Splitsider

It may be hard to believe now, but until the early '90s, the biggest influence on whether a stand-up comedian's career took off was left to one man: Johnny Carson. Not only would a shot on his version of The Tonight Show ensure that you could take a step up in the comedy world, but if he motioned you over to sit with him and Ed McMahon, you had the upper hand on any comedy club owner that ever tried to screw you over as you were coming up.

That's what happened to Drew Carey, whose career skyrocketed after his initial 1991 appearance on The Tonight Show, where he [...]

Jeffrey Tambor stopped by Late Night last night to promote tomorrow night's premiere of Bent on NBC, and he dropped a couple of his catchphrases from roles past. "There's always money in the banana stand." "Hey now." Unfortunately his diminutively regal character on Yo Gabba Gabba didn't seem to have a catchphrase, but it is worth appreciating all the same. He's a singing king on a tiny pillow! That is a career role!

“That’s the little bunny that keeps you running around the dog track, and it actually is an illusion. You always think that next horizon is where you’ll be comfortable and where everything will be set. It just never really is.” – That's Ed Helms, who's recently taken on roles in The Lorax and Jeff, Who Lives at Home, in this profile. His wisdom knows no bounds.

Peter Farrelly is making the leap from movies to TV, and from being half of a dynamic duo to being a dynamic single person. He's writing a comedy pilot for CBS, and he'll also direct it if the script gets picked up. It's about "a group of six parents and step-parents who are tasked with raising two kids." And our national love affair with the concept of "parenting" in entertainment lives on!

Fresh off SNL, Jason Segel continues effortlessly riding the gale-force winds of The Muppets promotion by taking us through his past roles. He even reveals the true goals behind Judd Apatow's movie making career:

[Undeclared] was really good, and they canceled it the same way they'd canceled Freaks and Geeks, so that was the moment when Judd was like, "All right, watch this: I'm single-handedly going to make all these people movie stars. You think you're so smart, network? Watch what I'm about to do." And from that show being canceled, Judd went on a Count of Monte Cristo-style revenge mission to make every one of us famous. [...]

If you're not wiped out by March Madness yet, go vote in the championship round of this Best Will Ferrell Character Tournament. One of the competitors has many leather-bound books, and his apartment smells of rich mahogany. The other abides by the four main food groups: candy, candy canes, candy corns and syrup. The choice is yours.

David Cross fans should be used to his pulling no punches by now. We already know he was not a fan of malt loaf on the set of The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret, and now thanks to this interview, we know how he really feels about the East Village and the controversy over his comments about Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked. (He feels negatively about them.) It's not all bad, though – Cross also talks about making peace with the fact that quality work is often only appreciated years after it's produced, and how that may still happen for Todd Margaret. Perhaps in the [...]

The darkest things about Will Ferrell in this profile are that Joan Rivers accused him of being rude once and that he doesn't love Chihuahuas. Also that sometimes his pants and shoes don't match. Honestly, it is shocking that any human being could be this untroubled, let alone one in comedy. "I just make a decision and go and feel good about it," he says of his choice to star in Casa de Mi Padre. Right! Of course! That's what we all do! Who said anything about agonizing for days over the smallest decisions, going back and forth a thousand times and then obsessing for months afterward, plagued [...]

You might not have noticed that Dane Cook hasn't been performing or writing any standup since February, but it's true. He says he's "taken it everywhere I've wanted to take it" and wants to focus instead on projects like the dramatic indie film Answers to Nothing and, of course, his upcoming NBC sitcom premiering in the fall. Be careful when you read that profile if you're committed to hating Dane Cook, though, because its description of his financial struggles after his parents both died and his brother-slash-business manager screwed him over might actually make you feel a little sympathetic for him. Just a little.

Oh fame, you are fickle temptress! While the Bill Hickses of the world receive your clammy embrace only after death, you mount yourself on a Dane Cook like a teenager after her first taste of Peach Schnapps! But there are no guarantees in this life. And there are no sure paths to becoming famous. Hundreds of top-notch stand-ups and sketch/improv performers are toiling away in obscurity at this very second (okay, maybe not this very second, but you get the gist).

So, how the hell do you become the next comedy sensation?

While most of our most renowned comedy performers have come up either through stand-up or sketch/improv (the two [...]

Even before suffering another heart attack yesterday (his second in 11 days and third in a year), Gallagher said last week that he's retiring from live performance after 32 years. Sounds like the right move for his health. And a 32-year career is nothing to sneeze at. Unless some little bits of watermelon debris get trapped in your nostrils; then sneezing should be expected.

So it turns out Woody Allen basically figured out the plot of Midnight in Paris in the late 1960s. That's how it seems when you listen to this footage of him doing standup from back in the day, anyhow. It's kind of amazing that a concept like this can stay in the back of someone's mind for 50 years before it becomes a movie. It's a good thing he never actually got punched by Ernest Hemingway, because the ensuing brain damage would surely render that impossible.

Megan Mullally has picked up some great stories over the course of her career, from hiding from a tornado under a card table with Michelle Pfeiffer to taking her shirt off on Parks & Rec before even meeting the director of the episode. Did you know that she was hired to guest star on Happy Endings because Casey Wilson was impressed by her phone's address book at a party, or that she was afraid of being fired for Karen Walker's high-pitched voice on Will & Grace? Well, she was.

Ricky Gervais' biggest career regret: thinking of the concept for Night at the Museum in 1999 but not finishing the screenplay, thereby missing out on the billion dollars the movie grossed. Good thing he's so humbly telling us about it now so we don't forget what a comedy genius he is.

This one marks the latest in a series of essays by Gervais, about Gervais. In other news, one time I thought it would be cool to make a movie about a ship sinking, so James Cameron owes me a billion dollars for Titanic. Oh wait, no he doesn't, because there's [...]