Brian Volk-Weiss

Comedy is an integral part of almost every radio morning show, be it phone gags, show prep bits, the "wacky co-hosts" or interviews with stand-up comics. Brian Volk-Weiss has made a successful career out of managing and/or producing stand-up comics, many of whom have enlivened radio morning shows. Here, he explains how being funny is serious business.

What are your earliest comedic influences?

Not to split hairs, but I have to say only one comic name comes to mind when I was growing up with my parents - Bill Cosby. Back then, they must've had 1,000 vinyl albums; 999 were music and the one comedy album was by Bill Cosby. I know that's not a cool thing to say anymore, but my nine-year old brain was not aware of certain variables in 1985, so Cosby was the guy. Our family always seemed to gravitate to artists who transcended genres. My parents didn't care for Country music, but they still had one Dolly Parton album. To this day, they have no interest in standup, but they loved Cosby.

Around college, I discovered Eddie Murphy on my own, so by the time I got out to L.A. and started my own career, it was Cosby, Murphy and honorable mention was Richard Pryor. Those are probably the only comedians I really cared about 20 years ago.

Did you ever want to be a standup comedian yourself?

Never ... not once. Though one thing that did happen was an absolutely tremendous learning experience for me. I always had lots of appreciation for stand-ups, but about 15 years ago, a stand-up comic friend of mine and I went to an open mic night at a comedy club because a very famous friend of ours was going to practice his set in an effort to get a gig on The Tonight Show. Now, I used to be the manager of the stand-up comic I went with, and while we were both waiting for our friend to show up, nobody in the crowd wanted to go up and do an act. My client friend at me and says, "Hey, you've seen me do my act a thousand times; why don't you go up there and do it?" What he said was essentially true; I knew 100% of his act, not only all the words but I knew his speech patterns - and he always killed it. Eighty percent of the time, he'd get a standing ovation. So I decided to go up and do his act right in front of him. It's not that I needed to learn how hard it is to be a stand-up comedian, but I went up and just ... bombed. It made it real clear to me how hard this was to do.

What was your plan to working behind the scenes at comedy?

I really didn't have one. I flew to New York the day after I graduated from the Univ. of Iowa, then I bought a car, got in it and drove across country that day. I was out here five days after I graduated. The day I got here, I wanted to be a director from what I learned in college, but I really didn't know what director does vs. what a producer does in Hollywood. When I got out here, I was able to get work in music video production and commercials. Then I realized what I really enjoyed was producing, not directing, which is ironic since now that I'm a producer, I'm starting to direct again - for the first time since college. I did it for two years there and I loved it very much. It just took about 18 years to get back to it.

Can you pinpoint a time when you figured out that you could turn your love of humor into a successful business career?

Two moments come to mind. The first happened when I was a manager who was producing a couple specials a year for clients - stand-ups who I managed. I had all the equipment needed to produce these specials for a cable network or whoever. So one day, I got a phone call from a guy who asked me to produce a stand-up special for Michael Ian Black, who I did not represent. I was somewhat offended. I said, "You trust me as producer but not as a manager? Why can't I manage Michael Ian Black?" and I hung up. Then I woke up the next morning and remembered that my job is ... to make money. I called back and apologized, and I got the gig anyway. But I remember being on set with Michael; it felt different producing a comedian who was not a client.

The second moment came after I read the book "The Long Tail" in 2006. This was before Netflix and YouTube, yet this book basically predicted their popularity. So after I read that book, I thought, "If this book is right, I need to immediately change the way I do business." I remember a saying - I think I first heard it in high school, but I have no idea who said it - that went, "Creativity without implementation is negligence." That always haunted me ... in a good way, in that whenever I see an opportunity that scares me, I'll never feel bad five years later if I took that risk and failed, but it'll eat me alive if I see an idea and don't act on it. I literally bet everything on my business and everyone thought I was crazy or insane - and that only reinforced me.

How did you morph from artist management into production ... what were the biggest obstacles to your success?

The biggest obstacle was basically if you were a comedian and had never done a special, none of the traditional buyers wanted to work with you, so it would be easy for me to get a deal with you. But if you were a comedian who had some success, credits and had already done a special, it would be very hard for me to convince you to trust my plan. Basically, my plan seemed ridiculous compared to what they were used to doing.

The first person who played a huge part to help us turn the corner was Tom Green, arguably the first comedian who didn't need us and who could've worked with other companies, but he trusted us. The other guy who played a huge part in our business was Nick Cannon, who trusted me to do what he wanted. We put almost all of our money into his first special, Mr. Show Biz. I was basically, at that time, working for free because I needed something on a resumé to show people. We had a nice budget to work with because neither of us took money upfront. That enabled us to make a gorgeous looking special that helped me to sell the first window to Showtime and the second window to Comedy Central. And that special is what got me into business with Jim Gaffigan ... which got us into business with Kevin Hart and Aziz Ansari. Everything else got easier once I started working with them.

Has comedy, as a business enterprise, changed as your platforms increased from TV and cable to digital opportunities such as Netflix, YouTube and the like?

We really didn't have to change our plans to adapt to the platforms. We made content that at one point we could sell to three buyers - only now we can sell it to about 10. The way it changed the business - and this happened in mid-2014 - is that I realized there were enough buyers to justify my investment in projects. Before 2014, my entire business was dependent on the fact that I had to have success with every artist I worked with, because if I spent $300,000 to make something, either Comedy Central, Showtime or HBO would have to buy it, otherwise I'd be out $300K. That was my situation from the beginning of 2007 up until 2014. It was very risky, scary and dangerous. In 2014, I realized that now there were enough platforms that we could make enough money on a project even if those three networks didn't buy it. That was a major change ... making the first special ever that I didn't have to sell to those three; I could sell it to others for $301,000 and at least break-even. I finally had the confidence to spend money knowing I could make it back from Amazon or YouTube or Hulu. Once I did that successfully, I could change our business model where we make something and distribute it ourselves.

Even though some parties think the comedy album is a thing of the past, you still seem to be successful with them. What is everyone else missing here?

We still go old-school with comedy records, and last year, every single Grammy nomination was one of our products. That was the first time in history that happened, so we knew in October that we would win in February when the awards ceremony took place. Nobody puts out more than we do in terms of value, and I would argue that nobody puts out the quality we do. And album sales and vinyl are up five years in a row, too.

Are you still a believer in vinyl as a significant part of your business model?

We're all about vinyl and sales are going up. Vinyl took up less than 1% of the business three years ago. Now it's between 4-5% ... and vinyl sales are still going up. Now, success in vinyl and all physical product depends on the artist. Certain artists are old-school fans and want their work on physical product. And we do huge business with CDs and DVDs. With Tiffany Haddish, we put out a cassette tape and sold all of them.

Is your business still centered around stand-up work, or are you getting into podcasts as a potential revenue source?

Well, 99% of what we're doing is stand-up, but before last year, it was always 100%. We are doing more and more podcasts. One is called 'I Mom So Hard,' and Celeste Barber's will be out in a couple of months. There's an Instagram star who will host one; we're shooting a guy who is a magician/motivational speaker, and there are a couple other deals I can't talk about at all. So we are definitely evolving in that direction.

What do you see in the future for Comedy Dynamics and its impact on the business?

Two things are left to accomplish. Within the last 12 months, we more or less fully achieved a "soup to nuts" level where we can buy something, develop it, then shop it, distribute it and monetize it. We've become fully functional within the last 12 months. It took my entire career to get to this point. Now what we need to do is increase our profile with the quality of the artists. The stuff we're working on now - which will hopefully be out in three to five years - instead of just dominating niche comedy in stand-up specials, will move into scripted shows and feature films. People start to trust our brand where Comedy Dynamics has made its bed, which is what we need to do. We're producing a new version of the sitcom, Mad About You, for Spectrum and Sony, which is not for our distribution system, but I can just see how well it works for our brand. This is a title that everybody over the age of 30 knows about. It's what our business is lacking and what we need to change.

Would you like to see Comedy Dynamics becoming as big as a Warner Bros. in terms of producing comedy content for the masses?

To me, this is like theorizing whether heaven and hell exists. I just want to make sure I'm doing well enough so after I'm done working, this company can still exist and stand-alone the way Disney has beyond Walt Disney's lifetime. Not only have they continued to exist, but they've continued to entertain of billions people over decades and, in my opinion, made the world a better place a lot of the time. I hope to accomplish that as well.