"Comedy in general works really well on the Web," Grigioni said. "It's the only genre where you can be successful in 10 seconds or five minutes."
Krantz of Super Deluxe agreed. "Sketch comedy is primarily short-form," he noted. "You have to get in and you have to know when to get out" - which makes it, he said, "perfect for the Web."
The Los Angeles comedy team Leon and Andy, who were featured in the Montreal sketch showcase (although they did not actually perform; they stayed backstage while their clips were shown to the audience on a big screen), echoed that sentiment. In an e-mail interview, the two comedians, Leon Mandel and Andy Fisher, whose bizarre shorts can be seen online at www.weepirate.com, said: "The Web is an amazing venue for sketch comedy. It's practically built for it. People want short, easily digestible pieces that they can ingest on their lunch breaks and share with their friends."
Mandel and Fisher said the Web had become their primary outlet. "We used to perform live a lot more than we do now," they wrote. "But when you can spend your energies making films that you can propagate onto the Web for perpetuity, performing for a crowd at a bar loses a little of its luster. We still love it, but we do it sparingly."
The situation is a little different for the Buffoons, a troupe affiliated with the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater in New York that was also on the Lineup bill, jolting the crowd with what might be called Three Stooges routines for the new millennium.
In a telephone interview, Bobby Moynihan of the Buffoons said the group had been "approached primarily by Internet people" at the festival and, with possible deals being discussed, faces the challenge of making its visceral comedy work online. "We're a very physical group," he said. "That's one of our biggest obstacles right now, because it's hard to translate that to film or television or the Internet."
Still, he said, the Buffoons are ready; they expect to be well represented online in the near future, when the Upright Citizens Brigade site (ucbtheatre.com) begins posting videos. He has had a taste of Web fame already through his bit part in a raunchy clip by another sketch troupe, Derrick (derrickcomedy.com), which he said was shot in one afternoon and which has been viewed three million times on YouTube.
"It used to be you'd do stand-up and you'd have an act that could be turned into a sitcom," Moynihan said. "Now if you have 20 seconds, you can put it up there and you'll be more famous than someone who spent years developing an act."
That sound you just heard is the collective click of comedians everywhere turning on their cameras.
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