MONTREAL – The world-renowned Montreal Just for Laughs comedy festival sadly announced this week that they would be seeking creditor protection before bursting out of a nearby cardboard box wearing a gorilla mask to mildly disturb passers-by.
While festival organizers wrestled briefly with whether to proceed with a straight bankruptcy, they ultimately opted to attempt a proposal to creditors and swiftly prepared their Notice of Intention to be delivered to said creditors by three men holding a comically large piece of plywood except one of the men is actually this really little guy and he’s being carried a bit off the ground, you see, and anyone who sees it is puzzled for a moment.
“We tried everything to avoid having to cancel our festival and seek this protection,” said Yves Paulsen, the Festival’s lead solicitor. “We tried finding alternate financing, booking major headliners, and even dressing a conventionally attractive woman in a relatively tame but still alluring bathing suit to ask people for directions while ‘hubba hubba’ music plays, gently unnerving them. Nothing worked!”
There have been warning signs for some time, stemming primarily from COVID-19 related changes to the market for live performance, but also the scandalous arrest of the festival’s grotesque, green homunculus mascot for indecent exposure in 2021. Others suggest audiences were driven away by the ever-present fear that anyone and anything in Montreal during the festival could be a hidden camera ploy designed to bother them briefly.
“We remain confident that we can find a solution to our current problems. Fortunately, Canadian comedians are historically very, very well paid and will not suffer greatly from the absence of the festival this year,” said Paulsen.
“Some of them have 10’s or even hundreds of dollars in savings, which will surely cover them for a few years while we reorganize,” he beamed.
At press time, the festival…. Hold on a second…. No, officer I’m just submitting this article for…. Well, why are you writing me a ticket? I’m just sitting here…. This is outrageous! What’s this? Your pen is actually a banana? Gaaaaaaaaaags!
