Buzz for documentaries about stand-up

Documentaries about the psychology of stand-up are proving a hit at the Sundance Film Festival.

The programme at the leading indie movie festival, running until Monday in Utah, includes Misery Loves Comedy, which features more than 50 comedians talking about depression; Tig, about how Tig Notaro translated her breast cancer diagnosis and treatment into a punchline; and Call Me Lucky, a documentary about political comedian Barry Crimmins.

Misery Loves Comedy – whose interviewees include Steve Coogan, Tom Hanks, Janeane Garofalo, Larry David and Whoopi Goldberg – has already found an American distribution deal with Tribecca Film.

Its general manager Todd Green said 'Misery Loves Comedy is a fascinating, unparalleled look inside the minds of some of the greatest and most beloved comedians of our time'.

He added: '[Director] Kevin Pollak has made a "must watch" on the art of comedy, for casual enthusiasts, to connoisseurs, to aspiring comedians.'

Pollak, a stand-up himself but with no history of mental health problems, said he wanted to explore why anyone who was clinically depressed would want to get onstage, just to feel good for an hour.

He said that he had wanted to speak to Robin Williams, and had been discussing the idea with him before he committed suicide last summer at 63.

'I could sense in him… that this was a subject that he wanted to talk about,' Pollak told the Independent. 'The brain of the comedian and the ego and the sensitivity of that performer. He seemed excited for this opportunity for fans to peel back the curtain and find out just what the hell is under there.'

Williams's death also had a strong influence on Bobcat Goldthwait, director of the Sundance documentary Call Me Lucky about activist, satirist and comedy club founder Barry Crimmins.

Williams was a friend of Goldthwait's and gave him the money to start work on the film, which covers Crimmins's career, his politics and his revelation on stage in 1992 that he'd been frequently sexually assaulted as a very young boy. He subsequently led a campaign against online child pornography.

Goldthwait said he made the film as if no one knew who 61-year-old Crimmins was, telling Boston website The ArtEry: 'We've been looking at the movie as if we were people from England watching this. First, they have to learn Barry, who he is. They have to learn about his comedy and how he was responsible for the Boston comedy scene explosion. We try to do that in an entertaining and funny way.'

Meanwhile a review of the documentary Tig said it was a 'class act because it celebrates, even flatters, its subject with an intimacy' as it contrasted her 'side-splitting' stand-up, with her unselfpitying response to her illness.

Another said Notaro's 'charm and insight' save the film from some of the formulae of the genre and melodramatic cliches borrowed from reality TV.

Published: 29 Jan 2015