Living comedy legend Carol Burnett, who turned 80 today, went on The Tonight Show earlier this week and shared a fascinating story about her first break in the entertainment industry in the 1950s, which involves a mysterious millionaire. (via The Comedy Bureau)
"I had a club at the Seaport, and on Saturday mornings [Jon Stewart] would do a children’s show. I swear, I wish I had the pictures of him, he had a cape on… he was a Captain Crusader type, with a cape on. A superhero type."
- Caroline Hirsch, founder of the famous comedy club Caroline's, recalling Jon Stewart's early days in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter that also touches on Louis C.K., Andy Kaufman, and Dane Cook.
The YouTube channel Official Comedy just unearthed this 25-year-old video of Marc Maron performing stand-up in 1988. Still only three or four years into his stand-up career at the time, Maron is still honing his style but it's fun to see him perform so young. This is from an 80s/90s TV show called Rascal's Comedy Hour, which Maron taped during the time in his life when he looked the most like Mitch Hedberg.
Hit the jump for video of a young Louis C.K. doing stand-up in 1987 to compare these two guys early in their careers in the late '80s:
At a recent screening of his new movie This is 40, Judd Apatow revealed that the first script he ever wrote was a spec script of The Simpsons back in 1990, when the show was still in the midst of its first season. Here's Apatow on the subject, as quoted by Slash Film:
"Who wants to grow up really? It’s kind of a drag. It’s funny because the first thing I ever wrote was about that. The first thing I ever wrote was a spec episode of The Simpsons. After only five Simpsons episodes aired, I sat down and tried to write one when I was in my [...]
Here's a newly-unearthed video of Reggie Watts (of Conan and Comedy Bang Bang fame) performing a parody song on the PBS/Disney kids show Bill Nye the Science Guy from 1998. At the time, Watts was a 25-year-old alternative musician in Seattle. Bill Nye was also filmed in Seattle and would typically use local musicians for the music videos that closed out each episode. This is Watts's earliest known TV credit and precedes anything on his IMDB by nearly a decade. He wouldn't begin performing solo until 2002. Thanks to Splitsider reader Victor Manuel for sending this in!
