A Funny Thing Happened . . .

You could tell this was no ordinary convention. A young man at the cocktail party was scraping chips off an ice sculpture of a flying horse into his plastic cup. Not for a drink, but for a photo opportunity.

This was the first American Comedy Convention, organized by Budd Friedman and Eddie Kritzer. Friedman had opened the original Improvisation in New York 25 years ago. It was the only night club in the country devoted exclusively to comedy. Now there are 280 such clubs. The ninth Improv just opened in Chicago, along with a Catch a Rising Star and a Funny Farm--the comedic equivalents of McDonald’s, Burger King and Wendy’s--each franchise boasting its own secret recipe for merchandising fast comedy.

As with any convention, there was networking--rival club owners talking to each other for the first time--and there was pragmatic knowledge to be gained by performers.

In one seminar, “Investment and Tax Planning for Working Comedians,” it was pointed out that you can depreciate those comic props--Gallagher certainly writes off every single watermelon he smashes. Accountant Matt Lichtenberg told how he had placed all his comedy clients in a building that he owned in Hollywood, then sold it for twice as much.

But that kind of dealing was a premature consideration for the working comedians here. A more immediate goal would be discussed in another seminar, “Getting Ready for Late-Night TV,” featuring Jim McCawley, co-producer of “The Tonight Show,” and Robert Morton, producer of “Late Night with David Letterman.”

“Type your whole act out,” McCawley advised. “Get rid of words you don’t need. On TV, those dead words and pauses equal dead air. Cut it all down to the essence of the idea, then relearn your act. Try not to imitate other acts. Comedians all watch each other and do jokes about what’s on TV, boring cabdrivers, the munchies--how many McNugget jokes can there be?”

As if to answer that question, Johnny Carson told yet another easy reference joke on “The Tonight Show”: “Tammy Faye Bakker had taken her makeup off, and people thought if was Ernest Borgnine.” This was not a rerun. Carson’s well-paid writers were back.

Morton said that “Late Night” auditions a few hundred acts in a year, including “comedians who kill, but are not right for the show . . .

“Compare it to any business, with a product and buyers. The bottom line is, we’re like a department store. You have to know the buyer. We don’t want any chainsaw jugglers. It’s just not the kind of merchandise we carry in our store. You have to know the marketplace.

“There’s a certain style that we buy. No mother-in-law jokes. This is the Big Leagues. You have to hit home runs. Go over your act and craft it for TV. I want to hear the clean television version. It’s David Letterman’s name.”

“Johnny is the audience,” McCawley said.

“We represent their points of view,” Morton added. “I rarely get through a 10-minute tape. Most likely I know in the first two minutes. But I still want to see a 6- to 15-minute tape, not edited highlights--I’m not working for George Schlatter here,” referring to the producer of “Comedy Club,” a weekly TV show in which performers are edited into each other’s acts. “I want to see segues, a build. Comics go on in the last 10 minutes, and David Letterman is a tough act to follow.”

“I watch them do just that 6 minutes, virtually foolproof,” McCawley said. “If they bomb, it means they departed from the game plan.”

A question came up about women on these shows.

“There were very few when we started,” McCawley said. “Now there are more. We try to be open-minded and helpful. But men laugh at different things than women laugh at. It’s harder to convince me that it works. Some are very successful, but Johnny doesn’t find them funny. At least they fail honestly.”

“Booking for David Letterman and Johnny Carson,” said Morton, “our percentage has more female than male. But David is 40 and Johnny has the sensibilities of a man in his 60s about women.”

This problem of sexism in comedy was evident at the convention. Originally there was to be a continuous showcase of “America’s hottest 100 comedians.” Each standup comic who registered for consideration had to have at least two recommendations by club owners. Of those, 175 were eliminated, and only 64 would be showcased. Of those, only three were women. And yet, bookers from such disparate cities as Boise, Ida., and Santa Rosa, Calif., said that they get more requests for female comics than they can fulfill, perhaps because it is couples who come to comedy clubs, and women who arrange their social calendars.

Kathleen Rogers, comedy editor of the Hollywood Reporter, had distributed lapel buttons with a slash mark over the word comedienne. “It doesn’t mean no female comics,” she explained. “It means no comediennes.”

Two comedians, Margaret Smith and Diane Ford, disagreed on the role of compromise in advancing a career.

Smith said, “We don’t say a surgeon who happens to be a woman. ‘Oh, geez, I’m a woman, I hope they give this guy more anesthesia.’ I can’t stomach those who write for the audience rather than themselves, who are unfaithful to who they really are. A club owner told me, ‘Talk more about things women talk about if you want to be successful.’ I don’t compromise.”

Ford said, “Safe material makes you acceptable. Are we talking about an art form or are we talking about making a living in this business? I will compromise. If there is no one to communicate with, then what good are your jokes?”

This convention made it official that comedy is now an industry, but it also became clear that, as with any industry, there is mass production. For three days in a row, six hours each afternoon, an assembly line of stand-up comics did 15 minutes apiece at the Improv in the Riviera Hotel, playing to an audience of nervous fellow performers, jaded industry people and various “civilians” gathered from poolside.

“This is like doing a prison show,” said one comedian. Except that here, the audience was free to come and go as it pleased, but the entertainers were captive performers. Moreover, each had to pay $300 for the privilege of perpetuating racial, religious, ethnic, chauvinist and ageist stereotypes.

Also, there were so many references to ancient and current TV shows and their characters--from Marcus Welby to Max Headroom, from Alvin and the Chipmunks to Cagney and Lacey, from Perry Mason to Hulk Hogan--that this supposedly shared subculture seemed to become a separate reality which Carlos Castaneda never even dreamed of. Castaneda is, of course, the garbage collector on “The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd.”

Yet, in the midst of this conveyor belt of comics, there developed a certain camaraderie. “Now, remember,” Stan Ullman advised a fellow performer about to go on, “don’t mumble.”

On a practical level, Jim Samuels remarked that the three club dates he picked up at the convention “are the equivalent of two weeks schmoozing at the Improv.” Ed Yeager told the audience, “You got one of my press kits. If you’re not important, put it back.”

Night clubs are for stand-up comedians what farm teams are for baseball players. There is a traveling hierarchy of opening acts, middle acts and headliners. One appearance on “The Tonight Show” or “Late Night” can transform you into a headliner. Several comics interrupted their own showcasing segments to make such self-conscious observations as, “This will never get me on Carson or Letterman.”

Here, then, is an all-purpose comedy club presentation, boiled down from 64 showcase performances:

“All right! How you guys doing? You in a good mood tonight? Ah, the love I feel in this room. I’ve been doing a lot of traveling lately. I got a speeding ticket the other day. I’ve been having problems with relationships. Anybody here go to parochial school? Any Michael Jackson fans here? Any of you guys take algebra in high school? The other day an Iranian cab driver took me to a 7-Eleven. While I was drinking a Slurpie, who should walk in but Vanna White and Oprah Winfrey. It seems they were out on a blind date, but they didn’t have much in common, you know what I’m saying? All Vanna wanted to do was worry about her skin blemishes, but Oprah preferred to complain about the taste of liver. So then Spuds Mackenzie comes in and he leaves the toilet seat up, but Sylvester Stallone catches him and says, ‘You want fries with that?’ Hey, my time’s up, thanks a lot. You guys have been a lot of fun. I’ve been generic. Good night!”