Earlier this summer, comedian Joe List opted to try something new, going straight to theaters nationwide for one night only with a new special, Small Ball.
Implementing a distribution strategy utilized by a select set of heavy-hitters — including Richard Pryor, Louis C.K., Kevin Hart, and Eddie Murphy — List jokes that he’s “the least successful comedian to have a comedy special in a movie theater.” It was never a personal ambition, he says, to have a presence in theaters in this sense, even if he’s a pretty avid cinephile. But given that the multi-hyphenate artist was already making his way to theaters this summer with Tom Dustin: Portrait of a Comedian, a documentary on a fellow comic and longtime friend, he felt like the experiment was worth a shot.
“I came into this, putting things in movie theaters, at the perfectly incorrect time,” List deadpans in today’s episode of the Comedy Means Business podcast. “Because the last 30 movies I’ve seen in the theater, it was [just] me and my opener [in the room].”
Still, after experiencing his work on the big screen, List came away feeling that this is perhaps a better way to consume comedy.
List describes himself as someone who, ironically, hates comedy specials — who feels they’re “a horrible way to take in comedy,” where you’re “watching an audience watch comedy.”
“But if you put it in a movie theater, you kind of bring the being in a crowd back into it,” List observes. “That aspect comes back in. So at the one in New York at the IFC Center, it was hard to tell which laughs were coming from in the room, and which ones were on the screen, or coming from the sound system. So that made it really cool. I do think it’s a better way to watch a comedy special, for sure.”
Appearing alongside List on today’s pod, his manager Chris Burns (of Underscore Talent) says he feels that taking the special to theaters first “created a moment around the special that is unusual,” resulting in a boost in the hour’s performance in its streaming debut, in the same way it’s posited that movies that go to theaters first perform better financially, overall.
List has gone straight to YouTube with four new hours of material over the last five years, and Small Ball is the top performing of the bunch, in its early days on the platform, having racked up over 700,000 views since June 6.
A true comics’ comic, List has been slowly and steadily building his career over the course of two and a half decades, coming up through traditional channels before moving to build out a solid direct-to-consumer business. While looking at that journey on today’s podcast, List and Burns give a rare glimpse into the relationship between an artist and his manager, reflecting on how the comedy business has changed since List started, going theatrical with Small Ball, and the makings of a multi-faceted career.
Watch a video clip from the conversation above and listen to the full pod below.
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