This month begins the annual "Funniest Person in Austin" contest. It's a surprisingly big deal, as the finals are attended by representatives from Comedy Central, 3 Arts, Conan/Kimmel/Fallon, and several big festivals, and the winner is not-totally-guaranteed-but-tacitly-assumed to be given a spot in the New Faces portion of the huge Just for Laughs Festival in Montreal. Plus, the booker for SXSW Comedy is said to attend every night, even the preliminary rounds.
You can see where I'm going with this.
The preliminary rounds are the most brutal: 16-17 performers each night, of which only three will advance to the semifinals. At the discretion of the judges, a fourth person from each night may go into a "comeback" round, with their sets posted on the website and the one with the most votes getting a wildcard spot straight into the finals. But even someone who advances normally only gets to perform 3 times at most.
My preliminary is May 5th, the very last one before the semifinals start. Looking at the lineups it's clear that they have seeded the brackets deliberately, with the bigger names in town spread out evenly across all the nights. On my night, I would say there is one shoo-in and three others (besides me, of course
) who are genuine contenders. The rest I've either seen at open mics or found videos of, and I'm not worried--or else they have no internet presence at all, which probably means they aren't a concern but then again many might assume the same about me. (I temporarily took down the previous clip I posted, because it's not my best stuff and if I do happen to end up in the comeback round I don't want it losing me votes.)
Do I have a chance at getting to the finals? I honestly don't know. The thing is, I know the set I've put together is hilarious. I by no means have a special's worth of great stuff, but I know that my best six minutes is objectively fantastic. But my style is also very different from most of the regulars. The scene here is a whole lot of "lean casually against the mic stand and tell self-deprecating one-liners," and I am far more theatrical and energetic. I yell a lot. Maybe that makes me stand out in a good way, or maybe that makes me too weird to be chosen by judges who are comfortably settled into the smirky scene.
Here, for example, is last year's winner:
This guy, on the other hand, is the most dynamic finalist video I could find out of all of them, and I'm still more frantic than he is by a long shot. (And of course this guy didn't place during his year.)
Aaanyway. I want this. Bad. My ego will be satisfied if I at least make it to the semi-finals (I mean honestly, any-fucking-body can sign up for this and that includes the local schizophrenic homeless dude who sings nonsense over a 12-inch toy keyboard, so I should at least move beyond that level,) and most of the big name folks do come to those shows as well. Some very talented people in this city have never made it to the finals, but they got spots at festivals and launched a career just because the right people saw them at the semi-finals. But I'd be lying if I didn't say that part of me thinks I'm good enough to win. Maybe that's delusional, but I've seen a ton of finalist sets at this point, and I think it's at least possible.
We shall see on May 5th, I suppose.