LATE NIGHT: IN THE WRITERS ROOM Moderator: Bill Carter (New York Times) Panelists: Steve Bodow (Head Writer, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart), Tim Carvell (Writer, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart), Mike Gibbons (Executive Producer, The George Lopez Late Night Talk Show; Co-Creator/Writer/Executive Producer, Tosh.0), Barry Julien (Head Writer, The Colbert Report), Tom Ruprecht [...]
View Post
UCB THEATRE PANEL Moderator: Paul Provenza Panelists: Matt Besser, Ian Roberts, Matt Walsh, Neil Campbell, Andy Daly, Lennon Parham, Horatio Sanz Good turnout for this one, presumably from nerds like myself who enjoy anything and anything to do with the UCBT. Paul Provenza was absolutely the best choice possible to moderate this panel. He does [...]
View Post
WEBCAST TO BROADCAST Panelists: Josh Faure-Brac (Creator & Executive Producer, SuperNews), Steven K.L. Olson (Director of Animation, SuperNews) There’s no way around it: I completely bailed on this one. I even bailed on the thing I was intending to bail on it for (the Artists vs. Industry ball hockey game). Funny thing about Just For [...]
View Post
Alright, let’s tighten these things up, shall we? The balance of Thursday’s seminars weren’t quite as rockin’ as the not-all-that-rockin’-anyway development panel in the morning, but here’s the gist of what went down: COMEDY’S NEXT GENERATION OF WRITERS Moderator: David Bernath (SVP Programming, Comedy Central) Panelists: Kristofor Brown (Writer – Drillbit Taylor, Beavis and Butt-Head), [...]
View Post
If Just For Laughs does anything well, it’s giving the appearance that their laminate-clad guests are VIPs. Through a hidden entrance beside the Hyatt bar was a red carpet, leading the way around a corner and into the dimly-lit and beautifully dressed conference room. Not a bad place to spend three days. But you wonder [...]
View Post
The Alternative Show is one of those “sure things” of the festival, and with its midnight start time typically ends up capping off my week in Montreal. All the comics have gotten to know each other and are slightly loopy from the lack of sleep, and the paying audience usually only fills the main level, [...]
View Post
Metropolis is the venue set aside for only the most rockin’ of Just For Laughs shows (my first experience there was in ’04 for Rob Smigel’s 3-hour Triumph the Insult Comic Dog Live so I became quickly initiated how insane things can get there). The lineup was, as expected, wrapped around the building upon my [...]
View Post
When an improv nerd walks into a theatre and sees UCB Theatre co-founders Matt Walsh, Matt Besser, and Ian Roberts standing in the centre of the stage, the reaction is almost physical. These are the guys, and unless you live in LA, you’ll rarely see them on stage together outside of their annual Del Close [...]
View Post
I’m tempted to say the second group of New Faces performers was slightly stronger than the first one I saw, but based on the improvement in audience energy that may be an unfair assessment. The list: Andy Ritchie Good joke writer. “I remember when college girls used to look at me. Now they just keep [...]
View Post
The hour we wait all year for (ok, I wait for… and Elon Gold waits for…you had to be there) was finally upon us this afternoon, as Andy Kindler delivered the 14th (really?!) annual State of the Industry Address at the Hyatt. The blogged-about-yesterday Marc Maron introduced Kindler this year, because “I, like Andy, have [...]
View Post