ALMOST from the moment he started his first job, at age 18, Louis Faranda knew what he wanted to do for the rest of his life. It was the early 1970s, and the Newark native had crossed the Hudson to take a job as a waiter at the then-new Upper East Side comedy club Catch a Rising Star. There, he discovered a creative hive buzzing with comics who were stretching the boundaries of the traditional stand-up act.
“I remember going into this place and realizing that I was part of something so different and so unique. You saw people that were being funny like funnymen, but they weren’t the old Borscht Belt comedians. It was a different style. That was the catalyst for me,” he says.
Sheer tenacity and that genuine love for the business enabled Faranda to move up the ranks and eventually become the club’s booker. While there, he gave a leg up to such then-unknown talents as Jon Stewart, Ray Romano, Rosie O’Donnell and Adam Sandler. His knack for spotting a great act caught the eye of Caroline Hirsch, owner of Carolines on Broadway, who offered him a job in 1994.
“I came in as the booker and within a year I became the general manager, and I’ve been running the club ever since,” Faranda says.
In addition to lining up several acts every night at Carolines, Faranda also lines up the talent for the New York Comedy Festival, which opens today and runs through Sunday. Now in it’s fourth year, the fest’s headliners include O’Donnell, Bill Maher, Sarah Silverman, Denis Leary and Damon Wayans.
As part of your job, you have to spot what’s funny. How do you do that?
To me, the most important thing I look for is how original they are. I want to see that somebody has originality, and when I say that I mean when I watch them I’m not seeing George Carlin, I’m not seeing Chris Rock. I’m seeing someone that’s unique and different. Then I look at stage presence, because for whatever it’s worth, you’ve got to have that magic onstage. And then I look for material – but material really goes with that originality. When somebody’s original, they have original material.
What do you spend the majority of your time doing during a typical workday?
The majority of my day is trying to configure who will come into Carolines – who’s out there – and then trying to work out a price to hire them. That’s the hardest part – getting beat up by the agents. Trying to be as fair as we can be. As you can see, with the level of talent that we bring into this club, we get it done. People who play this club are people who are the next sensation. If you sell out this club, you have arrived.
Give me an example of a high point in your day.
To me, the most exciting thing is, like, when we have two and three shows a night here, and if I have a Bill Burr or a Kathy Griffin doing the 8 o’clock show, and then at 10:30 I have a totally different headliner who’s selling out a second show. That’s fabulous. That’s what we try to do here – and that’s what makes my job so difficult.
Where do you look for new talent?
My radar is always on. I can never miss a beat. Thank God, I know most of the people around the country, because I’ve been doing it for so many years. Even when someone starts to evolve and develop, eventually I hear from their agents or managers. And I inquire. And I make these decisions. If somebody’s really funny and has that original thing – like the first time I saw Kathy Griffin, I knew that she would do well here. And she sold out every show. Or Dane Cook. His agent had been pushing him for three months, and I watched a tape of him and thought he was really funny. I thought, you know what, I’ll give him a shot.
How does it feel to have that power?
I don’t look at it as power. If I did, I’d be fooling myself, because in the scheme of things, what makes this fun is that it’s not about power. It’s about having fun with what I do – and I have always treated every comedian with the utmost respect. I have never once told a comedian they weren’t funny or they could never make it in this business – ever! I might have not hired comedians, and they dislike me for that, but I have never disrespected a comedian.
But do you acknowledge that you’re in a position to give someone their big break?
Yeah, it’s a nice feeling. I think that’s what keeps me wanting to do this job. When I look at, say, Jon Stewart’s career, I think at some tiny point I helped him because I put him onstage.