Tag: interview

StandUpTalk Is Great

I found this website and it’s very lovely. It’s got interviews, videos, and news about comedy…and what more could you ask for? A lot, but that’s because you’re not being grateful. Grateful should be spelled greatful not grateful. It just sounds like it means “full of grates.” That doesn’t sound too pleasant.

Anyways, here’s a good little article about Brent Morin to give you a taste of their lovely work at StandUpTalk, which I believe is run out of The Comedy Store in LA. Looking…looking…I think that’s true.

Regardless, they have some great stuff if you’re a comedy fan. Going on the Things I Like.

Graphic Art, Not Cartoons: An Interview With Kaitlyn Kieronski

It was a rainy, freezy day this past week when I met up with Kaitlyn Kieronski, a fellow alum of the always lovely Avery Coonley School and a current senior at NYU. We rendezvoused at The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf in the West Village (a venue that offers much more than it’s name suggests) to warm up with a cup of coffee and chat about graphic art – one part of Kaitlyn’s very complicated, self-designed major.

We talked about Walt Disney, voice acting, Cartoon Network, Seinfeld, Pokemon, a brief history of Pixar, Japanese computer games, and a lot of other fun, fantastic, and amazing stuff.

Continue reading “Graphic Art, Not Cartoons: An Interview With Kaitlyn Kieronski” →

Carol Burnett On The State Of Comedy TV

Admittedly, my ignorant young self knows nothing about Carol Burnett. But, a comedian friend shared a quote of hers from this Hollywood Reporter interview that I thought was interesting:

“Today the suits say, “It’s got to be fast.” So I think some of the writing isn’t good anymore. Now sitcoms sound like they’ve been written by teenage boys in a locker room.”

I agree. TV writing today is just punchlines in a lot of shows, which to me gets old. That’s not how life works. Some of the best sketch writing builds up to a climax. A lot of great sketches or TV shows are more “thinkers” than laugh out loud funny and the pressure for have every second be funny to compete with people’s short attention span I see as detrimental.

Stand up writing is actually very similar in New York. Here, you gotta have punchline, punchline, punchline or else no one will listen to you. I think there’s a lot of great comedy that isn’t like that, so it’s nice to see someone else saying, “Slow down!”

I actually don’t think anything else in the interview is that interesting, but please do read it if that tickles your fancy. And then you’ll know just about as much about Carol Burnett as I do.

Amy Schumer And Joke Stealing

If you haven’t heard this recording between Jim Norton and Amy Schumer, it’s a must-hear. She defends herself regarding all the recent accusations of her joke stealing and it’s fascinating.

A lot of comics rush to Schumer’s defense, and rightfully so. I can’t say for sure that she didn’t do it, but the jokes that she’s been accused of stealing are really…well, not that great of jokes that basically anyone could think of. I think it’s more likely to have been coincidence. That won’t stop the internet from bashing her, though. Just take a look at the comments on the video…sheeeeeesh!

On the other hand, Schumer does say a lot of things in this interview that she probably doesn’t have to say. Saying over and over that her accusers aren’t famous like her and suggesting that accusing her of joke stealing is how they think they can get famous is not exactly super classy. That doesn’t mean she’s wrong, and I know she’s clearly upset in the recording, but I might try to handle it a little differently if I were her.

 

John Mulaney Talks Playing Colleges

This is a really fun interview that came out in April from Inside Joke (watchinsidejoke), a YouTube channel I’d never heard of before, but looks awesome.

As a recent college grad, I found Mulaney’s stories especially funny. We had comedians come to our school and I remember thinking, what is the audience doing? They would only laugh at set-ups instead of the punch lines and they would laugh and cheer uncontrollably just at references to like a TV show and they would yell out stuff! And the show would be generally unorganized. And the shows happened in weird spaces. College shows are weird.

A lot of the interview is also Mulaney and the host reminiscing about the last time she interviewed him. That was funny.

Check out Inside Joke – they have tons of videos with awesome comics, but somehow don’t have a thousand views on everything! I was pleasantly surprised by the quality.

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Nathan Fielder Interviews With an Interviewer’s Mom

I posted a little while ago about Nathan Fielder’s new season of Nathan for You. A writer for the AV Club, John Teti, asked Fielder to do a traditional interview to promote the show, but Fielder had a different idea.

Teti had previously reviewed Fielder’s show on his podcast Mom on Pop, where he discusses pop culture with his mother.  Teti’s mother gave scathing reviews of Fielder’s work on the podcast, saying that Fielder wasn’t funny and she didn’t think he was a very nice guy.

So, what did Fielder suggest for the interview? He wanted to meet up with Teti’s mother to try to convince her that he was a good guy.

The interview with Teti’s mother is hilarious, at least to me. It’s definitely not your average type of funny. But it reminded me of conversations I have with people who aren’t really connected to the comedy world and are pretty ignorant about what can and can’t be funny (even though they’re generally nice people). The idea that some guy’s mother is trying to tell Fielder, who runs a successful comedy show, what is and isn’t funny is a pretty funny idea.

Spoiler: Fielder is successful in the end.

A Conversation Between Two Clean Comics

Brian Regan recently performed the first ever live Comedy Central special at Radio City Music Hall in Manhattan. It was a huge deal in the comedy community and most of my friends were either watching together online or actually there in person.

One of the reasons Regan was one of the only people who could be considered to do such an unprecedented show was because he is known so well as a clean comic.

Jim Gaffigan is one of the best known clean comics who actually resents being labeled as one. That’s just one of the things these two comics talk about in this Comics Talk to Comics piece in Vulture. It actually came out just before Regan’s special, so you’ll benefit from the extra excitement.