Feeding The Daily Beast

I know, I know. We have a lot of catching up to do. So let’s get to it!

Earlier this month, I began contributing on a freelance basis to The Daily Beast. My first two pieces were a review of Maria Bamford’s new memoir, ‘Sure, I’ll Join Your Cult: A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere,’ and an analysis of how Shane Gillis came back from his SNL shaming to become the #1 comedian on Netflix four years later.

Before I get you caught up with so many things happening in the comedy world these days (and there has been a bunch, notwithstanding the breaking/developing news of a tentative agreement that would halt the WGA strike just shy of five months, which has a bunch of repercussions to dive into soon enough), I wanted to share some additional insight to two other pieces I’ve posted to The Daily Beast over the past two Friday nights.

First up, my reflections upon Sorry/Not Sorry, the NYT-backed documentary following up on the Louis C.K. revelations they published six years ago, and what the relative careers of C.K. vs. his victims says about the #MeToo movement today. The film premiered two Sundays ago at TIFF (the Toronto International Film Festival), and I happen to be featured in it as the least famous talking head. So I wrote about watching it, and thinking about who else decided to come forward and why, as well as who didn’t want to talk about it, and why not. Certainly his victims may never want to think about him again, so dredging up those memories holds little appeal; but also, part of why the filmmakers embarked upon this documentary was because the blowback against victims or anyone speaking out against C.K. has been far worse than any consequences he has seemingly suffered. He won a Grammy (as did Dave Chappelle) for making light of it, and he sold out Madison Square Garden earlier this year (making even more money off of selling a livestream for it). At least the latter exercise allowed the filmmakers to ask his fans straight up to take a stance.

Some things I also noted which got cut out of my review…

1. Even just this week, Michelle Wolf’s latest stand-up released on Netflix includes a bit wherein she joked about rumors surrounding the late Nancy Reagan’s sexual proclivities in Hollywood when the former First Lady was just another aspiring actress. This same week, Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis apologized for having written letters to the court asking for leniency in sentencing serial rapist Danny Masterson, and then even more news resurfaced about how Masterson had dared Kutcher to French kiss an underage Kunis during filming of That ‘70s Show, and how Kutcher had joked on his MTV show Punk’d about anticipating other underage actresses turning 18.
2. We do learn that C.K. himself did begin attempting to make amends as early as 2009, reaching out to Abby Schachner online and then meeting with her face-to-face at Canter’s Deli in Los Angeles. Schachner also inadvertently mentions that she only had C.K.’s contact information in the first place back in the mid-1990s when she was a Second City performer who’d submitted a writing packet for The Dana Carvey Show. Schachner said she didn’t get the job, but her then-boyfriend, Jon (Glaser) did. Glaser later appeared on a 2015 episode of Louie. But we can only wonder what Glaser thought of C.K., or what of what the comedian had done to his ex-girlfriend.
3. Perhaps it’s generational. Younger comedians spoke out to Rolling Stone about how Jimmy Fallon was a bad boss to them on the set of The Tonight Show. Although none of these writers or staffers were willing to go on the record, Fallon did apologize to them after the article published.
4. Sorry/Not Sorry’s filmmakers reached out to me in part because I was one of the few men willing to grapple with the notion of how to handle C.K., both at the time in 2017, and then last year when C.K. directed and released an independent movie, Fourth of July.
5. We need to keep talking about C.K. just like comedian W. Kamau Bell reminded us last year in his Peabody-winning docuseries, We Need To Talk About Cosby.

As I noted: The film may feel like it’s raising more questions than it answers, but that’s kind of the point. This conversation needs to continue.

This past Friday night, I weighed in on the debates comedians are having in the wake of a New Yorker profile on Hasan Minhaj, grilling him over multiple incidents he described in his two Netflix specials that turned out to be not so true. So what, you might ask?

So I attempted to answer that question for you by outlining why comedians lie or exaggerate, and under what circumstances that’s good or bad for comedy.

If you’ve listened to my podcast interviews in recent years, I’ve asked more than one comedian or fellow critic about the impact of podcasting upon the expectations and understandings audiences may have about the comedians they’re listening to and then buying tickets to see onstage. About how comedians themselves are blurring the lines from when they’re being sincere versus when they’re just telling jokes. We didn’t have as much confusion about this before social media. We only knew comedians from what they said when they performed (and even when they appeared on a TV talk show panel, they usually were only asked questions to prompt their pre-written bits). Now we think we know everything about our favorite comedians. And all-too-often thes days, comedians love to hide behind the cover of “they’re just jokes” when audiences don’t like what they hear. I’ve also noted in these columns and podcasts more than once how broadcasting all of this has necessarily altered the relationship between comedian and audience. Before, you had to be in the club, tacitly agreeing with the comedian. Now, the comedian never knows who might be listening or watching, and in what context, and at what time.

My own relationship with Minhaj goes way back, more than a decade now, meeting with him in early 2013, when he was hosting a new show for MTV about…checks notes…epic fails online?!?

A couple of years later, we spoke for my podcast after one of his off-Broadway performances of Homecoming King in NYC.

It’s obviously weird to go back and watch/listen to our chats from then now, with this newfound perspective.

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But if it turns out Mike Birbiglia doesn’t even have a sleep disorder, we’re gonna riot. Just kidding, Mike — I know you’d never steer us wrong…right?