Joel Axler, co-founder of Yuk Yuk’s, says ‘Benmergui and I were the only people to survive the first season’ of the ill-fated talk show Friday Night! With Ralph Benmergui. I’m a merciful person, so I’ll leave that alone.

Fortunately, coordinating Ralph Benmergui’s comedy segments for both seasons of the show left Axler relatively unscarred – he’s since coordinated the talent for Funny Girls on wtn – and now Axler is cooking up a number of comedic tv projects with an eye on the Baton-controlled specialty channel The Comedy Network.

Bemoaning Canada’s apparent ‘obsession with drama,’ Axler’s interests turn more towards projects which are ‘easy to do, of relatively low cost and utilize a vibrant pool of Canadian comedy talent.’ And when he says low cost, he means it. Each half-hour episode of the three projects he’s working on rings in at under $15,000.

The first of that trio – Lasting Impressions – is currently being developed with Catalyst from an idea Axler struck upon about eight years ago. Picture a show featuring dueling professional impressionists, peppered with impressions by viewers via home video, complete with a prize for the winner.

Axler’s other two brainchildren – That’s Funny! and The Perfect Match – are still without production partners, and Axler is definitely looking. While he envisions That’s Funny as a compilation show comprised of the best standup in the country, the idea for The Perfect Match is unique.

‘I see a rough, hand-held kind of thing – kind of like Cops – where we track people on first blind dates, people who met through personal ads. Occasionally we could backtrack to couples we’ve seen and update what happened.’

Axler says there’s been some positive reaction to the idea in the u.s., though he’s unsure whether Canadian broadcasters will be as receptive: ‘They might be a little afraid of the concept.’

Meanwhile, Axler has tons of irons in the comedy fire. He’s struck a deal with Maverick Manufacturing of Goderich, Ont. to produce coin-operated cd joke machines (for airports, clubs, restaurants, wherever) and he’s looking to strike up a deal to produce a ‘virtual comedy club’ on cd-rom.

-Portrait of the artist as a young capitalist

‘In this day and age, almost everyone in the free world has thought about writing a movie,’ he says. But not everyone has the fast-forward mouth and brazen enterprise of Spenser Rice. He and partner Ken Hotz are putting the finishing touches on The Pitch, a ‘documentary comedy’ about adventures they had while flogging their mob comedy The Dawn.

After hitting what Rice calls ‘the Hollywood wall’ – getting blown off, hung up on, and tossed in the round folder – Hotz decided their exploits would be hilarious film fodder after being thwarted once again in trying to reach Al Pacino’s agent.

So, with 700 pounds of equipment in tow, they got down to business. They hit the Toronto International Film Festival and got their script into the hands of Mr. Pacino himself (a ‘crazy stroke of luck’). They got kicked out of a press conference for pitching Norman Jewison while he was talking up Bogus. They pitched (harassed?) Eric Stoltz on his way into a Hollywood premiere. They ran into Neil Simon on the street as they cruised l.a. and bickered in their van. All told, there were 15 celebrity appearances including Matt Dillon and Roger Ebert.

‘It’s about the tension and stress, and its affect on our partnership,’ says Rice. ‘And although we’re both filmmakers, and we realize that the presence of a camera alters reality somewhat, I think it’s still a very honest representation of what it’s all about.’

Shot in l.a. and Toronto over a two-and-half-month period for about $200,000 (raised privately with the help of producer Raymond Massey), The Pitch actually took precedence over developing The Dawn once things got rolling. ‘It’s a movie for industry people,’ says Rice. ‘Someone might see it and think we’re talented, so we’re holding off selling the script until The Pitch is released.’

Getting a release for the film is the next step, and nothing’s signed yet. Rice says although the duo (plus Hotz’s girlfriend, Kate Brooks) played writers, directors, subjects, researchers, and more, there’s a void of knowledge on how best to proceed distribution-wise. However, they’ve been hitting up Peter Sussman in Atlantis’ l.a. office for advice.

Lessons learned? Both Rice and Hotz became only more convinced that they’re ‘American-style’ filmmakers (not to mention Barnum & Bailey-type salesmen) and that, expectations for The Pitch aside, they want to make movies for a mainstream audience. ‘What I like about the American system,’ says Rice, ‘is that it’s a profit-motivated system.’

And in case you’re interested, The Dawn (which was written by Hotz and Rice when they had stars in their eyes, namely Pacino and DeNiro) is about a Mafia don who goes under the knife for a routine hernia operation and ends up with a sex change. I’m thinking Jim Carrey

-Cavan and McDonald are twitchin’

With Twitch City underway in Toronto, Susan Cavan says she and Bruce McDonald are already at work developing other feature and tv collaborations. No particulars yet, but soon.

Twitch City, created by and starring Don McKellar (Thirty-two Short Films About Glenn Gould) and produced in association with the cbc, is the offspring of Twitch City Enterprises, a joint company between Cavan’s Accent Entertainment and McDonald’s Shadow Shows.

The six-part, half-hour $2 million series is set in Toronto’s Kensington Market and stars McKellar as Curtis, a tv-lovin’, cat-hatin’ tightwad who never goes outside. Armand Leo is producing and McDonald is directing a cast which includes Molly Parker (Kissed), Daniel MacIvor (House), Bruce McCulloch (Kids in the Hall) and Callum Keith Rennie (Hard Core Logo). There’s also – get this – a guest appearance from Joyce DeWitt (Janet from Three’s Company, for those not in the know).

In June, Accent will be shooting the feature film Dog Park, a romantic comedy from McCulloch, who’ll also direct. In terms of cast, Natasha Henstridge is already on board. (Fans of the Muscles from Brussels will remember her from Maximum Risk.)

-Give our regards to Robert

Toronto-based producer Mark Terry (Silent Lies, Strange Horizons) of Hollywood Canada Productions is hitting Sundance this month, and legend has it that he’s the first Canuck to crack the competition. Terry was the executive producer on George B. from l.a.-based Tango West. True to form, the $2 million film about a newly wealthy man was finished a week prior to joining the 17 other films in competition.

-Not couch potatoes

God bless idealism. Even after facing a Canadian distributor who giggled at the notion of a domestic release for an English-language Canadian film, the partners behind Green Couch Productions are soldiering on with Variety, their first feature.

Green Couch (named for a piece of on-campus furniture frequented by York University film students) is Michael Shayne, Aaron Barnett and Scott Carman, all recent York grads. Variety, written by Shayne and Barnett, revolves around an after-hours card game in a variety store and was written and developed to be produced on the cheap. Shayne predicts the final total to nudge $50,000, all of it raised privately.

All that’s hanging the company up now is casting for two cameos – the rest has pretty much been shot and edited. They wanted to use a couple of grade a, 100% Canadian names – they had Saul Rubinek and Maury Chakin in mind – but they were foiled by actra because the rest of the cast was a group of unknown up-and-comers who worked on deferral.

‘Now it looks like we’re going to have to go American for the cameos,’ says Shayne, ‘although that’s not at all what we want to do.’

Having been running the industry maze since leaving film school, Shayne says a couple of things have become very clear to him and his partners: ‘The realm of Canadian institutions is not into supporting new talent or first-time filmmakers.’

It’s an issue they intend to tackle, but first they need those darn cameos. And a distributor with higher ideals.

-Coming right up

Sharon Stone and Harry Dean Stanton will be in town mid-February shooting Freak The Mighty, a Miramax film directed by Peter Chelsom.

Photography on Prince Street, the Warner Bros. cop series, is already underway but supplementary casting was still ongoing at press time. Produced by Brooke Kennedy and executive produced by Robert Nathan, Prince Street’s cast includes Vincent Spano (Alive) and Joe Morton (Lone Star) as members of the nypd.

-Update

Bruce Glawson’s one-hour tv doc on bisexuality, Beyond Either/Or, is now on location in Vancouver, Seattle, Portland and San Francisco with taping to follow in other North American cities later this year. No broadcaster yet, but several are interested in seeing a rough cut.

-For the record

In the Dec. 16 column, I wrote that the budget for Producers Network Associates’ Rippin’ and Trippin’ was $40,000. The value of the project, factoring in donations from sponsors, is $250,000.