Download or read book My Life The Sitcom written by Chadd Allan Wheat and published by Osprey House Books. This book was released on 2023-10-20 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Welcome to My Life: The Sitcom, featuring the panderings and ponderings of Yours Truly, Chadd Wheat. Believe it or not, many of you have actually asked for this book. I don't know if you intend on using it for the bottom of the birdcage, evidence in impending legal actions, or simply as a guide to living frivolously. Whatever the case, I hope you enjoy it. I started writing My Life: The Sitcom in 2002. Most of my articles, as published in The Lebanon Reporter and elsewhere, are my direct observations on the craziness that surrounds my life. Nearly all the events contained herein are actually true, with the names sometimes changed to protect the ignorant. People often ask me where I get the inspiration to write my ludicrous columns. After rubbing my chin and looking sage, I usually say something like, "by consuming too much reality television, caffeine and other borderline hallucinogens. Ha, ha! Just kidding, local law enforcement! As a matter of fact, I never watch reality television!
Download or read book My Life as an Experiment written by A. J. Jacobs and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2009-09-08 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of A.J. Jacobs’s hilarious adventures as a human guinea pig, including “My Outsourced Life,” “The Truth About Nakedness,” and a never-before-published essay. One man. Ten extraordinary quests. Bestselling author and human guinea pig A.J. Jacobs puts his life to the test and reports on the surprising and entertaining results. He goes undercover as a woman, lives by George Washington’s moral code, and impersonates a movie star. He practices "radical honesty," brushes his teeth with the world’s most rational toothpaste, and outsources every part of his life to India—including reading bedtime stories to his kids. And in a new adventure, Jacobs undergoes scientific testing to determine how he can put his wife through these and other life-altering experiments—one of which involves public nudity. Filled with humor and wisdom, My Life as an Experiment will immerse you in eye-opening situations and change the way you think about the big issues of our time—from love and work to national politics and breakfast cereal.
Download or read book My Life is a Situation Comedy written by Bill Persky and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If you've watched TV in the last 50 years, you already love Bill Persky. He discovered Goldie Hawn, gave Kelsey Grammer his first television job, created the ground breaking TV series "That Girl" and won 5 Emmy Awards. Raising his three daughters as a single parent, Bill Persky's life has been its own never ending situation comedy helping him write The Dick Van Dyke Show, Welcome Back Kotter, Who's The Boss, Kate & Allie, Bill Cosby and Sid Caesar, this book is the sitcom he has lived. A wonderful inside look at television and life in the chaotic past 50 years. Among the marquee names that sparkled brightly in Persky's universe are Mary Tyler Moore, Bill Cosby, Sid Caesar, Steve Allen, Goldie Hawn, Peter Sellers, Susan St. James, Jane Curtin, Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Tim Conway, Andy Williams, Cary Grant and The Smothers Brothers.
Download or read book You re Lucky You re Funny written by Phil Rosenthal and published by Plume. This book was released on 2007-09-25 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The creator and executive producer of Everybody Loves Raymond, on how to make a sitcom classic and keep laughing This laugh-out-loud memoir takes readers backstage and inside the writers’ room of one of America’s best-loved shows. With more than 17 million viewers and more than seventy Emmy nominations—including two wins for best comedy—Everybody Loves Raymond reigned supreme in television comedy for almost a decade. Phil Rosenthal was there at the beginning. United by a shared lifetime of family dysfunction, he and Ray Romano found endless material to keep the show fresh and funny for its entire run. Alongside hilarious anecdotes from the series and his own career misadventures prior to working on the show, Rosenthal provides an enlightening and entertaining look at how sitcoms are written and characters developed. You’re Lucky You’re Funny is an inspiration to aspiring creators of comedy and a must read for the show’s millions of devoted fans.
Download or read book Fresh Off the Boat written by Eddie Huang and published by Spiegel & Grau. This book was released on 2013 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Taiwanese American rebel restaurateur chronicles his rise to success from his difficult childhood in the American South to his decision to embrace all he had learned about food in his father's restaurants and his mother's kitchen to create his own culinary identity.
Download or read book The Great TV Sitcom Book written by Rick Mitz and published by . This book was released on 1980 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Sitcom written by Jeremy G. Butler and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-10-09 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this new Routledge Television Guidebook, Jeremy G. Butler studies our love-hate relationship with the durable sitcom, analyzing the genre’s position as a major media artefact within American culture and providing a historical overview of its evolution in the USA. Everyone loves the sitcom genre; and yet, paradoxically, everyone hates the sitcom, too. This book examines themes of gender, race, ethnicity, and the family that are always at the core of humor in our culture, tracking how those discourses are embedded in the sitcom’s relatively rigid storytelling structures. Butler pays particular attention to the sitcom’s position in today’s post-network media landscape and sample analyses of Sex and the City, Black-ish, The Simpsons, and The Andy Griffith Show illuminate how the sitcom is infused with foundational American values. At once contemporary and reflective, The Sitcom is a must-read for students and scholars of television, comedy, and broader media studies, and a great classroom text.
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 349 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 The Facts of My Life written by Charlotte Rae and published by BearManor Media. This book was released on 2015-11-01 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "It's about time a book came out about one of the most talented and beloved performers in the American theater. Charlotte is the consummate actress, comedienne, entertainer. Her work on stage and screen is always hilarious and somehow also gets you right in the gut. Her story is every bit as brilliant. Read it and smile." -Comedy Legend, Carl Reiner "To think of Charlotte Rae is to smile. Consequently, when I began to read "The Facts of My Life," I was unprepared for the emotional impact it would have on me. By the time I finished the first chapter, dealing as it does with her severely troubled son Andy, I was in tears. "As an old friend of Charlotte's, I thought I knew her fairly well. But as I read on, I discovered that the 'facts of her life' were constantly surprising (as well as amusing and engrossing)! There is so much that I don't know about Charlotte and so much that I now want to know, when the book is finally completed and published, I'll be first in line to get my copy!" -Sheldon Harnick (Composer, Fiddler on the Roof) Charlotte Rae's career spans more than seventy years, from the golden age of television to Shakespeare in the Park, the New York Cabaret scene of the late 1940's and 50's to her hit series, The Facts of Life and well beyond. Off stage and screen, Charlotte's life has been one of joy and challenge, raising an autistic son, coming to terms with alcoholism, the heartache of a broken marriage, the revelation of a gay husband and the sudden challenge of facing middle-age with financial and emotional uncertainties-an crisis she ultimately turned into the determination that brought her stardom. The Facts of My Life is the first opportunity for Charlotte fans to explore the fascinating story of her extraordinary life: poignant and hilarious, a story of courage and triumph, one that speaks for a generation of women breaking barriers, taking on challenges, overcoming personal tragedy, and paving the way for others.
Download or read book Sitcom written by Saul Austerlitz and published by Chicago Review Press. This book was released on 2014-03-01 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The form is so elemental, so basic, that we have difficulty imagining a time before it existed: a single set, fixed cameras, canned laughter, zany sidekicks, quirky family antics. Obsessively watched and critically ignored, sitcoms were a distraction, a gentle lullaby of a kinder, gentler America—until suddenly the artificial boundary between the world and television entertainment collapsed. In this book we can watch the growth of the sitcom, following the path that leads from Lucy to The Phil Silvers Show; from The Dick Van Dyke Show to The Mary Tyler Moore Show; from M*A*S*H to Taxi; from Cheers to Roseanne; from Seinfeld to Curb Your Enthusiasm; and from The Larry Sanders Show to 30 Rock. Each sitcom episode is a self-enclosed world, a brief overturning of the established order of its universe before returning to the precise spot from which it had begun. In twenty-four episodes, Sitcom surveys the history of the form, and functions as both a TV mixtape of fondly remembered shows that will guide us to notable series and larger trends, and a carefully curated guided tour through the history of one of our most treasured art forms. Saul Austerlitz is the author of Another Fine Mess: A History of the American Film Comedy, named by Booklist as one of the ten best arts books of 2010, and Money for Nothing: A History of the Music Video from the Beatles to the White Stripes. His work has been published in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Slate, and elsewhere.
Download or read book My World and Welcome to it written by James Thurber and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 1942 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A book of humor and satire covers topics from baseball to Macbeth.
Download or read book Laughing with Lucy written by Madelyn Pugh Davis and published by . This book was released on 2007-09 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lucille Ball's comic genius made them famous, but many of the unforgettable plot lines for I Love Lucy came from the life of their writer, Madelyn Pugh Davis. In Laughing with Lucy, Davis and her long-time writing partner, Bob Carroll Jr., recount her rise in television and her many years working on the set and behind the scenes with Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. Lighthearted and witty, this book offers a trip back in time to the tumultuous early days of television.
Download or read book Life After Life written by Kate Atkinson and published by Random House. This book was released on 2014 with total page 628 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WINNER OF THE COSTA NOVEL AWARD What if you had the chance to live your life again and again, until you finally got it right? During a snowstorm in England in 1910, a baby is born and dies before she can take her first breath. During a snowstorm in England in 1910, the same baby is born and lives to tell the tale. What if there were second chances? And third chances? In fact an infinite number of chances to live your life? Would you eventually be able to save the world from its own inevitable destiny? And would you even want to? Life After Life follows Ursula Todd as she lives through the turbulent events of the last century again and again. With wit and compassion, Kate Atkinson finds warmth even in lifeâe(tm)s bleakest moments, and shows an extraordinary ability to evoke the past. Here she is at her most profound and inventive, in a novel that celebrates the best and worst of ourselves.
Download or read book The Eight Characters of Comedy written by Scott Sedita and published by SCB Distributors. This book was released on 2014-01-31 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Eight Characters of Comedy is the “How-To” guide for actors & writers who want to break into the world of sitcoms. It has become a staple in acting classes, writers’ rooms, casting offices and production sets around the world. Now, in it’s exciting SECOND EDITION, renowned acting coach and bestselling author, Scott Sedita, gives you even MORE advice and exercises for breaking down comedy scripts, writing jokes and delivering them with comedic precision. Plus, you’ll find in-depth REVISED sections on Sitcom History, The Three Pillars of Comedy, Auditioning for Sitcoms, and his acclaimed comedic technique “The Sedita Method!” Most importantly, you will be introduced to his famous sitcom character archetypes, which will help you build your niche in half-hour comedy... The Eight Characters of Comedy! Who is normally cast as The Logical Smart One? Why do we love The Lovable Loser? Why is The Neurotic a favorite for actors and writers? How do you play The Dumb One smart? Who are the biggest Bitch/Bastards? What drives The Materialistic Ones? Why is The Womanizer/Manizer so popular? How can you realistically write and play someone In Their Own Universe? The Eight Characters of Comedy answers all these questions and more, with UPDATED EXAMPLES from current & classic sitcoms, and from many of the greatest sitcom characters & actors of all time! After reading this book, you WILL be ready to work in the exciting world of situation comedy!
Download or read book Blessed Life written by Kim Fields and published by FaithWords. This book was released on 2017-11-14 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From "Facts of Life" to "Living Single" to "Dancing with the Stars" to wife and mom, here's the Blessed Life of Kim Fields, veteran actress, TV personality, and star. Kim Fields has lived most of her life with people thinking they know her, which is understandable. From her first job on a Mrs. Butterworth syrup commercial at age 7, she has spent 40 years in the public eye. There were 9 years as Dorothy "Tootie" Ramsey on the classic sitcom The Facts of Life, 5 more in her 20s starring as Regine Hunter on the seminal coming-of-age show Living Single, and most recently appearing as herself on Real Housewives of Atlanta and Dancing with the Stars. Behind the camera, she has directed episodes of Kenan & Kel, Tyler Perry's Meet the Browns and House of Payne, and BET's Let's Stay Together. Between gigs, the pop culture icon's life has included theater, spoken word, music, speaking engagements, and simply being present to the point that she cannot go a day without someone stopping her to say, "When I was a kid, I wanted to be Tootie" or "You were my role model." Flattered and blessed, after four decades in the business, Kim finally understands the role she has played onscreen and off as a successful, outspoken African-American woman. However, for as much as she's been in the public eye, people have really never known her the way they think they have, and that's because she, herself, spent most of her life figuring herself out. Now, at age 48, she is ready to set the record straight. She says, "It's not that I've been misunderstood. It's that I finally feel like I understand me enough to tell the life story that I've been asked to write for years." It will be a chronicle of living, learning, and keen moments of self-discovery as she's journeyed through the many facets and chapters of life. Fields found faith at age 14 and has found God to be right there every step of the way since then.
Download or read book Laugh Lines written by Alan Zweibel and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2020-04-14 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With his tender, funny memoir of four decades in the business, one of the first writers for Saturday Night Live traces the history of American comedy. Alan Zweibel started his comedy career selling jokes for seven dollars apiece to the last of the Borscht Belt standups. Then one night, despite bombing on stage, he caught the attention of Lorne Michaels and became one of the first writers at Saturday Night Live, where he penned classic material for Gilda Radner, John Belushi, and all of the original Not Ready For Prime Time Players. From SNL, he went on to have a hand in a series of landmark shows—from It’s Garry Shandling’s Show to Curb Your Enthusiasm. Throughout the pages of Laugh Lines Zweibel weaves together his own stories and interviews with his friends and contemporaries, including Richard Lewis, Eric Idle, Bob Saget, Mike Birbiglia, Sarah Silverman, Judd Apatow, Dave Barry, Carl Reiner, and more. The book also features a charming foreword from his friend of forty-five years Billy Crystal, with whom he co-wrote and co-produced the upcoming film Here Today that stars Crystal and Tiffany Haddish. Laugh Lines is a warmhearted cultural memoir of American comedy. “In Laugh Lines, Zweibel looks back, affectionately and informatively, at a career that began when he was a young deli worker grinding out jokes for old-school borscht belt comedians in his spare time, and that, after his “S.N.L.” years, included rewarding collaborations with, among others, Garry Shandling, Billy Crystal, Martin Short, Larry David and Dave Barry. . . . Fascinating.” —New York Times “Any comedy fan will thrill to see the contemporary art's invention through the eyes of consummate funny man Alan Zweibel. He takes you behind the velvet rope and makes you weep for all those artists who made us laugh. Screamingly funny—also very moving. A classic.” —Mary Karr “Alan Zweibel is legendary among us comedians. He is the man who delivers comedy with an emotional clout that makes him respected and revered.” —Steve Martin
Download or read book Friends written by Simone Knox and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2019-09-16 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a long overdue, extensive study of one of the most beloved television shows: Friends. Why has this sitcom become the seminal success that it is? And how does it continue to engage viewers around the world a quarter century after its first broadcast? Featuring original interviews with key creative personnel (including co-creator Marta Kauffman and executive producer Kevin S. Bright), the book provides answers by identifying a strategy of intimacy that informs Friends’ use of humour, performance, style and set design. The authors provide fascinating analyses of some of the most well-remembered scenes—the one where Ross can’t get his leather pants back on, and Ross and Rachel’s break-up, to name just a couple—and reflect on how and why A-list guest performances sometimes fell short of the standards set by the ensemble cast. Also considered are the iconic look of Monica’s apartment as well as the programme’s much discussed politics of representation and the critical backlash it has received in recent years. An exploration of Joey, the infamous spin-off, and several attempts to adapt Friends’ successful formula across the globe, round out the discussion, with insights into mistranslated jokes and much more. For students, scholars, creative industry practitioners and fans alike, this is a compelling read that lets us glimpse behind the scenes of what has become a cultural phenomenon and semi-permanent fixture in many of our homes.
