The Definitive Guide to Comedy
Just in time for the 15th annual Del Close Marathon, here’s an inside behind-the-scenes look at the Upright Citizens Brigade’s signature long-form improv show and form, “ASSSSCAT.” The long-running UCB ASSSSCAT show, which helps close out DCM and packs the theaters in New York City (and now Los Angeles, too) …
Ask most comedians today who they love and loved watching perform, and Richard Pryor’s name is more likely than not to make the cut as one of the top two influencers for a generation of stand-ups. That’s the sense you’ll get at the start of watching the new documentary about …
In case you missed it, here it is online. From the PBS American Masters description: “Mel Brooks: Make a Noise journeys through Brooks’ early years in the creative beginnings of live television — with Sid Caesar on Your Show of Shows — to the film genres he so successfully satirized …
At a screening earlier this month of The Greatest Movie Ever Rolled at the Friars Club Comedy Film Festival, and elsewhere, Doug Benson readily concedes that he had wanted to follow up to The High Road — a 2009 road documentary for G4 that he’d hoped the cable channel would …
Here’s something for your (TBT) Throwback Thursday files. Within the opening minute of Milton Berle’s Mad Mad Mad World of Comedy (made and aired in 1974-1975), we see Laurel & Hardy in their later years do a classic joke in public, followed immediately by Milton Berle doing the same joke on …
About five years ago, Nina Conti faced a crisis of self-confidence regarding her career as a ventriloquist — despite winning the BBC New Comedy Award at the Edinburgh Festival in 2002 and the Barry Award six years later at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival (which she shared in Australia with Kristen Schaal). …
Not all Kickstarters are created equal. While “The Veronica Mars Movie Project” by the TV show’s creator, Rob Thomas, and Hollywood studio Warner Bros. roped in its $2 million goal from eager private citizens within a day — and more than $3.7 million in its first week on Kickstarter from …
Bonnie McFarlane and Rich Vos are wife and husband, both of them stand-up comedians. In their new documentary directed by McFarlane and shot by Vos, Women Aren’t Funny, they interview comedians, club owners, talent bookers and writers about the topic that never seems to let up against women in comedy. Here’s …
There’s a new documentary about Channel 101 which premiered at the inaugural RIOT LA Alternative Comedy Festival earlier this month. For those of you who need catching up, Dan Harmon (Community) and Rob Schrab (The Sarah Silverman Program) created Channel 101 in a time and land before webseries were a …
