Tag: comedy
Coining Catchphrases on ‘Seinfeld’
“Humor can be dissected as a frog can,” E.B. White famously wrote, “but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the purely scientific mind.” It’s from this quotation that Poking a Dead Frog: Conversations With Today’s Top Comedy Writers, Mike Sacks’ 2014 collection of interviews with humorists, takes its […]
Tig Notaro on Going Topless Onstage, Post-Double Mastectomy
Last week, ‘Tig’, a documentary about stand-up comic Tig Notaro–whose career reached new heights in 2012 after she opened a set by announcing she had breast cancer–debuted on Netflix. In January, at Vulture, Jada Yuan spoke with Notaro about the film, the assorted grave misfortunes from 2012 that are now behind her, her plans for […]
How a ’12 Angry Men’ Parody Emerged from Amy Schumer’s Writing Room
Each episode of Inside Amy Schumer usually contains a number of sketches, but last week the entire show was composed of a single extremely ambitious sketch. Bryan Moylan recently profiled Jessi Klein, the show’s head writer and co-executive producer of the show in New York Magazine. In the excerpt below, Moylan provides context for how the much-talked-about episode came together: Tuesday night’s […]
How McLovin Was Cast From a Camera Phone Headshot
[Allison] Jones began her career with the two-beats-and-a-punch-line sitcoms of the nineteen-eighties, but, in working with Feig and the director Judd Apatow, she was required to try something revolutionary: find comedic actors who, more than just delivering jokes, could improvise and riff on their lines, creating something altogether different from what was on the page. […]
Joan Rivers: 1933-2014
Joan Rivers, comedy legend, has died at age 81. Three stories from the Longreads Archive: The Fresh Air Interview: Joan Rivers (Terry Gross, NPR) GROSS: So, like, that’s kind of a paradox to me that you live to be on stage and at the same time, there’s this dread of being on stage. Ms. RIVERS: […]
The Mysteries of Phil Hartman’s Creative Genius
Part of the reason Hartman remains fuzzy in our memories was his own doing. When he joined SNL’s cast in 1986, it was customary for a newcomer to declare he would be the next John Belushi. Hartman had a different ambition. He told the Los Angeles Times he wanted to be the next Dan Aykroyd. […]
Gary Shteyngart on the Highest Form of Tragedy
The funnier you are, the more I think there’s a tragic undercurrent. … I think humor is one of the highest forms of tragedy there is. People talk about the serious novel and these sort of hallowed tones and how important it is, but I think a lot of humorous stuff — books by writers […]
Two Emmys and $57,000 in Debt
‘They don’t teach us about money in high school.’ Today’s video pick is Modern Comedian’s short documentary on comedian Sara Schaefer, who fell deep into debt even while she was pursuing her dream career and earning two Emmys as a writer for Jimmy Fallon. (Schaefer now co-hosts the MTV series Nikki & Sara LIVE, which […]
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A writer-comedian reviews his successes and failures, realizing there’s not much difference between the two: You might be thinking to yourself, ‘How do you know the fear never goes away?’ It could just be me. It could just be pessimism, or cynicism. The realization hit me like a ton of bricks a few years back […]
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Comedy is also an industry of paying dues: Many long-time performers regard their first ten years as a kind of clueless wandering, and veteran comics tend to treat newbies like replacement troops: They are young, dumb, and could be gone soon, so it’s best to wait till they survive a while before learning their names. […]
