Announcing I Work With Standups .com

[Clown horns honk, balloons launched, pigeons released, birds fly immediately into the balloons, very funny mid-air scene ensues, and cue fireworks....!]

DAN FRENCH'S STANDUP COMEDY WRITING AND CONSULTING BUSINESS -- I WORK WITH STANDUPS.COM -- NOW OPEN FOR BUSINESS!

HIRE AN EMMY-NOMINATED COMEDY WRITER FROM DENNIS MILLER AND LETTERMAN'S THE LATE, LATE SHOW TO TAKE YOUR ACT, SKILLS, AND CAREER TO THE NEXT LEVEL.

[Burned pigeon wrapped in red balloon flutters to ground, everyone applauds!]

Dan French 55 @ gmail . com

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Are you a standup comedian toiling away in the never-ending low-money gig wasteland, or hunkered down in a major media city digging away with a contraband spoon at the Big Concrete Wall of “No” that Surrounds the Bountiful Treasures of Comedy?

Well, we all know both comedy as an industry and Hollywood as a demon-corral are incredibly infuriating and make it unnecessarily tough to squeeze out your money. But you can’t fix the world. George Bush taught us that.

You can, though, fix and improve and develop you. And your act. You can make sure you're truly ready, not just kind of ready, to compete in this tough environment. And you being ready makes it a whole lot more likely that you can survive, and maybe even thrive, in the shallow shark pool of entertainment.

And I can help to make that happen.

I’m a hardcore professional comedy writer, two-time Emmy nominee, staff writer for Dennis Miller, The Late Late Show, and The Best Damn Sports Show Period.

I’m also a twenty-year standup, and writer for nationally known comics. I've worked for name acts like Dennis Miller, Ron White, Rodney Carrington. I was the main monologue guy on Best Damn Sports, and wrote stuff for Jack Black, George Lopez, Jerry Springer, Rosie Perez, Jim Rome, D.L. Hughley, Don King, and William "The Greatest Comic Actor Ever Born" Shatner. I wrote for Yakov Smirnov and Tom Arnold, and I wrote for Dennis Miller. I’ve got range.

I left Hollywood and now live in Austin, Texas. Which lead to IWorkWithStandups.com.

The idea of all of this is to give mid-level comics the same resources high-level comics get -- access to professional writing, directing, producing, and career consulting.

What I think would make your career scintillated, your bank book chubbier, and your comedy go super-nova, is to:

- develop a premiere, polished, fully realized standup act that explodes in the minds of people who see it
- greatly expand your collection of material, constantly add in a flow of new “A” bits
- shed weak material, bits that lower your show or lose the audience, all the stuff that blah’s up your act
- craft a highly reliable supply of successful stand-alone bits that can be used whenever, wherever you need them
- create new bits for specific purposes, including TV, contests, corporate work, clean work, etc.
- turn up the power on your performance skills
- ratchet up and expand your writing abilities
- create a riveting stage character that draws people to you and which can be dropped into commercials, TV shows
- devise a real plan that makes you marketable, bookable
- create a rabid, loyal, attached, informed fan base
- put together a well-planned, well-realized promotional kit and get it out there when and where it needs to be
- create better merch that will sell even when you aren’t there to sell it
- get constant access to free media, and be ready to deliver great, memorable, hilarious, give-us-more-of-that material, interviews, commentary, self-promo
- create biz relationships that are reliable, transparent, consistent, and mutually profitable
- turn all those barely developed ideas for sitcoms, reality shows, screenplays, and side projects into actual pitches, treatments, scripts and shows
- get the love of a good woman, man, or moderately conservative hermaphrodite midget

Surely all of that isn't too much to ask.

Here's the set-up for what I do, process and cost:

- $200 upfront, which gets us started, and buys four hours of my time.

- first, we talk a little on the phone about what you're after, where you want to get to, what you want as a career path so i have an idea of how to work with you (ie, if you're wanting TV-ready stuff, trying to feature/headline, want clean or blue, etc.)
- second, I look at your stuff, think about it, and first give you a detailed breakdown of what i see as your current strengths and weaknesses; what you need to concentrate on to get better, more hirable, more set up in the industry, where to improve your script, etc
- third, we pick an existing bit of yours, you send me a written version of it, i spend time writing new angles, new punches, tags, suggestions, etc.
- four, you try the stuff, make changes so it's fully in your voice, you're comfortable with it, see what works with audiences and what is weak
- five, i do one more rewrite, polish it, make changes based on your feedback
- six, evaluate and decide if you want to continue working on other bits

If you're not sure if this is worth your time (and standups are of course notorious non-believers and almost completely unable to work with others), get to know what I do. Check out my “thoughts” on the comedy business in a column I wrote for SheckyMagazine.com. Check out my blogs of short original humor IncrediblyTightShorts.blogspot.com.

Or, to get a better idea of what this is and how it works, email me now -- Dan French55 @ gmail.