The Definitive Guide to Comedy
Jimmy Shubert was just a kid from Philly who wanted to be a magician. That’s how he started in show business, before moving to Los Angeles in the 1980s and taking a job at The Comedy Store, where he became the kid in Sam Kinison’s outlaws of comedy crew. That …
Dave Smith is a native New Yorker and key member of the emerging new platform, GaS Digital Network. You’ve likely heard Dave as one-third of the Legion of Skanks alongside Big Jay Oakerson and Luis J Gomez, or as host of the podcast Part of the Problem, which combined receive …
Ryan Hamilton grew up in a small town in Idaho and studied broadcasting before turning to comedy. Hamilton calls several comedy scenes home, and that perhaps allowed him to emerge nationally in the mid-2000s in Sierra Mist’s America’s Next Great Comic Search. He’s also won the Great American Comedy Festival …
Lynne Koplitz caught her first wave of success hosting or co-hosting TV shows the likes of Change of Heart, How to Boil Water, and Life and Style. The stylish comedian became friends with the late great Joan Rivers while paired up in the IFC comedy Z Rock, and later became …
Janicza Bravo has made several short films that debuted at premier festivals such as Sundance and SXSW, and also directed an episode of the hit FX series, Atlanta. Bravo’s first feature film, Lemon, features her husband, Brett Gelman, as an actor and acting coach who turns 40 and realizes nothing in his …
Natalie Morales is an actress best known for her supporting roles in sitcoms such as Parks and Recreation, Trophy Wife, Girls, and The Grinder. She’s also done drama with White Collar, and action-adventure with The Middleman. She directed a webseries for Funny or Die about James Joyce’s Love Letters, and you …
Nate Bargatze is Jimmy Fallon’s favorite stand-up comedian, and Bargatze has the Tonight Show credits to back that up. Nate also has gone on tour with Fallon, multiple tours to entertain the troops in Iraq and Kuwait, and has two hit comedy albums to boot: Yelled At By A Clown …
OK. So I’ve only sat down to podcast with 28 of the comedians performing this week so far as part of the 2017 Just For Laughs festival in Montreal. But that’s a start! Each of these fine, funny folks regales me (and now you) with inspirational stories about how they …
Judd Apatow has one of the most impressive comedy resumes of anyone, anywhere. His Apatow Productions has produced and developed the television series Freaks and Geeks, Undeclared, Girls, Love and Crashing, he has directed the hit movies The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up, Funny People, This Is 40 and Trainwreck, and …
Dylan Brody started his stand-up career in New York City while still a teenager in the early 1980s, performing on multiple TV showcases, writing monologue jokes for Jay Leno when Leno was still just guest-hosting The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, and he has performed around the world. In more recent …
