Comedy Night at the Four Star Theater

The Four Star Theater on Clement Street is one of the last small neighborhood movie theaters still open in San Francisco. It looked like it was going to close, but it is still open and family run. It’s getting ragged around the edges. Everyone is glad that they’re still open, so customers ignore some dinginess.

We had just moved in, and we were settling into our new San Francisco neighborhood, The Richmond. It’s a neighborhood we were familiar with, but it’s a different deal when you’re living there. There are many restaurants, markets and a few bars close to our apartment. Within a three block radius from our apartment there are Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Mexican, Indian, Vietnamese and Middle Eastern restaurants. It’s a short walk to the Presidio in one direction and to Golden Gate Park in the other direction.

The Richmond is a neighborhood that is a little more connected to the earth than other San Francisco neighborhoods. It has a blue collar history. It’s in the fog belt and has cheaper rent.

We walked by The Four Star Movie Theater and were surprised to see an ad on a sandwich board outside the theater: “Stand-up Comedy Showcase & Music with Groovy Judy.” It would be on Thursday night, March 10. Admission would be five dollars! “Bring the whole family.” “Free hors d’oeuvres!” Five dollars? How can you go wrong? It’s three blocks from our apartment.

The theater isn’t far from The Holy City Zoo. The Holy City Zoo on Clement Street was the center of the Comedy Club boom in the Eighties. A comedy club was usually a cheap night out. There was no Internet back then. Cable TV was just taking off. Comedy clubs seemed to be everywhere.

The big night arrived and we walked over to the theater. Our host, Danny Dechi was out in front of the theater in a sparkly blue suit jacket. He’s a little guy and bald. He reminded me of the sleazy game show host Michael Palin played on Monty Python. He was talking to people outside and working the crowd a bit. Maybe he could talk some passersby into coming in. It was a little guerilla promotion outside the theater. We stepped up to the window and were surprised to find out that yes, it really was five dollars.

We’d seen Groovy Judy play at street festivals and other events. She’s tall and wears a purple outfit and a top hat. She stands out in a crowd. In her outfit she looks like a relic from a bygone psychedelic era, the early part of the era when everything was good vibes and Love. As we entered the historic Four Star Theater, she was talking people into moving closer to the front. We grabbed seats about half way back in the theater.

The theater has been subdivided to compete with the multiplexes. We were in the biggest theater. Some of the smaller ones are little more than rooms with a small screen. The Four Star shows some recent first run movies. They also show Chinese language movies.

The theater is old. The ceiling is red and the screen has a gold gilt decoration around the edges. The lighting was bad for a theater. I wondered how long it had been since they had an event here that wasn’t a movie.

Judy Groovy started the evening with a few songs on an acoustic. Her songs were peppy and upbeat. Maybe too upbeat for this crowd. An early clap-a-long failed, but she rallied the crowd later for a little call and response.

The crowd was old, but not ancient. Maybe I’ve been to too many dinosaur, geezer events. The crowd seemed a bit jaded. I got the impression that most of this audience had been to Comedy Clubs, maybe even during the Comedy boom of the Eighties. I don’t think the crowd expected too much for five dollars, and they were appreciative that the show was happening in their neighborhood. The comedians seemed a little nervous. They were all comedy club veterans. Maybe it’s harder to do comedy in your own neighborhood.

Groovy Judy sang a song about Being Yourself. You can be what you wanna be. Whatever it is. An artist, a pilot, a teacher... just be true to yourself and follow your dream. She even made getting laid off sound like a positive, learning experience. “Then you can do whatever you want!” She admits that’s not what she thought when she was first laid off in 2004. “They didn’t want to see my smiling face around there anymore.” She said she was happy playing music and teaching guitar, “And making money doing it!”

Groovy Judy did a good job of warming up the audience. They’re ready to laugh. She’s wrapping up her act. Dechi signals from the aisle next to us. He needs more time. “Time for one more?” Judy asks. Someone in the crowd shouts, “Encore!”

She does another song, then Dechi takes the stage and begins his hosting duties. “Welcome to the Four Star Theater.”

Dechi grew up in the Richmond neighborhood on Twenty-fourth Street, between Clement and Geary. “When I make it big, I’m moving to Twenty-second Street.” He said it was a lifelong dream.

Yes, he admits he’s a nerd and enjoys going to the big Wondercon Comic Book Convention held each year at The Moscone Convention Center. That caught my attention. The lobby was full of young nerds waiting to buy tickets. Dechi knew how to handle them. He stuck his head in and yelled, “Eugene, your mother is here to pick you up!” The nerds scattered and he was able to waltz in.

The only person left was a hot woman in a Wonder Woman costume. Dechi asked her to come home with him and he’d show her his comic book collection. “I’ve got a lot of issues.” Some in the crowd groaned.

He had a music case that I assumed carried a mandolin or maybe even a fiddle or violin. He opened it up with great flourish and pulled out... a pencil! Dechi is “The world’s only pencil musician.” He plays a couple of tunes by slapping his cheeks with the pencil. He uses a No. 2. Then he played the William Tell Overture on the top of his head. Now I recognized him! He was on Creepy KOFY Movie Time! With Balrok! The greatest TV show ever!

Cechi introduces the next comedian, Mike Spiegelman. Spiegelman is a young guy and takes the stage with some nervous energy. He tells us he will tell us some mushroom jokes later. He does the “I’m single” schtick. Just about every comic uses it tonight. “I hate the Internet.” He tells a joke about smoking pot and then informs us that, “We all buy our pot from Dechi.”

He finishes with the promised mushroom jokes:

Mushroom walks into a bar. The bartender says, “We don’t serve mushrooms here.” Mushroom says, “Hey, I’m a fun guy.”

There’s a series of mushroom jokes. At one point he’s all over the stage. He’s yelling and waving his arms. He’s playing the bar tender who finally says, “You know I freak out on mushrooms.”

Clark Stanton is next. He’s a middle aged bald guy with a bit of an edge to him. He tosses a few barbs at making mushroom jokes. He makes a joke about the carpet matching the drapery. “You can explain that to the kids.” Maybe his wife should shave her head to help him feel better about his baldness.

I tried to discretely look back and see if there really were any children in the theater. There was a small group of four kids near the back.

Lynn Ruth Miller is introduced. Seventy Seven years old! We had just seen her on Creepy KOFY Movie Time. She looks sharp onstage in a pants suit. Her jokes are quick one liners.

“I’m glad to be aging. I know people who didn’t get the chance.”

She goes through the obituaries now for romantic leads and attends funerals looking for love.

“I’ve got enough cross hatches on my cleavage that I can play tic-tac-toe... If I could find the pencil.”

“When I was your age...”

“Why do I wear a bra? So they don’t hang out the bottom of my blouse.”

Lynn Ruth Miller also uses the line, “You can explain it to the kids.” There might be much explaining to do later tonight.

The lighting in the theater isn’t meant for a stage show. The footlights shine and throw shadows on the scree. It reminded us of an old vaudeville house, or at least the movie and TV depictions of them that we’ve seen. It was more like what a theater must have been like long ago.

The cavalcade of comedy continues with Mike Capozzola. He lies down facing the audience. “I figure my face is the first one you can see.” He puts his face behind one of the stage lights. “Is it creepy?” He does look like something out of an old horror classic. Stanton’s big bit is about Girl Court. What if there was a reality TV show where law was interpreted by teenage girls? Girl Court! Few males stand a chance.

DJ Real looks like a young slacker dude. He uses an iPod to play some music while he raps. He sounds like Weird Al Yankovitch. He does some funny White boy rap. He has a little trouble finding someone from the audience to “help out” with his act. “It’s easy.” Tom joins him onstage and holds the Evil Paper Bag. “Whatever you throw into it becomes evil.” DJ Real plays some more music on his iPod and tosses in cut out heads of characters into the paper bag. They become sinister characters.

A tall guy takes the seat at the end of our aisle. He seems kind of weird to me. Intense. He toys with a cell phone. I’m tempted to hassle him about the cell phone, just to aggravate him. Dechi consults with him at one point. Then he introduces him. It’s the headliner, Will Franken!

Franken starts slow and does a sketch about a guy on the phone. He works some voices into it. He gets a call from someone asking him what he should do with a pallet of lost money. “You can leave it at 340 Twenty-fourth Avenue,” Franken quickly tells him. It's an address very close to the theater.

The voice of God calls. There is no God, only the voice of God. It’s Marlon Brando. He gives us the ‘errand boy’ speech from Apocalypse Now.

Then Franken plays an impressionist who can only imitate Michael Caine. It’s the only voice he can do, but it’s very convincing. If he tries to do an impression of anyone else he reverts to his normal voice. He only sounds like Michael Caine when he says or spells Michael Caine.

Michael Caine says he was kicked by a horse. Frantzen does a great Woody Allen, who calls to see how Caine is doing. “I just thought I’d check on you.” Frantzen tells a long story about Caine’s trip home to England.

Franken’s set is a bit more peppered with the F word. I think the children have left, and now it’s time for us to go.

Dechi almost forgets to give away the previously announced door prize. It’s a copy of a book about The Richmond. It’s from the great Arcadia publishing series on San Francisco neighborhoods. It will go to anyone who can yell out the answer to a trivia question. “What year did The Four Star open?” I was guessing 1927, but I was a little slow on the draw and someone else yelled it out. No, Dechi tells us. There are some lower guesses. 1914! It’s 1913. Some guy from Massachusetts takes home the prize.

I don’t know about the “Bring the whole family” that was on the ad. As the night went on, the comics seemed to stray from the wholesome family policy. At first there were a few inadvertent F words, but as the night went on, the comedians brought out more of their over 21 nightclub act. Maybe they should just keep the kids away, and let these comedians rip!

It was a great little show, especially considering the price, and that we had walked there. I sure hope it was a success. It would be great to see other events at this local theater.

On the way out Cechi made his last announcement from onstage: “Thank you for coming; or however you responded.”