comedy

Female Comedians Respond To and Disprove That Pesky "Women Aren't Funny" Claim

Rich Juzwiak · 03/22/13 12:00PM

Last night, Showtime aired the documentary Why We Laugh: Funny Women, a follow-up to its 2009 doc Why We Laugh: Black Comedians on Black Comedy. Dozens of female comedians were interviewed for it, including titans like Joan Rivers, Whoopi Goldberg, Lily Tomlin, Aisha Tyler and Kathy Griffin, who riffed on what it's like to be a woman in what is still considered (by many of them even) to be a "masculine" job in a male-dominated field.

Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle Performed Together Last Night, Discussed Going on Tour

Taylor Berman · 02/27/13 07:50PM

Last night, at around midnight, Dave Chappelle made a surprise appearance at the Comedy Cellar, the legendary nightclub featured during the credits to Louie. Considering Chappelle's relatively reclusive history, this would've been exciting for comedy nerds, if not exactly newsworthy. However, after Chappelle performed solo for 45 minutes or so, and was preparing to leave, Chris Rock jumped on stage.

ESB Shooting Sparks Rare, Brilliant Update on Onion Story

Adrian Chen · 08/24/12 12:21PM

The Onion is famous for its insanely painstaking joke-making process, where hundreds of proposed headlines are whittled down to just the handful of gems you see on the website or in the paper each week. But what happens when real breaking news collides with the imagined world of the Onion? Like any legit news organization these days, they update.

Tom Arnold's Tenderness, Ellen Barkin's Valium, Gilbert Gottfried's Tsunami Revisiting: The Adorable Messes of Roseanne's Roast

Rich Juzwiak · 08/13/12 12:50PM

Above is a highlight reel of last night's Roast of Roseanne on Comedy Central. Its messiness was an aesthetic choice — many members of the panel, whose star power was repeatedly called out for being underwhelming, aired out their dirty laundry. Carrie Fisher talked about her addiction and its affect on her memory, but best of all was when she read Jeff Ross with drag queen's precision. Ellen Barkin talked about popping Valium and drinking several cocktails before taking the stage — good thing, because I wanted to get to the bottom of why she could barely open her eyes all night before that. Gilbert Gottfried joked about his tsunami joke that went awry and got him fired as the Aflac duck's voice last year. He wants his job back, of course.

Only One Of These Films Has Gina Gershon Blowing a Chicken Leg: Killer Joe Vs. Klown's Hilarious Depravity

Rich Juzwiak · 07/28/12 07:15AM

In William Friedkin's Killer Joe, Gina Gershon's character Sharla is forced to give head to a chicken leg, a penis stand-in held at the crotch of Matthew McConaughey's anti-hero Killer Joe Cooper. Like the peeing scene in Last House on the Left, the marathon gang rape of I Spit on Your Grave, the wire torture that caps Audition and the turtle (and everything else) in Cannibal Holocaust, it is one of those scenes – a bit of celluloid that will define the film's legacy. The image of Gershon's bee-stung lips wrapped around a chicken leg is not something you see everyday or any other day, for that matter, and if you remove yourself from any emotional connection, you can appreciate this as a minor innovation in the catalog of things movies have done to freak people out, a stand-out in the canon of cinematic depravity.

Which Beloved Comedian Likes to Force Female Comics to Watch Him Jerk Off?

gawker sources · 03/19/12 06:27PM

Male comedians are weird. They jerk off all the time, and then go on stage and talk about jerking off all the time, for money and laughs. But our nation's most hilarious stand-up comic and critically cherished sitcom auteur adds a thrilling twist to his onanistic escapades: He traps unsuspecting women in his hotel room and makes them stick around until he's done.

Jimmy Kimmel's Mom Was 'Very Sadistic' And Kind of Messed Up

Ryan Tate · 02/02/12 07:49PM

Jimmy Kimmel went on fellow comic Marc Maron's podcast-slash-psychotherapy-couch WTF to talk about his unusual career path. But he couldn't resist taking his famously neurotic host on a detour into some of his family issues, including the "very sadistic" mom who used to make him pay her begging homage and who pretended she was dead to make him cry.

Here's the Horrible Comedy Sketch About Rape That Has UConn in Uproar

Maureen O'Connor · 02/01/12 11:54AM

UConn, America's foremost institution of sports riots and male rage, is in uproar after student-run (and student-funded) television network UCTV aired a sketch comedy segment that depicted a crying girl using a blue-light phone while fleeing a possible rapist. As she attempts to escape, the robotic blue-light voices call her a "cock gobbler," a "stinky bitchy," a "blonde bitch," and a "howler monkey bitch" who is "crying rape." The sketch ends with the girl falling to the ground after her attacker strangles her in a dark parking lot.

Letterman Fires Scout For Blabbing About Sexist Bookings

Ryan Tate · 01/17/12 01:10PM

The Late Show with David Letterman just fired its booker Eddie Brill. The ostensible reason is some horribly sexist comments Brill made in the New York Times. The real reason is Letterman's festering woman problem.

Saturday Night Live Paying Freelancers $100 Per Joke

Seth Abramovitch · 08/25/11 08:43PM

Did you know Saturday Night Live pays freelancers $100 per joke for Weekend Update? You can't just tie them to a rock and hurl them through an 8th floor window of Rockefeller Center, however. You must first get your name on something called "the fax list," which is a list of standups and comedy writers who have been vetted by a comedy writing establishment hopelessly mired in outdated modes of communication.

Harold and Kumar 3: The Christmas One

Max Read · 08/10/11 08:19PM

Here's the trailer for A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas, which is, yes, the third Harold and Kumar movie to grace our multiplexes. It is, as you may have guessed, a Christmas movie shot in 3D.