When netflix knows gay comedian
Stand Out: The Documentary Coming to Netflix - Netflix Tudum
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Stand Out: The Documentary will feature many of the same comedians as Stand Out: An LGBTQ+ Celebration.
By Marah Eakin
June 9, 2022
Queer comedy hive, rise up: Netflix has announced a new documentary about the history of LGBTQ stand-up, due to drop later this year.
Stand Out: The Documentary will act as an addendum to the newly available Stand Out: An LGBTQ+ Celebration, which features the largest-ever gathering of queer comics in one stand-up special. The documentary will showcase many of the same comedians, weighing in on the art of standup, the 50-plus-year history of the LGBTQ movement and the role LGBTQ performers play in moving society forward.
Stand Out: The Documentary will submit original performances, archival materials and backstage footage from the comedy special’s taping earlier this year. It also aims to travel issues like diversity in comedy, what queer comedy means in 2022 and the impact of making the alternative the norm.
The documentary is being written by queer comedy representative Page Hurwitz, who’s also producing the project alongside Wanda Sy
‘Laughter Is Disarming’: A Fresh Documentary Traces Generations of LGBTQ Comedy
As comedian Scott Thompson puts it in the documentary, “I just thought life can alter on a dime and society can change on a dime.”
Thompson points to an “embrace” of male lover culture in the 1970s — think disco and Village People — to a complete about-face in the 1980s with the AIDS epidemic.
“It went help 30, 40 years, instantly, almost overnight,” he says. “Gay men in those days were considered vile.”
“Comedy at that time was incredibly homophobic,” says Hurwitz, “and we had a lot of well-known comedians who were choosing to turn 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.”
But comedians know how to counterpunch and during the AIDS crisis, Sandra Bernhard’s politically charged, cabaret-style performances were a force. As she explains in the documentary, “This became like the next wave of having to be there and jump in full throttle.”
Joel Kim Booster’s Debut Netflix Special Is Coming This June - Netflix Tudum
Vivien Killilea/Getty Images for Vulture
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The comedian’s first Netflix special is about to build summer even hotter.
Good things come in threes — and Joel Kim Booster would definitely approve. The writer, star and comedian is making his Netflix comedy special debut in Psychosexual, in which he’ll argue life’s most key topics like his preference for threesomes, the cultural nuances of being Asian, the best masturbation techniques and more.
Known for his raunchy style of humor and viral tweets, Kim Booster draws inspiration from his gay Asian culture and being adopted by a colorless family in the Midwest. “It was strange for me growing up with an all-white family in an all-white town,” the comedian says in Model Minority, his debut stand-up album released in 2018. “It’s sort of been a detriment to me now as an adult because I don’t come across a lot of cultural expectations of what an Asian person should be in this country.”
The king of Instagram thirst traps began his comedy career opening for Chicago’s theater scene, principal him to pursue stand-up in Novel York City. With credits r
‘We Need Our Triumphs’: Homosexual Comics Take Center Stage in New Netflix Doc ‘Outstanding’
Page Hurwitz knows funny. The longtime director and producer has spent her two-decade career in Hollywood working on some of the biggest and boldest comedy productions and stand up sets from comics like Wanda Sykes, Tiffany Haddish, and Michelle Buteau. But over the years, she noticed a history playing out in front of her eyes — one she wasn’t sure the average person was aware of.
“While comedians don’t set out to be activists or cultural leaders — their goal is just to make people laugh — queer comedians happen to to shift the customs along the way,” Hurwitz tells Rolling Stone. “It’s important to not only tell the personal narratives comedians share, but also put them within the historical context.”
Her answer? The new documentary Outstanding: A Comedy Revolution, which follows a slew of LGBTQ+ comics through a historic night of comedy at the Hollywood Bowl, and a step by step history of how queer comedy has evolved in the past 100 years. Intercutting interviews with performances, personal meetups between comed
Who’s Laughing Now? A New Doc Delves Into the History of Queer Comedians
In the making since 2019, Page Hurwitz’s new Netflix documentary, Outstanding: A Comedy Revolution, taps a throng of queer notables — from Wanda Sykes, Rosie O’Donnell and Lily Tomlin to Joel Kim Booster, Fortune Feimster and Bob the Flamboyant Queen — to show how LGBTQ funny people own left their identify and challenged others’ perceptions for more than a century.
“None of these comedians set out to change the world. They place out to construct people laugh,” Hurwitz said at the film’s Tribeca Festival premiere ahead of its June 18 streaming debut. “And along the way, they did change the culture and, I think, they changed the world.”
Featuring an intergenerational and diverse cast, the documentary — set against the backdrop of the Netflix Is a Joke Fest’s Stand Out: An Gay Celebration show in 2022 — unpacks what has fueled the cycle of progress and regression that has surrounded the queer comedy community for decades.
The doc ranges far and roomy, from entertainers on the vaudeville circuit and early pioneers such as com