Every seat in Toronto's Winter Garden Theatre is filled. Close to 1,000 people have paid $100 to attend Stand Up for Kids, a benefit in support of the youth shelter Covenant House, and they're chattering excitedly as they wait for the lights to dim. The evening's sponsor, DundeeWealth Inc.-the wealth management firm that owns Dynamic Funds-has flown in caustic New York comic and political commentator Lewis Black to headline the event, backed up by Toronto native Mike Wilmot and a few standbys from the local scene.
Backstage, DundeeWealth president and CEO David Goodman is pacing nervously. Is he worried that the fundraiser will be a flop? Hardly. They've already raised $100,000. The jitters are because, in less than an hour, he'll be bounding onstage for his grand coming-out as a stand-up comic.
Goodman, 45, has been performing at Toronto-area clubs for more than a year. But never in front of a crowd this big, and never in front of people he actually knows. The place is packed with Dundee clients and staff. Rohit Sehgal, Dynamic's chief investment strategist and portfolio manager, and Noah Blackstein, who heads the firm's American Power Fund, are sitting right up front. Goodman's wife, Bonnie, and two of his teenaged daughters are here. So is his father, the formidable Ned.
Goodman is the third comic up (the program has listed him in the second half, just before Black, but at the last minute, he decides to just get it over with). When he walks into the spotlight, clad in a charcoal-grey pinstripe suit and blue, unbuttoned shirt, the crowd cheers. He starts off with an anecdote about he and his wife's misadventures with flavoured personal lubricant. The language is saltier than you'd expect from a chartered financial analyst. Other topics he touches on during his 12-minute set: kids, gay marriage, attention deficit disorder, vaginas, and the massage industry's monopoly on the "hand release."
The audience loves him, and he blows right through the blinking red light telling him his time is up (a perk of running the show). Afterward, Goodman is pumped. Black, he says, "was very complimentary. He said to me, 'Business and comedy-you've picked two hells to toil in.'"
A few days later, I ride the elevator to the 28th floor of the Dundee building at Yonge and Adelaide Streets in downtown Toronto. Inside Goodman's spacious corner office, he steers me toward the wall beside his desk, where three of his most prized possessions hang: a photo of himself with wildly popular Canadian comic Russell Peters, his diploma from the Humber School of Comedy workshop, and the $200 cheque he got from his first paid gig.
As we settle into his comfy leather furniture, Goodman tells me he has always loved stand-up. In the '70s, he and his older brother, John, spent hours listening to Richard Pryor and Steve Martin albums, and daydreamed about taking their own routine on the road. "But I got a commerce degree, I got a law degree, I went to work, and then I turned 40 with four kids," he says. When he did a speech at his brother's wedding in 2003, a guy from the band suggested he look into Humber College's five-day workshop. "You sit in a classroom with other aspiring comics, and you learn how to use a microphone, how to write a joke, how it all works," says Goodman. At the end of the week, each student has to do three minutes on stage. Goodman riffed about the gifts he and his wife exchange on their anniversaries. "I had a great set," he says. But he didn't perform again for an entire year.
The following summer, Goodman took the course again, and started hitting Toronto's open-mic scene, frequenting such grungy dives as Spirits Bar and Grill and the Eton House. "On Tuesdays and Wednesdays, I'd work late, then I'd take my notepad and try out my material so I could build up enough to be consistently funny," he says. Eventually, he got up the nerve to call Yuk Yuks pooh-bah Mark Breslin, who gave him a try. Now, Goodman is a regular there. He has also performed at the Improv in New York and L.A., and at Niagara's Fallsview Casino.
That doesn't mean he hasn't bombed. "I've had nights where you feel the sweat on your forehead," he says, "where you do a joke that you like, but that's probably not that funny, and there's four people in the audience and you can hear the sound of nothing. I've had a few of those."
So, does he find it hard to be funny these days, with the economy in free fall? "I don't joke about that," he says, suddenly sombre. "These are pretty serious times, and we have a very serious obligation to our clients and employees and shareholders. That's serious stuff."
He can, however, poke fun at himself. During our interview, I asked him how he deals with hecklers. "The best defence against being heckled is to be funny," he told me. "But I really haven't been heckled that much, and I hope it stays that way."
A week later, Dundee's head of media relations called me up. Goodman had just finished a meeting, she said, and he wanted to amend his answer:
"I've been heckled, but only in my day job."
WHAT'S SO FUNNY Favourite comics Steve Martin, John Belushi, Chris Rock, Lewis Black, Mike Wilmot ("he makes dirty jokes cute") Recommended reading Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life by Steve Martin Recommended viewing Comedian, a documentary that chronicles Jerry Seinfeld's struggle to develop new material. "It pulled back the veil" on what it takes to be a top comic On writing Goodman carries a gilt-edged leather book wherever he goes. "Anything that strikes me as funny, I write in my book. I have about 10 or 15 people that I sneak jokes in on. When you say, 'I just wrote a joke and I want to try it out on you,' they never laugh" Pre-show routine "I go to Starbucks and have one more coffee than I'd usually have in a day. I take my book and write up my set list. And I almost never eat first" On going to comedy school "I'm not sure you can teach someone to be funny, but you can probably help someone be funnier"