Colin Quinn on ‘A Parking Lot Comedy Show,’ His Stand-Up-Docu Hybrid on HBO Max
Preview
The entertainment world has taken a big hit since COVID-19, and hardest hit of all has been live performances. But Saturday Night Live vet Colin Quinn found a way around the challenges, and his stand-up act is back November 12 with a little help from HBO Max and some famous friends.
Colin Quinn & Friends: A Parking Lot Comedy Show, a documentary-stand-up hybrid filmed earlier this fall at a Brooklyn, N.Y., drive-in movie theater — featuring Rich Vos, Rachel Feinsteinn, Sam Jay, Bonnie McFarlane, Keith Robinson, Chris DiStefano, Marina Franklin, Dan Soder, and Bobby Kelly — started out, fittingly, as a joke.
“Trying to be funny, I tweeted about doing a parking lot drive-in comedy show…that was in March,” Quinn tells TV Insider.
It was his manager, Quinn adds, who then pushed him to put the special together: “I hate to give him credit, but he’s the one that…got the whole thing going. And then he asked me to get the people [I wanted to include].” HBO Max, he says, did the rest, bringing on board “everybody” he wanted.
With comedy clubs closed, taking things outdoors is an excellent option, though the coming cold weather, he jokes, might mean “stand-up is going down south.”
Photo: HBO Max
When it comes to the show’s fusion of stand-up special and doc, Quinn says, “I wanted to do something a little different, where you do stand-up but also backstage. I always feel like there’s so much fun going on backstage that’s related to what’s being said on stage.”
The behind-the-scenes (well, makeshift tent) footage is great fun, as the comedians worry and tease each other about bombing on stage. The stakes are even higher for Quinn, who pulled double duty as director of the special.
“[The project] was kind of a nerve-racking thing, but it went better than than it should have, considering how little people have done stand-up in so long,” he says,
While Quinn admits he isn’t working too much on his stand-up material in quarantine, he says he’s staying busy. In addition to the special, he’s been getting the word out about his recently published, and timely, book, Overstated: A Coast-to-Coast Roast of the 50 States. He says he’s also been bingeing shows from home just like the rest of us, noting Fauda, Cobra Kai, and Broadchurch as favorites.
Looking for a laugh? (And really, who isn’t.) Add Colin Quinn & Friends: A Parking Lot Comedy Show to your own watch list, sit back, and enjoy the show.
Colin Quinn & Friends: A Parking Lot Comedy Show, Streaming Thursday, November 12, HBO Max
