Cris Italia

Industry Standard w/ Barry Katz

Barry Katz

Comedy

4.8 • 946 Ratings

🗓️ 28 July 2025

⏱️ 89 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this emotional and insightful episode of Industry Standard, Barry Katz sits down with comedy club mogul Cris Italia to talk about building “The Stand,” coping with loss, and shaping the careers of comics like Pete Davidson, Andrew Schulz, and Nikki Glaser. Italia reflects on the influence of late comedy legends including Patrice O’Neal, Greg Giraldo, and Mike DeStefano, as well as the enduring inspiration of his late business partner Dave Kimowitz. The conversation touches on resilience in the face of tragedy, lessons from 9/11, and the power of comedy as both a coping mechanism and a calling. #standupcomedy #interview #thestandnyc #producer Blueprint for Success https://barrykatz.com/blueprint Are you a comedian, actor, writer, director, producer, manager, host, podcaster or agent? Would you like personalized help to reach all of your goals in the entertainment business? Click the link to learn more & join our FREE industry networking group full of decades of experience! Barry Katz Entertainment https://barrykatz.com

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Industry Standard with me, Barry Katz.
0:07.7	Hope everything's going well with you. I'm very grateful for all your support. You guys are
0:13.6	unbelievable. Thank you so much for the emails, the text, the letters, the FedExes, the packages,
0:26.6	the questions, the text, the letters, the FedExes, the packages, the questions, the answers, pretty much everything. So, so grateful. If you need to reach me, you can do so at Barry Katz at Twitter or
0:34.6	X or Instagram or you can reach me on my website at barrycats.com.
0:40.9	Got a very, very unique, interesting, authentic, and special episode today with Chris
0:47.6	Italia, who is the co-owner and producer at the Stan Comedy Club in New York City.
0:55.7	He's an incredible man.
0:58.1	And just being around him was amazing.
1:03.7	And when I think of Chris, I think of a guy who has some of the strongest relationships
1:09.4	with comedians in the world from Pete Davidson
1:14.1	to Jim Gaffigan, the Dave Chappelle, and too many to mention. There's just so many. He keeps that
1:23.5	relationship with them so, so well.
1:28.0	And it's very hard to do in the club business
1:30.2	because you always can piss somebody off.
1:33.5	But more importantly, not only does he have great relationships,
1:37.9	but he's been able to deal with incredible adversity,
1:41.2	the kind of adversity that no other human being in the comedy club business has ever
1:46.6	gone through before. Yet, for some reason, as you'll hear in this episode, he comes out on the other
1:55.0	side. I don't know how. I don't know what he's doing to make it work.
2:02.8	I don't know how he can figure out how to get out of bed some mornings.
2:09.0	But he did.
	...

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