Stop us if you’ve heard this one before: Lily Tomlin, Bob the Drag Queen, Billy Eichner, and 19 other comedy trailblazers walk into a room. The punchline? It’s the largest known gathering of queer comics on one stage ever recorded in history. Filmed live in Los Angeles as part of the Netflix is a Joke Festival and released in 2022 as its own special, Stand Out: An LGBTQ+ Celebration became the new epicenter of the queer comedy boom.
But who helped these comics get here? This is the question at the heart of director Page Hurwitz’s film Outstanding: A Comedy Revolution, a first-of-its-kind documentary framing LGBTQ+ comedy as an irrepressible art form of resistance. Consider the stand-up special, which she co-directed, as the “energetic spine running through” the film, which arrives on Netflix on June 18. The documentary interlaces moments from the 2022 event with archival footage and testimonials from pioneers and rising stars alike into the most comprehensive historical record of LGBTQ+ stand-up comedy to date.
“Seeing all of those people get together was so important, because that’s the story,” Hurwitz tells Tudum. “Lily Tomlin influenced Sandra Bernhard, and Sandra influenced Margaret Cho, and Margaret influenced Billy Eichner and Joel Kim Booster. It’s this incredible tapestry and that’s how the history was created. It’s been this sustained march toward liberation alongside the emergence of queer comedy through these generational torch passes.”
Produced by Push It Productions, the company Hurwitz co-founded with Wanda Sykes (who also appeared in Stand Out), Outstanding: A Comedy Revolution is the culmination of a career spent championing comedic voices — be it Fortune Feimster or Michelle Buteau — who might have otherwise been shut out of the conversation. That’s the same spirit captured in the film, which surfaces stories of lesser-known queer heroes who laid the foundation for those to come, brick by brick and joke by joke.
Take Moms Mabley, a groundbreaking Black vaudevillian performer whom Sykes credits as a major influence, or Robin Tyler, the first comedian to ever come out on television — and whose career never recovered because of homophobic public reaction to it. Both get their moments to shine, as Outstanding firmly roots them in queer history alongside household names such as Ellen DeGeneres and Rosie O’Donnell. “A lot of queer people are going to learn about [Tyler] for the first time,” says Hurwitz. The history of queer comedy is “very much a female-driven story,” Hurwitz notes, adding that many gay male stand-up performers were forced to stay in the closet, sidelined into stereotypes or ousted from the profession entirely. “Women really did lead the way, which we don’t ever get to see when we talk about comedy — and stand-up comedy, in particular,” she adds. “I’m really proud of that because those women were influential for so many people and have never really gotten their due.”
Given the complicated trajectories of the many people under the LGBTQ+ umbrella, condensing a century of history into one film is a nearly impossible task. The documentary traces the evolution of queer comedy by way of major cultural milestones from the Stonewall uprising and Anita Bryant’s anti-gay activism to the AIDS crisis and DeGeneres’s “Yep, I’m Gay” TIME magazine cover. Hurwitz, however, is well aware that there is a trove of stories still left to be told. “It’s very difficult when you’re in an underrepresented community, and everyone looks to one project to be the be-all and the end-all,” says the director.
For Hurwitz, it was also vital for Outstanding to address the current state of comedy, particularly the mainstreaming of transphobia in stand-up. As industry powerhouses like Ricky Gervais or Dave Chappelle suffer little to no consequences for their jokes, the film deliberately reminds the audience of the larger, real-world conditions that many in the community face today. “In these conversations about transphobia in comedy, and the outrage or the backlash, we haven’t heard enough from trans comedians, trans comedians of color, and trans women of color, who are by far disproportionately the victims of anti-trans violence,” Hurwitz explains. “I really wanted to hear their voices and what they had to say.”
So, instead of letting others do the talking, the documentary gives the mic to trans and non-binary comedians, including Mae Martin, Patti Harrison, Roz Hernandez, and KJ Whitehead. Without any affect, laughter, or performance, a group recites and then unpacks a handful of recent transphobic jokes, letting the words simply speak for themselves. The result is a bracing confrontation with the real-life harm that can come from even the most thoughtless remark.
And while trans comedians might be leading the conversation, they are never alone, as other featured comics and historians help address how these attacks are both alarmingly specific and also part of a long tradition of queer scapegoating in comedy. “We’ve been down this road,” Hurwitz says, referencing a pivotal interview in the film with comedian Judy Gold. “We did this in the ’80s with homophobia. Trans comedians need to get out onstage and make people laugh. That is how we’re going to change hearts and minds and just keep going.”
With Outstanding: A Comedy Revolution, Hurwitz hopes that LGBTQ+ stand-up comedians now have the benefit of better understanding their history to chart a more equitable and expansive future. Although the push and pull between progress and regressive politics when it comes to LGBTQ+ rights continues, Hurwitz can’t help but be optimistic about what lies ahead. “Never underestimate the power of a funny person with a microphone,” she says. “Comedy is so powerful because in many cases you can get your point across with humor far better than you can without it.”
It only takes a glance at the line-up of this historic special to see why the future looks so bright. A new generation of stand-ups aren’t just dominating comedy, but redefining the genre as we know it. “We are seeing queer comedians unfettered and authentic,” Hurwitz points out. “They are acting, doing stand-up, making their own films — like Billy Eichner said, ‘taking the whole pie.’ Sometimes it’s one step forward, two steps back, but every time, we keep coming back stronger, and that will continue. It will continue.”
Watch Outstanding: A Comedy Revolution on Netflix now.
