DVD News

Comedian Richard Jeni: The Beach Crowd arrives on DVD

By Patrick Luce Aug 2, 2011, 15:45 GMT

Comedian Richard Jeni: The Beach Crowd now on DVD. @Photo provided by JONAS PR.

Richard Jeni fans get ready for laughs with the DVD arrival of Richard Jeni: The Beach Crowd - which features never before seen performance footage and available exclusively from www.richardjeni.com. 

During his amazing, yet unfortunately too brief career, Jeni starred in five one hour stand-up specials for HBO & Showtime. Richard Jeni: The Beach Crowd, produced and distributed by the Estate of Richard Jeni, was compiled from raw footage captured during two weekend performances in 2002 and 2006 at Southern California’s famed Comedy & Magic Club in Hermosa Beach. 

This DVD presents a rare opportunity to watch the performer build and perfect his material.  Due to the sheer volume of great material, Jeni often left ‘A’ material on the cutting room floor simply because it did not fit into the time constraints or context of his stand-up specials.  Through a variety of personas and impersonations in an intimate comedy club setting, Jeni shares his thoughts on women, whales, drugs, and anything else that momentarily flashes through his imaginative and lightening fast mind.

In this rare, personal look at Jeni, we see him here for the first time in impromptu interaction with his audience, demonstrating an extraordinary skill for sharp and seamless improv.   The end result is a tour de force performance featuring 75 minutes of almost all never before seen material, exemplifying how Jeni earned the title “The comedian’s comedian.”  

Jeni (1957 – 2007) was voted one of the 100 Greatest Stand-Ups of All Time by Comedy Central and was named Best Male Stand-Up Comic by the American Comedy Awards. 

His five cable stand-up specials include three for HBO, A Big Steaming Pile of Me (2005), A Good Catholic Boy (1997), and Platypus Man (1994) which won the Cable ACE Award for "Best Stand-up Comedy Special” and two for Showtime, Boy from New York City (1990) and Richard Jeni: Crazy from The Heat (1992). 

Jeni also starred in his own television series Platypus Man and co-starred opposite Jim Carrey in the 1994 blockbuster hit “The Mask.”