Welcome to the ‘Six Degrees Catch Up Edition’ featuring all the latest happenings and goings on in the world of ‘Daily Show’ and ‘Colbert Report’ staff and ‘Friends of the Show’.
In this month’s catch we have interviews with Frank Lesser, Peter Gwinn, Cullen Crawford, David Sedaris, Jessica Williams and Samantha Bee, new books from Father James Martin and Jimmy Fallon, and Jon Batiste & Stay Human are gearing up perform at MOMA Nights.
- Cullen Crawford talks to ‘The National Post‘ about working as a writer for ClickHole. Launched a year ago as a spinoff of the Onion, ClickHole is a satire of Buzzfeed and spoofs the articles that dominant your social web experience.
- Blake Bailey recently interviewed David Sedaris for Vice, in which the two discuss the effect a sibling committing suicide has on their respective families, and the differing responses they receive from people who have read their written works about their late siblings.
- Father James Martin’s debut novel will be released on 13th October, 2015. ‘The Abbey: A Story of Discovery‘ “is infused with deep spiritual wisdom, wry humor, and loving grace. Through his characters’ struggles, questions, and crises, we see firsthand how God uses our worries, anger, doubts, prayers, failures, and longings to help us complete ourselves and feel wholly loved.”
- Frank Lesser talks to Psychology Today about his obsession of writing humour piece after humour piece about monsters and all manner of grisly creatures. This obsession eventually culminated in the release of his first book, ‘Sad Monsters‘, which “documents the trials and tribulations of all the undead creatures monster-mad readers have grown to love, from vampires and werewolves, to chupacabras and sphinxes, and even claw-footed bathtubs.”
Frank also briefly talks about his time as a writer on ‘The Colbert Report’:
Writing comedy for Stephen Colbert must be like learning crime-fighting from Batman. What’s something you learned about comedy from Colbert? (Maybe something about the psychology of comedy, since this is for Psychology Today).
Frank: Well, it’s like learning crime-fighting from Batman when you’ve got another dozen Robins running around. It’s a blessing and a curse: on the one hand, you know the guy cutting your jokes is a comic genius (and probably a regular genius, too), so you can’t be like, “He didn’t like my joke? Well, that jerk knows nothing!” Instead, you’re like, “Aw, Stephen Colbert didn’t like that joke? Mannnnnn, I suuuuuuuck.” And you just sit there at your desk staring at a Youtube clip for a couple minutes.
I think the most important thing I learned—and this was due to the work environment—was that you have to write what YOU think is funny. If you’re faking it—if you’re writing a joke because someone told you to write it, or you’re not being honest to your own sensibilities—it won’t work as well. And obviously, a lot of times we’d have to write about topics that we were assigned, but they let us write the jokes we wanted to write on them. Stephen and the other head writers would pick and choose which jokes made it to air of course, but I never felt like I was writing a joke that was dishonest, if that makes sense.
- Jessica Williams and Samantha Bee talk to People about working in comedy and what it’s like to be a woman in the industry.
- Jon Batiste & Stay Human will be performing at MOMA Nights on Thursday, July 23, 2015.
- Peter Gwinn was recently a guest on Episode #193 of ‘Into the Thunderdome‘ with Matt Besser and fellow guests Andy Daly and Amanda Sitko.
Six Degrees: June 2015 Catch Up
Welcome to the ‘Six Degrees Catch Up Edition’ featuring all the latest happenings and goings on in the world of ‘Daily Show’ and ‘Colbert Report’ staff and ‘Friends of the Show’.
In this month’s catch we have interviews with Frank Lesser, Peter Gwinn, Cullen Crawford, David Sedaris, Jessica Williams and Samantha Bee, new books from Father James Martin and Jimmy Fallon, and Jon Batiste & Stay Human are gearing up perform at MOMA Nights.
Frank also briefly talks about his time as a writer on ‘The Colbert Report’:
Writing comedy for Stephen Colbert must be like learning crime-fighting from Batman. What’s something you learned about comedy from Colbert? (Maybe something about the psychology of comedy, since this is for Psychology Today).
Frank: Well, it’s like learning crime-fighting from Batman when you’ve got another dozen Robins running around. It’s a blessing and a curse: on the one hand, you know the guy cutting your jokes is a comic genius (and probably a regular genius, too), so you can’t be like, “He didn’t like my joke? Well, that jerk knows nothing!” Instead, you’re like, “Aw, Stephen Colbert didn’t like that joke? Mannnnnn, I suuuuuuuck.” And you just sit there at your desk staring at a Youtube clip for a couple minutes.
I think the most important thing I learned—and this was due to the work environment—was that you have to write what YOU think is funny. If you’re faking it—if you’re writing a joke because someone told you to write it, or you’re not being honest to your own sensibilities—it won’t work as well. And obviously, a lot of times we’d have to write about topics that we were assigned, but they let us write the jokes we wanted to write on them. Stephen and the other head writers would pick and choose which jokes made it to air of course, but I never felt like I was writing a joke that was dishonest, if that makes sense.