The Definitive Guide to Comedy
After stirring keynote speeches by Lewis Black and Marc Maron over the past couple of years, Patton Oswalt took to the stage adjacent to the Hyatt lounge on Thursday afternoon to deliver the third annual keynote for the Just For Laughs Comedy Conference in Montreal. Oswalt employed self-deprecation right off …
For the past couple of decades, Montreal’s “New Faces of Comedy” has represented a watershed moment in the careers of stand-up comedians. Getting invited to Montreal for New Faces meant you had made it. Or maybe you hadn’t made it just yet, but this represented your big break, your chance …
Montreal’s Just For Laughs festival just got that much more interesting, as FOX announced Wednesday that it had ordered The Short-Com Comedy Hour, with up to nine episodes airing next summer and showcasing stand-up comedians in four mini sitcoms (short-coms) per hour. “We are basically ripping open the traditional scripted comedy …
Jerry Seinfeld usually drops in at New York City comedy clubs in the days leading up to his appearances on Late Show with David Letterman, so he can work out the kinks of what he’ll joke about during a stand-up set or even on panel chat with Letterman. But Seinfeld …
Remember when The New York Times profiled Eddie Brill into a corner and caused an uproar both within CBS and Late Show with David Letterman — which took away Brill’s power to book stand-up comedians on Letterman after almost 11 years — and within the comedy community, which debated whether …
For someone who grew up on camera in front of much of England the United Kingdom, and performs his one-man shows around the world, Simon Amstell remains socially awkward, lonely and depressed. That much Amstell is quick to remind his audiences in his latest one-man show, Numb. “That’s the hour!” …
Gil Ozeri stared down Adam Pally for a few seconds that seemed to stop time. Then Ozeri bum-rushed Pally and tackled him onstage. That a sold-out crowd of 479 in the School of the Visual Arts Theatre looked on didn’t seem to deter them from turning their hourlong improv comedy …
Still trying to read the tea leaves to see if Jason Sudeikis will return to Saturday Night Live this fall? One thing’s for certain. Sudeikis will continue working with the SNL crew in primetime, as NBC Chairman Bob Greenblatt announced today at the TV Critics Association summer press tour that …
Beth Stelling made her TV debut as a stand-up comedian last night on Conan. Stelling was a Chicago-based stand-up and New Face at Montreal’s Just For Laughs festival last July. We learned as much about her uterus as she did! Uterus. We also learned that biking can be fun and healthy, …
This is what aspiring stand-up comedian Caleb Medley looks like on his home page. But this (right) is what Medley looked like today, lying in a coma in University Hospital in Aurora, Colo., with a gunshot wound to his eye and head. Medley, 23, was one of the dozens of …
