Todd Glass: Comedy is about the club, not the city

Every conversation with a stand-up of Glass’ ability is pure joy for a comedy fan like me, and I’m equally excited about getting to see Glass live on Feb. 21 when he co-headlines the inaugural North Carolina Comedy Festival in Greensboro.

It’ll be the third time I’ve seen Glass perform in North Carolina, first at the old Nutt Street Comedy Room in Wilmington, then Goodnights Comedy Club in Raleigh and soon at Greensboro’s Starr Theatre. This state is lucky Glass likes us enough to keep coming back, and kudos to us for being cool enough to warrant repeat visits from artists like him.

It's really not the city. I remember somebody asked me once, “If I opened up a club in Boise, Idaho, or something like that, would comedians go?” I said, “Comedians will go where there's good clubs.” It's not the city. It's the club most of the time.

But hanging out with comedians is one of the most fun things to do so, when you go to a festival, you get to hang out with a lot of comedians. It's always a lot of fun and I have some friends who live in town so it worked all around.

Then I went to Acme and it became my favorite place on the planet. It's just the club or the venue or how they're managing it. I wouldn't let a bad experience in a city prevent me from going back but it certainly doesn't hurt if you've had good experiences there before. There are some pluses to certain cities that will make you make a judgement from afar.

Maybe it's near a college and young people tend to enjoy comedy so that could be a bonus, but overwhelmingly it's all in the way the venue is run. If they run it right, they'll have great crowds. Every venue, I don't think they know it, but you just decide which crowd you want. Just like any bar, you decide the crowd you want by the way you run your venue. Whatever crowd you have, that's what you've trained them to be.

There's two things I wanted. One, of course, the material. That's all up to me, and two, the look of it. Two guys, Jeff Roe and Scott Moran, had a lot to do with the look of it and how it turned out and how they shot it and the room. I wanted it to be in a little room but not a little room because it's an afterthought, which can be kitschy and cool too.

I've seen some comedians do that and it looks really cool. I wanted it to be a little room but like a little room in New York City, like a jazz club that holds 100 people but it's $120 to get in. It's a big deal. It's like a jazz club that holds 100 people but they run it like a 3,000-seat theater. That's why I had the band. I was really happy with it and I was proud of it.

I remember telling the director, Jeff Roe, “The crowd can be in the dark, right?” They always tell you, “Yeah” but then they go, “Well, how about this? Is this OK?” They'll be in the dark and when we cut to them in the dark, everyone will know what they're (expletive) doing: laughing or applauding. We don't have to notice the color of their shirt or the color of their eyes. You cut to someone in the dark and you see them laughing, you see them where they are: in a club in the dark. When you see a special where the audience is maybe as bright or even half as bright (as the stage), you go, “Wait, I thought the performer was lit up and the crowd was in the dark.” Why are you portraying an image of something that is not like that? It indirectly throws you off of what's going on there. You can imagine yourself sitting in the audience (in Act Happy) because it was dark and they were close to me. That's pretty much what I do. I work clubs that are like that.

Even if I shot a special that had 2,000 people (in the audience), I would still keep the crowd dark and me bright. I just wanted it to look like this old, cool club. That's why I had the band because I use the band on the road. I was happy with it. It was a lot of fun.

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