Dana Gould made a stop at Jimmy Kimmel Live and we’re awfully glad he did. Dana killed it with a great set, taking some time to muse on feathers as hair accessories and Stephen Hawking as an inspiration to schlubby Joe Shmoe’s everywhere–naturally. Definitely worth a few minutes of your afternoon. Be sure to follow Dana on Twitter (@DanaJGould) and see him live at SF Sketchfest and regular shows all around LA. Nice job Dana!
Patton Oswalt sat down on the Conan couch last night to promote his new film, Young Adult. The conversation, though, didn’t just focus on the Jason Reitman-directed film that looks awfully good and the logical perplexities of Patton adding a love scene with Charlize Theron to his resume. Naturally, the holiday season came up and Patton wants to know the Little Drummer Boy’s secret to soothing babies (Jesus or otherwise). Watch his full interview:
The wonderfully weird and recent Andy Kaufman Award winner Nick Vatterott delivered a distinctly quirky set on Conan last night. Apparently he’s gearing up to do some shows for kindergarten students and that sounds just about perfect. Nick also reflected on his own (distracted) childhood and the inherent awkwardness of the letter “Q”. Be sure to watch the rest of Nick’s clips on Rooftop and keep up with him on Twitter. Great job Nick!
In case you missed it, Rooftop friend and owl look-alike Sean Patton stopped by Conanrecently. Sean hit his stride right off the bat with a spin “dance move” that Conan really enjoyed. In a great set, he revealed his tricks to picking up ladies, including some surprising tips from the owls. He also congratulated himself for quitting smoking cigarettes and marijuana–an accomplishment that’s had some unforeseen effects (no more tuna-mac cakes!). Nice job, Sean! Don’t forget to catch out all of his Rooftop clips–you don’t want to miss his analysis of how college students party. You can follow Sean on Twitter.
Tig Notaro returned to the Conan stage last night, building off her hilarious last visit in September. Topics of the day included unusual reflections on her name, the bathing style of toddlers, and stool sounds. Be sure to watch all of Tig’s Rooftop clips. You can catch Tig on her weekly podcast Professor Blastoff, where she is joined by Kyle Dunnigan and David Huntsberger. Great job Tig!
Christian Finnegan stopped by the Conan stage yesterday, bringing his style of dry, observational wit and a bit of self-deprecation for good measure. Topics of the day included fine dining in Dayton, Ohio, Belgium’s admirable mediocrity, and what the U.S. can learn from Michael Jordan’s career in these tough economic times. Watch Christian’s entire set below and be sure to catch up on his Rooftop clips. You can follow Christian on Twitter @ChristFinnegan
Maria Bamford brought her signature style of hilarious characters and weird voices to the Conan stage last night. Needless to say, she killed it. The audience loved her material–motherhood and religion were the standout themes. Watch her set below and you’ll quickly learn why you should always call baby Jesus back and what it exactly means to worship in the church of People magazine (lots of Kirstie Alley). Great job Maria!
Be sure to catch up with all of Maria’s clips on Rooftop Comedy. You can follow Maria on Twitter here.
TJ Miller appeared on Conan Thursday night and he did a mighty fine job. You may recognize Miller as Ranger Jones in the live action Yogi Bear movie, from multiple appearances on Chelsea lately, and in heavy rotation as a Rooftop staff pick. On his second appearance on Conan, TJ rounded out his set with a story of an awkward airplane experience follwed by an amazing set of impressions Check it out!
Make sure to check out TJ’s hour long stand up special “No Real Reason” when it premieres on Comedy Central Saturday, November 12th at 11pm.
If you ever see Andrés du Bouchet perform live, you’re in for a treat. With Andrés comes a host of hilarious, captivating characters, making for a night of comedy that’s truly unique. There’s Danny Yeahyeah, a warm-up comic whose idea of crowd work is unlike anything you’ve ever heard; or Karl Management, who’s as passionate about managing talent as he is about pitching genius reality shows (Men With Terrible Gaydar House). Andrés, who spends his days as a writer for Conan, brings Karl, Danny, and others to his new album, Naked Trampoline Hamlet, recorded earlier this year at Bar Lubitsch in LA.Rooftop recently chatted with Andrés about his writing style, Conan O’Brien’s grip on U.S. history, marketing strategies from an unlikely source,and more.
Rooftop: Tell me about how your character Karl Management—a slick Hollywood suit who’s never short on new reality show ideas—came to be.
Andrés du Bouchet: Well I think, if I’m not mistaken, the character and the shows were two different things initially. It was another example of me re-assigning material to a different character. Those shows might have just been a blog post at first or something I wrote. The Karl Management character—do you remember, several years ago, there was this movie called The Aristocrats?
RT: Yes.
ADB: In the movie, all these comics tell their variation of that joke and then I participated in a show at the Peoples Improv Theater in New York where the whole point of the show was just for all the comics to do their version of “The Aristocrats”. So I decided I would tell it from the point of view of the talent manager of who these people were coming to. In most variations of that joke, you’re telling it from a third person perspective, where it’s just like “Here’s what happened. The manager is sitting there and he says blah, blah, blah”. So I just decided I’d tell it as a first person point of view story of the guy and these freaks came into his office. I’m always a big fan of making characters as—like calling a manager Karl Management. That just tickles me. Talking that way is just fun for me. It’s sort of like a style of speaking that’s like, one of my favorite comedians, Eddie Pepitone and my friend Michael Reisman who’s one of the guys I did a lot of comedy with in New York. It’s not the way he normally speaks, but sometimes, to make a point, he’d talk like that. He’s probably my favorite guy to appear as. It’s just very easy to talk like that and mundane things seem funny to me.
RT: As Karl Management, you build this great energy as you list more and more reality show pitches. Is that list framework your creative sweet spot as a writer?
ADB: I think any comedy writer would tell you that the format of the list is one of the most fun things to write. It’s not necessarily easy, but the fact that you have this structure in place makes it easier than normal. The order you put things in can help you decide which ones are going to be more elaborate and which ones are going to be quicker and simpler. You build off of previous items on the list, because certain things are already on the list, you can have a callback joke later that is sort of building off that. Anytime there’s a structure in place, it just makes writing more easy and fun. It gives you something to build on. I love listing off stupid things—who doesn’t? I like quiz formats. Those are another example—a lot of the bits I write here at work sometimes are these quizzes Conan and Andy do back and forth. Those are fun because it’s the same sort of thing: you build off of previous questions and you’ve got this structure to work with.
RT: Can you give an example of that kind of quiz segment?
ADB: They do this recurring bit I came up with where, because the premise is “Some people think Americans shouldn’t be allowed to vote unless they are educated enough in American history that they can pass the same test immigrants need to pass to become citizens”. That was some news story on CNN.com at some point last year. I was like, “Why don’t we just have Conan say ‘I agree with that! I’m going to take the citizenship test right now on camera’. Andy’s like, ‘Are you sure? These questions are pretty hard’. Conan’s like ‘I know my stuff. Let’s do it’. So obviously you can already see what’s going to happen. The first couple questions are real and then they get…and the way we do it is Conan is always right, even if his answer seems ridiculous. So I make up the questions and all the stupid answers and it’s fun to put them in a certain order that builds in ridiculousness or the momentum shifts from all these fast ones to, all of the sudden, a round where it’s a more elaborate thing with “Finish the phrase” or “Fill in the blank” or whatever and then it gets more and more ridiculous and then the last big question, Conan suddenly answers accurately in a long-winded, dry explanation. Like, “Explain what the Teapot Dome scandal was” and he’ll give a big paragraph of a completely accurate explanation. Those are always fun for me to write because there’s that structure in place.
RT: You just had an album release party in LA. How was that?
ADB: It was a lot of fun. It was at this place called the Steve Allen Theater. Two of the other Conan writers were co-hosts and co-hosted as these characters who were supposedly a company hired by Rooftop to do the marketing for the album. They called themselves—the two guys who did this were Dan Cronin and Todd Levin—their marketing firm was called Human Centipede. They were like, “We had our name way before that stupid movie came out and they refused to change it”. They had this whole really funny riff about how their company name and their slogans and stuff are just very unfortunate matches to stuff from The Human Centipede movie. Their logo looked like three guys sewn together. It was really funny. They did a slideshow of where they were going to advertise my album and it was all these very inappropriate places—Photoshop-ed billboards of the album in very inappropriate places, like at the bottom of the reflecting pool at the 9/11 memorial. We had a bunch of other comedians do spots and we had a great musical act. We had another bit where these two record execs approach the musical act at the end of her set and offer her a record deal. It was a lot of fun, a good crowd. I gave everyone in the crowd a CD.
RT: Next week you’re off to New York with some of the other Conan writers for a show at Upright Citizens Brigade?
ADB: I’ll do stuff that’s similar to what you heard on the CD. On Friday, I’ll avoid doing things that are already on the CD now that I’m working on other material. I’ll do some sort of character bit or whatever.
RT: Anything else about Naked Trampoline Hamlet we didn’t cover?
ADB: I’m just happy to get it out there. I think it’s the kind of thing that people will get more out of if they listen to it a couple times. At least, I like to think that I’ve peppered it with a lot of little, weird nuggets. There are a couple callbacks. There’s something that I did on purpose which is—you know how there’s a lot of fake names I use? There’s one name I use twice in two different bits. I just want to see if people can pinpoint what that is. It’s a fun little Easter egg.
Our old pal and “Best of the Fest” winner at the 2008 Aspen Rooftop Comedy Festival Matt Braunger was a joy to watch on Conan last night. Watch as he discusses awkwardness, drinking in your thirties, and Hungry Man dinners. Check it out!
Our old pal and “Best of the Fest” winner at the 2008 Aspen Rooftop Comedy Festival 