This funny business

“Ihate this place with a passion,” Shecky Greene said about Las Vegas. This was Saturday afternoon in the sports book at Caesars Palace, the giant TV screens projecting college football and horse races. Greene, 79 -- a former king of comedy here, a storyteller into the wee hours when Vegas had real showrooms and lounges and a mob presence, had a pick-six ticket he was following at Hollywood Park. The book was filled with guys dressed in Ohio State football jerseys.

Greene was here for something called the Comedy Festival, put on by HBO and two other big-media outfits --TBS, the cable network trying to re-brand itself as “very funny,” and AEG Live, the concert-promoting arm of Philip Anschutz’s entertainment empire. Greene, who in his heyday performed at the Riviera 20 weeks a year and did 2:30 a.m. shows to audiences not dressed in shorts and flip-flops, would participate in “The Founders.”

It would mean sitting onstage with, among others, Shelley Berman, Jerry Lewis and Larry King. He said he wasn’t particularly looking forward to seeing any of them.

“Larry King once said to me at Nate ‘n Al’s, ‘You know, you’re never good on television,’ ” Greene said. He looked up at one of the big screens. “This horse is going to be taken down,” he said. “That bothers me and I don’t even have a bet on it.”

Being good on television is the remarkably durable equation for success in comedy; networks continue to struggle to find the next big stand-up, even as many in the business feel the run of comedian-driven sitcoms is over. Returning to stand-up is what you do after you’ve conquered television, the biggest names at the festival -- Jon Stewart, Dave Chappelle, Jerry Seinfeld, Larry David -- significant simply because they’re onstage.

Greene’s presence here was part of the festival but hardly the reason for it. His Las Vegas is gone, his Caesars is gone, the casino now a dislocating place, with its adjacent Forum Shops mall and a terribly important right turn at the statue of David (the difference between ancient Rome and this Rome, Stewart said onstage Saturday night at the Celine Dion Theater, is that in ancient Rome it was easier to find the exits).

None of that matters, of course; what matters is that HBO, trying out a new comedy festival, can use Caesars as a staging ground for a talent party/comedy festival/piece of business. Fifteen-hundred bucks got you a pass to all the shows and a special performance by Seinfeld, at which he talked shop with Robert Klein, Chris Rock and Garry Shandling, with an uninitiated big name, CNN’s Anderson Cooper, moderating his way through the esoterica of comedy. Seinfeld was also given something called the Comedian Award.

The Comedy Festival is a trial balloon to go with HBO’s other, more established live event, the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival, held each February in Aspen, Colo. The Aspen fest is an arty, Sundance Film Festival kind of schmooze, held on a mountain; the Vegas fest, in its infancy, appears to be about drawing big names to the casino and selling tickets to the public.

For HBO, it is also an opportunity to showcase the network’s deep roots in the comedy business at a time when buzz for the network’s scripted shows has hit a post-”Sex and the City” lull. And so for a weekend, Caesars was populated by managers and agents and the writer guys who travel with the big-name comics. The cast of “The Sopranos” flew in from filming a new season to participate in a charity poker tournament, $15,000 getting you into a game of no limit Texas Hold’em with Tony Soprano, Paulie “Walnuts” and Johnny Sack.

The festival kicked off Thursday night with “Earth to America,” produced by Laurie David, wife of Larry David, a star-studded event about global warming broadcast Sunday night on TBS. “Earth to America” was neither an awards show nor a telethon but Laurie David showcasing her ability to wrangle big names -- Will Ferrell, Ben Stiller, Tom Hanks, her husband -- into donating their time in the name of consciousness-raising about the environment. They did this in Las Vegas.

Saturday night, Stewart and Chappelle, who briefly checked out on his career earlier this year, performed in Dion’s theater, both shows packed. On the Strip, among the tourists, it was interesting to note the mixed response even the big-name comics got when they slammed President Bush; you could feel the air leave the room a little bit each time. Stewart countered the spin that the president is stupid by saying: “Stupid is accidentally eating soap.” Onstage, he was more partisan than the faux anchor he plays on “The Daily Show,” characterizing Vice President Dick Cheney as a grim, movie-villain cleaner. “Dead hooker in the room, call Cheney.”

Stewart was followed at 11:30 by Chappelle, who did an hour-plus with security posted at the stage. Chappelle is on tour again after walking away from a $50-million deal and a third season of Comedy Central’s “Chappelle’s Show,” and onstage, anyway, he seemed refreshed, his set tight.

“If you haven’t heard about me, I’m ... insane,” was how he began the show, which outside the theater had the buzz of a prize fight, the top ticket a reasonable-for-Vegas $125.

Last May, Chappelle disappeared to South Africa amid rumors that he was having an emotional breakdown or was perhaps addicted to crack. But he was only living out a dream, he said, to “get to the top of show business and go back to Africa.” He added of rapper Kanye West’s recent post-Hurricane Katrina statements that the Bush administration doesn’t care about black people: “I gotta lot of respect for Kanye, and I’m gonna miss him.”

“HBO has always been very good at throwing parties,” Bill Maher said, when I asked him about the festival. We were reclining on a sofa bed together at the nightclub Pure (“Hey, I’ve done gayer things than this,” he called out when people passed by). Maher was hiding from “The Sopranos” poker tournament; he doesn’t know how to play. Being in this sleek club is like being on the inside of an ice cube except for the cocktail waitresses. At one of the tables, James Gandolfini and AEG President Tim Leiweke looked embroiled in the game.

Maher reminisced about the old Vegas versus the new -- his first engagement here was in 1982, opening for Diana Ross at Caesars, two grand a week, a sunken tub in the middle of his room. “This was when Caesars was the last hotel on the block,” Maher said.

Later that night, across the street, Maher hosted a “For Adults Only” show in the old Flamingo showroom, which still has maitre d’s in tuxedos, older men who betray surprise when you tip them. The show was a nod to the current renaissance for raunchy/dicey insult humor, thanks in part to the recent releases of “The Aristocrats” and “Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic.”

Silverman, still promoting her movie, was a late scratch, but another voice from “The Aristocrats” performed -- the comics’ comic Gilbert Gottfried. Hand pressed to forehead, he went into the archives for a barrage of Calista Flockhart-is-too-skinny jokes that included: “The first time I saw her she was in a restaurant trying to get something out of her teeth. I went up to her and I said, “Toothpick?” And she said: “Jew!”

It was in this smaller room, going on 2 in the morning, that you could laugh yourself to crying. The following night “The Founders” played the same room. It was Greene and Berman and Lewis, along with Phyllis Diller, George Carlin and Norm Crosby. They were all sitting a little awkwardly in director’s chairs, the show overlapping with the kids across the street at Caesars -- Seinfeld, Stewart -- and not fully attended.

Larry King immediately lost control of the event. Lewis, wearing a tuxedo and an undone bow tie, complained about the lighting and the microphones. After reminiscing for a bit he excused himself to go to the bathroom and never returned to the stage. Shortness of breath, I later heard.

When Greene walked onstage he said: “I’m home!” They were doing this for a DVD.