The Definitive Guide to Comedy
Set your countdown clocks: The 17th Annual Del Close Marathon is a little more than a month away — now serving up improvised comedy from thousands of performers across nine stages from 4 p.m. Friday, June 26, 2015, through the end of Sunday evening, June 28. Hosted and organized by …
IFC’s talk show with the most liberal interpretations of talk and show — Comedy Bang! Bang! with host Scott Aukerman and musical cohort Reggie Watts — returns Oct. 17 for the second half of its third season. Ten new episodes will premiere at 11 p.m. ET/PT Friday nights, with guests including: James Adomian, Eric Andre,Dane Cook, Rob Corddry, Andy Daly, Jon …
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) …
Was recreating the opening credits to Simon & Simon the “greatest event in television history”? No. No, it was not. Don’t take my word for it. That’s just one of the lines handed to Jeff Probst as he once again hosts a new special event for Adult Swim, in which …
Attention, YouTubers! Rob Riggle and his comedic colleagues who co-star in Riggle’s new webseries, “Coogan Auto,” have fired a shot across your bows. In their short promotional video, “Real Actors Against Web Videos,” Riggle, JB Smoove, Horatio Sanz, Jake Johnson and Alison Becker lump YouTube video-makers together as a sad, …
Anyone can throw on a mask and pretend to be a Mexican wrestler for laughs. Just ask Jack Black, who employed this method to great effect in 2006 for Nacho Libre. Or go back in time to Seattle, before the Y2K virus wiped out life on Earth, and a time …
It’s December 2011, and just like Jimmy Fallon and Saturday Night Live had predicted many years ago, Fallon is back as the host. Fallon has returned a couple of times previously in cameos to join Justin Timberlake in the Barry Gibb Talk Show sketches, but this is different. For one …
Hey kids of all ages, kids who love dancing, and kids who love the Upright Citizens Brigade. If you live anywhere near Austin, Texas, then you have the chance to see the UCB4’s latest feature film before everyone else, as Freak Dance premieres this weekend at the Austin Film Festival. …
Over the summer, Gary Rudoren (co-author of Comedy By The Numbers) told me he had a brilliant idea for another comedy book. Rudoren wanted to publish an oral history of the Upright Citizens Brigade. But he said he was too busy for it. Turns out I was too busy to …
On Saturday Night Live, oftentimes something will strike the cast and writers as super-funny around the office (particularly late at night Tuesday and into Wednesday morning of an SNL week), but not quite translate onscreen before the live audience. Such was the case, apparently, with Cup Boy and Plate Boy, …
