Barry Katz

Barry Katz is an Emmy and Grammy nominated comedy talent manager, podcast host, television and film producer. He was the owner and founder of the Boston Comedy Club in New York City and helped launch the careers of many successful comedians, including Dave Chappelle, Nick Swardson, Louie CK, Felipe Esparza, Bill Burr, Frank Caliendo, Marc Maron, Whitney Cummings, Bill Bellamy, Anthony Clark, Wanda Sykes, Jim Gaffigan, Dane Cook, Jeffrey Ross, Tom Papa, Gary Gulman, Hasan Minhaj, the late Patrice O’Neal, and former and present “SNL" stars Darrell Hammond, Jay Mohr, Melissa Villasenor, Jim Breuer, and Tracy Morgan.[1][2]

Barry Katz
OccupationTalent manager, television producer, film producer
Known forBoston Comedy Club

Career

Barry Katz started doing stand-up comedy at his high school in Western Massachusetts,  performing the iconic Driving Instructor routine from Bob Newhart's debut album “The Button Down Mind.”  When he attended college at Boston University, he started doing his own material after seeing Steven Wright perform at the infamous Crossroads Pub in Kenmore Square during the Blizzard of ’78. While he was still in college, he started performing at all of the comedy clubs in the Boston area, including the Comedy Connection, Nick's Comedy Stop, and the Ding Ho. He landed a job as a doorman at Play It Again Sam's, a comedy club/movie bar, and was soon given the opportunity to manage and book the venue while he was still in college. It was there that he segued into the other side of the business, while developing an eye for some of the most talented comics in the country—before they were stars—by revamping the entire line-up and giving permanent hosting spots to Anthony Clark, Denis Leary, Dana Gould, Lenny Clarke, and Bobcat Goldthwait.  During this time, he created a booking agency, The Boston Comedy Company, and became a personal appearance agent and producer for the best comedians in the area, eventually managing several performance venues throughout New England. Katz preferred the level of control that his new businesses provided, in contrast to the unpredictable paycheck of a stand-up performer. After a family tragedy in 1986, Katz decided to relocate to New York City.[3][4]

Katz soon opened a small office in the Hard Rock Cafe building on Broadway and started a personal comedy management company, Barry Katz Entertainment, where Louis C.K. became his first client. When Katz's friend from Boston, Eddie Brill, was running a comedy club in Greenwich Village and had plans to move to Los Angeles. Brill agreed to hand over the club to Katz. In 1988, Katz rebranded it as The Boston Comedy Club and the club ran for 17 years. Many of Katz's management clients were either teens or in their 20's when they started working at the club and signed with his management company, including Chappelle, Morgan, Cook, Mohr, Breuer, Ross, C.K., and Sykes.

Beginning in the 1990s, Katz forged a relationship with Lorne Michaels and Marcy Klein at Saturday Night Live, which saw several of his clients audition and become cast-members, including Hammond, Mohr, Breuer, Morgan, and Villaseñor.[3]

After Katz successfully brought 18 of his clients to the Montreal Just for Laughs Festival, in 1995, where he created the “New Faces” brand, 5 of his artists where signed to TV deals, and he landed a four-year development deal to package shows for Disney/Touchstone Television, where he went on to executive produce 8 comedy pilots, .[5]

In 1997, Katz and Jeff Ross brought the Friar's Club together with Comedy Central to launch The Comedy Central Roasts, which have since become the networks’ biggest franchise in their history. Additionally, that same year Katz, Neal Brennan (who was the former doorman at the Boston Comedy Club when he was a teenager), and Chappelle sold the cult movie Half Baked to Universal.[6]

After the Disney/Touchstone deal ended in 1999, Katz landed a 2-year deal and Sony-Columbia-Tristar where he went on to executive produce (alongside Joel Silver, Don Reo, and the late Chris Thompson and Tedd Demme) his first network show to get an order of 13 episodes—the critically acclaimed FOX half-hour comedy Action, starring Mohr, Illeana Douglas, and legendary comedian, Buddy Hackett (in his last role before he died).

In 2003, Katz merged his management/production company with New Wave Entertainment and remained in the position of president of talent management until he left the company after 8 years to work independently on his own again.[7]

While he was there, he co-founded Comedy Dynamics (one of the largest comedy production and distribution companies in the world) and executive produced a plethora of hour specials, including ones with Whitney Cummings, Gary Gulman, Felipe Esparza, Nick Cannon, Christopher Titus, and all of Dane Cook's record breaking library.  

In 2005, Katz became the first manager (and Cook the first artist) to use social media to engage fans, which led Cook to sell out two shows at Boston Garden (for his first HBO special—Vicious Circle) and Madison Square Garden, twice, while having the most financially profitable comedy tour, up to that point, in history.

In the audio recording world, Katz has produced several comedy albums, including all of Dane Cook’s albums which went gold, platinum, and double platinum. During their 17 year business relationship, Katz and Cook became the first manager/artist combination that launched a comedy album in the top 5 of Billboard’s mainstream national charts, twice. Additionally, Katz produced Jay Mohr's album Happy. And A Lot, which was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album at the 58th Annual Grammy Awards.

He also acted as a film producer on Cook's films Employee of the Month (with Jessica Simpson), Good Luck Chuck (with Jessica Alba), and My Best Friend's Girl (with Kate Hudson, Jason Biggs, and Alec Baldwin), as well as the documentaries I Killed JFK (about the only living person in the world to admit to killing President Kennedy) and Misery Loves Comedy (starring Tom Hanks, Larry David, Judd Apatow, and Amy Schumer).[8]

In terms of television,  Katz has sold 37 out of 38 stand-up comedy specials he produced and has brokered an unprecedented 100 TV development deals, created 3 television shows, and executive produced over 50 different specials, documentaries, reality shows, and scripted series, including the ABC impersonator competition series The Next Best Thing, the NBC sitcom Whitney and reality show Last Comic Standing for 8 seasons, which was nominated for an Emmy in 2004.

Additionally, he has appeared on Jerry Seinfeld's documentary Comedian, as well as his Netflix series Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee (in the episode featuring Michael Richards, who he once represented), as well as The History of Comedy on CNN.[9]

Telethon for America

In November 2018 in partnership with Comedy Central, YouTube, and Michelle Obama’s “When We All Vote,” the live event - Telethon for America - premiered. Created by Ben Gleib and executive produced by Katz, the event was the first telethon in history with the goal of raising no money. Instead of dollars, the event took pledges from viewers to vote in the midterm election.[10] Hosted by Olivia Munn and Gleib, the event featured celebrity appearances by Natalie Portman, Amy Schumer, Jim Jefferies, Jane Fonda, Charlize Theron, Jessica Alba, Judd Apatow, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Adam Devine, Rosario Dawson, Pete Davidson, Ray Romano, Dr. Phil, and over 40 other household names.[11]

Industry Standard

After nudging his client, Jay Mohr, to set up his own podcast, Mohr asked Katz to be his first guest. That episode became the # 1 comedy podcast in the world that week and fans started requesting to hear more from Katz, leading to him returning to the show several times in the next few months. Finally, Katz felt inspired to create his own podcast once he realized the things he experienced and heard in Hollywood, behind closed doors, would be useful to the public.

Launched in 2014 at # 3 on the iTunes comedy charts,[12] the show features an insider's look at the entertainment business through Katz's eyes and the industry's biggest players who frequently reveal the risky decisions that led to their most groundbreaking television, radio, music, internet, and film content.

Some of the notable guests have included Kevin Hart, Norman Lear, Bill Burr, the late Garry Marshall, Judd Apatow, Steve Levitan, and television executives Doug Herzog, Kevin Reilly, Warren Littlefield, and Netflix president Ted Sarandos.

Katz has been a regular podcast host at the New York Comedy Festival and the Montreal Comedy Festival, where he has recorded a live episode of his podcast in 2014 (with former Comedy Central president Kent Alterman), 2016 (with Howie Mandel), 2018 (with Kenya Barris), and is scheduled to appear again in 2020.[13]

Awards

Katz was an executive producer of the Emmy-nominated talent competition series Last Comic Standing. He also produced Mohr's Grammy-nominated comedy album, Happy. And A Lot.

Katz also served as an executive producer on the multi-nominated indie comedy feature film Dumbbells.[14]

Personal life

Katz was born on July 28, 1959 in Springfield, Massachusetts, and grew up in the adjacent town of Longmeadow, Massachusetts. His mother, Barbara worked at a women's clothing store at the town mall and volunteered at several hospitals. His father, David, designed guns for the United States Government at the Springfield, Massachusetts Armory, and right before he was scheduled to take the Bar exam to become a lawyer, he developed Hodgkin's Disease and passed away when Barry was 4-years old, leaving his Mom to raise him and his older sister Dawn.

In 1975, when he was a sophomore in high school, Katz’ guidance counselor inspired him to apply for a job as a special needs counselor at Camp Allen in Bedford New Hampshire (home town to Adam Sandler, Sarah Silverman, and Seth Meyers). It was there that he specialized in working with kids and adults, with a plethora of disabilities, for 5 summers, until he was 20 years old, and then spent another year working at Camp Riley in Bradford Woods, Indiana.

Coming from his background working with disabilities like blindness, Cerebral Palsy and Muscular Dystrophy, in 1977, Katz was accepted and attended the prestigious Sargent College at Boston University for four years. However,  his focus shifted to stand-up comedy once he discovered the excitement of performing in the city's best comedy clubs and opening up for Al Franken and Tom Davis in front of 1000 people at the BU Student Center.

While producing a stand-up show at Play it Again Sam's in 1984, Katz met and fell in love with Diane Creighton, and they were married the following year. After suffering from Anorexia Nervosa for most of their relationship, she passed away in 1986 at the age of 23.  

In 1998 he met Australian actress/writer Susanna Brisk and they were married two years later. They were together for 13 years, and later divorced in 2013. Presently, Katz lives in Malibu with his two sons Asher and Zion.[4]

gollark: If it was hypothetically secret, then hypothetically, telling you information about it could hypothetically permit cryptanalysis.
gollark: Do you know how "secrecy" works, in general?
gollark: Anyway, hypothetically, if I was reading out secret data, it would be very stupid to just tell people what it was.
gollark: I'm probably not Russian, so no.
gollark: Oh, sorry, I might have accidentally feedback.

References
  1. Arthur, Kenneth (March 16, 2018). "Diving Deep into the Business of Comedy with Barry Katz". Splitsider. New York City, New York, United States. Archived from the original on March 18, 2018. Retrieved May 1, 2020.
  2. Gurian, Jeffrey (May 29, 2017). "Laughable Launch, Barry Katz Reveals the Truth About JFK and Addressing the Rumors About Crapshoot Attendance". The Interrobang. Orange Pop Media. Retrieved May 1, 2020.
  3. Arthur, Kenneth (March 16, 2018). "Diving Deep into the Business of Comedy with Barry Katz". Vulture. Retrieved August 4, 2020.
  4. "r/IAmA - I am Barry Katz. I've managed, developed and produced for Louis CK, Dave Chappelle, Tracey Morgan, Jay Mohr among others and host the Industry Standard podcast on the business of comedy. Ask me anything". reddit. Retrieved August 4, 2020.
  5. "Just For Laughs unveil 2018 line-up". Mtltimes.ca. May 18, 2018. Retrieved August 4, 2020.
  6. Giannotta, Meghan (July 14, 2017). "HBO's 'Crashing': Pete Holmes compares Boston Comedy Club set to NYC venue". amNewYork. Retrieved August 4, 2020.
  7. "Where Comics Stand Up - NYTimes.com". web.archive.org. May 26, 2015. Retrieved August 4, 2020.
  8. "I Killed JFK". Cape Gazette. Retrieved August 4, 2020.
  9. "Michael Richards discusses his on-stage meltdown with Jerry Seinfeld in "Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee"". The Laugh Button. Retrieved August 4, 2020.
  10. "The Telethon for America". The Telethon for America. Retrieved August 4, 2020.
  11. Ramos, Dino-Ray (November 5, 2018). "Olivia Munn Set To Host Star-Studded 'Telethon For America', Additional Guests Revealed – Update". Deadline. Retrieved August 4, 2020.
  12. "Barry Katz | How to Make Your Mark in the Funny Business". Jordan Harbinger. June 12, 2018. Retrieved August 4, 2020.
  13. www.barrykatz.com https://www.barrykatz.com/#podcasts. Retrieved August 4, 2020. Missing or empty |title= (help)
  14. "Barry Katz". IMDb. Retrieved August 4, 2020.
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