The Definitive Guide to Comedy
Just one day into the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival, new streaming upstart Seeso has made waves by acquiring worldwide distribution rights to the documentary, The Pistol Shrimps, to become the platform’s first direct-to-Seeso movie. The Pistol Shrimps has its world premiere today at Tribeca. The doc, directed by Brent Hodge …
Netflix has acquired and will release Hannibal Takes Edinburgh, a feature-length documentary film featuring comedian Hannibal Buress, with a global premiere on Friday! From the Netflix announcement: Filmed over the course of 28 days in August 2013, Hannibal Takes Edinburgh follows Buress as the then up-and-coming comedian performed nightly to packed houses …
Can we talk? There already just was and still is a great documentary, made just six years ago, that reminds us what it meant to be Joan Rivers. A Piece of Work. What Rivers meant to comedians and all of us, though, that’s the point of Exit Laughing, the first …
Lance Bangs has become today’s go-to director for comedians filming their stand-up specials, road shows, showcases and documentaries. His credits since 2013 alone include directing Hannibal Buress, Marc Maron, Chelsea Peretti, Jen Kirkman, Kyle Kinane, John Hodgman and Bridget Everett. He followed Todd Barry on his Crowd Work Tour, hopped …
South By Southwest has filled out its 2016 feature film slate for SXSW, and a Robert Klein documentary directed by Klein himself will round out a comedy bill that’s quite meta. Last year, hit flicks Trainwreck and Spy both made their world premieres in Austin for SXSW. For 2016, the comedy movies …
Just as new words surfaced from Jerry Lewis reasserting his claim that nobody will ever see his infamous still-unreleased Holocaust film from 1972, a Jewish comedian from Britain has revealed startling new images and interviews with Lewis in a new documentary that aired on BBC, “The Story of The Day …
These last weeks of the calendar year can be delicate times for comedians. Do you have family obligations? Do you not have family to go home to? Do you have to work on Christmas or New Year’s Eve? Are you forever scanning the Internet to see if your name pops …
Sundance, the annual kick-off of film festival season, has announced most of its 2016 lineup. While a number of comedians will head to Utah in January to represent their roles in a variety of independent comedies, rom-coms and dramedies, there are relatively few selections so far purely centered on comedians. …
Amy Rice directed a documentary following Barack Obama from Illinois to the White House (2009’s By the People: The Election of Barack Obama), which was nothing like summer camp. Especially nothing like a movie about summer camp. Nor the decks of footage Rice had stored away in her closet from …
It’s no secret that some of Saturday Night Live‘s most striking work in recent years has not come via live TV, but come alive via lightning-quick production of thrilling tributes to film via short films. Think of the Wes Anderson Halloween tribute “New Horror Trailer,” Louis CK as Lincoln, or Ian …
