How comedy impressario Brian Volk-Weiss navigates the nexus of big-money stand-up, streaming and #MeToo
Brian Volk-Weiss' walls are scattershot with the arcane and the sublime: Johnny Cash's "I Walk the Line" single from Sun Records, a stone from industrialist John D. Rockefeller's gravesite, a painting of Luke Skywalker shunning the dark side and a spreadsheet showing that 649 gallons of Coca-Cola were sold in Los Angeles in 1892.
The walls, like the man, suggest a contempt for the predictable and a restless search for meaning no matter how obscure the source. The Coca-Cola spreadsheet is a metaphor for a small idea that takes over the planet; the stone is a reminder of a billionaire who glimpsed opportunity where others saw adversity. Volk-Weiss has collected such talismans on his way to becoming one of the most influential stand-up comedy producers in the country.
His Comedy Dynamics has produced specials for Ali Wong, Tiffany Haddish, Jim Gaffigan and many others. The company, which has more than 700 titles in its catalog, is run out of a Burbank office littered with skateboards, toy guns, strange gadgets and
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