At some point early Monday morning, Steven Brody Stevens turned digital. HBO Digital.
The stand-up comedian, TV audience warm-up guy, supporting character in Todd Phillips movies and friend to Zach Galifianakis, Stevens now has his own turn in the spotlight as star of a six-episode series, Brody Stevens: Enjoy It!
Each episode is 15 minutes long and available only to HBO subscribers via HBO Go (on mobile phones, iPads and gaming systems) or On Demand on television from now through Sept. 23, 2012. Stevens is one of four comedians with new HBO Digitals series — the others are Garfunkel and Oates, Single Long (a Chicago-based group attempts to launch a funny dating website) and The Boring Life of Jacqueline (about a New York women looking for love and a brighter future). All four projects already were in the pipeline as potential HBO series, and executives decided to try them out instead in the online/mobile platform, especially now that they’ve launched HBO Go.
Here’s a quick teaser clip for Brody Stevens on HBO Digitals.
If you’ve never experienced the comedic voice of Brody Stevens, not to worry that you’re worried you’re not “enjoying it” the first time around.
“I think the more they see me, the better,” Stevens tells The Comic’s Comic. “They watch my Conan set or research me on the Internet. That always helps. I feel like I’m the kind of guy who it takes a couple of times to get it. Even me, it takes me a couple of times to get me.”
Stevens, who’ll proudly proclaim “I’m 818 ’til I die,” pitched for the Arizona State baseball team, emerged out of the Seattle comedy scene in the mid-1990s with his own popular cable access show, then hit the New York and Los Angeles scenes. He has performed warm-up and other duties for the likes of The Best Damn Sports Show Period and Chelsea Lately.
Stevens already has received positive energy and feedback from fellow comedians and fans via Twitter, Facebook and in person. “I’m pleasantly surprised,” Stevens said. “You do something and you put it out there. Hopefully they laugh and they like it. They get it. A lot of great guys working on it with me. I was just being me and letting them capture me.”
His six-episode series, 90 minutes in all, emerged from a pilot presentation Stevens made with Galifianakis (who’s an executive producer and also appears onscreen in it) to HBO last year. The season finds him reconciling with his sister, Stephanie, as well as the folks at Chelsea Lately, but also hitting the low of an arrest and institutionalization — which fans and followers may remember witnessing play out online as his mania spread to his Twitter feed.
“He used to be funny and strange,” Galifianiakis says in episode two. “Then it became strange, without the funny part.”
Sarah Silverman, Chelsea Handler, Steve Agee, Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim, Jen Kirkman, Dave Rath, Judd Apatow and even Charlie Rose and Rich Eisen make appearances in the series. There are dream sequences, animated bits, therapy sessions with The Laugh Factory’s in-house therapist.
Spoiler alert: There is a happy ending, as we see behind the scenes of his stand-up performance on Conan in May. “What’s next?” they ask.
So did we. “Season two if there is one, I’d like to do more comedy,” Stevens sad. “Hopefully.”
Watch Brody Stevens: Enjoy It! on HBO Go or HBO On Demand, now through Sept. 23, 2012.
2 thoughts on “Brody Stevens talks up his new HBO Digitals series: “Enjoy it!””
Comments are closed.