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Interviews
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Talking to Nikki Glaser About 'The Half Hour', Her MTV Show, and Doing Standup Forever

by | April 30th, 2013

For the past 15 years, Comedy Central’s half hour specials have showcased the future stars of standup. Looking back, the early years of Comedy Central Presents included memorable sets from the likes of Mitch Hedberg, Patton Oswalt, Maria Bamford, Dane Cook and dozens more. Re-branded The Half Hour in 2012, the series continues to feature the best up-and-coming comics in the country.

For many comedians, it’s that history that makes doing a half hour special so significant. While a half hour may once have been a comic’s first major exposure, comedians now have many ways to build an audience. Almost everyone who taped a special this year does non-standup comedy as well, branching out into the worlds of podcasting, sketch and improv, web series, acting, and more. In this new series, I sat down with each of this year’s 16 Half Hour comedians to talk about their specials, their careers, and their generation of comedians. Each interview will also feature an exclusive clip from the special. All the interviews can be found here.

Nikki Glaser is no stranger to this blog: the podcast that she co-hosts with comedian Sara Schaefer, You Had To Be There, lives right here on the Splitsider Network. And their late night show, Nikki and Sara Live, was just picked up its for second season by MTV. I met up with her recently in the Viacom building overlooking Times Square to discuss honesty in standup and turning a new generation on to comedy.

So first, how did your taping go?

It was really fun. It went great. That's like a moment you always wait for as a comedian. You think, “Oh, when I do my half hour, what's that gonna be like?” And honestly, it was just another show. It was just another really great show, that I dressed up for more than I normally dress up. But it was really fun. My parents were there. Which, I said some filthy things in front of them, but you know what, they were gonna see it eventually, so let's get it over with.

Comedy Central’s half hour specials have featured so many great people, it’s a really impressive history. What did doing The Half Hour mean for you?

It’s definitely a symbol of arriving as a viable name in standup. It was a moment that, like I said, I've waited for for a long time, and it means a lot to get to do it. You look back at those old specials and you think, I can't believe I've done something that Mitch Hedberg has done. And even Dane Cook, it put him on the map. That special was the first thing where people were like, who's this guy? So it is a big deal, and it’s nice in a way to finally put a big chunk of my material out there. I haven't released an album, I have only done late night sets, so people have only seen me in segments. It’s gonna be cool to have someone see my entire act.  READ MORE

Interviews
3

Talking to Dan Soder About 'The Half Hour', Twitter, and Learning To Do Comedy

by | April 29th, 2013

For the past 15 years, Comedy Central’s half hour specials have showcased the future stars of standup. Looking back, the early years of Comedy Central Presents included memorable sets from the likes of Mitch Hedberg, Patton Oswalt, Maria Bamford, Dane Cook and dozens more. Re-branded The Half Hour in 2012, the series continues to feature the best up-and-coming comics in the country.

For many comedians, it’s that history that makes doing a half hour special so significant. While a half hour may once have been a comic’s first major exposure, comedians now have many ways to build an audience. Almost everyone who taped a special this year does non-standup comedy as well, branching out into the worlds of podcasting, sketch and improv, web series, acting, and more. In this new series, I sat down with each of this year’s 16 Half Hour comedians to talk about their specials, their careers, and their generation of comedians. Each interview will also feature an exclusive clip from the special. 

I met up with Dan Soder, who's been seen on Conan and MTV2's Guy Code and is a regular on Riotcast's You Know What Dude! podcast, over coffee in the East Village to talk about burning material and having to be everywhere.

So first, how did your taping go?

Awesome. It was fun. It was surreal. You do stand-up for so long, you have all these goals and then when you reach your goals, it's weird when you're doing it. You're like, “Oh, I'm taping a special for Comedy Central. This is weird.” All my heroes have done half hour specials. [Louis] C.K., Patrice [O’Neal], [Bill] Burr, [Greg] Giraldo, I remember watching like [Nick] DiPaolo’s when I was in high school and all these guys, I found out about so many great comedians because of the Comedy Central Presents series. So you know, kind of the same thing. It’s just called The Half Hour.

Well that was my next question, what does doing a half hour special mean for you?

It means I got a whole bunch of jokes that are burned. It means I got to write more jokes. It was unbelievable. A lot of my best friends have taped and I've been at their tapings, like Nate Bargatze and Mike Vecchione, and then to be actually doing it, it's great. Especially being a comedy fan and a comedian, it’s awesome. READ MORE

Interviews
1

Talking to the Olde English Guys About 'The Exquisite Corpse Project' and Writing With Friends

by | April 26th, 2013

Splitsider's first digital download, The Exquisite Corpse Project, is, I'll admit, a little hard to explain. Here's the premise, derived from the exquisite corpse party game: five writers each wrote 15 pages of a movie, having only seen the previous five pages of the script. The resulting film is a mix of that narrative with documentary footage about the making of the film and behind the scenes dynamics of the writers, all former members of the sketch group Olde English. The relationships of the group are explained more thoroughly in the film, but here's the short version: Ben Popik started the group while a student at Bard College. Members came and went, but when Joel Clark left just after college, the permanent group became Ben, Caleb Bark, Raphael Bob-Waksberg, Adam Conover, and Dave Segal. They went on to make sketches for the short-lived internet video site SuperDeluxe, before going their separate ways. In later years, Chioke Nassor was brought on to help with the production of the videos.

I recently sat down with six of the guys — Ben, the film's director; Caleb, the movie’s star; and four of the writers, Chioke, Joel, Adam, and Raphael — to discuss writing as a group, figuring out how to be a production company, and their fraught relationships.

[To Ben] You explain a bit in the movie why you wanted to do this project, but could you talk a little bit more about where the idea came from?

Ben: Sure. So, Olde English used to have a regular show at the UCB, and we experimented with a format which we called The Rules Show. We would assign each other a list of rules by which to make sketches. So, we would each come up with a list of rules for each other person. For instance, my favorite example was for Raphael. I said, you need to write a sketch in which you combine your three most embarrassing memories into one sketch. That was rule number one. Rule number two is that he had to write that sketch in five minutes. And rule number three was the five minutes begin right now. And then I handed him a pen and paper, and he had to scramble to write them. Now the important thing is, we filmed the meeting where we assigned each other the rules, and then we would show the audience the video of that rule assignment, so they got to watch Raphael laughing at these rules, and then scrambling to try and write something. And when the video was done, lights up on the stage, they would watch what he'd written.

Raphael: Which was terrible.

Ben: Now what he wrote was absolutely terrible, and how could it not be?

Raphael: And embarrassing, because it was about three embarrassing things that happened in my life.

Ben: And it was honest, right. What he wrote was terrible, cause how could it not be, but an interesting phenomenon we discovered is that, the audience loved it, even though it was terrible. And from a comedy perspective, that's fascinating, because usually if you write something bad, it will bomb. If they were to just see the sketch that he wrote, they would hate it. Why wouldn't they? They would say, why did I just watch that piece of shit? But with the added context of knowing why it was terrible, they could find it funny. They were in on the joke and they liked it. And that was really interesting to us. So this feature was basically an attempt to explore the format, and what effect it has on the audience to share the creative context with them. READ MORE

Interviews
1

Talking to Michael Che About Touring the World and Making Standup Glamorous

by | April 24th, 2013

There are high expectations for Michael Che. In the past year, the New York standup has worked on Best Week Ever and SNL, and been hailed as one to watch by the New York Times, Rolling Stone, the bookers of New York City, and many of his fellow comics. And he's not resting anytime soon, bringing his show "Cartoon Violence" to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe this August. Recently, over coffee at Columbus Circle in Manhattan, I got to talk to him about his rapid rise, his brief time in the world of high-end fashion, and the good advice he got from Tracy Morgan.

You just got back from playing the Melbourne Comedy Festival. How was that?

That was fun as hell. I had so much fun. It was cool. It’s the second time I've left the country for comedy, I went to Egypt before, but this is the first time I went and saw international performers and got a feel of what it's like. So it was cool.

How did people respond to you? How were the crowds?

The crowds responded well. I didn't really have a problem. They tense up with race stuff a little bit, because there's no black people there I guess, but they were really fun. They were like good listeners. You think that they're bored but they're just listening. It’s very weird, cause I'm used to a club or a bar atmosphere where everyone's kind of interacting and they don't really like to be interacted with. When I would talk to them, they would always kind of clam up. After awhile you loosen them up and then they understand that you're playing with them, but they're more of a sit and watch kind of thing. And I think the comedy that comes from there reflects that, because a lot of it is long-form stories and it's not as punchy as New York's scene is. But they were good. They were a festival audience, so they were there to see something funny. It's a theater seating, so there's nobody getting up and ordering drinks and checks being dropped. Everybody's sitting in their seat and no one's drinking. They're just enjoying the show. It's kind of cool. READ MORE

Interviews
3

Talking to Tony Hale About 'Arrested Development', 'Veep' and 'The Heat'

by | April 22nd, 2013

There's going to be a lot of Tony Hale going around in the very near future. He can currently be found every Sunday on HBO's Veep playing Gary, the bumbling but devoted body man to Julia Louis-Dreyfus's vice president. He'll be seen getting busted with a prostitute in this summer's action-comedy, The Heat. Most excitingly of course, he'll be resuming his role as the socially inept, one-handed Buster Bluth when Arrested Development premieres on Netflix in May. Recently, I caught up with over the phone to chat about cast reunions, hidden AD jokes, and how some of his characters might be related.

Obviously Arrested Development is coming back next month, and I feel like we’ve been talking about it non-stop for years. There was so much hype around the show, how did that affect you guys while you making it? You must have been so aware of all the expectations.

Yeah. Coming into it, we knew there were a lot of expectations. And stepping into a character that I haven't done in seven years, you kind of wonder, can I do it again? Let me tell you, once I heard Jessica Walter's voice, it was like a Pavlovian response and I just clicked right back in. It's like her demeaning, abusive, passive aggressive voice, it like clicked right in. And it was just like riding a bike again.

What was the feeling on the set?

I think for me, it was just very surreal. Very surreal. But I'm also just grateful to have this opportunity to do a job that I loved again. That practically never happens. So we were all just kind of grateful that it was happening and we all knew that it would not happen if we did not have the support of the fans and the press, that just kept it alive. We were all very, very grateful to be there, and just very excited. The stories kind of developed as were shooting, and so we were all kind of like, what's gonna happen? Because so much happened in Buster's life in those first three years. I just can't get my head around what was gonna happen, and there's a lot of fun turns. And we all also had huge faith in Mitch. Even if many times we would read the script and have no clue what's going on, we just trusted that he had this massive puzzle in his head and it was gonna work out and it was gonna be hilarious. READ MORE

Late Night
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Does Doing Standup on a Late Night Show Still Matter?

by | April 2nd, 2013

Late night shows have always been more than just variety programs. There were cultural touchstones, broad shared places for topical comedy and entertainment, and they served as key launching pads for several generations of comedians. A few decades ago, doing standup on a late night show was seen as a crucial, potentially game changing event in a young comic's career. The well-known story about Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show has been told from over and over, by everyone from Steven Wright to Ellen DeGeneres to Drew Carey. Do one great set on Carson, they story went, get invited over to the couch, and the next day, you will be a superstar. For most of the country, Carson’s approval was good enough.

“It's certainly a different landscape than it used to be,” says J.P. Buck, who books standups on Conan. “When Carson was doing it, that was really one of the few places you could find comedians. That era is gone." Now, the options for reaching an audience are plentiful, and growing every day. And yet every week, young comics continue to appear in the wee hours of the morning doing clean five-minute sets on, essentially, old-fashioned talk shows. In recent years, younger-skewing shows like Conan and Late Night with Jimmy Fallon have featured more young rising standups than the rest, giving dozens of comedians their late night debuts. Now that it seems Fallon may be moving up to The Tonight Show, more young comics may gain spots on that iconic institution. But as ratings for network TV continue to decline and more late night shows appearing every season, how much can a late night spot really do for a young comedian today? READ MORE

war for late night 2014
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What Moving 'The Tonight Show' Will Mean for New York's Comedy Scene

by | March 21st, 2013

As we reported yesterday, it seems Jimmy Fallon is set to take over for Jay Leno on The Tonight Show next year, and even more interestingly, move the show back to its birthplace of New York City. The show has been based in LA since 1972, when Johnny Carson felt that moving to the Hollywood would bring more big-name guests to the show, as well as a more laidback lifestyle for himself. It's a huge shift for one of America's most iconic TV shows, and the ripples will be felt throughout the industry.

Most obviously, this move is symbolic, an affirmation that comedy falls under New York's purview. But practically speaking, it’s possible that the number of available opportunities for New York comics is unlikely to change much. With all the buzz prompted by the New York Times article, as well as the lingering bitterness over Conan O'Brien's treatment, it's tempting to see everything related to The Tonight Show as hugely influential. But despite's Leno's still impressive numbers, the cultural influence is so diminished that it's almost impossible to imagine its return path to relevance. There will never be another night when all the comics at a comedy club gather around a TV to watch a fellow comic do standup on The Tonight Show, as Steven Wright's Boston buddies did during his first Carson appearance.

In fact, there's a good chance that The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon won't be a game changer. Conan's nine months on the job give clues as to what might happen under Fallon's watch—a drop off in ratings when Leno's devotees bail, a flailing 12:35 staff trying to find an 11:35 sensibility, and ultimately, a move towards the big-tent mentality that has characterized The Tonight Show for the past few decades. READ MORE

Comedy Docs
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Going on the Road with Doug Benson in 'The Greatest Movie Ever Rolled'

by | March 12th, 2013

It’s no secret that sometimes comedy is taken a bit too seriously. Comedy obsessives love not just the jokes, but the mechanics and emotions of the comedy world. There are a raft of comedy documentaries exploring comedy and comedians, but do they really have anything significant to add to the discussion? This series looks at comedy documentaries and whether they’re interesting, insightful, and possibly even…funny?

“I’m making a movie to raise money to make a movie about going on tour to raise money to make a movie about the tour,” Doug Benson says on stage at beginning of his new documentary, The Greatest Movie Ever Rolled. He then admits that the clip of him saying that will probably be the first scene in the movie. “My life is so easy, you guys.”

And actually, that appears to be true. Unlike his previous effort, 2007's Super High Me, which had a built-in structure thanks to its inspiration (Morgan Spurlock's Super Size Me), The Greatest Movie Ever Rolled is essentially a tour documentary glossed up as an experiment in comedy and weed, this one inspired by Spurlock's more recent The Greatest Movie Ever Sold. READ MORE

Interviews
2

Talking to Pete Holmes About His New TBS Late Night Show, Long Podcasts, and Conan

by | March 6th, 2013

Pete Holmes is hardly an unknown — he hosts the hugely popular podcast You Made It Weird, recorded his own Comedy Central Presents, and of course, voices the E-Trade Baby. But he's officially moved to the next level; it was announced last week that his late night talk show (originally called The Midnight Show with Pete Holmes) will premiere after Conan this fall, executive produced by Conan O'Brien and Jeff Ross. Earlier this week, I got the chance to chat with him about putting together a half hour talk show, working with Conan, and creating a comedy clubhouse at TBS.

What can you tell us about what the show will be like?

I'll be honest with you, I have a very good idea of what it'll be like. Having shot three pilots, we have given it a little bit of a test drive. But I also want to be careful to not sound too much like I know what it's gonna be like, because I think once it gets on its feet and we’re in the trenches of doing a show four times a week, the show is going to inevitably evolve and change. I can tell you what we're aiming for, which is that I really want to do a late night show that does more sketches. It's a little more Chappelle-y. Stuff like the Batman videos that we've been doing for CollegeHumor, which of course were part of the reason we probably got the show. Everything we've done for FrontPageFilms.com, all the simple premisey stuff that I do with Matt McCarthy, very lean and simple. We'd really love to see if we can incorporate as much of that into the show for no particular reason. There's no doctor in the news, we're just gonna do a doctor sketch because it's funny.

And when it comes to like the monologue, I'd like it to be a little less setup-punch and a little bit more maybe—and this is all speculation by the way, I don't even know what we're gonna end up doing—but I would like it to be a little closer to my voice as a standup, which is a little bit sillier. Staying on a topic a little bit longer than just, “This guy stuck his elbow in a garbage disposal. And uh, there's goes tennis!” Then you move on. I'd like to talk about the man with the elbow in the garbage disposal for a couple minutes, and maybe deviate, go to random things and less known stories. We're gonna see how long we can away with not even being that topical. But again, I feel like that's something someone who hasn't had to make a show four times a week would say. [Laughs] READ MORE

Interviews
0

Talking to Jesse Thorn about NPR, Podcasting Empires, and Not Going Viral

by | March 5th, 2013

It's fair to say that the comedy podcast boom would not exist without Jesse Thorn. Thorn, who began doing his public radio show, The Sound of Young America, as a college student in 2000, began podcasting the often comedy-centric show in 2004. (He also taught Marc Maron how to podcast.) In 2011, The Sound of Young America became Bullseye with Jesse Thorn, and starting this April, the show will be heard on NPR stations around the country.

Thorn's podcasting network, Maximum Fun, which hosts Bullseye along with Jordan, Jesse GO!, Judge John Hodgman, and a half dozen others, continues to grow, recently adding Dave Hill's Podcasting Incident to the mix. I recently caught up with Thorn at his office/podcasting studio in LA to discuss the move to NPR, production values in podcasting, and mixing high-mindedness with a good laugh.

Can you tell me a little about what the NPR deal will mean for the show?

Well, hopefully it means good things. Basically, the way public radio works is there are a few different organizations [like NPR] that distribute shows to stations. So NPR will essentially be in charge of bringing my show to public radio stations. There are three, four hundred NPR member stations around the country, who pay a certain amount of money to them to be able to carry their programming. So all those stations that you hear All Things Considered on or Morning Edition on are all NPR member stations, but they're not run by NPR. In fact it's sort of the other way around.

Recently, public radio weekends have changed a lot. In part because the Car Talk guys have retired. The last big weekend show is Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, which started 10 or 15 years ago now. So this is a moment where of stations are trying to put together national programming for weekends, and so it's a really important time. And we partnered with NPR because NPR is NPR. That’s the thing that NPR has that none of the other choices have. READ MORE

Interviews
0

Talking to T.J. Miller About Live TV Standup, Sketch Comedy, and Maybe Becoming a Celebrity

by | February 27th, 2013

T.J. Miller is hard to define. His eclectic resume includes acting in movies like Cloverfield and Yogi Bear, voicing a character in How To Train Your Dragon, hosting Comedy Central's standup/sketch show Mash Up, appearing as the guest every week on his podcast Cashing In With T.J. Miller, and putting out a 41-track hip-hop comedy album, The Extended Play EP. Those who mostly know him as one the best show-derailing guests on Doug Loves Movies may be surprised by his bittersweet turns in short films like Successful Alcoholics and I'm Having a Difficult Time Killing My Parents. 

During his recent New York visit, I got the chance to ride with him from Brooklyn’s Legion Bar, where he was performing at his sister’s weekly comedy show Big Gulp, to his headlining set at Gotham Comedy Club in Chelsea. On the way, we talked about televised standup, being a well-rounded comedian, and his inevitable move into prop comedy.

Tell me about the AXS TV show you hosted last night at Gotham. 

So, Mark Cuban and Ryan Seacrest—yeah I know, start it off with a bang—they did this merger and rebranded [Cuban’s] network HDNet, and it's now a live channel. So Gotham, which is built for a Comedy Central show said, let's do a live broadcast here. So it's like 10 PM Eastern, and you tune in at that time, and it's just a well-shot broadcast of a stand-up show. It's really crazy. I felt like, what was interesting was to go and talk about the fact that it was live. Do what I would do if I hosted any show and riff and do a little bit of crowd work. And then I mostly did bits that I thought of that day about the fact that it was streaming live. It's pretty weird that they can do that now. You know, it was probably seen by a hundred thousand people. It's crazy. READ MORE

guest stars
0

Patton Oswalt to Guest Star on 'Parks and Rec'

by | February 20th, 2013

Patton Oswalt will be guest starring on an upcoming episode of Parks and Recreation, showrunner Mike Schur confirmed in a conference call today. "I think the news has broken – what the hell, right? Yeah, we wrote a part recently for an episode we just finished shooting and we were sort of like, 'Who should do this? Oh Patton Oswalt. The answer is Patton Oswalt.' One of our writers, Joe Mande, has opened for him a lot doing standup, and he literally just emailed him and Patton was like, 'Yeah definitely, I'm in.' And that's as hard as it was to convince him, which was great, because he's a fan of the show. And he just came and did the part and he was so, so, so, funny." If these Buzzfeed photos are any indication, he's probably a farmer, a historical reenactor, or possibly a farming time traveler of some kind.

Schur, alongside Amy Poehler and Adam Scott, discussed how the show's reputation has meant great guest stars are eager to stop by. Matt Walsh appeared last week's episode, meaning that all of Poehler's fellow UCB-ers have now been on the show. "We're lucky now," Schur said, "because I think that we're established enough and enough amazing funny people have guested on the show that we're in a position where we can write a juicy part like that and go, 'Alright who should play this? Oh Walsh, he's perfect.' And then someone calls him and says, 'Hey, come do the show.' And if people are free and they want to do it, they just kind of come by. It's a very streamlined process."

The trio was careful not to give away too much about the upcoming wedding between Leslie and Ben, which will taking place in the first of two episodes airing this Thursday, offering only that Tom Haverford will have to become the last-minute officiate for the ceremony, and that opera-singing Retta's character Donna will be showing of her pipes at the event. Also, boxes of tissues are recommended for anyone who cries easily.

Local Guides
14

Splitsider's Guide to NYC's Comedy Scene

by | February 4th, 2013

"This is where comedy works — where people are the most miserable," Doug Stanhope lamented as he walked the streets of New York City at the beginning of his special, No Refunds. Maybe it is the misery, dirt and exhaustion that comes with life in NYC that fosters great comedic voices; an optimist would say its the city's vibrancy, diversity, and bustling energy. Either way, it's impossible to deny that no place does comedy like New York. Though in the past, we've looked at the stellar comedy scenes of both Los Angeles and Austin, I'll faithfully defend New York as the greatest comedy city in the world.

There's more comedy to see in New York City than any human could possibly manage. Standup is still the bread-and-butter of the scene, though nowadays it's also home to just about every time of comedic endeavor imaginable. This is a nowhere-near-comprehensive look at the city's comedy for both fans and aspiring comedians. READ MORE

Interviews
4

Talking to Nick Kroll About 'Kroll Show,' Characters, and Complex Sketch Shows

by | January 18th, 2013

20130117-215707.jpgFollowing the immense success of Key & Peele, Comedy Central is betting big on sketch shows this season. With The Ben Show and Inside Amy Schumer still to air this winter, the network this week launched a high-profile new show, Kroll Show, fronted by one of the most recognized and beloved names in comedy. Nick Kroll's characters are a mainstay of Comedy Bang! Bang!, while his dry wit is on display as Ruxin on FX's The League. I caught up with Kroll recently to discuss reality TV, character work, and the perks of having your own sketch show.

Why did you decide at this point in your career to do a sketch show?

You know, I've been doing character work for a long time and this felt like just a natural evolution of my work. Having done the special for Comedy Central, Thank You Very Cool, a couple years ago, which functioned basically as a backdoor pilot to see what the characters would feel like on TV, it just felt like the stars were aligned with the timing of what Comedy Central was trying to do and the kind of stuff that I wanted to do. And meeting guys like Jon Krisel and John Levenstein and Jon Daly and feeling like we could assemble a really solid team to make the show. READ MORE

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