Brooks, Shandling Are Highlights of Humor Festival : Comedy: The four-day, 40-program event includes tapings of HBO’s ‘Young Comedians Special’ and the Tracey Ullman-hosted ‘Women of the Night.’

ASPEN, Colo. â€”  “I think it’s long overdue,â€� Albert Brooks joked, as he was honored by the American Film Institute for his career achievements. “Just make me a promise--no more tributes to Jack Lemmon.â€�

To the delight of adoring fans here Friday at the first U.S. Comedy Arts Festival, Brooks also read a mock-celebratory telegram from House Speaker Newt Gingrich: “I don’t know what AFI stands for, but I’m lumping it in with everything else I’m canceling funding for.�

As things turned out, Brooks and another of comedy’s greatest practitioners of the art of dissecting neurotic foibles--Garry Shandling--were the highlights of the festival Friday and Saturday.

The festival concluded Saturday after offering industry talent scouts a blizzard of humor--some 40 programs over the course of four evenings--and plenty of blizzards for those who braved the nearby ski slopes.

Inside, Shandling and Brooks set the pace for the many newcomers on display. Both men have built thriving careers on self-flagellating humor--Brooks in cult films such as “Modern Romance� and “Real Life� and Shandling in his wildly acclaimed TV evisceration of the late-night talk show industry, “The Larry Sanders Show.�

In his appearance, Brooks sat sheepishly before his fans and admitted to mixed feelings over whether he should appear at a public retrospective of his work. (His agent advised him, “When the studios no longer want you, this will be your living,� he said.)

He recounted some of the nightmares he endured while a stand-up comic for rock musicians more than 20 years ago--including the time Sly Stone’s manager asked him just minutes before a show in Tacoma, Wash., if Brooks could pad his set until Sly arrived--from Ohio.

Brooks also discussed the difficulties he has encountered with Hollywood studio executives while creating his movies. “When you drive by a studio,� he said, consider the size of its parking lot--�Every car in that lot represents someone who is there to keep you from doing what you want to do.�

*

Shandling, meanwhile, was the host of HBO’s “Young Comedians Special� Saturday night, introducing up-and-coming comics who had to compete with his quick wit.

Dave Attell--who proclaimed he enjoyed “making fun of the Amish--because they’re never going to find out�--and Anthony Clark, who declared his Virginia hometown the best place to live for people who have only one year to live, “because every day there seems like an eternity,� emerged as the audience favorites.

Likewise, Wendy Liebman and Diana Jordan reigned as crowd pleasers during the taping of the Tracey Ullman-hosted “Women of the Night,� the cable station’s tribute to female stand-up talent, scheduled for a May air date. On a local level, a venue called the Mustang Cafe won rave reviews for a steady stream of hip entertainment; its programs quickly became the festival’s hottest tickets.

Stu Smiley, executive director of the Comedy Arts Festival, said that to secure the top talent for the festival, and to make clubs such as the Mustang must-see venues, a battery of talent scouts from HBO and elsewhere spent months combing eight different American cities, reviewing potential entertainers--not just stand-up comics, but filmmakers and theater performers--both live and on videotape.

If an avant-garde sensibility seemed to emerge--some of the best word-of-mouth was reserved for such theatrically centered performers as Danny Hoch, One Woman Shoe, Pulp Playhouse and Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind--Smiley said, it was because “the sensibility of the group of scouts got thrown in there, for better or worse. We were covering a wide range of talent--from writers to directors to performers--and we wanted to present to the industry the best people.�

This being Aspen, however, it sometimes seemed that the weather inspired more chatter than the performers. Saturday saw a major snowstorm that not only diminished the charms of skiing but also shut down the airport and stranded many festival attendees. On Sunday, with the weather still threatening, hundreds of industry folk were scrambling to leave in time for Hollywood’s battery of festivities surrounding the Academy Awards. Six-hour bus rides to Denver became the only guaranteed exit from the town--if the roads leaving town hadn’t been shut down.

Such meteorological mayhem meant, ironically, that Comedy Arts Festival attendees were in grave danger of losing their senses of humor. The inspired Angst of Brooks’ and Shandling’s most memorably agitated characters were suddenly in grave danger of being overshadowed by formerly genial festival-goers.