What to do when in the midst of unfathomable national tragedy, and your guest is 5 x Emmy Winner, Alan Zweibel, one of the funniest humans on the planet? Face the elephant in the room head-on. We discussed how comics and monologists deliver on a day like this, and what is verboten? From there we moved into personal, current COVID crisis, where listener Julie Warner, Billy Crystal’s co-star in the film, Mr. Saturday Night, informed us we were depressing (she was playing… Alan is never is anything less than hysterical), and then we segued into his latest co-creation with Billy, Here Today, about an aging comedy writer whose memory is fading due to dementia. Har har har dee har har. Well, the story that inspired the film is crazy funny, as is Alan’s telling of it. It was all comedy gold from there, covering Alan’s many of Alan’s most memorable collaborations, more on Billy from the early 70s standup days to their Tony-winning Broadway smash, 700 Sundays. The first sold joke to Morty Gunty (still a winner today), and other Borscht Belt favorites, to Larry David bombing at The Improv, Lorne Michaels recognizing his gift and hiring him in the very first wave of Saturday Night Live, where Alan’s collaboration and friendship with Gilda Radner yielded iconic characters and moments, week after week, year after year, the trajectory of their relationship thru till her untimely end, where he wrote for her, yet again… his collab with Garry Shandling and their multiple Ace Award-Winning co-creation, It’s The Garry Shandling Show, and the evolution of them… to writing Lunatics with Dave Barry and then For This We Left Egypt with Dave and Ada Mansbach, the definitive Haggadah in my house, to Alan’s Bunny Bunny, his love letter to Gilda from page to stage, and his latest, Laugh Lines, My life Helping Funny People Be Funnier, which spans 50 years of fab stories, one after another… my favorite tonight, and it’s such a Sophie’s Choice with the wealth presented, is Alan’s college poetry “recital.” I was crying. In the good way.
This time with Alan was chicken soup with noodles, matzah balls, and latkes, for the pandemic, crazy-world weary soul. Warm, flavorful, sizzling, and delicious… with a side of hysterically funny. Perfection!
Alan Zweibel on Game Changers With Vicki Abelson
Wednesday, 5/124/22, 5 pm PT, 8 pm ET
Streamed Live on my Facebook
Replay here:
Alan Zweibel on Game Changers With Vicki Abelson What to do when in the midst of unfathomable national tragedy, and your guest is 5 x Emmy
