Bøger af Mike Sacks

Interviews with David Sedaris, Dave Barry, Jack Handey, Bob Odenkirk, and other humor-writing pros: "Sure to captivate anyone who loves a good comedy." --Publishers Weekly (starred review) If you aspire to write sitcoms, standup, screenplays, or satirical essays--or are just a connoisseur of comedy--you should learn from the professionals. With interviews from twenty-one top humor writers whose credits include everything from Marx Brothers movies to Borat and The Office, readers will score not only professional advice but personal details about their processes, influences, and experiences in the industry--and, of course, more than a few amusing stories. Discover what Paul Feig thinks would have happened to Freaks and Geeks if the show had had another season; what the writers' room at SNL is really like; how the Onion editorial staff dealt with the aftermath of 9/11; and much, much more. These humor writers are among the best in the business, ranging from veterans to newcomers, and have collectively been involved with many of the pop culture touchstones of the last half-century. Interviewees include: Stephen Merchant (The Office) - Harold Ramis (Animal House, Groundhog Day) - Dan Mazer (Da Ali G Show, Borat) - Paul Feig (Freaks and Geeks) - Bob Odenkirk (The Ben Stiller Show) - Todd Hanson (The Onion) - Mitch Hurwitz (Arrested Development) - David Sedaris (Me Talk Pretty One Day) - Al Jaffee (Mad) - Allison Silverman (The Colbert Report) - Robert Smigel (Late Night with Conan O'Brien) - Dave Barry (Dave Barry Is Not Making This Up) - Larry Wilmore (In Living Color, The Bernie Mac Show) - Jack Handey (Saturday Night Live) - Larry Gelbart (M*A*S*H, Tootsie) - Buck Henry - Merrill Markoe - Irving Brecher - Marshall Brickman - George Meyer - Dick Cavett "Remarkably frank interviews . . . reads like a secret history of popular culture." --Time "Loaded with information for people interested in comedy, not just those who want to work in the business." --PopMatters

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY NPR Amy Poehler, Mel Brooks, Adam McKay, George Saunders, Bill Hader, Patton Oswalt, and many more take us deep inside the mysterious world of comedy in this fascinating, laugh-out-loud-funny book. Packed with behind-the-scenes stories-from a day in the writers' room at The Onion to why a sketch does or doesn't make it onto Saturday Night Live to how the BBC nearly erased the entire first season of Monty Python's Flying Circus-Poking a Dead Frog is a must-read for comedy buffs, writers and pop culture junkies alike.

At long last ... the candid, shocking and previously untold story of Skippy "e;Batty"e; Battison, the universe's most radical, free-thinking, and honest comedian, comedy writer, satellite radio and podcasting star! Vulture's Best Books of 2022 (So Far!)Mike Sacks is a master of a particular type of writing that he probably invented or at least perfected - a dazzling, tricky act of written performance art, composing an entire manuscript from the point of view of a fictional character. In doing so, he satirizes stuffy literary conventions and loathsome segments of society at the same time. Following Stinker Lets Loose, the novelization of a late-'70s Smokey and the Bandit knockoff that doesn't exist, and Randy, a faux self-published memoir from a Maryland dirtbag, Sacks takes on the all-too-familiar and aggravatingly toxic phenomenon of the failed comedian who becomes a self-styled "e;un-PC"e; right-wing pundit purporting to tell it like it is, a career path born out of professional desperation that gives voice to the rage and anger they've always had for women and non-white people. Skippy "e;Batty"e; Battison, the first-person "e;hero"e; of Passing on the Right, sure does think he's funny and totally blowing your mind, except he's excruciatingly not funny but rather dangerous and horrible, so deeply pathetic and sad that it comes around the other side to funny again. Passing is an astute and provocative character study of a guy who so desperately wishes he were Greg Gutfeld, and Sacks's first-person commitment to the bit is a master class in postmodern meta comedy. - Brian BooneThis guy isn't afraid to "e;tell it like it is"e;!Nothing is held back! The infamous memoir that was dumped by Viking in June 2021 for being "e;too controversial"e; and "e;against our moral standards"e;Now being published by Sunshine Beam Press!Many consider Skippy to be the "e;Worst Person in Comedy"e;While others feel that Skippy's story deserves to be heard, from his humble beginnings in Bethesda, Maryland, to his graduation from Georgetown Prep (a few years after Kavanaugh), to his performing stand-up in Ocean City, Maryland (once), to his writing for the 1998 Academy Awards (the Titanic parody as sung by Billy Crystal), to his one unproduced Simpsons episode, to his fifteen unproduced movie scripts ("e;too hot to handle!"e;), to his being the only white writer on The Wayans Bros., to his supposed "e;invention"e; of the phrase "e;That's what she said!,"e; to his stint in prison over a misunderstanding involving an underage girl, to his conversion to GOP family values, to his "e;involvement"e; in the January 6th "e;situation"e;!Love him or hate him, more than 5 Million of his daily listeners to his satellite radio show and podcast definitely have an opinion!The FIRST memoir from America's Number One Conservative Comedic Persona Who's Always ... RIGHT

"She may be an insane chimp, but she's my insane chimp!" Mike Sacks is writing the apotheosis of avant garde comedy-books written as found documents, trawling through the ephemera of suburban America, jokes low-brow, bizarre and visceral in a package more formally taut and wildly ambitious than nearly anything published as literary fiction today. Stinker Lets Loose is the deadly accurate novelization of a non-existent '70s drive-in film, complete with images from the set; it explores the implications behind Eastwood and Reynolds vehicles while one-upping them in puerility and wildness. "If you don't know who Mike Sacks is, well, you should. His writing is funnier than just about anyone's and now he has a podcast that is excellent. I say Hooray for Mike Sacks and everything he stands for." -David Sedaris "He's the best kind of comedy writer; a bona fide weirdo with virtually no interest in satisfying anything other than his own personal obsessions." -Andy Richter "One of the Best Comedy Releases of the year." -Splitsider "Top ten comedy release of the year!" -Vulture

"This book is fucking awesome. It's my life's story. I'm thirty-four but look twenty-one. Maybe twenty-two at the most. I live in Maryland. Please read it. I'm a writer, a songwriter, an artist. I do it all. I'm an artist of life. I'm an adventurer, I'm the president of my development. Read the memoir. You won't be disappointed." A self-published memoir of a Maryland thirty-something found by author Mike Sacks at a garage sale in 2019 and re-published here for the first time. The memoir is written by the struggling poet and novelist Noah B., who is embedded in the mind and lifestyle of a perversely unexceptional American asshole named Randy. Like Pale Fire if it were about a Danny McBride-style fuckup, the story is both unmoored from time and eerily prescient of our own-one so stupid and unbelievable that it requires a writer like Sacks to bring it to light. "If you don't know who Mike Sacks is, well, you should. His writing is funnier than just about anyone's and now he has a podcast that is excellent. I say Hooray for Mike Sacks and everything he stands for." -David Sedaris "He's the best kind of comedy writer; a bona fide weirdo with virtually no interest in satisfying anything other than his own personal obsessions." -Andy Richter "Randy is a hilariously, unexpectedly poignant and eminently worthy addition to Sacks' sociological/anthropological exploration of the American Jackass and his curious ways. Audacious and inspired." -Nathan Rabin "The year's best memoir is about a man who shot a porno in a Baskin-Robbins." -Vice "Randy does more to explain certain unexpected turns in this nation's political fate over the last couple of years than a bazillion think-pieces in the New York Times, Atlantic, New Yorker, MSNBC." -John Colapinto (The New Yorker) "As the book's description alludes, Randy is an experiment in memoir, biography, and, well, sheer insanity." -Robobutt