Local filmmaker plans comedy show to promote upcoming project
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“Stand Up: Who's Laughing Now" is the title of a short film by Liberty High School graduate Mark Banks, and he's using laughter to draw attention to the project.
The 38-minute movie will have its premiere on Nov. 11 at Silverspot Cinema in Orange, but Banks is planning a local event Oct. 17 at Apollo Event Center in Youngstown that will include a standup show featuring local and regional talent, some of whom appear in the movie, along with clips from "Stand Up" and a Q&A. Food will be provided by A Fresh Wind Catering. Admission is free, but seating is limited and tickets are required to attend.
"The movie is about a comedy show, so we're doing a comedy show about the movie," Banks said. "We're going to have the comedians do live performances, and then in between sets, we're gonna show clips. We have actors from the movie and they're gonna be there in character."
The comedy lineup for the Oct. 17 show includes local talent David Smith, Lexx Vegas, Jon Huff, Dan Kulifay, Marco Torres and Brandon White joined by Cleveland comics Ryan Polk (a Youngstown State University graduate) and Jennifer Chandler along with Cameron Steele from Columbus.
Polk also plays one of the comedians in the film, along with Precious from Youngstown. The rest of cast is from Cleveland and Columbus except for James Dobra, who works for Mahoning County Hazmat.
Banks doesn't have a standup comedy background, but he said he's always been an entertainer. He did music and theater growing up and performed as Michael Jackson with the Liberty High School Marching Band. After graduating from College of Wooster, he moved to Los Angeles to pursue acting and music, and moved back to Ohio.
His own struggles in the entertainment world inspired the script for "Stand Up," which Banks said tells the story of a comedian who "takes matters into his own hands" after a particularly bad set. Based on the trailer for the film he's posted to YouTube, that comedian also takes a firearm into his own hands.
"A lot of my friends are comedians or in the entertainment industry, and I wanted to shed light on what it's like to fail," Banks said. "The movie's about the struggles as an entertainer, from personal experience and from shared experience with a lot of people I've worked with. Just what it's like to go up there and pretty much have your dreams shattered. It's something that a lot of us go through."
Banks found a production studio in Cleveland that could pass for a comedy club, and the entire film was shot in a single day in June.
"We got in there and we executed because we were paying by the hour for the space," Banks said. "We knew the shots that we needed, and we had a couple different cameras. That was a good part about it. We knocked it out."
The movie has been submitted to a couple of different film festivals, and Banks said the ultimate goal is to find financial backers to expand "Stand Up" into a series that tells the story in greater detail.
"We want to help raise awareness about our project and get more funding," he said. "We want to do a series (With the short film), we're beginning with the end of the storyline. We want to do a longer series (looking at) the background of each audience member. We want to make it like a 12-episode series. That's the long term plan."