Night O’ Bitterness
Every year during the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, a group of ageing comedians gather in the Peter Cook Bar at the Town Hall for their ‘Night O’ Bitterness’. Funnily enough, there never seems to be much bitterness, as everybody is laughing and having too much fun. It’s a gathering of older comedians, having a night of drinking, catching up and reminiscing about ‘how we used to do it better in the old days’. This is done with a sense of mischief and the knowledge that, in the words of Barry Humphries, ‘you can never go back’. We just sit in the bar (we’ve renamed it the Eric Bana Bar) and laugh with each other at the passing parade of young, enthusiastic comedians with their full heads of hair (without a touch of grey), BlackBerries and people/networking skills.
The comedy festival has smothered the local industry, but that is the nature of the festival beast. Pre-comedy festival days saw the healthiest and busiest of year-round comedy scenes in Melbourne, which rivalled those anywhere in the world. I travelled to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 1990 and the international comedy that I saw couldn’t match the innovation, edginess and hilarity of the Melbourne comedy scene. I met some Scottish comedians who hated the Edinburgh Fringe Festival because, they told me, it made people think comedy only happened for one month of the year, and killed off many local venues, which were unable to draw a crowd for the rest of the year; this is exactly what has happened to the Melbourne scene.
The cards are also stacked against the local acts, who must deal with the ‘We can see you guys anytime, so we’re going to one of the foreign acts’ syndrome. Raising the level of difficulty is that the Melbourne International Comedy Festival actually pays to bring some of the overseas comedians to the city and promotes them, presumably using some of the fees paid by the local shows. This does ensure that it’s an international festival, but the closing of many local venues has meant our young comedians don’t have a chance to run material repeatedly until it is polished, sharp and competitive enough for them to make a living from it. Festivals keep administrators, not the performers, in work all year round. One solution could be to have an Australian act doing a ten-minute support gig for every overseas act, which might make people seek out the local comedy during the rest of the year. Years ago, there were local support acts for international bands and comedians, with the local acts many times burying the overseas acts. In any event, a couple of local acts in the festival usually overcome the odds and break through, making victory even sweeter, because ‘funny’ always wins, no matter where you are from.
Those who can’t be at the Night O’ Bitterness send lines to be read out at various times of the night, like, ‘Apparently, all it takes is $600 and putting your name on a poster and you are a comedian’. You see, when the Night O’ crew started, there was no thought of a comedy career, because there wasn’t the possibility of one; mostly it was just odd people who couldn’t find a place in society, and ended up doing comedy as a last resort from homelessness, or worse, a proper job. One year, as we were ready to unleash the requisite bile, an old colleague let slip he was on anti-depressants. This sobering reminder of the ‘real world’ meant we spent the rest of the night enquiring into the mental health of every comedian we met; a Pandora’s Box scenario or what?
Another time, I found myself chatting with a popular, well-to-do overseas comedian who was going on at length about how, having done a gig that went poorly, he felt so bad for his audience. ‘Did you give them all their money back?’ I enquired. ‘No,’ the stunned comic replied and, with a coquettish flick of his extremely long hair, he was gone. Someone should teach those blokes to get a sense of humour...
Matt Quartermaine is a Melbourne-based writer and comedian. With Matt Parkinson, Tim Smith and Andrew Goodone, he produces ‘The Chat’, a weekly podcast in which ‘four grown men in comfortable chairs spill their guts’. Click here to download it for free at iTunes.
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