“Harland Williams and I and the guy from Barenaked Ladies who is his cousin [Kevin Hearn] were standing backstage, and Harland said, ‘Let’s just all walk across the stage in our underwear.’ All of us stripped down to our underwear and socks, and without saying a word or batting an eye, we all walked across the stage and out the side stage door. Sean Tweedly was like, ‘What the hell was that?’ And the crowd went crazy. Nobody was in boxers, so it was an informative walk.”
That’s as close to nudity as it gets at Playboy Comedy, the stand-up-centric show, founded by Los Angeles-based comics Cort McCown (he of the underwear-walking) and Paul Hughes, which features such top-notch talent as John Reep, Al Madrigal, Doug Benson, Bill Dwyer, Jim Norton, Craig Robinson, Colin Quinn and Joe Rogan every other Saturday at the Palms.
Hughes and McCown first pooled their comedic chips about seven years ago with one-nighters in LA bars and coffee shops. They soon found themselves passed at the World Famous Comedy Store, then spearheading a weekly show in the Main Room that saw the likes of Dane Cook, Sarah Silverman and Chris Rock gracing the stage. After inviting George Maloof and Michael Morton out to catch a performance, they were invited to produce a show at the Palms Casino beginning in April 2003.
“They were tough at first,” Hughes says of the early shows. “The Palms only gave us a few months’ deal: ‘We’ll sink-or-swim you guys and see how you do.’ It was a lot of hustling and passing out fliers, sneaking into casinos and trying to get those people to come, standing on the street corners next to the Mexican guys that pass out the photos of the naked girls, and we’d be giving out comedy passes.”
It was during construction of the Fantasy Tower (and the Playboy Club therein) that McCown had a revelation. “I’ve always been a big fan of what Playboy used to do with their After Dark series,” he recalls. “They had Dick Gregory, George Carlin, Lenny Bruce, a lot of these guys perform back in the day. It was a really cool thing. We went to Playboy and said, ‘There’s no entertainment in the Playboy Club. It’s a club and casino. But Playboy is an entertainment company, so we want to introduce this show as a real classy thing.’” The newly renamed Playboy Comedy debuted November 2005.
Enthuses four-time Playboy comic Sebastian Maniscalco, “They really tapped into a unique market by parlaying the Playboy name with stand-up comedy. It gives a different twist to the show. Obviously, people come out to see not only the comedy but the Playmates. It adds another dimension.”
The show is currently housed in a just-under-200-capacity lounge, often features an interactive segment with a (fully clothed) Playboy model and boasts a soundtrack courtesy of a live jazz trio. “We had a DJ for a while, but we were looking to mix it up,” Hughes explains. “We try to evoke that ‘martini lifestyle.’”
Playboy Comedy’s Palms deal holds through January 2009, and though they’ve already scored dates in Southern California, Atlanta and Dallas and hope to one day launch a national tour, as McCown promises, “The Palms is our home. ... It can be hard to make people aware, especially people from out of town, that what happens in Vegas doesn’t necessarily happen on the Strip. You don’t have to pay $100 to see a great show.”
“Above all else, me and Cort’s thing since the beginning has been getting the funniest people alive to perform, and then we would get our audience,” adds Hughes. “And it’s always worked.”