Splitsider

In the hierarchy of artistic endeavors comedy occupies a hazy, confused space. The enthusiasm comedians are capable of generating among the general public is considerable but often fleeting; they seem unjustly deficient at inspiring the kind of long term devotion more commonly reserved for their peers in music and film. It was precisely this frustrating divide that drove Patton Oswalt to launch his Comedians of Comedy tour in 2004, a string of stand-up dates that circumvented the two-drink minimum drudgery of conventional comedy clubs in favor of smaller, hipper venues. “These are the kind of people that will support indie rock bands — for twenty years they’ll follow a [...]

This is a review of a book entitled This is a Book by Demetri Martin. The book was written by Demetri Martin, of course. The title is not the only reason, however, why it could not have possibly been written by anyone else.

There has always been a matter-of-fact post-modernism to the way Demetri Martin packages himself, and his literary debut is a remarkable translation of that unique aesthetic into book form. (That the author designed the jacket and cover artwork himself suggests that this process was a labor of love.) Several self-aware touches adorn the book, poking fun at the medium: a sly mock-tutorial, “How to read [...]

Good news comedy nerds (and just nerds): Paul is funny! Don’t be fooled by the marketing campaign and weak trailers; this is not simply a buddy comedy with wacky CGI’d aliens and weed jokes. It’s a Simon Pegg and Nick Frost movie through and through. Like Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, Pegg and Frost co-wrote a script that embraces, not mocks, the genre film.

Parody movies rarely work, and thanks to the sometimes alarming rate in which they’re churned out (Scary Movie, Epic Movie, Date Movie, etc.), quality seems to suffer. But there are a few very noteworth exceptions. Christopher Guest has mastered the mockumentary, and [...]

Once you’ve made it, it’s hard to resist the urge to take a victory lap. For those who’ve succeeded in a big way on a large stage, the lap usually takes the form of a book, in which thinly disguised self-glorification attempts to pass for genuine reflection and introspection. And yet in his memoir Zombie Spaceship Wasteland, Patton Oswalt, who has racked up impressive achievements in stand-up, movies, and television, not to mention his status as the standard-bearer for alternative comedy, abstains from even the mere hint of self-satisfaction. Rather than just dully chart the path that led him out of obscurity and into startling professional success, the comedian [...]

I moved to the United States five years ago, feeling very confident about my English vocabulary, only to find that my meager repertoire of cultural references made lively communication with other students difficult. The word that gave me the most trouble was "hipster" – my fellow freshmen used it frequently, and my inability to understand it made me feel horribly foreign. I eventually asked a local outcast (the inevitable companion of the foreign student on first days of school everywhere) to explain the concept to me. He said that hipsters never admitted to being hipsters, but that they could easily be identified by their tight uniform and hatred of [...]

There’s been a lot of talk this weekend about what kind of comedy Bridesmaids is — who it’s for, what it’s trying to do. Most of the buzz I’ve heard revolves around the comedy non-revelation that, holy shit, girls can be funny too, and look at these funny girls who are already millionaires for being funny be so funny even though girls are never funny. It’s ridiculous. And although I understand why comparisons will be drawn, over and over, to the “guy versions” of Bridesmaids, I really wish they didn’t have to be. Because Bridesmaids is, objectively, a fucking terrific comedy, independent of the gender discussions that people who [...]

"Everything you'd think from the commercials and promotional videos about the Paul Reiser Show is true. Curb-lite call it, less taste, less filling. Reiser is still Paul Reiser. He's lost a step though. It’s not that hard to see why NBC kept this thing on the shelf for so long."

That was the first paragraph of notes I had upon watching the Paul Reiser Show, before the name Larry David seemed to be the centerpiece of the episode's plot. But David's appearance, in an extremely Curb-ian scene taking place in a café — “In the Valley!” — takes Paul Reiser's newfound meta-factor to the Nth degree, with David literally [...]

When Michael Showalter first sat down to write his debut book, he set out with the high-minded and sincere intention to write an “important memoir” that would change the lives of its readers in profound and significant ways. The modest benchmark he set for himself as a first-time author was to write something comparable to David Eggers’s A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Well…things did not pan out exactly as Showalter first intended, but that doesn’t mean that what he produced instead, the uniquely absurd Mr. Funny Pants, is worse off as a result. In fact, it is due in large part to its quirky navigation of that strange [...]

Auteur of underdogs–turned auteur of bromance, Judd Apatow is the fast-talking wordsmith who sits in the front row, spouting encyclopedic knowledge over the drone of a dull geography teacher. He’s also the charismatic goofball with a Ritalin prescription.

As he explains in the introduction to I Found This Funny, he always considered himself a standup comedian. Only later in life did he assume the identity of a reader. “I became a decent writer,” he admits, “because I could mimic the comics I was getting paid to write for, but my own act, had no unique perspective.” That was before he cracked the books.

I Found This Funny, published [...]

Maybe you’ve noticed the signs during your morning subway commute. They’re almost believable for a split second: Still a virgin? Call the virgin helpline at 888-743-4335.

The posters promote The Virginity Hit, a new comedy co-directed by Andrew Gurland and Huck Botko and produced by fratty funnymen Will Ferrell and Adam MacKay. It tells the story – nay, shows the story – of four high school boys with a video camera, intent on becoming men.

Donald Glover is at a point in his career where he can basically do whatever he wants. The comedy community loves him, thanks to 30 Rock, Community, and Derrick Comedy; he’s attractive enough that fashion companies, like the Gap, want him to appear in their ads; he's nerd-approved, which is how the rumor of Donald Glover as Spider-Man got started; and influential music critics have come around to his rap, where he rhymes under the Wu Tang-generated Childish Gambino moniker.

In an already impressive career, that last one is probably the most notable. When an actor or, especially, a comedian releases a music album, it’s often an ego-driven move, [...]

You’d be hard-pressed to find anybody at the moment as well positioned at the nexus of comedy, entertainment, and the cultural zeitgeist as Tina Fey. She cut her teeth at improv on the stages of the Second City Theater in Chicago, incubator of such geniuses as Belushi, Aykroyd, and Colbert. She rose through the ranks of Saturday Night Live to become head writer and the anchor for its Weekend Update. She’s the creator of NBC’s 30 Rock, which broke records for garnering the most Emmy nominations for comedy in a single year. Oh yeah — and she also delivered late night impressions of a certain former governor so dead-on [...]

Most people tuning into Friday’s premiere of The Onion News Network on IFC probably knew what to expect. For over 20 years, The Onion’s brand of print humor has made us laugh — and since 2006, we’ve enjoyed The Onion News Network’s online videos. In its newest incarnation, The ONN makes the leap to television and hits all the right strides. 

Several of the show’s segments were released and well-received online before ONN’s premiere, but any sense of inertia viewers may have felt was allayed by the addition of the Factzone’s great cast. Suzanne Sena plays ONN’s Stepford anchor, Brooke Alvarez, an icy blond megalomaniac whose polished newscaster cadence [...]

There’s something a little distasteful about humor for humor’s sake, something crude in trying to provoke laughter in strangers: I say this thing, you feel this way. The function’s just too simple. There’s a sense that one must justify their jest, and biography’s a good way to excuse the impulse to joke.

Comedians are always telling origin stories: why they’re funny, and – often – how they’ve gotten funnier. They usually self-identify with one of three archetypes: the nerd who discovered he could make girls laugh; the baby of family who used humor to get a word in edgewise; or the sufferer, who, in the face of tragedy, joked [...]