So. You’ve got Josh Brolin for the week. Josh Brolin, who — goatee or no goatee — can pass for most U.S. presidents, a young Most Interesting Man in the World, Satan, Tommy Lee Jones, anybody on Mad Men (including Megan), characters not yet introduced, and even a handsome human version of a pit bull. He’s at your disposal. And yet your only guests on Weekend Update are Garth and Kat? Why was that? Did Josh Brolin eat all of the bagels at craft services except for the whole wheat ones? Were you somehow offended by the way he ran majestically through the slow-motion hallway, dripping viscous, slow-crawling sauce from one beaker to another, so offended that you also kept it offline so I couldn’t embed it here? Do you remain suspicious about his legal troubles? Or is it — as I have long suspected — that the Garth and Kat sketches belong under the complicated striped umbrella of Comedy Mind Control, and that they appear on SNL whenever the government wants to send us subliminal messages in the form of improvised (wink wink, government) horrible songs with lyrics like “when I look out my window I see a birdbath,” lyrics that don’t make you laugh but that make you listen carefully (and then resent having spent your attention on them)? I don’t understand. I know that last weekend’s musical celebration of spring was likely the unmelodic swan song of Garth and Kat, but I don’t care. Josh Brolin was just sitting there!
Every week in this space, Grantland pop culture correspondent Andy Greenwald will run down the happenings and mishappenings in NBC’s Thursday comedy night done mostly right. (Note: The order reflects newsworthiness, not quality. Although occasionally the two just might overlap.)
Over a five-year period beginning in 1998, HBO premiered Sex and the City (1998), The Sopranos (1999), Curb Your Enthusiasm (2000), Six Feet Under (2001), and The Wire (2002). That’s a DiMaggio-esque streak of hits, unparalleled in the unpredictable, ego- and money-fueled world of television. Which makes sense considering that at the time the network didn’t consider itself in the television business at all: It was in the HBO business. Unlike ossified, regular old TV, HBO was an exciting new world where breasts could be bared, F-bombs could be dropped, and Brian Benben was considered a leading man. The premium channel was blessed with an executive team committed to empowering cranky creators — can you imagine giving notes to David Chase, David Simon, or Larry David? — and an operating ethos that wasn’t tied to antiquated notions like “advertising” or “ratings.” Part of what HBO was selling was prestige: These were shows unavailable anywhere else, serialized conversation starters that dominated water coolers and Internet message boards. If you didn’t want to be left behind, you’d pay for the privilege of watching them. Sure, the shows were brilliant, but it isn’t hard to game the system when you’re playing by different rules.
So HBO’s mid-decade hiccup — that creative trench that brought us Unscripted (an improvised show about George Clooney’s girlfriend’s acting class) and Tell Me You Love Me (an overly ambitious gamble on America’s appetite for televised hate-fucking) — wasn’t just a result of visionary executive Chris Albrecht being forced to resign in disgrace. It was representative of a larger shift in the small-screen landscape as even the most obscure cable channels began to realize that investing in narrative series could instantly put them on the map, or at least liberate them from the lower 400s on Time Warner’s ever-expanding grid. The more attention-getting and risk-taking their offerings, the better. HBO was still HBO. But TV? That was quickly becoming HBO, too.
Courtesy of The New York Comedy Festival and Blake McElrath
First, it's time for another losing Thursday night football pick! I'm grabbing Jacksonville +12.5 points in Atlanta for the simple reason that the 2011 Falcons shouldn't be favored by that many points over anyone except the Rams and the Indianapolis Orlovskys.
OK, so last night was a big for the BS Report studio: the great Louis C.K. stopped by for a lively chat about his new comedy special ("Louis C.K.: Live at the Beacon Theater"), his superb FX comedy Louie, the story behind the famous Dane Cook episode, the ups and downs of his standup career, his creative process, and topics like "Why does Hollywood try to meddle so much with creative people?", "Can Chris Rock become a serious actor some day?" and "Is it OK to want to beat up kids in your daughter's school without actually beating them up?" Somehow we babbled on for two parts without ever mentioning Boston (he grew up there), the Celtics (he loves them) or boxing (his favorite sport). Maybe next time.
Courtesy of The New York Comedy Festival and Blake McElrath
The best thing on the Internet this Saturday was Louis CK's $5-per-download middleman-eliminating standup special Live at the Beacon, the "In Rainbows" of standup specials featuring jokes about babies with big dicks. The best thing on the Internet today is CK's equally un-middlemanned Reddit Q&A, in which he discusses retaining creative control by making his TV show for a too-low-to-quote price ("the budget for the first season was cough dollars and the second season was sneeze"), the possibility that he'll self-finance a movie if his next crazy DIY experiment "tears an asshole into the money monster who then shits dollars into my mouth (oh my god what's wrong with me)", and whether or not his Afghanistan episode "Duckling" was actually filmed on location in the Graveyard of Empires ("it [was] filmed in Santa Clarita California which is not technically in afghanistan.") It's all amazing and inspiring, because Louis CK is a monster who poops "amazing and inspiring" into the mouth of the culture every goddamn day. But we particularly enjoyed this exchange from early in the chat, in which some authentically touching how-to-be-a-dad advice is couched within an anecdote about comedy groupies.
There just aren't many videos out there whose first five seconds can cause both an explosion of laughter and a wave a sadness to crash over me, but comedian Henry Phillips' second episode of his "Henry's Kitchen" series does just that. As the mournful piano soundtrack lumbers through its minor chord progression and a pair of meaty paws struggle clumsily to cut an onion, you know immediately you are about to watch the saddest, loneliest, more regret-filled cooking demonstration ever. Are we watching fiction? Should someone check on the real Henry to make sure things are ok? This feels too real. Oh, and the recipe looks terrible, but I'd eat Henry's chili five nights a week if I could guarantee many more videos like this.
Krister Johnson is a comedian and writer in New York. Follow him on twitter@kristerjohnson
Sometimes bad things happen to good people (me obviously being the good person in this story). Such was the case this year when my 15-year-old stepdaughter broke the only rule I ever set in our home: NO GINGERS ALLOWED. She knew this rule and chose to disobey it by bringing a cold, clammy devil dragon into my safe haven. This devil ginger was a tricky little fucker, too. Constantly smiling while saying "please" and "thank you" as if she were a functioning member of society and not a transparent-devil-child-with-dead-shark-eyes-from-the-depths-of-Hell. I watched the blood run through her cold, see-thru skin while I pretended everything was fine. Many moments from this evening I've chosen to forget or were sucked out of my brain by the red-headed devil who briefly terrorized my home one quiet January night. Keep in mind, the tweets are 100 percent accurate and in no way, shape, or form exaggerated, as many have suggested.
The Hollywood Prospectus is soliciting nominations for sensational Twitter rants. Please send your favorites tohollywood@grantland.com. Buzz Bissinger entries will not be honored.
