Mike Carrozza is Thrilled For You

While we start­ed off with a heat­ed and con­tentious debate about the prop­er pro­nun­ci­a­tion of Cheru­bic (a bril­liant tac­tic by our guest since that is the title of his debut com­e­dy album). Once res­o­lu­tion was achieved, we launch into what I can only describe as the Mike Car­roz­za Kind­ness Hour. Through­out my talk with Car­roz­za, I found myself redi­rect­ing him a few times to talk about him­self. Not because he mean­dered off the top­ic of com­e­dy, but because he spent so much time hap­pi­ly hyp­ing up oth­er comics. 

It was a sweet char­ac­ter trait that solid­i­fied the impres­sion Car­roz­za made on me when he guest­ed a few times on the 2020 Iso­la­tion Com­e­dy online shows. Every­one loved Mike, and every­one seemed to know Mike. He seemed like he was every­one’s best friend. And that’s a good place to be when you’re a standup com­ic. You want to be like­able on top of being fun­ny, and Car­roz­za hits both of those traits read­i­ly. Of his pos­i­tive nature, Car­roz­za says ​“I am gen­er­al­ly a hap­py nice guy. But it’s because I want safe­ty and com­fort for every­body who isn’t inflict­ing pain on others.”

You have to be fun­ny if you’re going to sur­vive the Cana­di­an com­e­dy scene. As Car­roz­za tells it, Cana­di­an audi­ences want you to pep­per them con­stant­ly with jokes. Any breaks from jokes on stage mean dead silence from your audi­ence. So you have to con­stant­ly work at engag­ing with your audi­ence. It’s a very dif­fer­ent style from the vari­ety of styles you see in Amer­i­ca. And it’s not to say you can’t be suc­cess­ful as a long form sto­ry teller in Cana­da. One of the best albums I’ve heard is from fel­low Cana­di­an K. Trevor Wil­son (Sex­Cop­FirePe­nis) and the audi­ence indeed is very very qui­et until the punch­line of his sto­ries get deliv­ered. It was an inter­est­ing obser­va­tion about Cana­di­an audi­ences that did­n’t crys­tal­ize for me until Car­roz­za point­ed it out.

Because Car­roz­za grew up in Mon­tréal, he grew up with the tra­di­tion and com­e­dy stal­wart that is the Just for Laughs Com­e­dy Fes­ti­val. The mas­sive fes­ti­val that takes over Mon­tréal with comics, comedic actors, and ​“the indus­try”, is some­thing Car­roz­za has had a pre­cious rela­tion­ship with. He went from observ­ing, to intern­ing with the fes­ti­val, to grad­u­al­ly per­form­ing at JFL. Part of that tra­jec­to­ry is due to that friend­ly charm: he’d exhib­it his typ­i­cal friend­ly, sup­port­ive per­son­al­i­ty and grad­u­al­ly, comics would ask him to be on their shows. ​“It’s been very nice to be able to have been just the guy who’s hang­ing around Just For Laughs (Mon­tréal Com­e­dy Fes­ti­val) to being , ​‘Oh, I’m on Just For Laughs.’,” he says. As long as you’ve been putting in the hard work of mak­ing those Cana­di­an audi­ences laugh the rest of the year, those charms were a great way to gain expo­sure at the festival.

The tough­est part about being a Cana­di­an com­ic is fight­ing the lure of per­form­ing on Amer­i­can stages. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, cross-bor­der trav­el is incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult and has been made more so under restric­tive visa require­ments imposed by our 45^th pres­i­dent (and so far not yet loos­ened by our 46^th). As Car­roz­za tells it, unless you are an ​‘indi­vid­ual of extra­or­di­nary abil­i­ty’ (as Justin Bieber was deemed, but c’mon, don’t we deserve more Cana­di­an com­e­dy?!), it is incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult to get a work visa to per­form in the US. 

Despite the chal­lenges of cre­ative expres­sion in the face of lock­down restric­tions and cross-bor­der lim­its, Car­roz­za is an indi­vid­ual of extra­or­di­nary pos­i­tiv­i­ty. It’s good to con­firm that you can be both a fan­tas­tic com­ic and have a child­like pos­i­tiv­i­ty. He can pro­nounce Cheru­bic any way he damned well pleases.

Want to know more about com­e­dy in Toronto/​Montréal and Cana­da in General?

Mike’s rec­om­men­da­tions for comics to check out from Cana­da include: Arthur Sime­on, Deb­o­rah DiGio­van­ni, Nour Hadi­di, Bren­don Ash- Mohammed, Hoo­do Her­si, Mark For­ward, Steph Tolev, Ivan Deck­er, Deanne Smith, Rod­ney Ram­sey, Ster­ling Scott, Gra­ham Clark, Sophie Bud­dle, Mayce Galoni, Jacob Samuel, Nick Nemeroff, Matt Wright, Hisham Kelati, and Rebec­ca Reeds.

He also rec­om­mends we watch The May­or of Com­e­dy: A Cana­di­an Stand-up Sto­ry to learn more about Cana­di­an com­e­dy and the chal­lenges of try­ing to per­form in the US. (https://​may​o​rof​com​e​dy​.com/ )

If you’re in Cana­da, check out the com­e­dy scene where comics have to work very hard for your laughs because silence is nev­er reward­ed and so they keep the punch­lines com­ing at you. Cana­da is the home of the Just For Laughs Com­e­dy Fes­ti­val in Montréal.

Mike can be seen and heard:

• Online — Check his social media for dates
• xBum­merxBoysx Pod­cast — Mike and co-host Alex Kolanko talk about songs that made them sad that week
• We Did­n’t Get a Rose Pod­cast — Mike and co-host Chris Mejia recap The Bachelor
• Cheru­bic — debut com­e­dy album avail­able everywhere

Fol­low Mike

• Web­site — Mike​Car​roz​za​.com
• Link­tree — link​tr​.ee/​m​i​k​e​c​a​r​rozza
• Twit­ter — @mikecarrozza
• Insta­gram — @mikecarrozza
• Face­book — Face​book​.com/​M​i​k​e​.​C​a​r​rozza
• Youtube — Youtube​.com/​M​i​k​e​C​a​r​rozza
• Dis­cord — Dis​cord​.com/​i​n​v​i​t​e​/​M​i​k​e​C​a​r​rozza
• Twitch — Twitch​.tv/​m​i​k​e​c​a​r​rozza