Carl Hutchinson releasing stand-up documentary That's The Show
Carl Hutchinson has made a film about his life as a touring comic.
Hour-long documentary That's The Show premieres at the Tyneside Cinema in Newcastle on 11th May and will be followed by a Q&A with the Geordie stand-up talking about his career.
Focusing on the highs and lows of life on the road, the documentary accompanies Hutchinson on his current Watch Till The End tour and also features fellow North-East comedians Anth Young and Chris Ramsey, his support act and the comic he has most often supported respectively.
Having become a father during the coronavirus pandemic, Hutchinson conceived the film as a way to "maximise" value from his time spent away from home.
"My daughter was born just after lockdown" he told British Comedy Guide. "I was obviously thankful that theatres had opened up again but gutted I had to go out and make up for the previous year and a bit.
"So I thought: 'What else could I be doing while I'm away that won't impact the family life?' ... The documentary seemed an easy fit. I'm already on the road, why not get it on film?"
Reuniting Hutchinson with MOTIF Pictures (Knights Oot, Talking Drugs With Joby Mageean), with whom he previously made several Channel 4 sketch shorts, That's The Show is directed by Tautvydas Baranauskas (Laugh Lessons), to whom he gave complete creative control.
"When it's going well, there's really nothing better [than stand-up]" Hutchinson says. But it's harder "when you've had a real bad day at home and you still have to get on with it and give the crowd a good show. Or when the audience aren't as giving as you may have initially anticipated. [When you're] dying on your arse essentially.
"There's a whole section of the documentary covering how both me and Anth dies on our arses, the documentary doesn't shy away from anything in that respect. I told them to film everything and since they were doing me a favour by doing it for free, I can't really ask for any editorial control. I know [producer] James [Craggs] and Tautes well and I trust their judgement. I'd like to say I know a little comedy but I don't know filmmaking so I just left it up to them."
Hutchinson cites several American comics' stand-up films as inspirations for That's The Show, including Jerry Seinfeld's Comedian, David Cross' Let America Laugh and When Stand Up Stood Out, the retrospective of Boston's live comedy scene in the 1980s and 1990s.
"You can imagine how happy I was when the now late Barry Crimmins came over to Edinburgh to do the Fringe a few years ago" he recalls. "I think I chewed his ear off talking about every part of that documentary."
As a performer who hates watching or listening to himself, with the pressure for comics to market themselves relentlessly through social media now, he has nevertheless had to grow accustomed to it, recording The Carl Hutchinson Podcast weekly. "Every week now I have to watch and listen to my stupid fat face" he laments.
Details of further cinema screenings of That's The Show are available on www.carlhutchinson.net, with plans to release the film online at a later date.
"The dream would be to get it onto a streaming platform" he says. "We'll see what the demand for it is. Just got to put ourselves out there and hope for a bit of luck!"
You can watch the trailer for That's The Show here: