Glazer: Hats Off to KC Comic Mike Baldwin for Huge Comedy Competition Win

I was pleased to see my friend, Mike Baldwin‘s picture on the front page of the Kansas City Star today…

It was a preview to a front page FYI story about Baldwin winning the Seattle International Comedy Competition. One of the three biggest in America. Baldwin had also done well in the San Francisco contest. Besides winning five grand and some commercial dough, Baldwin is now an official big-time headliner. The story quotes Mike as having started with Stanford and Sons. Later it quotes me on a few issues as well.

Always cool to see your guys do well.

The FYI cover story also features a couple of other Stanford’s guys, AJ Finney who will be headlining Stanford’s for Xmas week and former Stanford’s guys Dustin Kaufman and Justin Leon. They’re all very talented young men. We also talked about our New Years Eve headline Nikki Glaser who started her comedy career with us. Today you see her today on the Tonight Show, she was a finalist on NBC’s Last Comic Standing as well and in the movie I Am Comic. She’s big talent today. There were others named that we’ve worked with all the way back to a Stanford’s regular, now deceased, named Bill Hicks. Bill even talked about Stanford’s in his book before he died. As did Darrell Hammond from Saturday Night Live in his new book out now.

Baldwin will be at Zona Rosa on Xmas weekend and we will have him back this Spring for a week. It’s hard to headline the guys from here like we want to because on the way up they emcee and co-star so often. Comedy fans here see them a bit too much sometimes, so even when they start to make it, they are often taken for granted by the local folks.

The one thing I tell all the comics is look, "We can start you off, send clips to agents (which I did for all these comics) but in the end you will have to move to LA or New York to go into TV and film. I have seen too many talented young comics fail to do that. They get frustrated too fast out there. Hey, I remember my early days in Hollywood. It’s tough, you have few friends, it’skinda lonely and it’s hard to get any work. It takes time.

So sometimes these people you build up resent the home club because we don’t make them stars and can’t book them as often as they want to work. Baldwin was always a good guy, loyal as possible and he appreciated all we did for him. I got Nikki to CAA and my agent there launched her career by pairing her with Pauly Shore to start. Kaufman and Steve Kramer have the manager I introduced them to also.

There just so many good comics out there today, it’s hard to even get an agent, especially in LA or New York.

AJ Finney got a nice DVD/CD deal and you hear him all the time on comedy radio. Nikki is on the verge of some major TV/Film deals. She was up for a full-time writing job on late night TV and those pay $500,000 to start – not bad.

All these comics are still young 28-35. It takes 5 to 10 years to really get the big money rolling in and they sure earn it. Comedy is a tough, lonely life. The travel from city to city every week, the hotels. It’s hard to have a long term relationship when you’re never home. And WHERE’S HOME? 

Baldwin has the chops to go to the top, so do the others.

I wish them the best and am glad we could all work together.