Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Outstanding: A Comedy Revolution’ On Netflix, A Documentary About Great Strides Forward For LGBTQ+ Comedians

Two years after Netflix gathered dozens of LGBTQ+ comedians together for a celebratory showcase at the first Netflix Is A Joke festival, now comes a documentary going deep on the history of queer stand-up comedy. Is 99 minutes enough time to show just how far they’ve come?.

OUTSTANDING: A COMEDY REVOLUTION: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: These words appear onscreen over an otherwise wordless montage showing smiling audience members: “On May 7, 2022…top LGBTQ+ comedians from around the world…converged on the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles…for a historic night of comedy.”

The Gist: Bob The Drag Queen helps establish the doc’s pitch even before the title sequence, saying: “If you see a queer stand-up comedian, I don’t think you understand the adversities they’ve overcome to end up on your television screens, in your movies, even on your Instagram feed.”

Then more comedians you’ve come to know and love over the past three decades — Wanda Sykes, Eddie Izzard, Rosie O’Donnell, Marsha Warfield, Judy Gold, Todd Glass — testify to the lack of representation and openness they grew up with when they were first starting out or even once established in the 1980s and ’90s. Even icons such as Lily Tomlin and Sandra Bernhard maintained double lives of sorts, keeping relatively quiet about their identities for mainstream audiences, and less so for queer crowds. Or there were personalities famous on game shows in the ’70s such as Charles Nelson Reilly or Paul Lynde who, while not hiding their true selves, left it to viewers to figure it out for themselves.

Humorists and joke-writers Bruce Vilanch and Dave Holmes help provide us with some history for context, tracing trans and drag roles back to Vaudeville and reminding us about the “Lavender Scare” after WWII in which straight men joked about fearing being perceived as gay, and how the AIDS crisis of the 1980s led to another backlash against the LGBTQ+ community, which back then was really only talked about in terms of LGB, if that.

Tomlin said she found it easier to talk about difficult issues back then through portraying characters such as Edith Ann and Ernestine. “I think I did characters, from the beginning, out of a desire to make a world that was better,” Tomlin recalled.“Very often, the comedy’s reflecting what we’re living through. And maybe they’re showing you the way, or telling you, or giving you a hint about how things could be.” And there’s a revelation that TIME offered her the cover in 1975 if she’d come out publicly. She refused, insulted. “They really wanted to just do an article on gay people, which was fine, but it was very early to come out.”

We learn how important it was for queer comedians to, if not come out, then at least or also mentor the next generation of comics they influenced. Tomlin inspired Sandra Bernhard, Bernhard inspired Margaret Cho, and Cho inspired Joel Kim Booster, while Eddie Izzard’s cross-dressing helped Solomon Georgio. Similarly, Scott Thompson’s out and proud characters on Kids In The Hall helped others. But at the same time, some of the most famous comedians of the 1980s (Eddie Murphy, Sam Kinison, and Andrew Dice Clay are cited) had audiences roaring at homophobic jokes.

And we see how attitudes have changed slowly but surely since then.

What Documentaries Will It Remind You Of?: While there have been retrospectives on individual comedians (Whoopi Goldberg Presents Moms Mabley remains a stand-out, a decade later, and available on Max), or about the arts and entertainment of and from the LGBTQ+ community, this might still be the first to put 100 years of queer comedy into perspective.

Our Take: One of the great things about making this documentary is that it allows writer/director Page Hurwitz (who also EPs the doc with Sykes) to rectify some of the snubs and oversights that didn’t or couldn’t make the cut in Stand Out: An LGBTQ+ Celebration.

So not only do we get to see some of the previously cut sets from James Adomian, River Butcher, and Todd Glass, but we also hear from them in offstage interviews talking about their hopes, fears and experiences as comedians. We also learn about some of the comedians who came and came out before them, such as Suzanne Westenhoefer, Karen Williams, Lea DeLaria, Kate Clinton, Jason Stuart, and Alec Mapa. If you’re a comedy fan, you may have heard of Moms Mabley (Sykes also portrayed Mabley in Prime Video’s The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel). But have you ever heard about Rae Bourbon?

Did you know that Fortune Feimster’s first headlining gig as a stand-up was at Pulse nightclub in Orlando?

And in case you forget, we get to see a clip of Ellen DeGeneres appearing as a guest on Rosie O’Donnell’s daytime talker, shortly before Ellen came out on her ABC sitcom, when both were still closeted. O’Donnell talks lovingly now about how she allowed herself to open up just a bit joking with DeGeneres about being a little bit “Lebanese” to show that they were in this together.

There’s some grainy footage from 1977 that almost steals the show, though. It comes from a human rights benefit fronted by Tomlin called “A Star Spangled Night For Rights,” and featured a performance by Richard Pryor. Pryor at first got an applause break for announcing he’d enjoyed sex with another man. “Back in 1952. Sucked Wilbur Harp’s dick. It was beautiful,” he said, before eventually reminding the almost entirely-white audience that they’ve had it easy compared to his black contemporaries. News headlines covering the benefit focused solely on Pryor’s racial divisiveness. “Richard Pryor is one of the great bright lights of queer comedy but we’re never allowed to talk about it,” said Guy Branum now.

It’s so similar yet different to the discussions in the media and in comedy surrounding Dave Chappelle’s continued barbs about the trans community and placing their struggles alongside or against those of black Americans.

Mae Martin has used their privilege and platform on Netflix to publicly shame the likes of Chappelle and Ricky Gervais, but this doc also gives lesser-known trans comedians including Roz Hernandez, KJ Whitehead, and Robin Tran a voice to clap back at comedians whose material clearly makes them feel less safe today than they felt even five years ago.

Sex and Skin: None shown, but lots of talking and joking about it.

Parting Shot: The doc effectively ends with the same parting shot as the 2022 Netflix comedy special, followed by a quickly flashing series of headshots of LGBTQ+ comedians, followed by outtakes over the end credits. The last outtake goes to Cho, claiming queer women are better at comedy because “we just don’t care” what men think.

Sleeper Star: Robin Tyler, who provides current interviews, may have been the biggest pioneer of them all, having come out at age 16 in 1958, and performing on TV in the 1970s. That is, until she told a joke mocking anti-gay crusader Anita Bryant on Norm Crosby’s stand-up showcase that literally cancelled her own late-night TV deal. “I don’t mind them being born-again, but why do they have to come back as themselves?” Tyler joked then, and now. But she didn’t let the end of her TV career stop her. Instead, she became a vigorous activist. “Closets are vertical coffins. All you do is suffocate to death,” Tyler says.

Our Call: STREAM IT. This is very much a companion piece to the 2022 special, and hopefully it’ll prompt you to check that out, too. I’d argue the doc would’ve helped the special gain more traction if they were released simultaneously a couple of years ago, but perhaps the delay is all-too symbolic of how slow progress can come, even on or especially on Netflix. But watching it now also feels more vital considering all of the hateful forces mobilizing politically and socially against the LGBTQ+ community now. As one of the comedians says in the doc, hate comes from fear of the unknown. And knowing and laughing at funny queer comedians can make all fo the difference.

Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy beat. He also podcasts half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories: The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First.