{"id":28494,"date":"2018-04-20T03:49:15","date_gmt":"2018-04-20T10:49:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=28494"},"modified":"2018-04-18T16:31:14","modified_gmt":"2018-04-18T23:31:14","slug":"success-in-comedy-biz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2018\/04\/20\/success-in-comedy-biz\/","title":{"rendered":"Success in comedy biz"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mark Breslin (photo from Temple Sholom)<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Yuk Yuk\u2019s co-founder Mark Breslin is excited to be entertaining Jewish Vancouverites at Temple Sholom\u2019s annual spring fundraiser May 6.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t get enough Jews in my life,\u201d he told the Independent<\/em>. \u201cI\u2019m married to a Catholic woman but I\u2019m a Jew through and through. Any time I can talk about Jews and Jewishness, and my unique views on that, I jump at the opportunity because comedy is the jazz of our people. That\u2019s how I express my Jewishness in the biggest way, not by keeping kosher or going to Israel each year, but through comedy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Breslin opened his first Yuk Yuk\u2019s location in 1976. Today, he has 15 Yuk Yuk\u2019s franchises across the country, has published four books, produced programs for television and radio, and appeared in theatrical productions. He\u2019s a sought-after public speaker and, in December 2017, he was awarded the Order of Canada.<\/p>\n

\u201cComedy is not usually something people respect, so it\u2019s gratifying that some bureaucrats in Ottawa see what I\u2019ve done with my life and think it has value,\u201d he said. \u201cBut all the people I\u2019d like to lord this over are dead now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those people include a high school principal who informed Breslin he was a menace to society, as well as his aunts and uncles, who refused to attend his shows \u201cbecause they thought I was wasting my life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Back when he started Yuk Yuk\u2019s, Breslin said he received no support or encouragement from the people closest to him. \u201cMy mother was a child actress in the Yiddish stage in 1920, so you\u2019d think she would be thrilled about what I was trying to build in comedy, but instead she was appalled by it right to the grave. My father was more ambivalent. He respected Yuk Yuk\u2019s as a business and was proud of me, though he didn\u2019t find the comedy funny. Even my friends thought I was nuts.\u201d<\/p>\n

When he began the first Yuk Yuk\u2019s location, in Toronto, Breslin said his main goal was to avoid law school. \u201cI thought I\u2019d do comedy for a couple of years and find something else to do when it ran out of steam,\u201d he admitted. \u201cI never thought it would become my life!\u201d<\/p>\n

Initially, the Toronto Yuk Yuk\u2019s was known as \u201cthat Jewish club,\u201d because the names of the performing comedians were all Jewish. \u201cWhen standup started, it was a very Jewish thing to do,\u201d explained Breslin. \u201cA lot of the comedians at that time were my friends from high school or university, and they gravitated to Yuk Yuk\u2019s because they knew me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today, standup is a mainstream phenomenon and Yuk Yuk\u2019s is no longer known as a Jewish club. One thing that\u2019s remained unchanged from the get-go, however, is Breslin\u2019s insistence that his clubs be uncensored. \u201cI\u2019ve never censored an act in the 42 years I\u2019ve been in business,\u201d he said. \u201cBeing uncensored is important because the clubs are small enough that no one can control them. We have an obligation to be the official opposition and, these days, it\u2019s more important than ever.\u201d While he conceded that most comics exercise their right of free speech to talk about sex, not politics, he said, \u201cStill, the opportunity is there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yuk Yuk\u2019s has two locations in British Columbia: Abbotsford and Vancouver. The Vancouver club opened in 1988 and is located on Cambie Street, near City Hall. It\u2019s always been a success, said Breslin. \u201cI measure success by some level of profitability, but also by how impactful our product is on the wider community and on comedy in general,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Among the comedians who got their start at Yuk Yuk\u2019s are Russell Peters, Jim Carrey, Howie Mandel, Mike Bullard and Gerry Dee.<\/p>\n

Breslin said that, on May 6, at the Temple Sholom event, he plans to talk about how each Jew has their own unique form of Jewishness and how we treat our culture as a Chinese buffet, picking what we want from it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m going to talk about the golden age of Judaism, 1950 to 1975, when it was cool and sexy to be a Jew,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ll try to figure out what happened between then and now, and why we\u2019re a people in need of a good PR person. I\u2019ll also reveal a lot of fun stuff about my life, my family and things I\u2019ve done, relating that to comedy in general and what it means as a Jewish art form.\u201d<\/p>\n

For event details, visit templesholom.ca\/inspired<\/a>. The evening at Performance Works on Granville Island is titled Inspired to Act and includes comedy, music by Adrienne Robles and Liel Amdour, and the 2018 Tikkun Olam Youth Awards.<\/p>\n

Lauren Kramer<\/strong>, an award-winning writer and editor, lives in Richmond. To read her work online, visit laurenkramer.net<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mark Breslin (photo from Temple Sholom) Yuk Yuk\u2019s co-founder Mark Breslin is excited to be entertaining Jewish Vancouverites at Temple Sholom\u2019s annual spring fundraiser May 6. \u201cI can\u2019t get enough Jews in my life,\u201d he told the Independent. \u201cI\u2019m married to a Catholic woman but I\u2019m a Jew through and through. Any time I can […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28468,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[785],"tags":[5278,8022,1325,1959,8065],"class_list":["post-28494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-performing-arts","tag-comedy","tag-mark-breslin","tag-temple-sholom","tag-tikkun-olam","tag-yuk-yuks"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28494"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28494\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}