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Showing posts with label stand up. Show all posts
Showing posts with label stand up. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
"Sold my last house for $85,000...
my landlord was real upset about that"
Garry Shandling (11.29.1949) is an American comedian, actor and writer best known for his work in It's Garry Shandling's Show and The Larry Sanders Show. Born into a middle-class Jewish family in Chicago, Shandling was then raised in Tucson, AZ. Later as a young adult he moved-on to LA, starting out a creative career at an ad agency, writing scripts...
Garry Shandling soon broke into TV by successfully submitting an unsolicited script for a Sanford and Son episode (this became the one where Fred turns his junkyard into a Japanese restaurant lol). He came to write for other top network TV shows such as Three's Company and Welcome Back, Kotter.
Later Shandling made a successful stand-up performance on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and subsequently became a frequent guest-host on the show throughout the early 80s. Shandling eventually evolved into the leading contender to replace Carson as host upon his pending retirement, a position that instead went to Jay Leno.
In 1986 Shandling created It's Garry Shandling's Show for the pay cable channel Showtime, which was nominated for four Emmy Awards- it ran four seasons.
His second effort at a series -The Larry Sanders Show- hit the air on HBO in 1992, and was considerably more successful. Shandling was nominated for and impressive 18 Emmy Awards for the show and won in 1998, along with Peter Tolan, for writing the series finale.
During his three-decade career, Shandling has been nominated for 19 Primetime Emmy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, 11 CableACE Awards, a BAFTA Award, three American Comedy Awards, two Writers' Guild of America Award nominations, and two Satellite Award nominations, and more.
I myself was fortunate enough to have caught the stand up act live cca 1984, and he just killed- imo Garry Shandling's a comedy genius. Here's an appearance on the then-new Letterman show... he really shook-up the formula and inspired many other stand up acts that followed to think outside the box a little bit:
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Wednesday, February 23, 2011
"Most states don't end in the letter 'A'..."
Surrealist comedian Emo Phillips (dob 2.08.56) is an entertainer and comedian originating from the Chicago suburb of Downers Grove, Illinois.
The highly unique brand of self-deprecating stand up comedy that made him famous is often built upon the paraprosdokians and garden path sentences spoken in a wandering falsetto tone. It's been said that the wide-eyed, confused, and childlike delivery is employed to invoke the 'wisdom of children' or the idiot savant...
Philips has recorded three comedy albums, including E=mo², which won the 1985 New Music Award for best comedy album. It was later re-released along with his Live at the Hasty Pudding Theatre (1988) album on a single CD.
Aside from his long career as a standup comic, Emo has been featured in acting roles on television series such as Miami Vice and The Weird Al Show. He was recently a guest star on British television and has numerous voiceover credits.
Emo Phillips has appeared in feature films as well, including 1989's UHF (as a rather clumsy school shop teacher that accidentally saws his thumb off), the original 1992 version of Meet the Parents (also executive producer), and Desperation Boulevard in 1998.
I sure remember him hitting the stand up scene on the Letterman show in the mid 80s- I thought he was nuts, but a talented act of the sort that tends to stick in your mind.
This clip comes from Emo's exceptional comedy video made at Harvard University's historical Hasty Pudding Theatre in 1988...
OK, OK- I know he's weird, but... I always found Emo to be very, very funny- this schtick's great:
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Stand-up Comedy Greats: Steven Wright Debuts on The Tonight Show - 1982
0 comments Posted by queen at 12:00 PM"Yeah, it's a small world... but I wouldn't want to paint it"
Steven Wright -dob 12.06.55- is an American comedian, actor and writer. Widely known for a distinct lethargic voice and deadpan delivery in a droning monotone, the highly-original style of humor centers on ironic, philosophical, and even nonsensical jokes and one-liners with often bizarre, contrived situations...
His early career as a Boston-area stand up comedian working primarily two clubs eventually landed him appearances on both the Carson and Letterman shows by 1982. Wright's unique act went over huge in the new-wave 80s, and he was repeatedly asked back on.
By 1985, Steven Wright's comedy album I Have a Pony was released to much critical acclaim, and the success of this LP landed him a much-coveted HBO special which he recorded as a live college concert performance entitled "A Steven Wright Special".
By the mid-80s Wright had firmly developed a new brand of obscure, laid-back performing and was rapidly building a cult-like mystique and eclectic following of "hip" young fans. The performance would become one of HBO's longest running and most requested comedy specials and propel him to huge success on the college arena concert circuits.
In 1989 he and fellow producer Dean Parisot won an Academy Award for their 30-minute short film The Appointments of Dennis Jennings, starring Wright along with Brit Rowan Atkinson (later of Mr Bean fame).
1992 brought Wright a recurring role on the television sitcom Mad About You. He also supplied the voice of the radio DJ in writer-director Quentin Tarantino's film Reservoir Dogs that same year.
Here's a 26-year-old Steven Wright in his national TV debut on Carson's Tonight Show in '82...
Previous RR Comedy Greats features archived -here-
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