Alan Zweibel has written a lot of funny stuff over the last four decades. His TV credits include writer for the first five seasons of “Saturday Night Live,” co-creator of “It’s Garry Shandling’s Show,” and producer for “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” He also co-wrote both Martin Short’s and Billy Crystal’s one-man shows on Broadway and won the Thurber Prize For American Humor for his 2006 novel, “The Other Shulman” (listen to our conversation about it here).
His latest novel, co-authored with Dave Barry, is “Lunatics.” I discussed it with both of them when it was published last February, and now that it’s out in paperback, I invited Alan to join me solo to discuss how they’ve updated this edition, whether it’s been sold as a movie yet, and whether he’ll do more co-writing with Dave or other authors.
We also talked about Gilda Radner, who Alan worked with very closely with during their “SNL” years and her Broadway show, “Gilda Live.” I brought it up because of a recent controversy regarding some of the Gilda’s Club cancer centers around the country that are considering dropping her name from their title because, as one of their spokeswomen explained, “young people don’t know who she is.” This infuriates Alan, who has done fundraisers for many of these centers, as he explained during our conversation.
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