Craig Rowin, the comedian and Upright Citizens Brigade improviser who recently grabbed a lot of press and attention when he boldly asked everyone via YouTube to give him $1 million and received it (only to reveal it was all a hoax), is now writing the questions for the ABC game show, Who Wants to be a Millionaire?
Seriously.
Really.
No joke this time.
I caught up with Rowin over the weekend. "It's crazy," Rowin told me. "It's awesome."
And to answer your other questions: NO, he did not ask for the TV writing gig via YouTube; YES he submitted a writing packet through traditional means; YES, the show's producers know about his million-dollar stunt; and NO, he doesn't plan on pulling a fast one on you this time.
Statette delivers the hard stats via this graphic. Don't shoot the messengers!
NOTE: This list does not include the writing staffs for George Lopez (Lopez Tonight, TBS) or Mo'Nique (The Mo'Nique Show, BET).
And if you want to really jump into the rabbit hole, try to break down the stats further by race/ethnicity and/or how many white men, how many from a particular college, how many got writing jobs after first working as interns on the show, and how many of them owe me money.
It only seems like Broadway has been taken over this spring by comedians. Chris Rock. Robin Williams. Jim Gaffigan. A musical from the South Park guys. Colin Quinn and Pee-wee Herman just wrapped up their shows. Kathy Griffin made a brash short-term bid for a Tony, too.
But none of them have performed on Broadway as much in 2011 as Bill Dawes had, and he's often following up his shows with late-night stand-up comedy sets around Manhattan (just before midnight tonight, he'll be on the bill at Gotham Comedy Club). Dawes plays NFL Hall of Fame halfback Paul Hornung in the Broadway production of Lombardi, which stars Dan Lauria as the legendary coach of the Green Bay Packers and Judith Light as his wife. With more than 200 shows under their belts, Dawes says they've got the longest-running Broadway play right now.
As a stand-up, Dawes has toured military bases with the USO, opened and written for Jamie Kennedy, and often works the Laugh Factory when he's in Los Angeles.
I spoke with Dawes earlier this week about pulling double duty as a stand-up comedian and Broadway actor. Disclosure: Dawes and I played college football together.
How does it feel to put on football pads again every night? "It feeels good, man. Luckily. My biggest fear was that people wouldn't believe me looking like a footbal player."
I believe you. "No, a real football player! But no, that was my one big thing. Because I hate when you see someone like Leo DiCaprio in Basketball Diaries and say, Leo, 'I know you can't play basketball!'"
And how does it feel to be back on Broadway? You'd done it once before, right? "I understudied a role. This time, it's cool because, this just goes to show, I was involved, we were all invoved with the creative process in developing the play. It wasn't from scratch. The play was written. But it changed significantly between first rehearsal and now. And I'm a comic, so I'm a writer and so I was constantly meddling. I knew things about Paul Hornung. Like he's a consummate name-dropper. When I met Paul Hornung, that's how he was. It was cool. He's 75 and like 325 pounds now. He's a winker and a slapper. We had mimosas and he told me some stories. I'd read his book, and he told me stories just like I'd read."
Having the Packers win the Super Bowl certainly must have helped your show. "Well, we haven't had Aaron Rodgers stop by yet," but several of the retired Packers who had played for Lombardi have come to the show. "We had some magical juju working."
Some coincidence, too, that your Broadway gig comes just as so many other stand-ups are taking to the stage, eh? "It's pretty crazy. I talked to Chris Rock very briefly about it at a restaurant, and I asked him. He said, 'This is my first show ever! I never even did a show in school!' I saw him. He's good. It's not an easy role, he's up with some vets and he holds his own. Both 'Bengal Tiger' and 'Motherfucker with the Hat,' theybre both good plays."
"And I'm still going up at Gotham like once a month, and Times Square (Arts Center) like four or five times a week. I'm trying to branch out. I have a weird alternative bent that I'm trying to explore. I came up doing big bold urban, snap, listen to me comedy. I'm not up there with my memo pad and my glasses."
Doing stand-up even after doing Broadway four or five times a week? "People say it must exhaust you, but to me it's a release. Once in a blue room you get a bad crowd. But nine times out of ten, you have a structured routine and a choregoraphy, and then you go out to the comedy club and there's people from all over the world, and you can just talk to them and riff. Someone will bring their dog in with them lying next to the stage. And I'll just riff on that. I have fun. It's not going to get me a development deal. But it's fun."
As podcasting becomes more mainstream and popular, we're starting to see comedy clubs and theaters embracing them and hosting live broadcasts of the podcasts. Marc Maron has been doing this for his WTF show for a while now, and comedy festivals have followed suit.
Kevin Smith has taken it a step further, announcing yesterday that his SModcastle had grown popular enough to move from its original 50-seat venue in Hollywood to the Jon Lovitz Comedy Club in Universal CityWalk. Smith noted fondly that Lovitz's place, back when it was a B.B. King's, had hosted his premiere party for Mallrats in 1995.
Smith also said that his partnership with Lovitz would extend not only to hosting Smith's various podcasts, but also reaching out to other popular podcasters such as Maron and Chris Hardwick -- and one with Lovitz himself called "The ABC's of SNL," which Smith said would "reminisce with anybody who ever had anything to do with Saturday Night Live."
You can read his whole take here. Smith summed up the move thusly:
SModcastle has grown up very quickly and delivered us to the big leagues: motherfucking CITYWALK! But more than that? It’s put us into business with a guy who spent years making us laugh. As a huge SNL nerd who always dreamed of writing for the show when he was a kid, that’s pretty awesome and poetic.
And based on what it’s done to his club, Lovitz is now committed to the podcast cause. His year-old club has fast become the podcasting center of the universe, making him a Podfather of sorts – so much so that he’s renaming the club for our arrival…
Starting this June, The Jon Lovitz Comedy Club will be re-christened as THE JON LOVITZ PODCAST THEATRE!
Dan Abramson used to work as the "associate comedy editor" at The Huffington Post. Now he fills a similar role at Funny or Die. And today, Abramson supplies this flowchart to help you decide whether you should join the class-action lawsuit against HuffPo.
Fun facts!
Hopeful thoughts go out to Eddie Pepitone, Fahim Anwar and the rest of the cast of NBC's sitcom pilot, Family Practice, which tapes tonight before a live studio audience in Studio City, Calif.
The potential sitcom stars Andrew J. West as a doctor who leaves his job to return home and join the family business of doctors, which includes his parents (played by Jean Smart and Jere Burns) and grandfather (Christopher Lloyd).
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