12/23/2025
Three years ago, I executed a three camera shoot by myself for a local stand up comedy roast battle. No crew. No safety net. Just me handling cameras, audio, timing, and post. I made a couple hundred dollars, mostly from comedians who wanted clips of their own sets, not from the event itself.
At the time, nobody was shooting the local stand up comedy scene. Nobody was documenting it. Nobody was treating it like something worth preserving. I had already been embedded in that world for years as a collaborator and producer, and as far back as 2014 I was actively pushing for a full documentary. I could see the story. The personalities. The long arcs playing out in real time.
For over a decade, I chased that vision. I pitched it to Hollywood. I pitched it to local comedians and clubs. With the locals, I just got vague “no’s” or silence, and with Hollywood producers, I got formal rejection emails. I still have them. Timestamped proof that this idea wasn’t hypothetical, it was presented, considered, and dismissed over and over again. Nobody understood what I was seeing. Or they didn’t believe it mattered.
And now, years later, I’m watching other people show up with cameras, filming shows, building platforms, doing the exact thing I spent over ten years trying to convince people was worth doing.
And I’m on the outside again.
That’s the part that sucks. Not that others are doing it, but that I was early, loud, persistent, and documented in my effort, and still lost the time. Being first comes out of just doing it — not seeing, then doing. And with that, there is a specific kind of grief in being able to open your inbox and trace the entire arc of rejection in black and white, only to watch the world eventually validate the idea after you’ve already been worn down.
I wasn’t imagining this. I tried to build it. I have the receipts. And somehow, even with the vision and the work, I still ended up watching from the sidelines when everyone else finally caught up.
On May 20, 2022 at Justice Pub in Jacksonville, stand up comedians from all over Florida came together for one night in order to hurt each other’s self estee...
