is immediate, and that gets you to where you are and finally to make it on television. When Jim Carrey was on Living Color, that funny new white guy on that TV show came from Jim Carey sleeping in the back of his car, going across the country to be able to build an audience and fill a theatre. Comedians have so much passion for success that they drive hundrds of miles to go to a gig that may not even be enough to cover their gas money. They are people chasing their dreams.

Take Dane Cook for example. I used to make $7.50 working the door when Dane was working with Cheeseburgers in 1982. He was one of the first people I knew who had a car phone, and he would do 4 or 5 shows a night. He just worked and worked and worked and I knew that he was going to be a star because of his work ethic. Obviously once people go up the ladder there's jealousy involved, but I root for people from Boston who do well. I'm proud of people from the city, like New Kids on the Block, I know some people from the group; Jordan Knight sang at my wedding. Some people don't like them but these kids came out of the neighborhood and I think we should be proud of every Bostonian. They came from our home.

Events INSIDER: As comedians say, "That's my time." Do you have any final thoughts?

JT:You couldn't put a festivfal of this magnitude together without the support of Magners. All these clubs that are involved, we're all friends but we're also comeptitios on the weekends. So it's nice that because of Magners we all come together like a miniature Switzerland, to celebrate comedy. And to celebrate it with a nice cold Magners is the apple on top of everything.

Come get immersed in comedy for 5 days this week at www.magnerscomedyusa.com.