Big Comedy News From Jenny Slate, Lynne Koplitz, Max Silvestri, Joe Mande and More Plus A Visit to Levity Live

Published by Jeffrey Gurian at May 4, 2015

Jeffrey Gurian is a writer and comedian in New York who loves to Jump Around. Follow his regular column, right here, to find out what’s happening in comedy, and who Jeffrey Gurian ran into this week in and around New York. This week, Jeffrey reports from Levity Live, Gotham Comedy, and Warsaw in Brooklyn.

Last Ever ‘Big Terrific Show’ Draws Jenny Slate, Hannibal Buress,

There are very few people I still get excited about meeting but Jenny Slate was definitely one of them. Every time I was on the set of Kroll Show and especially when I was in the Pub-LIZ-ity/Blisteritos Dad Academy Graduation sketch I was hoping to meet her but we weren’t on set at the same time. So when I had the chance to attend the last ever Big Terrific Show out in Brooklyn at a place appropriately called Warsaw (because it seemed to be some kind of a Polish center, and all the help and the snacks were Polish), I jumped at it. Jenny Slate, Hannibal Buress, Joe Mande and Max Silvestri were all on the show. It was a packed house of over 500 people, but it could have been a thousand for all that me and Joe Mande know. He was on the show too and when I asked him how many people he thought were there, he also said he was not a good judge of how many people fit into a room.

Jenny Slate Starring in a New Film with Nick Kroll and Adam Scott, and Shooting TV Pilot with Mike Birbiglia

Jenny is off to Cleveland to star in a film with Nick Kroll and Adam Scott called My Blind Brother in which she plays the female lead. She’s also shooting a pilot in Brooklyn for FX with her good friends Ari Graynor (Bad Teacher), Mike Birbiglia and Gabe Liedman who was part of Big Terrific, along with Max Silvestri. The pilot is about two female friends in their 30’s who make a movie together, and wind up embarking on a cross country road trip. She said it’s like “Thelma and Louise, except nobody dies!” And they begin filming next week! Jenny also co-stars on the FX comedy series Married which returns for Season 2 in July and she had to cut back a bit on her appearances switching from a regular to a recurring status, in order to do all these other things. We wish her much luck which she won’t need because she’s got the goods! What a talented girl! She told me all of this after the show when everyone was going to hang out at the bar. I went up behind Jenny ready to introduce myself when she turned and said “Hi Jeffrey, how are you?” It totally threw me off. But I got the opportunity to tell her how talented I think she is, because I think she’s AMAZING, and she was kind enough to suggest we take a selfie and send it to Nick, which we did.

Max Silvestri Hosting New Culinary Competition Show for Bravo

Max Silvestri is headed to LA right now to film a new Bravo show he’s hosting called Recipe for Deception. It’s a food show but not just a food show, a “culinary competition show” and in each episode four new chefs must create a dish featuring a main ingredient, but they don’t know what that ingredient is, so they must ask their fellow competitors three “yes or no” questions to try and figure it out. The competitors must answer with two true answers and one total lie. Max is already known for having starred in FYI’s The Feed, another food show which he hosted with Marcus Samuelsson, and Gail Simmons. And yet with all these food shows Max manages to stay nice and thin. He said he’s got other stuff to tell me, about other cool projects he’s got coming up once he gets to LA.

Joe Mande Writing a Pilot for NBC, Touring with Aziz and Mulaney

Joe Mande came to New York from LA just to do this Big Terrific show. The big news is that he’s writing a pilot for NBC with his friend Noah Garfinkel who’s a writer for New Girl. It’s about a marijuana dispensary, something I think Joe may be an expert on! He’s been on the road with John Mulaney which has to be a blast, and they went to Santa Fe, and San Antonio. He did both of the Big Terrific shows that night cause there was an early one too, and then he was heading back to LA in the morning. Now that Parks and Recreation is over he’s opening for Aziz Ansari and John Mulaney, and he does one night only shows in rock clubs all over the country. It was great to see him again as always!

Lynne Koplitz Working on Children’s Story, plus Dirty Sexy Funny

I popped in to visit my girl Lynne Koplitz who was headlining Gotham Comedy Club, and as I walked into the club for her second show of the evening she was still on stage killing it on her first show. After Lynne’s killer set I went and sat with her for a few minutes down in the green room so we could catch up. So many people were there to greet her after her first show that we made up to meet after her second show. Lynne told me she’s on Sirius XM with Jenny McCarthy three days a week doing Dirty, Sexy, Funny, three things she knows a lot about! And they also have an all women’s DSF tour with Lynne, Tammy Pescatelli, April Macie, and Paula Bel, plus she’s getting ready to pitch some stuff to Oxygen, and she’s also working on a children’s story! Which is a funny concept in itself. Lynne Koplitz writing a children’s story! It will be interesting to see the other side of Lynn cause I know there’s no way she’s writing a sexy children’s story!

Rebecca Corry From ‘One Big Happy’ Standing Up For Pets

I saw Chris Mazzilli standing outside the showroom during Lynne Koplitz’s set. He was talking to someone and when I came by he made sure to introduce me. When Chris tells me he wants me to meet somebody, I know it’s something special. The last time he went out of his way to make sure I knew someone it was T.J. Miller, so he knows of what he speaks. This time it was Rebecca Corry from Ellen Degeneres’s new show One Big Happy which just wrapped it’s first season on NBC. It’s shot in LA on the Warner Brothers lot, and Rebecca plays the sister of Elisha Cuthbert’s character, who is absolutely gorgeous, and I’m not exaggerating! When I asked Rebecca what the audition process was like she said it literally took a few months. She had to do multiple auditions and all the producers and Portia DeRossi were in the room. But what Rebecca is most proud of, is her recent march on Washington on behalf of pitbulls. She has an organization called Stand Up for Pets Foundation and she herself got 5,000 people to turn out for her march. As she explained it the foundation’s purpose is dedicated to educating and advocating and saving the lives of pitbull type dogs which get a bad rap for being vicious. Just on T-shirt sales alone which she herself made, she was able to raise over 100 K which paid for the costs of the march. And right after the success of her march she got the news that the Ellen show was going to series.

Charles McBee was also on Lynne’s show, and he’s into his third season of his web series It’s A Chucked Up Life which he created, stars in, writes, and directs with him and Akash Bhasin who I know from my work with the fun comedy troupe Cult Comedy Pictures. Akash is one of the founding members, and he and Charles, and Alex Barnett, a white, Jewish comic married to a Black woman, also do The Diversity Show, a monthly show at Gotham.

Derek Gaines in New Morgan Spurlock Reality Show, Broke Ass Game Show Gets Love from Russell Crowe

I drove over to The Stand to see what was going on and out in the street just hanging out was Derek Gaines, host of MTV’s Broke Ass Game Show. He was actually hosting the show and while we were talking comic /manager Tommy Kang ran out and made sure he was ready to bring the next comic up on stage. But before he had to run, he told me that BAGS, (and I don’t know that anyone ever used that acronym!) will start filming it’s second season in June, and they’re getting ready to launch AOL’s first season of Connected a live reality show from Morgan Spurlock. The show follows the lives of 6 other people besides Derek, who’s the only stand-up comedian on the show. And I remember last summer seeing him outside The Stand with a video camera. They gave him a video camera and he was shooting scenes for his own segments. Derek was excited about two things. One that Morgan Spurlock bought him a pair of expensive sneakers as a present cause he knows that Derek is a “sneaker-head”, so he bought him a pair of Nike SB Dunks. The other thing he was psyched about is that Russell Crowe tweeted about his show. Russell tweeted, “How funny is Broke Ass Game Show”. I asked him if Russell follows him and he was like, “ No, but I follow HIM!” Then he had to run and get up on stage to bring off Ted Alexandro and bring up Rachel Feinstein, who’s looking hotter than ever these days! She likes calling me a “poon-hound.”

Ted Alexandro, Monroe Martin Catch Up Post-Moontower

So then I got to catch up with Ted Alexandro one of the nicest and funniest guys in the biz. It’s always a treat to see Ted. We have a really special bond. He’s still waiting on news about his pilot for his web series Teacher’s Lounge, in which he’s mulling offers from IFC, TBS, and TruTV, and when we discussed that we went off on a thing about “mulling” and if that’s really a thing that people do. When’s the last time you mulled? Is that an actual verb that you can conjugate? I mulled, he mulled, they mulled? And can you just plain mull, or do you have to mull something OVER? I’ll let you mull that over for a while while telling you more about Ted. He just got back from Moontower Comedy Festival for his first time, doing six shows over three nights and he said he had an amazing time. He flew out with a bunch of comics on the same plane like Todd Barry, Jena Friedman, and Michelle Wolf. Ted also just did a live version of Teacher’s Lounge at Eastville Comedy Club with Judah Friedlander, the afore-mentioned Rachel Feinstein, Jeffrey Joseph, and musician Ted Leo who’s half of The Both.

And before I split I sat down with my man Monroe Martin, which is the only comfortable way for me to speak to him since he’s about 6’ 5”, and he told me about HIS experiences just doing Moontower Comedy Festival for the first time. He said he wound up doing about 7 shows because his buddy Jermaine Fowler requested that he be added to his show called Meet Jermaine. He said he got lots of good feedback from people, and had a lot of fun hanging out with Wanda Sykes, Keith Robinson, and Robert Kelly.

Levity Live in West Nyack

I had been hearing so much about Levity Live in West Nyack and how beautiful the club was so when I got offered the opportunity to do a guest spot on Dave Saitzyk’s monthly show I jumped at it. It took me almost an hour to get there because my GPS doesn’t like me, and sends me the wrong way, but I finally found it ensconced in a huge shopping mall. It’s a gorgeous club and every big star in the world performs there. It reminded me of one of the big gambling casino showrooms in Vegas, or Foxwoods, or someplace cool like that. It was a really fun show and Adam Mamawala which is a whole name in itself, was the headliner, and he did great. I had known Adam from a local show we had both done.

I ended my week by dropping by the Saturday Night Live party at the trendy meat-packing restaurant Spice Market to see Colin Jost, and found Richie Tienken Jr. at the door checking people in. That’s Richie from The Comic Strip’s son. It’s his 4th season working at SNL, and he looked great all dressed up. I had never seen him in a sport jacket before, and it was really cool running into him.

Anyway that’s it for me. I’m OUT!!!

Jeffrey Gurian is a comedian, writer and all around bon vivant in New York City. Subscribe to his YouTube channel. Below, photos, Jeffrey with Rebecca Corry, Ted Alexandro, Jenny Slate, and Joe Mande.

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Jeffrey Gurian

Jeffrey Gurian is a comedy writer, comedian, author, producer, comedy connoisseur, comedy journalist, and an all around bon vivant. You can find him on red carpets, at comedy events across the country and hosting Comedy Matters TV. He’s the author of the book Make ‘Em Laugh with an intro by Chris Rock”. You've seen him on Comedy Central's Kroll Show and he's a regular on SiriusXM's Bennington Show and it's predecessor the Ron and Fez Show. He's also A BIG BELIEVER in Happiness and Love.