Deadline reports today that comedy star Jonah Hill and writer/stand-up comedian Hannibal Buress have sold a new comedy project to Fox. Details of the show's style and concept are yet to be determined, but the sitcom will be co-written by Hill and Buress, and Buress will star.
“My initial dream was to write a show for Fox News, but Jonah convinced me we’d have a slightly better shot at normal Fox,” Buress said. This will be the comedian's first starring role; his most recognizable onscreen role is probably playing a homeless man in several episodes of 30 Rock.
"From the first time I saw Hannibal perform," Hill said, "I started banging down the door to be the person to help guide his unique voice and material to television. I feel lucky he chose me and my bosses at Fox."
Buress was featured as one of Back Stage's "10 Comics to Watch" earlier this year, and with the help of Fox and Hill, the up-and-coming comic will soon be seen by a much larger television audience. The deal seems to part of a growing trend, too, as networks are once again looking to stand-ups such as Whitney Cummings, Demetri Martin, Dane Cook, Sarah Silverman, and Roseanne Barr to create their next crop of new sitcoms.
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"Tell Your Friends! The Concert Film!" premieres in NYC (Left to right: Kurt Braunohler, Leo Allen, Rob Paravonian, Kristen Schaal, Liam McEneany, Victor Varnado, Christian Finnegan). Photo credit: Lindsay Aikman/Michael Priest Photography.
Last night, Sketchfest NYC presented the New York premiere of Tell Your Friends! The Concert Film!, a documentary about the indie comedy scene in New York City and the long-running comedy show "Tell Your Friends!," which is hosted each week by Liam McEneaney on the Lower East Side. McEneaney and director Victor Varnado (The Awkward Comedy Show) say their goal was to create a filmed document of the current comedy movement -- like Woodstock or The Last Waltz did for music -- by combining live performances with insightful interviews and candid backstage footage to create an overall sense of the scene.
The film was shot at a live "Tell Your Friends!" show at The Bell House in Brooklyn last summer and features performances by Reggie Watts, Kurt Braunohler & Kristen Schaal, Christian Finnegan, Leo Allen, Rob Paravonian, and McEneaney. The documentary also includes interviews with comedians Janeane Garofalo, Jim Gaffigan, Colin Quinn, Marc Maron, Paul F. Tompkins, Eddie Brill, Wyatt Cenac, Hannibal Buress, and Kumail Nanjiani.
Tell Your Friends! The Concert Film! premiered at SXSW earlier this year, and has also screened at Just for Laughs in Montreal and Chicago, as well as other film festivals. Watch the trailer for the film below, then check out our video interviews with the creators and cast:
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Jeremy Seglem began his acting career about five years ago, in a collection of short comedic web videos called "Treading Water." Since then, in partnership with writer/director Tim Young, he's continued to produce original video content for the web -- first as the co-creator and star of the mockumentary series "Twilight with Steve Cooper" and its follow-up, "Behind the Steve," and now as the co-creator and writer of "Cop/Cop," a new improvised comedy series starring Tyler Gilmore and Rob Cuthill as two inept cops who will go to any lengths to get a confession.
The first episode of "Cop/Cop," titled "Old Dogs," premiered online this week, and another episode has been selected to debut at the Channel 101 program at this year's New York Television Festival on Friday night in NYC. Channel 101 is a monthly series in which five-minute shows are screened for a live audience, who vote to "cancel" some series and "renew" others, new episodes of which are then presented as part of the new "prime time lineup" at the event the next month.
"I have not experienced a live situation, where people will laugh at something I've made," Seglem says. "So my goal is just to have people laugh at it. That's really all I can ask. It'd be nice to advance, but as long as people think it's funny, I don't care."
Watch the first episode of "Cop/Cop" below, then read our Q&A with Seglem to learn more about his creative process, how he finds an audience for funny three-minute videos among so much competition online, and why all actors should take on the role of a casting director.
(Warning: Language and situations may be NSFW)
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"Two years ago, I planned on killing myself in my garage. Now, I'm in my garage doing the best work I've ever done."
This is how viewers are introduced to comedian and podcast host Marc Maron in his new independent comedy pilot, which premiered as part of the New York Television Festival's Primetime "Opening Night Comedy Extravaganza" last night in New York City. Presented with the eponymous working title Maron, the show opens with Maron speaking directly to the camera, sharing his neuroses with someone we'd assume is his therapist. But no -- he's just trying to connect with his cat's veterinarian.
That type of straightforward, confessional comedy has been Maron's trademark for more than two decades as a stand-up comic. Today, he reaches hundreds of thousands of listeners as the host of WTF with Marc Maron, a popular podcast -- recorded in his garage at his home near L.A. that he calls the "cat ranch" -- in which he engages comedians such as Robin Williams, Maria Bamford, Garry Shandling, Louis C.K., and more than 200 others in long-form conversations.
("When I was going to a meeting at Fox [to pitch the pilot]," Maron revealed in a Q&A with the audience following the screening, "we were walking through the parking lot and Louis was driving out. He was just alone in his car, and he was like, 'Hey, what's going on?' I said, 'I'm meeting with Fox. We did a pilot presentation.' He goes, 'Really?' And I said, 'Yeah, it's called Louie Also.")
Last night's NYTVF screening was the first time that the public, or Maron himself, had seen the finished pilot.
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