Mike Falzone: Dynamic Listening

Since Com­e­dy Wham’s incep­tion, Valerie and I have attend­ed our fair share of fes­ti­vals. I can always tell some­thing spe­cial is afoot when we both start vig­or­ous­ly look­ing for ways to rearrange our sched­ule to catch the same show not just once but mul­ti­ple times. Pre­vi­ous exam­ples include The God­damn Com­e­dy Jam and Stu­art Goldsmith’s Comedian’s Come­di­an Pod­cast. This year, that ​“some­thing spe­cial” came in the form of Mike Falzone’s crowd work show Sur­round­ed.

Already intrigued by the con­cept, we walked in, saw the set­up, and were hooked. As the show’s title sug­gests, the audi­ence sur­rounds the per­former. Crowd work presents enough of a chal­lenge to comics from atop the stage, but when they’re placed on the same lev­el, inti­mate­ly close to their audi­ence, it’s a whole new lev­el of daunt­ing. As an audi­ence mem­ber, there was a thrill in know­ing we were like­ly to be part of the show, and with that ​“lambs for the slaugh­ter” men­tal­i­ty came an unex­pect­ed com­radery and bond amongst the audi­ence mem­bers. Sur­round­ed does for its audi­ence some­thing I’ve only seen in the afore­men­tioned God­damn Com­e­dy Jam; it cre­ates fans and friends (I think our audi­ence formed a kick­ball team).

Much in the same way that we ambushed Stu­art Gold­smith after see­ing his first live Comedian’s Come­di­an record­ing at SXSW years ago, Valerie and I were bolt­ing down 6^th Street to lock down cre­ator Mike Fal­zone and find out who is the genius behind Sur­round­ed. For­tu­nate­ly for us, he gra­cious­ly agreed to work an inter­view with us into his already busy Moon­tow­er sched­ule.

Inter­est­ing­ly enough, Fal­zone’s for­ay into per­for­mance began not with com­e­dy, but rather music. He was pri­mar­i­ly a gui­tarist. And while he gar­nered some suc­cess as a musi­cian, he real­ized that the moments in between songs when he would talk to the crowd were becom­ing his favorite part. Fal­zone con­nect­ed more deeply with audi­ences when talk­ing rather than play­ing to them. His crowd work dur­ing those sets thus laid the foun­da­tion to what has become a suc­cess­ful com­e­dy career. Describ­ing his pas­sion for com­e­dy, Fal­zone states, ​“When I start­ed get­ting into stand up and falling in love with it, I was like, I nev­er want to stop get­ting bet­ter at this. There’s no like, plateau.” Rev­el­ing in the fact that in com­e­dy you’re real­ly only com­pet­ing with your­self, Fal­zone says, ​“You could always be bet­ter than your last show.”

Fal­zone and his then girl­friend and now wife Zoja moved to Los Ange­les so that he could pur­sue his career ful­ly. Ear­ly adopters of pod­cast­ing, they start­ed their own show Wel­come to the Pod­cast, now called Wel­come to Our Pod­cast, which chron­i­cled the tri­als and tribu­la­tions of mov­ing across the coun­try from Con­necti­cut to chase their dreams. After a slump of bad open mics, Fal­zone had slowed down in his pur­suits, but his wife keen­ly remind­ed him that they didn’t move 3000 miles away from their old life for him to stop now. His wife’s words were just the moti­va­tion that he need­ed to kick things into overdrive. 

Fal­zone began hit­ting the scene hard and even­tu­al­ly start­ed a show­case called Friends & Friends. It was the pre­de­ces­sor to Sur­round­ed, which was born as Fal­zone walked into The Lab at the Hol­ly­wood improv and he saw the seat­ing arranged in the round. The idea for his new crowd work show came to life that day. 

The inti­ma­cy of Falzone’s show is not lost on him and, truth be told, that might be just what we need right now, hav­ing been through COVID and the lone­li­ness that coin­cid­ed. Fal­zone says, ​“I always thought that espe­cial­ly after the pan­dem­ic, where we’re, like, kind of iso­lat­ed from each oth­er, that peo­ple would real­ly appre­ci­ate a show where it’s unique to them, that’s nev­er gonna hap­pen again.” That’s where the ​“some­thing spe­cial” I referred to before real­ly comes into play. As for the key to a suc­cess­ful set at Sur­round­ed, Fal­zone sug­gests, ​“It’s way more of an exer­cise in lis­ten­ing than it is try­ing to be quick.” The show offers comics a way to hone that chal­leng­ing but worth­while skill. 

Fal­zone seems to have a way of con­nect­ing to peo­ple, enter­tain­ing them, and mak­ing them super fans. So many of his col­leagues raved about him when they found out we were inter­view­ing him. Fal­zone actu­al­ly has anoth­er pod­cast, Dynam­ic Ban­ter, with his friend Steve Zaragoza. Dynam­ic Ban­ter is like being a fly on the wall of two dudes just talk­ing about what­ev­er comes into their minds and makes them laugh. It’s an absolute blast of a lis­ten. It also has a very ded­i­cat­ed fan base, as evi­denced by For­est, a lis­ten­er that car­ried a pod­cast poster around Moon­tow­er this year just to get it auto­graphed by Falzone. 

HIs abil­i­ty to con­nect with fans both live and via pod­cast is the thing that makes you root so hard for Mike Fal­zone — the thing that makes you run down a crowd­ed 6^th Street to get an inter­view or car­ry a poster to shows. Fal­zone cre­ates tru­ly mem­o­rable expe­ri­ences for his fans and his guest comics. 

Sur­round­ed was record­ed this year dur­ing Moon­tow­er Just for Laughs Fes­ti­val and weeks lat­er went to Net­flix is a Joke Fes­ti­val. The hope is that the buzz will get it picked up as a spe­cial for stream­ing plat­forms. In a time when peo­ple could use laughs more than ever, I sure hope it does.

Fol­low Mike

• Web­site — Mike​Fal​zone​.com
• Twit­ter — @mikefalzone
• Insta­gram — @mikefalzone
  
• Face­book — Face​book​.com/​M​i​k​e​F​a​lzone
  
• Tik­Tok — @mikefalzonecomedy
• Youtube — Youtube​.com/​M​i​k​e​F​a​lzone

Mike can be seen and heard:

• Debut Spe­cial: You Got Toes (Tubi)
• Pod­casts (avail­able on Youtube and your favorite pod­cast player)
  • Dynam­ic Ban­ter (stay tuned for big news about DB becom­ing more than just a podcast!)
  • Wel­come to Our Podcast
• Host­ed Shows — Sur­round­ed every first Fri­day at Hol­ly­wood Improv (7:00pm and 9:45pm)
  
• Video Series
  • Since 2006, Mike has been cre­at­ing videos on Youtube — head there to see them all