
One of the first stand-up shows I ever did was at Gotham Comedy Club. It was called the “New Talent Showcase” and I was given the opportunity to do five glorious minutes on a stage I’d seen on Comedy Central and in the seminal inside baseball documentary Comedian, as long as I brought five glorious people to be in the audience. I convinced five of my college friends who I was in the city with that summer to come to the show, dreaming that this would be my big break, that soon I would be the toast of the town. Little ol’ Jay Light, a 19-year-old who had done less than 10 total comedy spots in his entire life to date, was going to become a star at that show, and all it took was the guiding hand of Yonah Ward Grossman to get me there.
Fame did not come. What I got was words of encouragement and pats on the back from the friends who showed up, a standup set that lurks deep in my YouTube uploads that I have zero desire to watch any time in the near or far future, and the understanding that if I wanted to get up at Gotham again, all I needed to do was bring five more people.
This was my first and only bringer show. Thank God.

“But Jay,” I can hear you non-comedian readers saying, “what’s a bringer show?”
Imagine that you are a medical student. You’re studying hard and drinking a lot of energy drinks, and you bump into this dude in the cafeteria who says he can get you a job at your dream hospital. “All you gotta do,” he whispers, coffee breath wafting into your ear, “is bring five patients we can operate on.”
Did you just think “what the fuck?” Congrats! You are smarter than the average person who decides to try stand-up comedy.
Did you just think “well, I know my boss’s assistant has that mole she was going to try to get biopsied, and I bet my father-in-law could use a second opinion on his slipped disc…” then you’re probably a pretty easy mark and if you’re doing comedy you should stick to open mics. And not the pay-to-play ones, either. You’re too easily exploitable, you sick little dreamer, you.
See, here’s a fun fact about LA: because it is still the place you go if you want to be part of The Industry, there are thousands of people showing up here every month who want to “make it.” These people are very easy to trick, especially if you give them a business card with the logo of a comedy club on it and say you’re a producer.1 But these shows are not a rite of passage. Comedy is not supposed to be a pyramid scheme. And before you say, “Jay, I think maybe you’re being a little hyperbolic,” well let me fill you in on the literal pyramid scheme that is now happening in the comedy scene.
A few weeks ago, I got an email from a bringer show producer:
Hey Jay! How’s it going?
My name is Ken, the booker for Guy’znite.
As you may know, we’re a well-known weekly show at HaHa Comedy Club, Pack Theater, Hotel Cafe, and more. We’re currently partnering with four of LA’s top producers to scout new talent, and our talent team thought you’d be a perfect fit.
We have spots left for an upcoming show, and I wanted to offer it to you before another comic grabs it!
I knew that Guy’z Nite, a show title that the booker couldn’t even be bothered to properly spell and format in the email, was a bringer show because I’d gotten an Instagram DM from their “talent scout” sometime last year asking me to fill out a Google Form. It looked like your otherwise fairly standard Google Form for show submissions, with one key difference: questions at the bottom asking how many fans you have who live in Los Angeles, and how many fans you could guarantee would come to a show if you were booked.
When bringer show producers are talking about fans, at least in this sense, they don’t mean literal fans. They mean “friends/family/co-workers/errant Tinder matches/whoever you can scrounge up to buy a ticket” but they all phrase it this way because they want to make you feel like a star. They want to make you feel like a star because they can get more money out of you that way.
This, by the way, is part of the argument that any bringer producer will spring on you whenever they get pressed, or sometimes, apropos of nothing. “Every show is a bringer show! All comics need their fans to show up!”
And, yeah, as much as I hate to admit it, there is some truth to this. I have been producing shows for a long time, almost as long as I’ve been doing comedy. Producing shows requires you to hustle to get butts in seats. I literally have a newsletter (you’re reading it!) and a WRONG!-centric mailing list (you might be subscribed to it!) that I use regularly to push my shows. I send out DMs to people when I’m in crunch mode. I’ve barked in New York, LA, Austin, and at Edinburgh Fringe, flyering and being told to fuck off more times than I can count.
Here’s the difference: bringer producers are outsourcing the hardest part of producing. They get to sit back, book a couple big names to do the pro spots, throw together a flyer, and let the ticket sales roll in on the backs of the amateurs they’re giving "an opportunity to perform at a storied comedy club." Never mind that the actual club bookers never watch those shows, and that the club staff is only excited because they know they’re getting a little extra two drink minimum money on the balance sheet.
Bringer producers are just trying to take the stigma off the word. The label of “bringer producer” is what I think they hate more than anything. Bringer is a dirty word, and it should be. They know they’re being exploitative and preying on people’s dreams, all the while building their own mailing lists and followings on the backs of the folks they book.
Here’s how bad I would never want to consider myself a bringer producer: I got hired to run a comedy contest show at a club in LA, and I tanked that job by deliberately not asking the comics I booked to bring audience members.
The deal was simple: ten spots on the lineup, half booked by me, half booked by the club. I’d host, get stage time and a meal, and a little pay. My plan: let the club book five people they know would bring, allowing me to book five actually funny friends of mine. The comic who brought the most people would always win first place, two of my bookings would win second and third, and my conscience would stay clean enough to run it back the next week.
They fired me after a month. It must’ve been obvious I wasn’t going to play ball.2 I just hated the idea of commodifying people’s dreams.
Let’s get back to Guy’z Nite.
I replied to Ken’s email choosing a date I was available. He got back to me in about an hour and a half with a tentative confirmation and the following (lightly edited) email:
Before we book you, we’re so excited to introduce you to the incredible opportunity that comes with being a part of Guy’z Nite!
We have recently partnered up with 4 of LA’s Most Reputable Standup Producers to offer you an exciting opportunity to get your name recognized on even bigger stages after your date with us.
This includes producers who book:
• Hollywood Improv Main Stage & Lab
• The Ice House (Both Legendary & California Room)
• The Bourbon Room
• The Three Clubs
• Hollywood Roosevelt Theater
& Much More.
Based on your career goals, you can select the producer you wish to receive your GUARANTEED introduction with.
To successfully secure your introduction with your desired producer, we have agreed to ONLY make introductions for comedians who:
1. Were strong comedically
Your set is going to be professionally filmed by our camera team which the booker may later watch in consideration of adding you to their rotation.
2. Had a minimum of 10 Guests
We’ll be sending the booker a report which they will review. They wants to see that you had a minimum of 10 attending guests on your Guy’z Nite date.
If you DO make it to the list of comics who crossed both those off…
Then we will report that to the booker and they will reach out to you within 5-10 days after the show via email with a booking offer to see you in person!
In the case that you don’t, they are also crossing comics off of the list who did not meet those expectations and therefore they will not consider you for future bookings.
We know getting people out can be challenging for some more than others, but if you're open to the challenge, the payoff has been very rewarding for the previous 110+ comics who got booked with them at The Ice House, Comedy Store & many other reputable clubs.
[This section lists the names of the four bringer producers and where they produce shows, so you can take your pick of who you’d like to be exploited by next up the chain.]
ADDITIONAL to this exciting introduction opportunity, we would also like to introduce you to: The Guy’z Nite Games, our value-packed incentives which include our PR Partnership with The LA Tribune News, our Viral-Engineered Editing Team, & our Cross-Country Tour: [they then linked to the following file explaining the tier list of rewards based on how many audience members you bring.]
Lastly, we will have an editing team and master camera setup dedicated to professionally shooting your entire set so that you can have some 4K booking footage & social media content available for purchase. So if you have a great set… You’ll also have some great content! We’ll get you connected with our editing crew later on.
Please prepare for a 6 minute set and a light at 5!
NOTE: This show is geared specifically for comics who want to build stronger connections with LA’s biggest producers and get on bigger stages. If you do not plan on meeting the 10 guest minimum and prefer to be placed on a lower-stakes show, please kindly DECLINE this offer.
We are more than happy to offer you a date on one of our regular nights. For all comics making their Guy’z Nite debut, we do ask for a minimum of 7 guests on our regular night.
If you are ready for this opportunity and would like to confirm your spot- Please respond to this email *WITHIN 24 HOURS* with your Desired Producer and Headshot so that we can add you to our flyers.
Congratulations Jay & Looking forward to your message!
I sent Ken and Guy a more diplomatic message that night, but here’s one that’s a little more blunt: this is insidious. I hope you stop. I doubt you will.
A tier list of incentives? You’re gamifying this shit now? Even the guys who used to literally run a show at the Dave & Busters in Hollywood & Highland wouldn’t stoop to this Chuck E. Cheese nonsense you’re pulling.
Let’s do a little simple math here: if you’re a comic on this lineup who hits the “Kickstarter+” tier, which requires 10 guests, you earn 2 entries in the lotto bucket at the next show, $40 off “Package 3” which I can only assume is some editing thing they offer, a “Priority Producer-Partnered Introduction” listed at a $210 value, and a whole $30 for you to put in your pocket! WOW! Meanwhile, tickets to this show cost $25 (at a minimum) which means, if your friends are cheap, then the Guyz are making at least $220 off you.
But don’t worry, maybe with that “Priority Producer-Partnered Introduction” you’ll get to do another spot at a better club where you’ll have to convince at least another seven friends to show up!
Maybe that’s part of the problem now, is that everything just feels too slick. When I was still in the comedy club door guy phase of my career, I saw enough bringer shows to have the producer’s sets memorized.
Here’s how they used to go down: you’d sign up for something questionable on Craigslist or some “talent scout” would approach you while you were waiting around to maybe get picked for the open mic at one of the clubs. You’d be told that they could get you on a show at the club, you’d really get to perform at the main stage. You, being a person with dreams, would agree to the terms and start hustling your friends with the same energy of someone trying to sell Herbalife.
At the show, you would quickly realize who the head honcho was because they were by far the worst comic on the show. They weren’t always bad, necessarily. In fact they were usually pretty competent at telling jokes and doing a pretty good impression of a standup comic. But it was obvious why they went down this route. Their crimes against art ranged from being hacks, to being racist with no punchlines, to stealing jokes from Twitter or other comics. They would treat you like a god if you brought more than the required amount of people, and they would treat you like a puddle of dumpster juice if you were even one person shy of their ask. Sometimes even if you brought the right amount of people you’d still have to remind them that you were owed a spot on their 3+ hour show.
Apparently one of these producers used to send out an email saying that doing his show was like doing the Mount Everest of comedy. I'm not sure if it was because English wasn’t this guy's first language and he meant the Mount Rushmore of comedy, or because the show was grueling and you might die before you finish the journey.
The really crazy part was watching some of them achieve escape velocity from their bringerdom. Some did this by building up a big enough mailing list that they got to book a lineup with no bringers at all, leaving themselves 15-20 glorious minutes to do a joke heavily involving an Adele song.3 Some did this by self-producing some specials. Some did this by proving to me that they’re human, that they have bills to pay and mouths to feed, by being kind to me even though I may later watch them tell someone their time is being cut because not enough people showed up.
It was easy to tell that this was the goal all along, to finally be able to scrub off the bringer producer stank. They seemed lighter, even if it was only by a couple of degrees. But was I surprised when I still saw some of these people’s names on the Guy’z Nite email? Absolutely not.
Anyone who’s been reading my Substack for a bit knows how much I think The Dream, in the traditional Hollywood sense, is increasingly becoming a mirage. The Dream rarely realizes itself the way it does in TV or movies4 and, even now, is less likely to be realized simply by going viral once or twice on social media. Success as a comic requires patience and diligence, core tenets for any artist. That being said: be wary of anyone who says they know a shortcut to The Dream. They may seem cool and nice, and maybe, on a human-to-human level, they are. But you have to separate the bullshit from the bullshitter.
The hardest thing to foster in a city as sprawling as Los Angeles is community. I’ve been in the game long enough to have two very strong opinions on why this is: I think pay-to-play mics tend to impede our ability to build a thriving scene, and I think bringer shows create an oppressive system within an oppressive system, more likely to snuff out creativity than encourage its growth.
Do comedians need bringer shows? No. Do bringer shows need comedians? Yes. Will bringer shows ever die out? Tough to say. I think it’s possible, with enough time and effort, to build a big-city scene that shuns bringer shows and pay-to-play mics the same way that other comedy scenes do all over the world. Will it happen in my lifetime? I’d love to see it.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: it is possible to build the scene you want to see. It requires action, and it takes effort. But trust me on this: it’s way more fun to create when you’re among comrades instead of charlatans.
WHAT ABOUT ME?
This week, you can find me:
doing shows in LA - full show calendar is here
getting ready to host my comedy game show WRONG! at the Comedy Store on Saturday at 11:45 PM, get your tickets!
Until next time, friends (and perhaps a couple frenemies). Thanks for reading, I’m glad you’re here.
Did you know that being a producer can mean literally anything? Welcome to Hollywood!
I was also heavily drinking and having a very hard time dealing with a recent breakup, which probably made their decision even easier, but this post isn’t about that!
If you’re thinking: “Jay, isn’t that a little too specific?” Don’t worry, multiple bringer producers have bits heavily involving Adele songs.
Unless you count Mulholland Drive, which does, in fact, have a much more accurate version of the Hollywood experience. Yes, I am talking about the part where you’re jealous of a more successful person while attending their birthday party, then you do a bunch of drugs and/or kill yourself.
Death to bringer shows (and paid mics!)!!!!
Hey Jay, I read the article. I enjoyed it.
I have a bit of a different take on bringer shows. For me, they were an absolute godsend early in my comedy career and played a big role in my development as a young comedian.
I might be in a different boat than a lot of people. But I started doing comedy when I had a pretty large social circle outside of comedians—which made it much easier for me to bring people out when asked. I was fortunate enough to be able to consistently bring 2, 5, sometimes even 10 people to shows. These people were friends or people that I worked with.
And those bringer shows led to real opportunities and regular (non-bringer) shows. For example, I now host about once a month at HaHa Comedy Club for Guyz Nite. I’ve done door spots at Fourth Wall, a guest spot at the Ice House California Room, and I’ve performed at the Jimmy Kimmel Comedy Club in Las Vegas and Mic Drop in San Diego. Every single one of those specific opportunities can be traced back to a bringer show I was part of. All of them were non-bringers.
Here’s what I’ll say: if you’re new to comedy and reading this comment, I believe that stage time is the most important thing. If you’re clever and you find a way to get booked on a lot of quality shows quickly without having to go the bringer route, that’s amazing—you should absolutely pursue that. But if you’re someone who has a large social circle or you’re willing to get creative—whether that’s barking or figuring out how to draw a crowd in unconventional ways to hit the audience numbers you promised—then I think bringer shows can be a great stepping stone on the way up.
That said, it's important be smart: the best feedback on how good of a comedian you are onstage is from an audience that doesn’t know you, has never seen your face, or heard your jokes. Network your way into non-bringer shows as much as you can. Avoid sleazy producers who’ll put you on a three-hour lineup just to do five minutes. And get on stage as much as possible—whether that’s paid open mics, free mics, bringers, guest spots, door spots, or producing your own shows.
In my experience, Guy runs a tight ship. The shows tend to run no longer than an hour and 50 minutes. Guy himself generally does 12 minutes. And there are opportunities with who he introduces you (and not to mention who you meet) to do bringer shows and non-bringer shows. Of course, you must network and put in hustle yourself.
As for the sales-y, gamified language in Guy’s messages—I get how that might turn some people off. Personally, when I did Guyz Nite, Guy never used that language with me. Maybe the feedback you are giving him will help his approach over time.
I won’t condone everything he does—nobody’s perfect. But it would feel wrong for me not to speak publicly and thank him for the opportunities he’s given me. He’s helped me get a foothold in the comedy scene, and I’m genuinely grateful for that.
And just to be clear, Jay—none of this is a knock on you. From what I’ve seen, you’re an incredible comic with way more experience than I have. I’ve enjoyed your sets at the Belly Room a lot, especially the roasts. Maybe I’ll see things differently when I’ve been doing this as long as you have. But for now, I wanted to offer my perspective, especially because I want to give credit where credit is due.
If there is someone who has actually done a Guyz Nite show and had a negative experience, I hope they post it up here.
But I hope more people who also had a more positive experience also comment.
(Posting this on Instagram too)