When Stand Up Stood Out purports to tell the story of the Boston stand up comedy scene from the late 70s through the late 80s, but it really never rises above a guy looking back at his glory years.Fran Solomita was one of those Boston comics and he starts out this film by justifying it. Solomita references the comedy club explosion of the 80s and says it was due to the emergence of an aggressive comedy sub-culture in Boston, but he never provides any evidence or reasoning for that assertion. The film never really examines its subject matter in any real way, or tries to actually tell us what Boston stand up comedy became in that era and why it did and didn't succeed. There's no real narrative or insight to this documentary. It's just the collected reminiscing of the comics from that span of time.When Stand Up Stood Out focuses on a few individual subjects and intersperses that with brief asides. The main subjects are the Ding Ho, an infamous Boston comedy club that operated out of a Chinese restaurant, and Lenny Clarke, who is cast as the heart and soul of Boston comedy. If you want to hear a lot of stories about those two things and the people who orbited around them, you'll get it. If you're looking to understand any of it, you'll be left out in the cold. Watching this film is a bit like going to your spouse's high school reunion. You watch a bunch of other people tell a bunch of stories that you've never heard, and you feel excluded.There are a few moments in the film when it seems like Solomita is trying to get beyond the "Old Home Week" stuff. Janeane Garafolo shows up a few times and tries to get under the surface of Boston comedy, but she clearly wasn't a significant part of the era being focused on and her inclusion seems like Solomita did it just because he got to interview her.Ultimately, the film raises more questions than it answers. Why did Boston stand up comedy become such a potent force so quickly? What sort of an environment produces both the cerebral Stephen Wright and the boorishly aggressive Lenny Clarke? What role did the overwhelmingly white, male, catholic nature of Boston stand up comics play in shaping their material and performing style? Why did some Boston comedians succeed nationally and others not? When Stand Up Stood out is almost like a prologue to a better documentary coming at some point in the future. It doesn't do much on its own but it does whet your appetite for even more.

What up with the quote on the back? It says something like this movie is the antidote to Jerry Seinfeld's Comedian. I don't get it. The documentary Comedian is a more focused film, basically just showing a year in the lives of two comics. When Stand up Stood Out is a long winded, unfocused historical documentary about some pretty irrelevant comedians in Boston. Steven Wright is the only comedian in the whole lot who anyone cares about whatsoever. Lenny Clarke is an annoying, unfunny idiot that thinks he is edgy because he says rude, inappropriate things. Wow. Not impressed. The guy who made this movie is obviously pretty narcissistic and lame for making such deliberate self-promotion. There are plenty of great comics to come from the Boston scene (Conan, Leno, David Cross, Steven Wright, Janeane Garafalo) but this doc mostly just focuses on the director and his friends. Not as bad as the unwatchable Aristocrats, but not nearly at the same level as Comedian.

From a comedy junkies point of view, I found this movie to be insightful. I did not discover the magic of comedy until the late 80's, early 90's and have been hooked ever since. I have seen all of the comics featured in this film and was lucky enough to be in that Ding Ho for the reunion. Having worked behind the scenes from 1990-1993 for Boston Comedy in Alston, I had heard the stories about the Ding Ho and Play It Again Sams, I would pine to hear more to know these comedian's more, so to have a chance to view the old days as portrayed in this movie was treat. I had no idea that all of these talented maniacs would make it as far as they did. This was my first job out of college, working in Alston in basement so I was not thinking beyond the fact that I needed to find a job that was above ground. The honesty and the way the comics were so candid about their jealousy was fantastic, because that was how I viewed the scene during my brief tenure. When I entered the scene it was over-saturated with the folks getting stage time who were NOT talented. The comics in this movie are the rocks of Boston Comedy. I continue to go to Giggles and attend every Comics Come Home Show. I loved When Stand Up Stood Out and will recommend it to all.

Fran Solomita's documentary WHEN STAND-UP STOOD OUT chronicles the rise of the Boston stand-up scene in the late seventies and early eighties, a period that produced such talents as Dennis Leary, Steven Wright, Don Gavin, Janeane Garofolo, Lenny Clarke, Bobcat Goldthwaite, Colin Quinn and Solomita himself. It follows the scene's conception, at a crummy little Chinese restaurant called the Ding Ho, to Wright's first appearance on Carson's TONIGHT SHOW, to the mainstream success comedians like Clarke, Leary and Garofolo have enjoyed, while confronting issues of inter-comic jealously, bitter rivalries, drug and alcohol excesses, and the elusive specter of fame. The film is constructed competently, and features some really eye-popping moments (the comedian who bashes a heckler with his guitar), but it never really feels like more than a slightly longer BEHIND THE MUSIC or TRUE Hollywood STORY. Since the director is a buddy of most of the subjects, the viewer feels like an outsider on an inside joke, robbing the film of it's objectivity. The major issues (the drugs, the jealously) are dealt with in brief montages, so most of the film is dedicated to showing early (and admittedly funny) clips of the comedians performing, and no real insight is made. Ironically, WHEN STAND-UP STOOD OUT really needs to stand out more.