Inside ‘Inside Jokes’ On Amazon Prime Video: The Just For Laughs Festival Is Very Serious Business

I had a front-row seat to the finale of Inside Jokes.

If you know where to look, you can make out my blurry face as the comedians showcased in July for New Faces at Montreal’s Just For Laughs comedy festival. But I’m not the focus of Amazon Prime Video’s docuseries, Inside Jokes.

Rosebud Baker, Robert Dean, Kellen Erskine, Simon Gibson, Daphnique Springs, MK Paulsen and Alzo Slade are. That you don’t know any of these names already is exactly the point. Montreal’s annual New Faces showcase is the closest thing comedy has to a debutante ball.

As former New Faces such as Saturday Night Live head writer Colin Jost (2010), Brooklyn Nine-Nine‘s Chelsea Peretti (2008), Hannibal Buress (2006) and Gabriel Iglesias (1999), who contribute perspective to the docuseries, describe the event:

Jost: “It’s a group of stand-ups who have been completely unrecognized before this moment.”
Buress: “It’s an opportunity for comics to get seen by television execs, stand-up agents, club bookers…”

Peretti: “Going to JFL totally helps legitimize you.”
Iglesias: “You know that something big could potentially come from this.”

All of that, plus a history of six-figure development deals and sitcoms for previously unknown comedians coming out of Montreal has given New Faces a historical prestige, and for those who haven’t yet gotten it or just getting it themselves, can add overwhelming pressure, peer- and self-inflicted.

Inside Jokes follows seven comedians in the week leading up to their final callback auditions in Los Angeles and New York City, and then up to Montreal for their potential A Star Is Born moment.

Side note: If your search isn’t quite accurate, you may wind up watching Episode 1 of Inside Joke with Asif Ali on Amazon Prime Video, which does feature JC Currais as well as another 2018 New Face, Erica Rhodes. And Ali is one-fourth of GOATFACE, the comedy group (which also includes Hasan Minhaj) that released their own sketch and stand-up special last week on Comedy Central. And Minhaj, of course, has a critical success with his new weekly series, Patriot Act, on Netflix. Comedy is a small world.

That’s even further proven true by the presence of Robbie Praw.

For several years, Praw picked the New Faces as the head booker for JFL, before leveling up to head comedy booker for Netflix. You can see Praw and fellow Netflix exec Lisa Nishimura in the finale of Inside Jokes, waiting to assess the 2018 crop of New Faces just as I was.

The docuseries contains some elements of “reality TV” scripting and casting to it, for better or worse.

Gibson and Paulsen aren’t just competing for New Faces, but also roommates. Erskine works the road at clubs and bar gigs, while trying to support a wife and kids and a Mormon lifestyle. “The stakes are higher for me, because I’ve been dragging my family along with me, pursuing this dream,” Erskine tells the documentary crew. “So this is my chance.”

Most of the scenes featuring JFL producers Nick Brazao and Jeff Singer, meanwhile, feel as though they might have been filmed in post-production. Watching Brazao and Singer discuss potential New Faces selections, in particular, makes me wonder just how much all of it was a fait accompli, and then how these particular comedians may have changed their behaviors and altered their performances for the cameras. Of course, this is the hallmark catch-22 of all “reality” or documentary filming.

Which does make it funnier when the production doesn’t edit out poorly attended shows or sets that truly bombed.

More pluses and minuses abound, thankfully. If you don’t think the comedians are that funny, well, of course not. Not every stand-up starts out a star. And in this comedy boom, it’s a healthy reminder that of the thousands of new aspiring stand-ups showing up on stages across America and the world, very few of them will make it to the point where they can quit their day jobs. Even fewer will become household names. These newer than New Faces find no room for them in the comedy clubs, and often have to resort to open mics and bringer shows (bringing enough paying guests) to earn precious stage time if they want to get better at the craft.

As Gibson reflects in the opening episode, while working as a barista out of a trailer: “A lot of friends back home don’t understand what LA and Hollywood actually is. Someone that I knew from high school contacted me on Facebook after this commercial I was in went national. And she was like, ‘Oh my God! It looks like things are really working out for you in LA!’ I just wrote back: ‘I just applied for food stamps.’”

I’ve seen all of these comedians at New Faces and critiqued them then. Watching not only their performances again onscreen months later, but also learning more about them and their backstories, provides a healthy reminder to me as a critic that every performer has a backstory, a dream, a life, and hardships of their own to overcome. I wouldn’t change any of the reviews I gave them in July. But I almost wish we had Inside Jokes as a delivery system for New Faces instead of a pressure-packed live showcase.

If show business scouts and executives really want to know what Baker or Gibson (the two stand-outs among the stand-ups) can do, they’d do well to watch this before the other executives do.

A pleasant surprise about Inside Jokes also comes when the production continues to follow the comedians who didn’t get invited to Montreal. Seeing how they face rejection can be more informative to audiences (comedians or civilians) than seeing how others face success. Thank goodness for the inclusion of funny folks such as Cameron Esposito here. Esposito never got New Faces. But she has made a name for herself with multiple TV credits and a critically acclaimed stand-up special earlier this year.

“What I’ve found to be true is this a long-haul game,” Esposito counsels another comedian. “The skill that you actually have to learn is how to fail.”

Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy beat for his own digital newspaper, The Comic’s Comic; before that, for actual newspapers. Based in NYC but will travel anywhere for the scoop: Ice cream or news. He also tweets @thecomicscomic and podcasts half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories: The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First.

Watch Inside Jokes on Amazon Prime Video