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Can 400 Comedians Convince You to Keep Netflix?
Talking to the streamer’s head of stand-up about live events, SNL, and Matt Rife.
The size and scale of the streamer’s stand-up business will be on display in a major way starting next week with the return of the aforementioned Netflix is a Joke Festival, a 12-day (and night) marathon of more than 500 shows spread across nearly three dozen Los Angeles venues that will spotlight multiple generations of comics, from Gen X legends (Chris Rock, Sarah Silverman, Katt Williams) and modern superstars (John Mulaney, Ali Wong) to more recent breakouts (Matt Rife, Fortune Feimster) and a slew of younger stars most non-comedy nerds would need to Google before identifying. While the festival itself is a complicated patchwork quilt of programming (once again: 500-plus shows), adding in more than a week of live broadcasts on a platform which barely a year ago buckled under the burden of a Love Is Blind reunion special is surely supersizing the stress levels for Praw and his team. And yet when Vulture caught up with the Montreal native by phone earlier this week, he was decidedly calm and reasonably confident the sequel to the Netflix is a Joke Festival will be more The Empire Strikes Back than Staying Alive.
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