Download or read book Comedy at the Edge written by Richard Zoglin and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2009-02-10 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Surveys the stand-up comedy of the 1970s, citing the contributions of celebrity comics, from George Carlin and Richard Pryor to Robin Williams and Andy Kaufman, in an account that also evaluates the roles played by such clubs as Catch a Rising Star, the Improv, and the Comedy Store.
Download or read book Born Standing Up written by Steve Martin and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2008-09-04 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Steve Martin has been an international star for over thirty years. Here, for the first time, he looks back to the beginning of his career and charmingly evokes the young man he once was. Born in Texas but raised in California, Steve was seduced early by the comedy shows that played on the radio when the family travelled back and forth to visit relatives. When Disneyland opened just a couple of miles away from home, an enchanted Steve was given his first chance to learn magic and entertain an audience. He describes how he noted the reaction to each joke in a ledger - 'big laugh' or 'quiet' - and assiduously studied the acts of colleagues, stealing jokes when needed. With superb detail, Steve recreates the world of small, dark clubs and the fear and exhilaration of standing in the spotlight. While a philosophy student at UCLA, he worked hard at local clubs honing his comedy and slowly attracting a following until he was picked up to write for TV. From here on, Steve Martin became an acclaimed comedian, packing out venues nationwide. One night, however, he noticed empty seats and realised he had 'reached the top of the rollercoaster'. BORN STANDING UP is a funny and riveting chronicle of how Steve Martin became the comedy genius we now know and is also a fascinating portrait of an era.
Download or read book Jewish Comedy Stars written by Norman H. Finkelstein and published by Kar-Ben Publishing. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Profiles Jewish comedians, from Fanny Brice and Jerry Lewis to Sarah Silverman and Jon Stewart.
Download or read book Stand up Comedy in Theory or Abjection in America written by John Limon and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2000-06-23 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stand-Up Comedy in Theory, or, Abjection in America is the first study of stand-up comedy as a form of art. John Limon appreciates and analyzes the specific practice of stand-up itself, moving beyond theories of the joke, of the comic, and of comedy in general to read stand-up through the lens of literary and cultural theory. Limon argues that stand-up is an artform best defined by its fascination with the abject, Julia Kristeva’s term for those aspects of oneself that are obnoxious to one’s sense of identity but that are nevertheless—like blood, feces, or urine—impossible to jettison once and for all. All of a comedian’s life, Limon asserts, is abject in this sense. Limon begins with stand-up comics in the 1950s and 1960s—Lenny Bruce, Carl Reiner, Mel Brooks, Mike Nichols, Elaine May—when the norm of the profession was the Jewish, male, heterosexual comedian. He then moves toward the present with analyses of David Letterman, Richard Pryor, Ellen DeGeneres, and Paula Poundstone. Limon incorporates feminist, race, and queer theories to argue that the “comedification” of America—stand-up comedy’s escape from its narrow origins—involves the repossession by black, female, queer, and Protestant comedians of what was black, female, queer, yet suburbanizing in Jewish, male, heterosexual comedy. Limon’s formal definition of stand-up as abject art thus hinges on his claim that the great American comedians of the 1950s and 1960s located their comedy at the place (which would have been conceived in 1960 as a location between New York City or Chicago and their suburbs) where body is thrown off for the mind and materiality is thrown off for abstraction—at the place, that is, where American abjection has always found its home.
Download or read book Elvis in Vegas written by Richard Zoglin and published by Simon & Schuster. This book was released on 2020-11-10 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Outstanding pop-culture history.” —Newsday The “smart and zippy account” (The Wall Street Journal) of how Las Vegas saved Elvis and Elvis saved Las Vegas in the greatest musical comeback of all time. Elvis’s 1969 opening night in Vegas was his first time back on a live stage in more than eight years. His career had gone sour—bad movies, mediocre pop songs that no longer made the charts—and he’d been dismissed by most critics as over-the-hill. But in Vegas he played the biggest showroom in the biggest hotel in the city, drawing more people for his four-week engagement than any other show in Vegas history. His performance got rave reviews; “Suspicious Minds,” the song he introduced there, gave him his first number-one hit in seven years; and Elvis became Vegas’s biggest star. Over the next seven years, he performed more than 600 shows there, and sold out every one. Las Vegas was changed, too. By the end of the ‘60s, Vegas’ golden age—when the Rat Pack led a glittering array of stars who made it the nation’s premier live-entertainment center—was losing its luster. Elvis created a new kind of Vegas show: an over-the-top, rock-concert extravaganza. He set a new bar for Vegas performers, with the biggest salary, the biggest musical production, and the biggest promotion campaign the city had ever seen. He opened the door to a new generation of pop/rock artists and brought a new audience to Vegas—not the traditional well-heeled older gamblers, but a mass audience from Middle America that Vegas depends on for its success to this day. At once “a fascinating history of Vegas as gambling capital, celebrity playground, mob hangout, [and] entertainment Valhalla” (Rolling Stone) and the incredible “tale of how the King got his groove back” (Associated Press), Elvis in Vegas is a classic feel-good story for the ages.
Download or read book Constant Comedy written by Art Bell and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-12-06 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discover the riveting, hilarious true story of the birth of Comedy Central in what New York Times bestselling author, Dan Lyons, calls the “funniest behind-the-scenes memoir I’ve ever read, full of crazy characters, plot twists, and suspense.” Award-Winning Finalist in the Narrative: Non-Fiction category of the 2020 Best Book Awards sponsored by American Book Fest In 1988, a young, mid-level employee named Art Bell pitched a novel concept—a television channel focused 100% on just one thing: comedy—to the chairman of HBO. The station that would soon become Comedy Central, with celebrated programs like South Park, Chapelle’s Show, The Daily Show, and The Colbert Report, was born. Constant Comedy takes readers behind the scenes into the comedy startup on its way to becoming one of the most successful and creative purveyors of popular culture in the United States. From disastrous pitch meetings with comedians to the discovery of talents like Bill Maher and Jon Stewart, this intimate biography peers behind the curtain and reveals what it’s really like to work, struggle, and ultimately succeed at the cutting edge of show business.
Download or read book Edge of Glory written by Magan Vernon and published by Beautifully Broken Books. This book was released on 2016-07-12 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Funny How Life Works written by Michael Jr. and published by Inprov Media. This book was released on 2021-03-02 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Funny How Life Works is a behind-the-scenes look at the life and career of comedian Michael Jr. Infused with the same laugh-out-loud humor and practical wisdom that define his stand-up acts, Michael shares a collection of stories meant to inspire readers to embrace their purpose--their "punchline."
Download or read book Edge Case written by YZ Chin and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2021-08-10 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Recommended Read from: Entertainment Weekly * Buzzfeed * Good Morning America * USA Today * Harper's Bazaar * Fortune * A.V. Club * The Millions * Lit Hub * International Examiner * Publishers Weekly When her husband suddenly disappears, a young woman must uncover where he went—and who she might be without him—in this striking debut of immigration, identity, and marriage. After another taxing day as the sole female employee at her New York City tech startup, Edwina comes home to find that her husband, Marlin, has packed up a suitcase and left. The only question now is why. Did he give up on their increasingly hopeless quest to secure their green cards and decide to return to Malaysia? Was it the death of his father that sent him into a tailspin? Or has his strange, sudden change in personality finally made Marlin and Edwina strangers to each other? As Edwina searches the city for traces of her husband, she simultaneously sifts through memories of their relationship, hoping to discover the moment when something went wrong. All the while, a coworker is making increasingly uncomfortable advances toward her. And she can’t hide the truth about Marlin’s disappearance from her overbearing, eccentric mother for much longer. Soon Edwina will have to decide how much she is willing to sacrifice in order to stay in her marriage and in America. Poignant and darkly funny, Edge Case is a searing meditation on intimacy, estrangement, and the fractured nature of identity. In this moving debut, YZ Chin explores the imperfect yet enduring relationships we hold to country and family. “Chin’s specificity and wonderfully drawn minor characters add depth and richness…. Not only a subtly provocative depiction of the tech industry, and this country, as tilting ever more off-kilter; but also a realistic portrayal of a woman in crisis.” —Lauren Oyler, The New York Times Book Review
Download or read book Hope written by Richard Zoglin and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-11-04 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chronicles the life and career of comedian, actor, and entertainer Bob Hope.
Download or read book Anyone for Edmund written by Simon Edge and published by Eye Books (US&CA). This book was released on 2020-03-01 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Under tennis courts at a ruined Suffolk abbey, archaeologists make a thrilling find: the remains of St Edmund, king and martyr. He was venerated for centuries as England's patron saint, but his body has been lost since the closure of the monasteries. Culture Secretary Marina Spencer, adored by those who don't know her, jumps on the bandwagon. Egged on by her downtrodden adviser Mark Price, she promotes St Edmund as a new patron saint for the United Kingdom, playing up his Scottish, Welsh, and Irish credentials. Unfortunately these credentials are a fiction, invented by Mark in a moment of panic. As crisis looms, the one person who can see through the whole deception is Mark's cousin Hannah, a dig volunteer. Will she blow the whistle or help him out? And what of St Edmund himself, watching through the baffling prism of a very different age? Splicing ancient and modern as he did in The Hopkins Conundrum and A Right Royal Face-Off, Simon Edge pokes fun at Westminster culture and celebrates the cult of a medieval saint in this beguiling and utterly original comedy.
Download or read book The Comedians written by Kliph Nesteroff and published by Open Road + Grove/Atlantic. This book was released on 2015-11-03 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Funny [and] fascinating . . . If you’re a comedy nerd you’ll love this book.” —Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Named a Best Book of the Year by Kirkus Reviews, National Post, and Splitsider Based on over two hundred original interviews and extensive archival research, this groundbreaking work is a narrative exploration of the way comedians have reflected, shaped, and changed American culture over the past one hundred years. Starting with the vaudeville circuit at the turn of the last century, the book introduces the first stand-up comedian—an emcee who abandoned physical shtick for straight jokes. After the repeal of Prohibition, Mafia-run supper clubs replaced speakeasies, and mobsters replaced vaudeville impresarios as the comedian’s primary employer. In the 1950s, the late-night talk show brought stand-up to a wide public, while Lenny Bruce, Mort Sahl, and Jonathan Winters attacked conformity and staged a comedy rebellion in coffeehouses. From comedy’s part in the civil rights movement and the social upheaval of the late 1960s, to the first comedy clubs of the 1970s and the cocaine-fueled comedy boom of the 1980s, The Comedians culminates with a new era of media-driven celebrity in the twenty-first century. “Entertaining and carefully documented . . . jaw-dropping anecdotes . . . This book is a real treat.” —Merrill Markoe, TheWall Street Journal
Download or read book The Potlikker Papers written by John T. Edge and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2017-05-16 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The one food book you must read this year." —Southern Living One of Christopher Kimball’s Six Favorite Books About Food A people’s history that reveals how Southerners shaped American culinary identity and how race relations impacted Southern food culture over six revolutionary decades Like great provincial dishes around the world, potlikker is a salvage food. During the antebellum era, slave owners ate the greens from the pot and set aside the leftover potlikker broth for the enslaved, unaware that the broth, not the greens, was nutrient rich. After slavery, potlikker sustained the working poor, both black and white. In the South of today, potlikker has taken on new meanings as chefs have reclaimed it. Potlikker is a quintessential Southern dish, and The Potlikker Papers is a people’s history of the modern South, told through its food. Beginning with the pivotal role cooks and waiters played in the civil rights movement, noted authority John T. Edge narrates the South’s fitful journey from a hive of racism to a hotbed of American immigration. He shows why working-class Southern food has become a vital driver of contemporary American cuisine. Food access was a battleground issue during the 1950s and 1960s. Ownership of culinary traditions has remained a central contention on the long march toward equality. The Potlikker Papers tracks pivotal moments in Southern history, from the back-to-the-land movement of the 1970s to the rise of fast and convenience foods modeled on rural staples. Edge narrates the gentrification that gained traction in the restaurants of the 1980s and the artisanal renaissance that began to reconnect farmers and cooks in the 1990s. He reports as a newer South came into focus in the 2000s and 2010s, enriched by the arrival of immigrants from Mexico to Vietnam and many points in between. Along the way, Edge profiles extraordinary figures in Southern food, including Fannie Lou Hamer, Colonel Sanders, Mahalia Jackson, Edna Lewis, Paul Prudhomme, Craig Claiborne, and Sean Brock. Over the last three generations, wrenching changes have transformed the South. The Potlikker Papers tells the story of that dynamism—and reveals how Southern food has become a shared culinary language for the nation.
Download or read book Inside Comedy written by David Steinberg and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2023-06-06 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: David Steinberg's name has been synonymous with comedy for decades. The Canadian-born comedian, producer, writer, director, and author has been called "a comic institution himself" by the New York Times. He appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson 140 times (second only to Bob Hope), and directed episodes of popular television sitcoms, including Curb Your Enthusiasm, Seinfeld, Friends, Mad About You, The Golden Girls, and Designing Women. From 2012–2015, Steinberg hosted the comedy documentary series Inside Comedy, which featured such comedy greats as Billy Crystal, Chris Rock, and Gary Shandling. In this entertaining history of comedy, Steinberg shares insightful memories of his journey through his career and takes the reader behind the curtain of the comedy scene of the last half-century. Steinberg shares amusing and often hilarious stories and anecdotes from some of the most legendary comedians in the industry—from Groucho Marx, Carol Burnett, Mel Brooks, and Richard Pryor to Lily Tomlin, Robin Williams, Jerry Seinfeld, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and Tina Fey. Inside Comedy presents in-depth portraits of some of the most talented and revered comedians in the world of comedy today.
Download or read book I m Fine And Other Lies written by Whitney Cummings and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-02-02 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Whitney Cummings has written a book about being, well, not fine—and what to do when you find yourself with brutal anxiety and a co-dependency disorder; all in her trademark wit, humor, and honesty. This book, however, is fine as hell.”—Sophia Amoruso, author of #Girlboss “The funniest cry for help you'll read this year.”—BJ Novak Well, well, well. Look at you, ogling my book page....I presume if you’re reading this it means you either need more encouragement to buy it or we used to date and you’re trying to figure out if you should sue me or not. Here are all the stories and mistakes I’ve made that were way too embarrassing to tell on stage in front of an actual audience; but thanks to not-so-modern technology, you can read about them here so I don’t have to risk having your judgmental eye contact crush my self-esteem. This book contains some delicious schadenfreude in which I recall such humiliating debacles as breaking my shoulder while trying to impress a guy, coming very close to spending my life in a Guatemalan prison, and having my lacerated ear sewn back on by a deaf guy after losing it in a torrid love affair. In addition to hoarding mortifying situations that’ll make you feel way better about your choices, I’ve also accumulated a lot of knowledge from therapists, psychotherapists, and psychopaths, which can probably help you avoid making the same mistakes I’ve made. Think of this book as everything you’d want from the Internet all in one place, except without the constant distractions of ads, online shopping, and porn. I’m not sure what else to say to say, except that you should buy it if you want to laugh and learn how to stop being crazy. And if we used to date, see you in court.
Download or read book Stand Up Comedy written by Judy Carter and published by Dell. This book was released on 2010-03-03 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If you think you’re funny, buy this book! Whether you dream of becoming a star . . . A better public speaker . . . A more effective communicator . . . A funnier, happier human being . . . You can learn to leave ‘em laughing! David Letterman learned to do it. Jay Leno learned to do it. Roseanne Barr learned to do it. So can you! Now successful stand-up comic Judy Carter—who went from teaching high school to performing in Las Vegas, Atlantic City, Lake Tahoe, and on over 45 major TV shows—gives you the same hands-on, step-by-step instruction she’s taught to students in her comedy workshops. She shows you how to do it: create an act, perform it, make money with it, or apply it to everyday life. Discover: • The formulas for creating comedy material • How to find your own style • The three steps to putting your act together • Rehearsal do’s and don’ts • What to do if you bomb • Ways to punch up your everyday life with humor
Download or read book The Hopkins Conundrum written by Simon Edge and published by Eye Books (US&CA). This book was released on 2017-05-25 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tim Cleverley inherits a failing pub in Wales, which he plans to rescue by enlisting an American pulp novelist to concoct an entirely fabricated "mystery" about Gerald Manley Hopkins, who composed "The Wreck of the Deutschland" nearby. Blending the real stories of Hopkins and the shipwrecked nuns he wrote about with a contemporary love story, while casting a wry eye on the Dan Brown industry, The Hopkins Conundrum is a highly original mix of commercial fiction, literary biography, and satirical commentary.
