The funny business The Boston Comedy Festival comes of age BY TED DROZDOWSKI

To hell with NYC and LA — at least for a week. Boston is often perceived as a little brother to those media-saturated cities. But from now through September 17, the Hub is where the heart of contemporary American comedy will be beating.

The sixth annual Boston International Comedy & Movie Festival has corralled more than 100 comics, from rising locals to national heavyweights, along with a clutch of movies. The highlights (for the whole story, visit http://www.bostoncomedyfestival.com/) include social satirist Lewis Black at the Cutler Majestic Theatre this Friday and Saturday, short films at the Coolidge Corner Theatre on the 15th, the freewheeling humor of Charlestown’s Walsh Brothers on the 16th, the pot-ty humor of "Marijuana-Logues" on the 17th, and a week-long stand-up contest with a $10,000 prize.

Struggling locals were part of the inspiration for the festival. Lanky Boston-based improv/stand-up guy Jim McCue, one of the founders, explains, "About nine years ago, I tried getting folks from the Montreal Comedy Festival to come here. They wouldn’t, so I went up during the Montreal festival and produced ‘The Boston Tea Party,’ where I got Tony V and other comedians from here to perform. Unfortunately, instead of inviting us to their festival, the Montreal producers got mad at us. So I went ahead and did it here. Now we get talent bookers and agents from LA and NYC coming to Boston every year, and comedians from all around the country. It grew from fairly straight-ahead stand-up and improv to having gay comedy and all sorts of ethnicities included. A few years ago, Dane Cook called me saying, ‘I have a funny movie I’d like to show,’ so we added films, too." McCue isn’t exactly a household name, but he has opened for major comedians including Black, played arenas, worked in TV, and toured entertaining US troops abroad.

For local artists like Chris and David Walsh, the Boston Comedy Festival offers a chance to break out of the city’s comedy circle. By staging their own irreverent performances at Cambridge’s Improv Asylum, which they’ll do at midnight next Friday for the festival, they’ve built a reputation for a free-ranging humor that’s rooted in their brotherly rapport and encompasses scripted plot lines, skits, improvisation, audience participation, jokes, and music. "What’s been great about working at the Improv Asylum for the last 18 months or so," says David, "is that we’ve assembled our own little crew who are in the shows and we’ve been able to try out new things and hone our writing. If somebody else hires you to do a show at a club, they’re counting the laughs per minute."

"We’ve had the freedom to bomb, which is what you need to learn how not to bomb," Chris adds.

"Another thing we’ve learned is that the other major festivals, like Montreal and Aspen, are intensely political," David goes on. "We’ve seen guys from Boston who are hilarious try to get into those festivals and be completely passed over for people who aren’t even funny."

But the Walshes now have a leg up. Their reputation as two of Boston’s hottest comics has attracted an LA-based management company that’ll have representatives at the Asylum to coach them on how to tweak their act for the Aspen festival’s admissions committee. "We really want to do this for a living, but our comedy won’t go over at the Elks Lodge in Athol," David acknowledges. "So we welcome the help in getting our Improv Asylum show ready to take to other places like Boston where people will get it."

BOSTON INTERNATIONAL COMEDY & MOVIE FESTIVAL | Sept 9–17 | 617.782.8100 or http://www.bostoncomedyfestival.com/