MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
"Outstanding: A Comedy Revolution" is a new documentary about the history of LGBTQ stand-up. As NPR's Elizabeth Blair reports, the film spans nearly a century of milestones and setbacks for queer comedians pursuing the career of making people laugh.
ELIZABETH BLAIR, BYLINE: A multigenerational who's who of comedy fills this documentary - Billy Eichner, Fortune Feimster, Lily Tomlin.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
LILY TOMLIN: This is Miss Ernestine Tomlin of the AT&T.
I felt like Ernestine could change the world (laughter). Like, she would stop AT&T from being a monopoly.
BLAIR: There's Solomon Georgio, Eddie Izzard, Margaret Cho.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
MARGARET CHO: I told my mother when I was 14, I wanted to be a comedian. And she said, or maybe it's better if you just die.
BLAIR: "Outstanding" was directed by Page Hurwitz, who's been working in comedy for decades as both a stand-up herself and a TV producer, writer and director. When she started putting the documentary together, she knew one thing for sure.
PAGE HURWITZ: We're the gays. So I wanted to make it dynamic. I was like, nothing worse than you could be than banal.
BLAIR: So for the documentary, she organized a massive event in Los Angeles, featuring a lineup of gay comedians, including drag queen, Trixie Mattel.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
TRIXIE MATTEL: And you know, I've had such a meteoric rise to fame and fortune. The only people I can really relate to are the rich people. Poor people up there, Mama, I don't even know you.
BLAIR: Hurwitz did dozens of interviews with iconic comedians, and those who might have been more famous had they stayed in the closet...
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
ROBIN TYLER: Never was in the closet. Closets are vertical coffins. All you do is suffocate to death.
BLAIR: ...People like Robin Tyler. In the 1970s, she became one of the first comedians to come out on national television.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
TYLER: And then he said the one thing that was really supposed to upset me, he said, hey, are you, a lesbian? And I said, hey, are you the alternative?
BLAIR: Tyler and her partner, Pat Harrison, landed a deal to develop a TV comedy variety show for ABC. Around the same time, Tyler started making jokes about Anita Bryant, the former beauty pageant winner, singer and Christian. Bryant was also one of the most active voices in the anti-gay crusade.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
TYLER: And then I did a joke saying Anita Bryant is to Christianity what paint by numbers is to art, right?
HURWITZ: As a result, Robin lost her contract - her television contract. And that's why no one knows her name. And she should be a household name because she's so funny and so talented.
BLAIR: Page Hurwitz and a small staff poured over archival performances and news footage to show how from one decade to the next, queer comedians either made strides or suffered, depending on the political and cultural climate of the day. As comedian Scott Thompson puts it in the documentary...
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "OUTSTANDING: A COMEDY REVOLUTION ")
SCOTT THOMPSON: You know, I just thought life can change on a dime, and society can change on a dime. Like, in the late '70s, there was a movement to kind of embrace the homosexual.
BLAIR: There were glitzy variety TV shows, disco, Village People. But then in the 1980s, came the AIDs epidemic.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "OUTSTANDING: A COMEDY REVOLUTION ")
THOMPSON: And it went back 30, 40 years, instantly, almost overnight. Gay men in those days were considered vile.
HURWITZ: Comedy at that time was incredibly homophobic. And we had a lot of well-known comedians who were choosing to turn, you know, that tragedy into fodder for their hackneyed comedy acts, so whether it was Andrew Dice Clay or Sam Kinison, or frankly, for that matter, Eddie Murphy.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
EDDIE MURPHY: It petrifies me 'cause girls be hanging out with them. And one night, they could be in the club having fun with their gay friend and give them a little kiss (imitating kissing sound) and go home with their AIDS on their lips.
BLAIR: Of course, you can't get AIDS from a kiss on the lips.
HURWITZ: Well, comedy is always a reflection of the culture, good and bad.
BLAIR: And to counterpunch homophobia during the AIDS crisis, you had comedians like Sandra Bernhard.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "OUTSTANDING: A COMEDY REVOLUTION ")
SANDRA BERNHARD: So this became, like, the next wave of, like, having to be there and jump in full throttle.
BLAIR: Bernhard's politically charged cabaret style performances went viral before viral was a thing. Throughout the documentary, gay comedians talk about taking inspiration from each other. Here's Wanda Sykes.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "OUTSTANDING: A COMEDY REVOLUTION ")
WANDA SYKES: It was rough, but Sandra was so bold, like, just the wild woman pointing out hypocrisy.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "OUTSTANDING: A COMEDY REVOLUTION ")
BERNHARD: Jerry Falwell tries to fight the funk. And he tells us to fight the funk. Jerry Falwell will give in to the funk.
BLAIR: The film shows how there are still challenges for gay performers, most significantly transphobic material by big-name comedians. But Page Hurwitz says LGBTQ comedians will continue to take the stage, make people laugh and change the culture in the process.
HURWITZ: You're sharing who you are with the audience. And it's so powerful because laughter is disarming. You make the personal universal, and so we can realize that actually we're more alike than we are different.
BLAIR: "Outstanding: A Comedy Revolution" begins streaming on Netflix this week. Elizabeth Blair, NPR News.
Copyright © 2024 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.