Las Vegas Weekly

November 24, 2008 · 3:18 PM

Comedy Festival wrap-up: Hans Klok, Ellen DeGeneres and celebrity baggers

By Robin Leach

Ellen DeGeneres with some of the cast, including Hans Klok in the background.

Photo: Tom Donoghue

Talk-show host and comedienne Ellen DeGeneres turned part of Wolfgang Puck’s Spago restaurant in the Forum Shops of Caesars Palace into her renowned “riff-raff” room when she taped an extra episode of her Emmy Award-winning daily program.

Caesars headliner Bette Midler, singer Pink and former Beauty of Magic Planet Hollywood headliner Hans Klok were the special guests -- along with 200 guests of Ellen’s show there. Ellen’s technicians ensured that fans in both Spago and The Colosseum, where Hans Klok performed his magic, were able to see the action in both places on large-screen monitors.

I chatted with Hans as to why he’s been selected by Ellen to appear five times on her show this year alone: “She loves magic. She is an ambassador for me. I am not a big name here in America yet, so she really does help do something for me.” Click HERE for our Comedy Festival coverage Friday with Hans’ underwater escape trick featured on Ellen’s TV show.

“I wanted to do the underwater escape in Beauty of Magic with my co-star Pamela Anderson. The producer did not like it. I had a great producer, but he was worried for Pamela and thought it too dangerous for her. He forced me to do too much that was not really my style. We had a storyline in the show that was too much talking. I am more into fast illusions.

“I want to tell you what my experience in Vegas taught me. I learned a lot. Never land in Vegas with a show that exists already. This town expects to be special and privileged. The town wants you to make a show -- a spectacle not seen anywhere else -- for it. I had a lot of criticism, and they said my style was old-fashioned. It is fine with me; I know I am a very good illusionist, but I have to do something completely new next time -- and I will.

“Criss Angel has opened since I left, and I know next time I come to Vegas, I will come back to the Strip and come up with something specially made for Vegas. This town needs more magic. You still have Lance Burton, Penn & Teller and Criss Angel, but after Siegfried & Roy left, that was that. I am Vegas. I am a little over the top, and I love it.

“I don’t know, when but we will return. I always felt very welcome in the city. Everybody was very good to me. I must say it was the best time of my life, and I learned a lot. It was the most difficult thing to do, but also the best time of my life.”

You can read all our Comedy Festival coverage here at Vegas DeLuxe. Our excellent editor John Katsilometes has posted his reports and reviews on the Seinfeld Bus (click HERE), “Ellen’s Even Bigger Really Big Show” (click HERE) and Bobby Slayton (click HERE), and you can click HERE for his weekend story on the “Cheech & Chong Roast.” Relive the three-day Comedy Festival by clicking on our photo gallery HERE. And our colleagues at Las Vegas Weekly’s Web site LasVegasWeekly.com have reviews of and stories about many of The Comedy Festival shows.

During the three-day Comedy Festival at Caesars Palace, the first-ever, star-studded celebrity-bagging competition took place for the TBS improv series 10 Items or Less.” 10 Items regulars John Lehr, Kim Coles, Roberta Valderrama and Greg Davis Jr. competed in the wacky contests against Mad Men’s Vincent Kartheiser, Aaron Staton and Alison Brie, plus Eva Marcille from The Young and the Restless and Kyle Howard, Michael Bunin, Kellee Stewart and Jamie Kaler from the TBS series My Boys. They were all judged on their grocery bagging speed, technique and equal distribution of weight in bags.

Daytime Emmy Award-nominated Judge David Young served as the referee, and Mark DeCarlo hosted the program set in a grocery store. Judge Young had serious arguments with the competing teams before he declared the 10 Items host team the winners. They donated their winnings to the DoSomething.org charity, and, incidentally, all the food used in the contest was donated to the downtown Three Square Food Bank.

Ellen summed up her participation in The Comedy Festival: “My priority has always been to put more positive energy, more compassion and more friendly humor out there. There’s too much mean-spirited comedy. I try to stay away from that. It’s not healthy, and I think it contributes to a lot of the anger that’s out there right now.

“People watch our show to feel good, and that’s my goal. That’s what drives me -- that’s who I am and how I choose to live. I like my studio audience to be happy and positive, and that energy to me translates back through the camera to the viewers at home.”

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