Comic Relief Gets Yuks--and Bucks

Four years after Band Aid, Live Aid, Hands Across America and USA for Africa rewrote the rules for celebrity-studded pop charity events, the causes they championed persist: African pestilence and famine are still claiming 4 million young lives a year and America’s 3 million homeless remain homeless.

Most of the pop charities themselves, however, have vanished from the public spotlight.

Except for Comic Relief.

“Who would have ever thought that the last guys doing it would be the comedians?” said Bob Zmuda, president and co-founder of the organization sponsoring tonight’s all-star comedy revue for the nation’s homeless.

Plans are already in the works for a Comic Relief show next year in New York, even before this year’s four-hour laugh-a-thon goes on the air tonight from the Universal Amphitheater. It will air at 9 p.m. on HBO.

Hosted by Billy Crystal, Robin Williams and Whoopi Goldberg, the annual event features many of the country’s top comics in stand-up routines, sitcom skits and production numbers sandwiched between pleas for donations to help the homeless. Pledge donations and ticket proceeds are used to underwrite 19 medical care projects throughout the country. HBO picks up the production tab.

“One of the reasons they’re able to tell people over the air that 100% of their pledge will go to help the homeless is because HBO underwrites it,” said Michael Cousineau, executive director of the Los Angeles Health Care for the Homeless project that has directly benefitted from Comic Relief I ($77,000) and II ($150,000). “HBO gets a lot in terms of publicity, but it’s a tradeoff that works.”

Nationally, the first two Comic Reliefs took in about $4.7 million and distributed it to the 19 medical projects, which, in turn, used the money to aid an estimated 150,000 homeless people in need of medical attention, according to Comic Relief’s annual report.

Comic Relief’s careful planning has also insured its longevity, said Cousineau. The organization’s officials have learned from the mistakes of other pop charities. Because Comic Relief knew before its very first show exactly how the proceeds would be distributed, for example, all the money raised during the program was paid out to health care centers within six months, he said.

By contrast, Cousineau said, organizers of the 1986 pop charity event Hands Across America spent nearly half of every dollar contributed on overhead and did not get the remaining money fully distributed to the homeless until as long as a year after the event.

“We got a little bit of money from Hands Across America,” said Cousineau. “But Comic Relief has kept us going.”

At least 6,000 homeless men, women and children have received medication, care and counseling at the Los Angeles center as a direct result of Comic Relief, Cousineau said. An additional 20,000 have benefitted indirectly because the Comic Relief grant encouraged matching grants from other groups, such as the Ahmanson and Parsons Foundations in Los Angeles, he said.

Comic Relief III is sold out at the amphitheater, with all $400,000 in ticket revenue earmarked for the homeless, according to Comic Relief’s vice president, Dennis Albaugh.

The show will open with an extravagant musical dance number, according to Zmuda, choreographed to the tune of Comic Relief’s 1989 theme song: “Don’t Be a Greedy Bastard.”

“It’s got lyrics like ‘Those Yuppie days are over and gone, it’s time to throw away the Perrier and Grey Poupon,’ ” Zmuda said.

The show itself will feature between 35 and 40 acts and could last as long as four and a quarter hours, he said. Among the personalities who have agreed to appear are John Cleese, Goldie Hawn, Fred Savage, Bob Newhart, Joe Flaherty, Martin Short, Charlton Heston, Doc Severinson, Garry Shandling, Jamie Lee Curtis and Shelley Long.

There are some notable absences from the roster, such as Eddie Murphy and Bill Cosby, arguably the two best-known comedians in the country.

“I don’t know why they don’t join in,” said HBO’s Chris Albrecht, who has overseen the show’s production since the first Comic Relief in 1986. “Some of them can’t do it but some of them just won’t do it.”

Next year, when Comic Relief IV opens at Radio City Music Hall, Albrecht hopes to lure some of those reluctant comedians into the Comic Relief “family.” He also hopes to land a national sponsor to help underwrite the organization.