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What Happened To The Friars Club?

How to piss away a legacy, and all of the comedy news that goes on without them now

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Farewell to Friars (Again)

What does it say about The Friars Club that it could close its doors for a second time in three years, and hardly anyone even noticed, let alone knew they’d reopened during the pandemic?

That the shuttering came around the same time as the ceremonies at the Kennedy Center for the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor — perhaps the closest thing to the annual Friars Club Roast in terms of regaling and celebrating a funny person — only makes it sadder, somehow. This year’s Mark Twain Prize went to Adam Sandler, who showed up in a suit and gave a sincerely lengthy speech after hearing his friends rib him for a couple of hours for his casual attire, his carefree attitude, the ease with which he has made millions laugh, and his loyalty to them all.

It aired this past Sunday on CNN, after several years on PBS, and no years on Comedy Central — that’s where the Friars brought their brand of roasting from 1998 to 2002, until Jeff Ross and Comedy Central eventually made it their own thing from 2003 through 2019.

I’ve attended one Comedy Central Roast (Donald Trump!, 2011), and only made it to one of the Friars Club Roasts (Jack Black, 2013). But I did visit the Friars Club itself several times in the 2010s, seeing screenings of the club’s own comedy film festival, attending afterparties for the club’s improv and sketch competitions, seeing live comedy shows (both stand-up and improv) in the Milton Berle Room, and in 2019, even embarking on a special podcast series with the Friars that remains in limbo today.

So what happened?

It’s easy to point to potential malfeasance, as Roger Friedman recounts in his bulletin earlier this month, which is how I found out the Friars had closed once more for good.

The easier answer is the Friars died out without figuring out how to adapt to younger, hipper comedians. At one point, they tried inviting Jimmy Fallon and all of his late-night writers into the club, hoping it’d lead to a wave of new members. But that never materialized. Instead, in 2014 they named the building on East 55th Street after Jerry Lewis and made octogenarian Larry King their club dean. Lewis died in 2017; King in 2021; and Freddie Roman, the previous dean, in 2022. Sure, you could name the bathroom for Richard Lewis as a joke, but if Lewis, 75, is in Los Angeles, who’s left to actually enjoy and make use of the Friars Club, and extoll its virtues to today’s funny people?

Their most recent Instagram post, from Jan. 30, 2023, announced that Reelin’ In The Years Productions would have access to more than seven decades of film footage from the Friars Club. So perhaps we’ll be haunted by the Friars in documentary films and series for years to come?!

Daily Show Correspondents Get To Guest Host (Finally)

John Leguizamo guest hosts The Daily Show this week, but then we get to see each of the correspondents behind the desk, starting with Roy Wood Jr., and even including O.G. “Back In Black” correspondent Lewis Black later this spring!

I know my colleague Jason Zinoman suggested in his NYT column last week (free link!) that TDS should or could just keep on keepin’ on with rotating guest hosts, but I’m not as sold on that idea — particularly for a show that churns out four new episodes each week.

My vote’s for The Roy and/or Ronny Show for now…

Houston Held A Riot

A weekend before The Final Four brings March Madness to a close in the biggest city in Texas, Houston hosted a comedy festival and forgot to tell me? Oh well. Sorry I missed it. Only noticed because a friend of mine, Chris Grace, apparently won the comedy contest that was part of The Riot Comedy Festival. Congrats, Chris!

What other new comedy festivals am I missing? Please let me know in the comments below (if you’re a paid subscriber; otherwise, email me) and I’ll finally update my list over on The Comic’s Comic. Thanks!

R.I.P. Norman Steinberg

Norman Steinberg died on March 15 at the age of 83. If the name doesn’t ring a bell, perhaps one of the films he helped write does — Steinberg wrote or co-wrote the screenplays for Blazing Saddles; Yes, Giorgo; My Favorite Year; Johnny Dangerously; Wise Guys; and Funny About Love.

Industry News and Notes

What else is new?

  • Amy Poehler is getting into podcasts?! She’ll star in “Say More With Dr? Sheila,” as a fake therapist improvising and interacting with different fake couples. It’ll be the first of three 10-episode projects. “We are huge fans of podcasts and we can’t wait to poke fun at all the things we love about them, and to do so with Cadence13,” Poehler and Liz Cackowski said in a joint statement.

  • There’s going to be another Ghostbusters?! Gil Kenan will direct Ghostbusters: Afterlife, which has James Acaster, Emily Alyn Lind, Kumail Nanjiani and Patton Oswalt joining returning cast members Paul Rudd and Carrie Coon. Alrighty then.

  • Jim and Brian Kehoe have sold another comedy movie pitch: Joel in Accounting Must Die, to TriStar. The Kehoe brothers previously wrote Blockers.

  • So…the Orange County District Attorney’s office in California dismissed domestic violence charges against Justin Roiland (Rick and Morty), but the damage has been done thanks to multiple women coming forward in the wake of those charges with evidence of Roiland’s offensive behavior toward them.

  • A24, meanwhile, has gotten behind Kyle Mooney’s directorial effort of Y2K, set during a New Year’s Eve party at the end of 1999, from an Evan Winter script, with a cast of Jaeden Martell, Julian Dennison, Tim Heidecker, The Kid Laroi, Alicia Silverstone, Rachel Zegler, Lachlan Watson, Mason Gooding, Eduardo Franco, Miles Robbins, Fred Hechinger, and Daniel Zolghadri.

  • Amazon has begun production in Canada on a comedy series based on the “Great Canadian Maple Syrup Heist.” Margo Martindale, Chris Diamantopoulos, and Guillaume Cyr star in The Sticky, with Jamie Lee Curtis confirmed to guest star in the series, set to debut in 2024.

  • Amazon’s also behind Paul Feig’s comedy of horrors film, Grand Death Lotto, starring Awkwafina as a lottery ticket winner who has to survive til sundown, or else her would-be killer claims her prize. John Cena and Simu Liu will co-star, along with Ayden Mayeri, Seann William Scott, Dolly de Leon and Donald Elise Watkins.

  • FOX is developing animated comedy HAVOC! from Michael Glouberman and Bento Box, about a super-villain and his ragtag team of misfits.

  • Seriously, Yahoo?! Game Show Network announced a new series premiering this summer, “Hey Yahoo!” hosted by Tom Cavanagh, in which teams of three guess what people are searching for on Yahoo.

  • Taylor Tomlinson has reached a deal with Netflix for TWO MORE stand-up specials. She has released Netflix hours in 2020 and 2022.

  • Diarra Kilpatrick has a deal with BET which includes a straight-to-series order for Diarra from Detroit on BET+, an hourly series about a teacher who refuses to believe she’s been ghosted by her Tinder date, leading her down darkly humorous paths.

  • An upcoming audiobook promises perhaps never-before-heard stories from Steve Martin. “So Many Steves: Afternoons With Steve Martin” will be published on May 2, 2023, by Pushkin, featuring conversations between Martin and New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik.

In news involving funny people who’ve been on my podcast already…

  • Bonnie McFarlane is developing a comedy series with Cineflex Productions based on her memoir growing up in rural Canada, “You’re Better Than Me,” which she spoke to me about when she published it in 2016.

  • Robin Thede has another project in the works with HBO, Disengagement, in which the creator and star of A Black Lady Sketch Show would focus on a Midwestern family that implodes after their business fails in a very public fashion.

  • Connor Ratliff has scored a part as teacher Mr. Rapp in the upcoming movie musical adaptation of Mean Girls for Paramount+.

Last Week’s Specials

New on YouTube

New on Amazon Prime

New on Amazon (for rent)

THIS WEEK: 11 (Previous subtotal: 126) Running total for 2023: 137 comedy specials!

Late-Night Roundup

Fun Things To Do In NYC

This past weekend’s show(s) I plugged in The New York Times: A new nonprofit called Old Pros actively seeks to destigmatize sex work founded by comedian Kaytlin Bailey, and a team that includes Marie Cecile Anderson and Irene Merrow. You can find their slate of upcoming events here.

Would you like to promote your comedy show or album or special or whatnot on this newsletter???

You can plug your projects in the comments if you’re a PAID SUBSCRIBER of Piffany! Or, if you’d rather have me include your project in the body of the weekly From The Comic’s Comic roundup, please let me know and we can work out the details.

Thanks for reading!

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