Splitsider

Posts tagged as mental health

The Uneasy Relationship Between Mental Illness and Comedy

I had to take a Xanax to write this article. My anxiety makes it hard to start; my depression and self-doubt make it hard to come to any conclusion. And so, in classic neurotic fashion, I begin with skepticism:

“Are you SERIOUS?" Marc Maron asked me, presumably rhetorically, upon hearing my reason for calling him. I don’t think he was trying to be mean. It seemed like genuine disbelief.

I told him that I was. That I believed — in the face of countless evidence to the contrary — that mental illness was an obstacle to good comedy and not a tool for its deployment. That there exists a [...]

Will Ferrell Is Disgustingly Well-Adjusted

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 [...]

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