Stand-Up Creativity : O.C. Club to Serve as Testing Ground for Comic’s TV Show

When Elayne Boosler performs tonight at the Laff Stop in Newport Beach, the audience will be doing more than just watching a sharp, veteran comic at work.

The crowd will be assisting Boosler--albeit passively and perhaps unwittingly--in creating material for her next cable special, which will air live on the Showtime cable network Oct. 7.

The forthcoming program, entitled “Top Tomata,” is her third in three years--an impressive achievement, no question, but also one that quickly gobbles her stand-up material like some voracious joke-munching piranha.

Nevertheless, she is determined that “Top Tomata” will be 60 minutes of new material. But even if the curly-haired Brooklyn native were a prolific joke-writer (and she claims that she’s not), there would still be a little problem with all this.

“I can’t write at home,” Boosler said, speaking by phone from that Los Angeles residence recently. “I can only write stand-up on stage. I mean, I have written jokes at home, but I can’t deliver them. I feel somehow dishonest. To me, the best stand-up is so spontaneous.

“I can’t just go out and say ‘Speaking of banks.’ It just really has to be born somehow. So I come up with a word or phrase. I read all the papers, then go on stage and say ‘Stealth bomber’ and just start talking about it.

“Hopefully, a jokes pops out of there. I keep the tape running, listen back, cull out the (good) stuff and the next night, continue it live.”

To ensure that this process spawns enough strong material, Boosler is performing some local dates this month and then, “I’m on the road every single night, in a different city, from Sept. 3 to Oct. 7--the night of the special.”

If that sounds like an exceptionally grueling schedule, especially for someone of Boosler’s stature and experience, it’s also wholly consistent with the intense work ethic that has typified her 16 years in the funny business.

Her rigorous toiling may have been more a matter of necessity than choice because the vast bulk of her career predated the Comedy Boom--and its attendant easier paths to $ucce$$. Being a woman only complicated the struggle.

At the same time, some aspects of the way she has battled her way to the top were a matter of choice. Indeed, it appears that Boosler’s career triumphs were the result of pairing that work ethic with a staunchly uncompromising modus operandi, that she stayed true to her vision and to herself--even (or especially) when the going got tough.

Exhibit A is the way Boosler, 36, handled the many frustrations she faced a few years ago, before her first cable special, “Party of One,” finally aired. It started the moment she approached cable executives about securing a special: “Their line to me was, ‘A woman can’t carry an hour,’ ” she recalled.

Undeterred by that sexist slap in the face (and the equally enjoyable fact that many comics with several years less seniority and standing were getting specials), Boosler decided to write, produce and finance her own hourlong program.

In addition to showcasing her stand-up talents, “Party of One” also featured cameo appearances by David Letterman and Bill Cosby, among others, and music by Tom Waits. Nonetheless, when she took the completed special back to the cable bigwigs, they still weren’t buying.

She said the network wanted her to cut it to 30 minutes and air it as “an experiment,” but she refused (“I’m not experimental --I resent that totally”), at which point she was told “Goodby.”

Reeling from that slap in the face, she went back on the road for several months, partly to chip away at the massive debt she had incurred in producing the special.

“I was extremely depressed,” said Boosler, who was warm, friendly and forthcoming throughout the interview--wistful rather than bitter about her unduly rocky road. It’s worth noting that the only profanity she uttered came as she recounted this episode. “I was gonna quit.”

She didn’t, although some other folks’ employment status shifted when the cable networks underwent one of those executive shuffles. “Everybody changed over and moved on to other jobs, and the new guy said, ‘Hey--what a great show!’ ”

“When the special finally ran, it did so well--they do have ratings for cable--that they immediately signed up every woman with cable TV specials, they started doing those ‘Women of the Night’ things and so on. No (woman) ever had a show, and now everybody has one. I think that’s great.”

If her breakthrough helped pave the way for other female comics to receive cable exposure, it also aided Boosler’s evolution into a full-fledged auteur. Beyond creating the stand-up and vignette material for “Party of One,” “Elayne Boosler: Broadway Baby” and that work-in-progress, “Top Tomata,” she also has written and directed two short films for the Cinemax cable network.

The most recent of those was last winter’s “The Call,” a contemporary re-telling of Kafka’s “Metamorphosis,” in which Boosler portrayed a single woman so undone by anxiety and insecurity while waiting to hear from a suitor that she eventually turns into a huge cockroach.

The next step: “Queen of Clubs,” her feature film debut as writer, director and star. Boosler said pre-production on the picture starts Oct. 8--the day after “Top Tomata” airs. Obviously, that hard-core work ethic continues, but will the stand-up? Or, like Woody Allen, Steve Martin, Albert Brooks and others, will the pursuit of filmmaking mean the end of joke-telling?

“No, it’s not just a pass-through for me,” she replied firmly. “I wouldn’t dare turn my back on the only thing that’s kept me going, which is stand-up. Even if I get into films--and it works out well--it’s so late already that it’s not going to make me more happy, and it’s certainly not going to change my life. It’s going to be ‘Oh, good. I got to do this (film)--great. Where am I performing next week?’ ”

Elayne Boosler performs tonight at the Laff Stop, 2122 S.E. Bristol, Newport Beach. Show times: 8 and 9:45 p.m. Tickets: $12. Information: (714) 852-8762.