• Open mics are widely known to be a slog for most. Everyone is trying new stuff which can be brave to do in front of your peers but yeah, listening to hours of new stuff can be a bit much if you do it seven days a week. That’s why it’s so refreshing to see a new take on the open mic which is what I found in Nat Towsen’s show “New Material Night” at the PIT. I attended with Anna E. Paone and Danny Braff last Sunday (Art Cai, Dominic Leonelli and Jeff Jacobs were there too!) and saw Nat open the show with an impressive amount of new stuff. It’s a tough thing to do stuff that isn’t tried and true in front of an audience but Nat did so with ease and bravado. Milly Tea and Jes Tom followed. They both did sets that felt polished yet fresh. It was a joy to watch. Then Nat brought on the headliner Gary Gulman. He ran about an hour of new stuff (he has a special coming out on October 5 as he reminded the crowd as a running joke) and some of it was truly revelatory. He said, “Staggering” onstage. Never heard anyone say that while performing comedy and that’s what separates him; Gary always plays to the top of his intelligence. A chunk about all of us living in a simulation was perfect. He’s one of the best working comics today and his daily Twitter tips for comics are a goldmine. Gary is incredible and if I ever remake “The Wizard of Oz” (which I have no plans to do so) I can’t think of anyone who could play The Cowardly Lion better.
• Didn’t do much comedically this week but I did make it through sketch packet season alive. I know a lot of my peers like Maura Sateriale, Nate Borgman and Joe Nahme to name a few did SNL packets that were due this past Monday which I thought was an interesting process. For some reason, SNL opened writing submissions to the public this year. Who knows if any of us folks without representation even hear back but it was certainly cool to be part of the world of people who get to submit and feel like a legitimate writer for a second. Similarly, I submitted packets to the Armory Sketch Group and BoogieManja as well. Fingers crossed this goes anywhere.
• If you couldn’t tell from above, I’m a massive SNL fan. I haven’t missed an episode in years and started watching back in 1995 or so (late 90s is the best era followed closely by the late 80s). Anyway, where is this going? Well, last Friday was my birthday and I got a group text from my brother Ben Levy I opened it and it was a Cameo video of Chris Kattan. Basically, my Dad Andy Levy wrote up a script for Kattan to read (excerpts from his Mango character and lines from “A Night at the Roxbury” which is my all-time favorite film) and he went way off. Either way, it was still awesome. Hadn’t really explored Cameo before either; you can get Mr. Wonderful from “Shark Tank” to wish you a happy birthday for $1000.00 if you want. Kattan is much cheaper.
• Watched so much stuff this week so I’ll recap quickly. The first two episodes of “Bring the Funny” are a more high energy, cleaner “Last Comic Standing” and it’s definitely cool to see my pal Ian Lara crush it up there. Also, a guy I sort of barely know Michael Longfellow (we just missed each other in AZ) killed it as well. Excited to see what the following weeks hold as much as the choices for who move on to be fairly strange (not a slight to those who have advanced. The judges just treat some performers unfairly it seems). Also, caught three very funny movies this week. “Airplane 2” (streaming on Amazon Prime) deserves way more credit. The movie is yes, dumb as mud, but incredibly smart too. So many very literal jokes. I really wish there were more parodies made at this level. Also, finally saw “Living In Oblivion (streaming on Amazon Prime too), which is the movie about making movies that every film school kid aspires to make. This one gets it right too and is spot on about making video. It pretty much is film school featuring a youngish Steve Buscemi, Catherine Keener and Peter Dinklage. It breezes right past. You should definitely check it. Finally, saw “Toy Story 4” with Anna and Clayton Russell Porter last week. Don’t know how the franchise keeps getting better but it does. Go see it just for Forky. It should also be mentioned that with about ten minutes left in the movie at its emotional climax, a dude walked in looking for his friend (just like the character in the movie was looking for their friend) and it totally took us out of the experience. Paid $17.00 or so for that.
• Had a totally random dude with a ton of followers retweet a very dumb Tweet of mine (A lot of people don’t know this but 21 Savage is Fred and Ben Savage’s little brother) and a bunch of gamers randomly picked it up. Don’t know how or why this happened but I got four random, new followers out of it. I celebrate the small things. Also, as always, if you follow @mattlevy51 if you’re not already, I will follow back and like ten of your Tweets. This was just a plug.
• I really want to bring Genevieve Rice’s excellent show from AZ to life in NYC. The show is called Snark Show and could use a home. I’ll book everyone! It will run for all of time and we will all become wildly successful because of it. If you know a place that I could put it up at (already submitted to the PIT), let me know! I’ll get you on (once it exists that is)!
• Got one sweet show this week that I’m very excited about. It’s Matt Vita’s two-minute competition show tomorrow night. You should go or ask me about it if you don’t know about it already, Matt WILL book you on a future one and I’ll put in a good word with him for you there. Let me know if you want details.
You miss 100% of the punchlines you don’t write
