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Denver Post 1.14.03
Denver Post1/14/03
By Ed Will
Denver Post Staff Writer
A passion for laughter
When the Comedy Works fell on hard times, Wende Curtis took action: she bought it
Wende Curtis' world lies two flights below a four-story stone building that squats on the corner of 15th and Larimer streets.
It is dim and quiet during the day but comes alive at night as people descend into one of the country's most respected comedy clubs to watch stand-up's brightest stars, old and new.
Curtis owns her world.
She bought the Comedy Works in June 2001, but it has been the center of her universe since December 1986 when she joined the company as a cocktail waitress at a sister club in Fort Collins. She said it never occurred to her at the time she would end up owning the Comedy Works.
"But the day it occurred ... I remember walking down the hall looking at baseboard and going, 'Replace that baseboard, because this place is mine.'
I never thought it was possible to love this place more or to feel more responsible for it, but I felt [more] that day," Curtis, 39, said.
She bought the club from now-defunct First Entertainment Inc., a multimedia company that once owned several entertainment businesses.
Curtis actually purchased 80 percent interest in First Film, which among other things owns the club and Comedy Works Entertainment, which Curtis has revived as a vehicle to promote comedy concerts in larger venues.
First Entertainment was in dire financial trouble, so Curtis had to buy it or watch the 324-seat club fall into someone else's hands.
"Then where is my livelihood? This is all I know. This is it, and I don't want to start over. I love this business and more important than loving this business, I love this club," Curtis said.
It was love at first sight.
Edd Nichols, a Denver comedian and businessman who was a Comedy Works owner at the time, remembers it that way, too.
The Fort Collins Comedy Works struggled from the beginning, but Nichols said he came up with a promotion that brought people in: cold-calling area businesses and saying they had won a group of tickets to the club.
He asked club employees to donate their time to make the calls. Only Curtis volunteered.
"She would come in during the day before she did her shift at night and do this promotion for us for nothing," Nichols said.
"Maybe there was somebody else, but I just remember [her]."
Curtis smiled and cocked an eyebrow when she heard Nichols' story.
"Actually, his recollection is a little bit off, because I came up with that idea by talking with the comics. Of course, I was the only one, because it was my idea. I developed that program for them, and it helped them stay open for a few years," she said.
Curtis said she worked about 20 unpaid hours a week promoting the club. She noted she had a stake in the club attracting customers: Tips paid her rent.
She allowed, however, that her motivation went beyond that.
"If I believe in something - and I have always believed in this organization and what it does and what it is capable of - I am just relentless, absolutely relentless," Curtis said.
Early start on work ethic
Curtis learned hard work as a child at an auto parts store on Brighton Boulevard that her father, Terry Curtis, owned.
"She was basically stocking shelves and cleaning shelves and that type of stuff," Terry Curtis recalled. "Pretty much menial jobs, but that is where she learned her work ethic."
Wende Curtis remembered a little bit of filing and a lot of scrubbing toilets, washing windows and sweeping the parking lot.
"My parents instilled a very significant work ethic in me," she said. "That broom was bigger than me when I was sweeping that parking lot."
While she had some parental assistance with her work attitude, her preternatural tenacity revealed itself early.
"Oh, about age 3," mother Barbara Curtis said. "I wouldn't say she was stubborn, but I guess maybe headstrong. Always very loving but always knew the direction she was going and was persistent until she conquered."
The child foreshadowed the woman.
"The biggest thing Wende has going for herself is she is a tough broad in a business where you have to be a tough broad to get along," Lisa Grigby said.
Grigsby owns the Jokers Comedy Cafe in Dayton, Ohio, and is a nationally known consultant to comedy clubs.
"I would say of 500 comedy clubs maybe there is a handful of female owners.... Mainly, it is a man's world," Grigsby said.
Curtis had no plan or desire to belong to that tiny sorority when she started in Fort Collins.
"I figured it was just another job, but, gosh, if I have go to work, it might as well be something really great and fun," said Curtis.
She was in her final academic semester as a theatre arts major at Colorado State University. She planned to work at the club for a year or so until she landed in graduate school to study directing at the University of Washington or acting in New York City.
Growing responsibility
Tall and blond, Curtis looks more like a movie star or a Las Vegas showgirl than comedy club owner. But her career path took her from Fort Collins to Denver to Tampa, Fla., and back to Colorado.
Curtis took over management of the financially troubled Fort Collins club 15 months after it opened. Soon afterward she added the responsibility of booking acts for it and the Denver club.
Four years later, in February 1992, she became manager of the original Comedy Works in Larimer Square. In those four years, she was sent in to right two other financially floundering clubs owned by the company, the Jazz Works in LoDo and a Comedy Works in Tampa.
"She always had to take over for somebody who wasn't doing well.... She always went into the situation kind of behind the eight ball," Nichols said.
Only the Denver Comedy Works continues to operate, but Curtis left behind a healthy club each time she moved on.
Her experience at each club prepared her to build something special at the financially solvent flagship club.
"I began to book bigger and bigger acts, and I began to book them more and more frequently, as frequently as I could get my hands on them.... Over the last 11 years it simply has evolved into the animal it is now, which is just these huge acts," Cutis said.
Last month comedian/actor Dennis Miller wanted a night's work at a comedy club to test-drive new material for an upcoming HBO special.
"There are only a few places where you put a celebrity of Dennis caliber, and Wende's was the first place I thought of. Wende knows how to deal with celebrity comics," said Stacy Mark, vice president of comedy for the William Morris Agency in Beverly Hills.
"It is a fortress of comedy," said comic Brian McKin, who publishes Sheckymagazine.com, a New Jersey-based webzine that has covered the business since 1999.
Respected independent
It is no small accomplishment for an independent club to land top talent in a world of chains, such as the Funny Bone, Catch a Rising Star and The Improv, Grigsby said.
"Independents have nothing else to go on other than their reputations and how they treat you," Grigsby said. "Comics know ... at the Comedy Works they are going to be treated well, put in a good hotel. They'll get good crowds because Wende will advertise the show."
That approach is just good business because comedy is what she sells, and comedy-smart Denver audiences willingly fork over top dollar for the best.
Comedian Darrell Hammond of "Saturday Night Live" said the club's physical layout is another plus, because its multilevel seating puts the audience right in the performer's face.
"It's so close and so intimate that the laughter is explosive," Hammond said.
The Comedy Works over the years has developed a deep well of local talent, which Curtis taps to fill in the week around the two-night gigs favored by national stars.
It saves her a lot of money because she doesn't have to pay expenses to bring in an out-of-town, second-tier comic. Still, her financial risks are high, because top names come with a steep price, easily reaching five figure for two nights.
Denver comedian Roger Rittenhouse said he likes the fact that Curtis treats local comics well even though she is tough when it comes to business.
"When it comes to being a businessperson, she strikes fear in people, and that is what you've got to do to run a business," Rittenhouse said. "When the Improv threatened to come into Denver, she got right on it and booked the (biggest names) two years in advance to make sure the Improv couldn't get any of the. And the Improv backed out."
Curtis said that when she heard the comedy chain was thinking of challenging the Comedy Works she made it well-known throughout the industry that it faced a major battle.
'Very well-thought-out'
Curtis does not back away from challenges, former employee Susan Collyar said. She worked at the club for eight years before leaving two years ago to start a public relations firm, Hype Publicity.
"Her strengths are that she is gutsy and she is not afraid to take risks," Collyar said. "She is very well-thought-out. She plans for things, and then she figures out the best way to accomplish those goals."
Curtis may be about to prove that point again. There is talk she plans to open a Comedy Works in Chicago. While she concedes the idea is exciting, she is closed-mouthed about any possible deal.
"I don't like to talk about business deals until they're done, because they are such a house of cards," she said. But she did say that if she started a club in the Midwest, it would not be the beginning of a chain.
"I don't think I could do more than two markets because it is hands-on. I am a fairly humble person, but a good portion of this (club's) success is my own personal success. You have to be here, and I am here a lot," she said.
Her only interest outside the comedy club is the theater, and she catches as many productions as she can, Curtis said.
"Really, all I do is work," she said. "I truly have sacrificed a tremendous amount of stuff for my career, good or bad or indifferent. I have certainly gotten the club out of it all, but I've given up a lot, a social life and relationships."
She said she has had two significant relationships, both of which were long-distance ones with men she met though work. Neither was a comic.
"Those were pretty successful relationships for me, because I don't have a lot of time on my hands," Curtis said. "Anybody who wants too much time from me, I am afraid it doesn't work very well."
She has a world to run.
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