Lena Dunham knows it’s tough to be young and creative and struggling to find a purpose in life, and she’s not alone. Not by a long shot. Aaron Eisenberg, Alex Forstenhausler, and Austin Breslow, creators of Your Dad’s Friends, have come along with another shrewd look at a talented generation making a career out of being unemployed. (As I write this article, two of my jobless 24-year-old friends are firing off emails into the Craigslist tv/film/video/radio abyss and discussing their favorite bits of The Sopranos first season — all of which they watched today.)
We city-dwelling creatives, children of parents who were too tolerant, products of colleges that were [...]
Sadly, BriTANick's new video "The Coach" isn't a remake of the Craig T. Nelson tour de force, Coach. Not sadly, it stars Joss Whedon as a bird. Ok, he's not a bird. You're a bird. Where does the pee go? If you remember, the BriTANick guys were part of the Don of Whe's Much Ado About Nothing movie that shot last fall so they are all best friends. Such good friends that they were able to convince the director of the soon to be giantest movie evers,The Avengers, to strap on a bird beak. Or maybe he's always had a bird beak, because he's a bird. You're a bird. [...]
A sketch about beer goggles? Not the most original joke. “Oh,” I thought “it’s probably some ironic play on the old trope about being too drunk to see people’s true qualities. Something not at all about inebriation. Something awesome.”
And I was wrong. It wasn’t ironic. Nope. It was pretty much just a straight-up take on the alcohol-induced phenomenon we all know and dread. Still, I found myself…laughing.
The short, written by Lauren Cook and Anna Breslaw, directed by Oren Brimer (The Daily Show), and starring veteran funnyman Kurt Braunohler alongside Scott Eckert, Anna Breslaw, and Lauren Cook, demonstrates that good acting and writing matters a hell of a lot [...]
As someone who's never seen a single Nancy Meyers movie, including It's Complicated, Julie Klausner's "deleted scene" from that very movie is pretty wonderful. I imagine if you're a Meyers junkie it's even better?
I’ve said it before. I’ll say it again. Sometimes, in web series, simple is better. UCBComedy's “How to Make a Situation About You” confirms that hilarity can come out of smart, small ideas. The key to making short pieces successful? Clarity of message.
It’s easier to write a five-minute-per-episode, arc-heavy web opus than it is a sub two-minute idea good enough to have staying power. To be quick and memorable and quality demands a hyper focus on the single salient element of a funny idea, the nugget that cuts through all the fluff to the core of the most illustrative beats. Few attempt simple because it’s risky. It forces [...]
Ever wonder what’s the best parody video on the Internet? Well wonder no more. Unless you disagree with me and don’t think this is the best one out there. Then, I guess you can continue to wonder. Either way, do yourself a favor and watch PoolJumpers.
Parody videos are the holy grail of web sketch, because, if done right, their zeitgeisty relatability helps them spread fast and hard. Since it’s 2010 premiere, The Birthday Boys’ classic PoolJumpers is the benchmark for what works…really…really well. We know it’s a little old, but the fact that it hasn’t been profiled in this column pains us and, let’s get real, funny [...]
When I received an email plugging a web series about a guy interviewing for jobs in corporate America, I felt a pang of disappointment. Someone had “stolen” my idea. I clicked the link hoping it wouldn’t be funny and I’d be vindicated as a comic genius, still able produce my own Webby-winning take. Unfortunately for my ego, Howard Gets an Interview is more than enough to fill the situational interview web series space. And I mean that in the best possible way.
Written by Jonathan F. Cohen and starring Timothy Hornor as Howard, the “series” is, at this point, one episode long and, thus, more of a sketch. Still, [...]
Why anyone would break up with Garfunkel and/or Oates (Riki Lindhome and Kate Micucci, respectively), is beyond me. Yet some messy boy or boys did and all G&O can do is clean, sing sadly, and put on an adorable play where cats dress up as everything from sponges to Molotov cocktails to DVD copies of The Last Boy Scout. At least, they have each other and their fans and all those crazy cats (except the one dressed up like an ashtray, she’s mine).
Comedy Central has ordered up a presentation on Funny or Die's "Drunk History" series, which is the first step towards ordering up a pilot and then, eventually, a series. But unlike most presentation orders, this one has Will Ferrell and Adam McKay behind it, which gives it far better odds than orders doled out to unknowns. Called Drunk History Across America, it sounds like it'll combine the premise of the web videos we know and love (drunk narrators sloppily retelling history, with famous people reenacting it) with more of a travel show-like element. Deadline reports that it'll also feature "interviews with the city’s locals who will drunkenly narrate [...]
In this exclusive video interview written and directed by Horatio Sanz, worldwide celebrity Joseph Kony speaks out about how it feels to have more Youtube hits than Rebecca Black. For someone so famous, it's a little weird that he's still not verified on Twitter. But he takes it in stride. Haters gonna hate.
A lazy idiot’s motto? Perhaps. But in the cruel world of mass market comedy, where we celebrate the laziest of the idiots, sometimes old faithful is better than cutting edge. This is especially true for celebrities with established brands and followings, celebrities like, well, Danny McBride, Jack Black, and Kyle Gass. (Maybe Dane Cook? Come on…maybe?). No matter what your comedic sensibilities, it’s hard to deny “The Roadie with Danny McBride” packs a special sort of power in its anticipatory appeal, its “I already know and love these guys” punch.
Assuming you haven’t started watching already (you definitely should have; what I have [...]
It's a busy week for female-centered comedy news between the announcement of Whitney Cummings' new show Love You, Mean It with Whitney Cummings, Bridesmaids' probably-never-gonna-happen sequel, and the renewal of HBO's Girls and Veep, but during the last two months, a new female-led sketch comedy show on VH1 slipped past the radar undetected. Thanks to a lack of promotion and news coverage, Stevie TV has stealthily crept past mainstream criticism since its debut in March and has already been picked up for a second season. Don't let its fellow VH1 shows (gems like Mob Wives, Celebrity Rehab, and Flavor of Love starring Flavor Flav) fool you [...]
We all love stuff that’s cool and weird and offbeat, don’t we? I’ll answer for you here — yes. Of course we do. Like any aficionados, we enjoy that which is cutting edge, beyond the norm, even alienating to those not “in-the-know”. We used to feel this way about deadpan mockumentaries and snickered at those in our midst who asked “is this for real?” Ha! We were so much smarter and cooler than them. But no longer. Now, everyone gets “awkward.” To be made uncomfortable is to be made to laugh. From web to screen, the pieces that seem to garner the most attention seem to be the ones [...]
Historically speaking, I’m not a fan of web videos centering around celebrity impersonations because they’re often short on content. Especially if the impression is really strong. Performers figure they can skate by on the old “hey, that really does sound just like…” recognition and, in almost every case, they can’t. The shtick gets old. So viewers are left with a mediocre piece that has a kick-ass first quarter and then sorta…falls off. Not the case with Mike O’Gorman’s “Donald Trump’s Celebrity Apprentice Post Show Recap” and I’m glad he’s proved me wrong.
O’Gorman (actor, writer, and co-creator of “Tiny Apartment,” the very first web series we reviewed in [...]
