Columnist Lisa Ferguson: Bizarre ready to roll credits on comedy career

Lisa Ferguson

Friday, Nov. 28, 2003 | 8:28 a.m.

The end is near for John Bizarre.

After spending more than two decades performing stand-up comedy, the funny man is calling it quits. He plans to hang up his microphone early next year and pursue his new love -- filmmaking -- full time.

Comedy is "wonderful, it's so much fun," Bizarre, who wraps a weeklong gig Sunday at Catch a Rising Star at Excalibur, said recently from his home in Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley. "But I can't do both.

"You can't really make money doing comedy in town in L.A., so you have to go out of town" to perform, he explains. "If I go out of town, I can't stay here and ... make films, so it's one or the other. It's really me, at 42, making a choice."

When he says he wants to "make films," he's not kidding. Bizarre is in the process of editing "Buster & Salazar," a comedy about a down-and-out comedy team, which is a film he conceived, wrote, produced, directed, filmed and funded, along with myriad other chores, on his own. If that weren't enough, he also co-stars in the film.

"It's so exciting and it's just amazing," Bizarre says of the experience. "I'm really in film school right now, even though I'm not in school. I'm making a film without knowing anything. It's fun."

The very-independent flick (it was crafted for only $6,000) follows the fictional title characters -- Buster is played by comic Jim Myers, while Bizarre is Salazar -- who are "a comedy team that was really hot for about six months in 1983. They had a TV show and it went in the tank after six weeks -- and so did they."

The two sever their partnership, but later reunite and win a "Star Search"-style talent show.

Working in front of and behind the camera on the movie has been no small feat for Bizarre, who's appeared on such TV sitcoms and dramas as "The Drew Carey Show," "The District" and "Murder in Small Town X," among others, but not in any feature films. In the spirit of the adage, "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em," he decided to make his own flick.

"I thought, we can write this, and try and sell it and hang around for a couple of years, or we can write it, rent the equipment and make the movie, so that's what I decided to do," he says.

Working on such a small budget forced Bizarre to be extremely creative. For scenes that took place with the actors inside a car, he strapped a camera to the hood, pointed it toward the windshield and drove around Los Angeles rolling tape.

One of the movie's final shots required Las Vegas' skyline for its backdrop, so earlier this year he brought the production to the Strip.

"We went from parking-garage rooftop to rooftop," he recalls. "We'd just start shooting, and then some security guy would come out ... and we'd just take off. That's real filmmaking, like guerrilla-style ... We shot all that night, we got the end of the film, it looks sharp and we shot it for nothing."

Bizarre figures he'll complete the film and begin shopping it to industry execs early next year. Then he'll get to work on another of the other numerous movie ideas swimming in his head.

"I'd love to be the Ed Wood of 21st-century filmmaking," he says. "I don't have a problem with that, (being) some low-budget lunatic."

Of course, he can always fall back on writing. Bizarre penned a pair of books -- "Giving You the Stink Eye" and "It So Doesn't Suck to be You"--which have sold out on his website, www.johnbizarre.com, where he also maintains The Daily Snap, a thought-provoking, witty on-line journal of his goings-ons and musings.

He's not discounting an eventual return to comedy and the high-energy act that earned him five appearances on "Star Search," and a performance on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno." Nor will this be Bizarre's first exodus from stand-up: In the early '90s, he sold all of his worldly possessions and moved to Amsterdam, where he spent two years working in the streets as a tour guide and a rickshaw driver.

"Then I came to the point where I went, 'Wow, am I poor ... I remember those college dates paid pretty well,' " he says, and in 1996 returned to the states to resume shticking. "I like to say I'm getting out, but it's like I'm Pacino in the third 'Godfather' -- they keep pulling me back in."

Out for laughs

Comic Kivi Rogers is set to record his performances Tuesday through Dec. 7 at The Improv at Harrah's, to serve as the basis for a forthcoming CD. Rogers, who takes the stage in Las Vegas about four times a year, says the local club is an "ideal" venue in which to record: "The sound is perfect ... and the crowds are really good. You do 35 minutes, and that's an ideal set." The still-untitled disc is due out early next year.

Also at The Improv, Dec. 9 through Dec. 14, is Kenny Bob Davis, who enjoyed a successful career as a '60s folk singer before turning to comedy in 1978. Having lent his humor (off the greens) to more than 250 charity and PGA-golf events, the California native who calls Texas home has earned the nickname "The Golf Comic."