Our Weekend Double Bill
My wife and I spent the last two evenings at the Fox Theater having a great time. Friday night, we were there for Jerry Seinfeld, who maintains his rank as the best standup comedian of our time. His writing is brilliant -- every word, phrase, sentence, pause, action...
Tripp Whetsell On The History Of The Improv
Long before there was a Funny Bone or a Helium Comedy Club or the Comedy Store or the Comic Strip or Yuk Yuk’s, there was a place in Hell’s Kitchen in New York called The Improv. It was started by Budd Friedman, who I met a couple of years ago when I was in LA and my...
Robert Bader on The Marx Brothers
My conversation with Robert Bader about the Marx Brothers, who he writes about in the book, “Four Of The Three Musketeers.”
Kliph Nesteroff, “Funny How?”
Kliph Nesteroff returned to my radio show to talk about two TV projects he has coming up. One of them is "Funny How?" a five-part series debuting July 10th on Viceland, in which he follows Dave Attell, Mike Birbiglia, Rhea Butcher, and other comics as they work across...
Mulaney, Oswalt, and Letterman
I've become a big John Mulaney fan over the last couple of years. I didn't watch his Fox sitcom, (which only ran for a dozen or so episodes in 2014), but discovered him via his Netflix standup special, "The Comeback Kid." I was impressed by his writing, delivery, and...
Picture Of The Day
The most famous routine by comedian Shelley Berman, who died last week, is a masterful piece of timing and one-sided storytelling... Previously on Harris Online... When I talked to Kliph Nesteroff about his book, "The Comedians," I asked him if Bob Newhart stole...
Mark Malkoff, “The Carson Podcast”
It has been 25 years since Johnny Carson stepped down as host of "The Tonight Show," but his legacy lives on in reruns on Antenna TV and in "The Carson Podcast," hosted by my guest Mark Malkoff. In looking back at the King Of Late Night, we discussed: Whether Carson's...
I’m Dying Up Here
Showtime has a new series starting Sunday called "I'm Dying Up Here." It's based on William Knoedelseder's 2006 non-fiction book about the Los Angeles comedy scene in the late 1970s, particularly at the Comedy Store, where young comics like Jay Leno, David Letterman,...