Juste pour rire was founded by Canadian businessman Gilbert Rozon as a two-day event in Montreal, with four French comedy shows, forty-one years ago. In 1985, promoter Andy Nulman came on board, and the two turned the July festival into a longer bilingual production, which became known in English as Just for Laughs. That year, the event attracted 40,000 attendees and showcased fifty-five comedians, including Yves Lecoq and Michel Forget for the French sets and Jerry Seinfeld and Jay Leno for the English shows. American talent scouts and Hollywood agents began to understand that’s where they needed to be. In 1989, about 250 of them attended the summer event, which at that point boasted performers from twelve countries. For decades, JFL launched star careers.
“What [the festival] did was pretty amazing,” says Andrew Clark, humorist and director of the comedy program at Humber College in Toronto. “It became the one-stop shop for the comedy business.” Industry professionals could spot promising comics, who, in turn, “could walk away with a three quarters of a million dollars development deal.” Clark is also one of Canada’s first comedy critics and author of Stand and Deliver: Inside Canadian Comedy, a deep dive into the industry’s history. “It used to be ‘JFL is touring Canada,’ and you’re on the JFL bill. People were going because they recognized JFL,” he says. “It was a very exciting thing.”
