TRAVERSE CITY -- If you want funny people to come to Traverse City in the middle of winter, invite them in March.
People who live here know it doesn't matter what the calendar says -- there's still just as much snow in the first week of March as there is in the last week of February, comedian Jeff Garlin said. But people from warm, sunny Southern California don't.
Garlin, of HBO's "Curb Your Enthusiasm", and Traverse City Film Festival co-founder Michael Moore told a crowd Saturday at a comedy panel discussion that plans are in the works to hold -- what else? -- a comedy festival in town next spring.
Dates are still unknown, but scheduling the event for March or April would mean "a lot of the sting is gone," Garlin said, a statement that could be as much for visiting comedians as for winter-weary locals.
Saturday's announcement at the City Opera House capped a two-hour discussion about the art of being funny, an art several panelists described as being imperfect and entirely dependent on perspective.
Besides Moore and Garlin, speakers included Robert Byington, whose films "Harmony and Me" and "Registered Sex Offender" are in this year's festival lineup; Ben Steinbauer, whose "Winnebago Man" also is on this year's schedule; Larry Charles, director of "Borat" and "Bruno"; Woodstock icon Wavy Gravy; and filmmaker Paul Mazursky.
"No one knows what's funny," said Charles, who described the process of filming a comedy as akin to working in a lab. "You really are starting from scratch every day."
Even though filmmaking requires a structured process, it still can seem improvisational if directors create "as free an atmosphere as possible," he said, adding that there is no formula to follow.
Filmmakers opened the discussion by talking about their early years in comedy:
-- Mazursky, known for such films as "Enemies, a Love Story" and "Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice", relied on humor to cope during his parents' arguments. At 4 years old, he said, he performed impressions to divert their attention and "they would stop arguing."
-- Steinbauer described himself as an "accidentally funny" child. On the day his parents brought his baby sister home from the hospital, he tied a blanket around his neck and took a running leap off the top of a shed. "They weren't laughing," he said, "but I got lots of attention."
-- Moore said he and friends once put a test tube filled with clear liquid near a science fair display at his Catholic school and labeled it nitroglycerin. One of the nuns pulled the fire alarm. "We thought it was funny," he said. "If we did that today, No. 1, expelled."
Byington and Garlin exchanged lighthearted banter during the discussion. Garlin spoke often, telling stories and offering input on everything from the new "bromance" genre to the proliferation of curse words in stand-up routines.
"I feel like I should just be sitting behind you guys not talking, like an extra," Byington said of the industry veterans sitting at the other end of the stage. "I feel like we're on a different panel over here."
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