Valley Stream comedian aims to make it big

When grade school students are asked what they want to be when they grow up, there is often a variety of responses. Astronauts, doctors and lawyers are a few of the popular responses, but for Valley Stream native Joe Pontillo, he just wanted to make people laugh.

Pontillo, now all grown up, is a stand-up comedian working his way up the industry ranks. He routinely appears in venues across Long Island, in addition to comedy clubs in different states.

He attended Wheeler Avenue Elementary School, Memorial Junior High School and graduated from Central High School in 2001. Pontillo said he never passed up an opportunity to make his classmates laugh.

“I was more of the class clown,” Pontillo said. “If there was ever a reason for me to talk in front of the class, I would always go out of my way to make sure it was funny and ridiculous in some way.”

While attending junior high and high school, Pontillo made comedic videos with his friends. “Since I was a little kid I fancied myself as someone who should be on TV or be entertaining in some fashion,” Pontillo said.

He went on to attend Hofstra University, graduating in 2005, and received a degree in film after switching his major from television. Pontillo made his “unofficial” stand-up debut as a freshman in college, but he said it didn’t go over very well. Hofstra had a contest where the best student-comedian would get to open a show for Dave Chappelle at a later date. A 19-year-old Pontillo entered the contest, but he “didn’t have an idea” what he was doing while on stage.

Pontillo didn’t appear on stage again until he was 21 when he attended an open mic night at Governor’s of Levittown. “Comedy clubs on Long Island have designated open mic nights,” Pontillo said, “where you call up and you get booked on the show and you have to bring some people to come see you so there’s a nice crowd. I did that and all my friends came to support me, which was a terrible idea because I did bad.”

Doing stand-up was tougher than Pontillo had originally thought. “I think I was just very uneducated about how to go about starting a stand-up career,” he said. “I kind of thought, ‘let’s see what the next opportunity is,’ and then eventually I realized I should probably seek something out rather than wait.”

He quickly learned that success does not come easy in the world of comedy. “When I first got into it, I was naïve,” Pontillo said, “so I thought I’d do a couple of shows here and there and somebody will see me and in like three weeks I’d have a TV show, but it really doesn’t work that way. You have to take it to another level, get on stage every night and be hard core about it.”

Pontillo, who refers to himself as an observational comedian, gets on stage whenever an opportunity presents itself, including at Sip This on Rockaway Avenue where he last appeared on April 4. “It’s a very good atmosphere,” Pontillo said. “During your set you’ll get heckled by the espresso machine. We have a bunch of regulars who come to the show and there are always new people each time.”

He now lives in Brooklyn but says he makes multiple trips to Valley Stream each week to visit with family and friends. Pontillo will be appearing several times in the greater New York area in the coming weeks. To find a full list of show dates, check out www.joepontillo.com.