Originally published April 10, 1998

The Boston Globe

Comic hopes next pilot takes off
Comedy Notes

By Michael Blowen
Globe Staff

This is the network’s pilot season. It’s a six week window for stand-up comics to strike it rich with a big deal for their own show. There’s a scramble to inherit Jerry Seinfeld’s mantle as the sitcom king. That’s Jerry Seinfeld, as in Jerry, “$1 million and episode” Seinfeld. From stand up to sitcom. No more rainy nights hosting open mikes and inhaling fast food. Fame and fortune.

Many of the Boston-based comedians have fled to the West Coast looking for that one big break. But why?

Why would a stand up comic, whose material is organic – often dredged up from humiliating personal experiences – want the homogenized impersonality of a weekly situation comedy?

“Money,” says Frank Santorelli, who’ll be playing tonight with Don Gavin and tomorrow night with Paul Nardizzi at the Comedy Connection at Fanueil Hall. “And anyone who tells you something different is lying.”

In previous years, Santorelli went to Los Angeles trying to hook one of the 100-150 pilots shot by NBC,CBS,ABC, WB, FOX, UPN, and a few of the minor cable networks. Of those, only about a dozen usually make it. Of those, only about three last past the first year.

During the 1996-97 pilot season, Santorelli nearly hit the jackpot. WB filmed a pilot Santorelli called, “Let’s Be Frank,” in which the Boston based comic played a detective.

“I got it though a huge audition at the Laugh Factory, “says Santorelli, referring to the hot comedy spot on Sunset Boulevard in LA, “Robby Benson directed it and Ron Candida was my sidekick. It was pretty funny, but then they tested it out and we came in too old.”

If the show had been ordered by WB, Santorelli would have earned a starting salary of $35,000 a week.

“Anthony Clark was earning $50,000 on “Soul Man,” he says. “That’s like hitting the lottery. I love it when some of the sitcom guys complain about 17 hour days. Let them go cry in their money.”

Santorelli stays closer to home these days because he and his wife, Linda Martin, an assistant athletic director at Boston University, have a 2-year old daughter named Theresa.

“I used to go out to Los Angeles,” he says, “but now I send out video tapes.”

Santorelli is up for a part on a new sitcom produced by Diane English, creator of “Murphy Brown.”

“It’s called, ‘Living in Captivity’ and I tried out for a character named Carmine Santucci, King of the Mufflers,” he says, “I haven’t heard yet whether I got it.”

Santorelli also auditioned to do the voice of a cartoon character named Shrek in an animated series being developed at Dream Works.

“They’ve got Eddie Murphy as the donkey and Linda Hunt as the witch,” he says. “I’ve got a shot.”

Meanwhile, Santorelli, one of the city’s most popular comic, continues to pour his energy into his show.