Ten Dead Comedians

Author : Fred Van Lente
Publisher : Quirk Books
ISBN 13 : 1594749752
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.59/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Ten Dead Comedians written by Fred Van Lente and published by Quirk Books. This book was released on 2017-07-11 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fred Van Lente’s brilliant debut is both a savagely funny homage to the Golden Age of Mystery and a thoroughly contemporary show-business satire. As the story opens, nine comedians of various acclaim are summoned to the island retreat of legendary Hollywood funnyman Dustin Walker. The group includes a former late-night TV host, a washed-up improv instructor, a ridiculously wealthy “blue collar” comic, and a past-her-prime Vegas icon. All nine arrive via boat to find that every building on the island is completely deserted. Marooned without cell phone service or wifi signals, they soon find themselves being murdered one by one. But who is doing the killing, and why? A darkly clever take on Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None and other classics of the genre, Ten Dead Comedians is a marvel of literary ventriloquism, with hilarious comic monologues in the voice of every suspect. It’s also an ingeniously plotted puzzler with a twist you’ll never see coming!

Author : Gene Perret
Publisher : Linden Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1610351533
Total Pages : 84 pages
Book Rating : 4.39/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Ten Commandments of Comedy written by Gene Perret and published by Linden Publishing. This book was released on 2013-01-22 with total page 84 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beginning comedy writers and performers may think funny can't be taught, but legendary comedy writer Gene Perret, winner of three Emmy Awards, tells otherwise in this guide to what makes a good joke work. Outlining the 10 commandments of comedy, the unbreakable rules that every gag must follow in order to be funny, this book liberates readers and allows them to immediately begin writing better and funnier comedy material. By following Perret's commandments, readers will better understand how to write jokes that connect with audiences and discover why unsuccessful material isn't working and how it can be fixed. From the First Commandment (""Thou Shalt Surprise"") to the Tenth (""Thou Shalt Be Clever""), this work stands as a fast guide to the essentials of humor that is perfect for business presenters, after-dinner speakers, professional comedians, and anyone who wants to be funny.

Author : Emily Culliton
Publisher : Knopf
ISBN 13 : 1524731900
Total Pages : 306 pages
Book Rating : 4.08/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Misfortune of Marion Palm written by Emily Culliton and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2017 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A wildly entertaining debut about a Brooklyn Heights wife and mother who has embezzled a small fortune from her children's private school and makes a run for it, leaving behind her trust fund poet husband, his maybe-secret lover, her two daughters, and a school board who will do anything to find her. Marion Palm prefers not to think of herself as a thief but rather "a woman who embezzles." Over the years she has managed to steal $180,000 from her daughters' private school, money that has paid for European vacations, a Sub-Zero refrigerator, and perpetually unused state-of-the-art exercise equipment. But, now, when the school faces an audit, Marion pulls piles of rubber-banded cash from their basement hiding places and flees, leaving her family to grapple with the baffled detectives, the irate school board, and the mother-shaped hole in their house. Told from the points of view of Nathan, Marion's husband, heir to a long-diminished family fortune; Ginny, Marion's teenage daughter who falls helplessly in love at the slightest provocation; Jane, Marion's youngest who is obsessed with a missing person of her own; and Marion herself, on the lam--and hiding in plain sight.

Author :
Publisher : Publishers Lunch
ISBN 13 : 0997396075
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.72/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Buzz Books 2017: Spring/Summer written by and published by Publishers Lunch. This book was released on 2017-01-13 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The tenth edition of Buzz Books captures the excitement of Winter Institute and takes it much further: start off a year of new reading discoveries: excerpts from 40 talked about Buzz Books due to be published in the months ahead. Be among the first to get a taste of new fiction from major bestselling authors including Dennis Lehane, Nora Roberts, The Rosie Project author Graeme Simsion, Karen Dionne, I Am Having So Much Fun Here Without You author Courtney Maum’s anticipated follow-up, and Don Winslow’s latest thriller. The new Buzz Books shines a light on 15 promising debuts. Memoirist (Don’t Let’s Go To The Dogs Tonight) Alexandra Fuller’s first fiction joins Laurel Davis Huber’s fictionalized account of The Velveteen Rabbit’s author. Literary reimaginings include Sarah Schmidt looking through the eyes of Lizzie Borden’s troubled sister and Sarah Shoemaker writing from the vantage point of Charlotte Bronte’s Mr. Rochester. Award-winning journalist Omar El Akaad describes the “second” American Civil War in a novel set in 2074. Other debuts span an inspiring range, from dystopian to utopian, from a Norse trilogy about Norway’s first king to a scattered family from Palestine. Among our always fascinating nonfiction, novelist Richard Ford remembers his parents in a memoir; Roxane Gay’s long-awaited Hunger follows her bestselling Bad Feminist; and Kate Moore’s Radium Girls is an expose of pioneering working women, who were poisoned by radium paint in the 1920s. Start reading the bestsellers and big discoveries of tomorrow right now, and then share the bounty: anyone can download this free edition of Buzz Books at all major ebookstores or at buzz.publishersmarketplace.com. For still more pre-publication samples, check out Buzz Books 2017: Young Adult Spring/Summer, also available now, for excerpts from the some of the best of publishing’s hottest genre.

Author : Mike Sacks
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 0143123785
Total Pages : 475 pages
Book Rating : 4.81/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Poking a Dead Frog written by Mike Sacks and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2014-06-24 with total page 475 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Author : Gerald Nachman
Publisher : Pantheon
ISBN 13 : 0307490726
Total Pages : 688 pages
Book Rating : 4.28/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Seriously Funny written by Gerald Nachman and published by Pantheon. This book was released on 2009-08-26 with total page 688 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The comedians of the 1950s and 1960s were a totally different breed of relevant, revolutionary performer from any that came before or after, comics whose humor did much more than pry guffaws out of audiences. Gerald Nachman presents the stories of the groundbreaking comedy stars of those years, each one a cultural harbinger: • Mort Sahl, of a new political cynicism • Lenny Bruce, of the sexual, drug, and language revolution • Dick Gregory, of racial unrest • Bill Cosby and Godfrey Cambridge, of racial harmony • Phyllis Diller, of housewifely complaint • Mike Nichols & Elaine May and Woody Allen, of self-analytical angst and a rearrangement of male-female relations • Stan Freberg and Bob Newhart, of encroaching, pervasive pop media manipulation and, in the case of Bob Elliott & Ray Goulding, of the banalities of broadcasting • Mel Brooks, of the Yiddishization of American comedy • Sid Caesar, of a new awareness of the satirical possibilities of television • Joan Rivers, of the obsessive craving for celebrity gossip and of a latent bitchy sensibility • Tom Lehrer, of the inane, hypocritical, mawkishly sentimental nature of hallowed American folkways and, in the case of the Smothers Brothers, of overly revered folk songs and folklore • Steve Allen, of the late-night talk show as a force in American comedy • David Frye and Vaughn Meader, of the merger of showbiz and politics and, along with Will Jordan, of stretching the boundaries of mimicry • Shelley Berman, of a generation of obsessively self-confessional humor • Jonathan Winters and Jean Shepherd, of the daring new free-form improvisational comedy and of a sardonically updated view of Midwestern archetypes • Ernie Kovacs, of surreal visual effects and the unbounded vistas of video Taken together, they made up the faculty of a new school of vigorous, socially aware satire, a vibrant group of voices that reigned from approximately 1953 to 1965. Nachman shines a flashlight into the corners of these comedians’ chaotic and often troubled lives, illuminating their genius as well as their demons, damaged souls, and desperate drive. His exhaustive research and intimate interviews reveal characters that are intriguing and all too human, full of rich stories, confessions, regrets, and traumas. Seriously Funny is at once a dazzling cultural history and a joyous celebration of an extraordinary era in American comedy.

Author : Dan Barton
Publisher : Macmillan
ISBN 13 : 9780312290344
Total Pages : 280 pages
Book Rating : 4.49/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Dead Crowd written by Dan Barton and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2002-05-14 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When private investigator Biff Kincaid falls under police suspicion for the murder of a comedy club owner who owes him money, he decides to investigate the crime himself.

Author : Fred Van Lente
Publisher : IDW Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1649360002
Total Pages : 132 pages
Book Rating : 4.07/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Comic Book History of Animation: True Toon Tales of the Most Iconic Characters, Artists and Styles! written by Fred Van Lente and published by IDW Publishing. This book was released on 2021-07-21 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the team behind The Comic Book History of Comics comes the perfect companion piece telling the story of the triumphs and tragedies of the filmmakers and beloved animated characters of the past century and a half—essential for hardcore fans of the medium and noobies alike! It's all here, from Aardman to Zoetrope, Disney to Miyazaki, Hanna-Barbera to Pixar, and everything in-between! Begin in the early 1900s with J. Stuart Blackton and the first American cartoon, Winsor McCay's Gertie the Dinosaur, and Felix the Cat! Find out about Margaret Winkler, the most powerful person in early animation, and Walt Disney, who revolutionizes cartoons with sound and color! Discover how Fleischer Studios teaches us to sing "Boop-boop-a-doop" and eat our spinach, and how Warner Bros' Looney Toons rivaled Disney's Silly Symphonies! Plus, icons of animation including Hanna-Barbera, Huckleberry Hound, The Flintstones, and Ruby-Spears; the Plastic Age of toy-based TV shows including G.I. Joe, Transformers, and He-Man; and the new Golden Age of TV animation launched by The Simpsons! And go abroad to France with Émile Cohl's dynamic doodles in Fantasmagorie; to Japan, where the Imperial Navy debuts the first full-length anime as propaganda, Divine Sea Warriors, and Osamu Tezuka conquers TV as he conquered manga; and to Argentina, which beat out Snow White for the first feature length animated movie by two decades! And finally, Jurassic Park and the computer animation revolution! Post-Little Mermaid Disney, Pixar, and Studio Ghibli conquer the world! If you’ve ever wanted to know more about the history of animation but were afraid to ask, this book is especially for you!

Author : Thor Ramsey
Publisher : Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN 13 : 1666797731
Total Pages : 255 pages
Book Rating : 4.32/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The End Times Comedy Show written by Thor Ramsey and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2022-04-28 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Los Angeles, circa 1998, Sam Seitz is a mildly successful comedian with five Tonight Show appearances who is actively trying to lose his religion so that he might "pursue the mindless goal of becoming famous for the sake of fame, without hindrance, setting aside the truth that so easily besets" him. Coming from a family of the most famous evangelicals in the country, apostatizing is no small task. After all, his family has been called "the Kennedys of the evangelical world." For the first time in his life he feels like unbelief is within reach, until he notices that Jesus is following him. Literally. Not to mention the demons he starts seeing, but they might be with the drug dealer who happens to be his stripper girlfriend's ex-boyfriend. And let's not leave out the night God tells him in a dream that he only has twenty-four hours to live. Thus begins his quest to find a way to reverse this proclamation, but hopefully one that doesn't involve repentance, since he's trying to deconvert and all. The End Times Comedy Show is a satire of the evangelical landscape that is filled with kindness, faith, and warmth for its characters. Blending magical realism and dark humor, Ramsey takes the theological subject of "crucified with Christ" to parabolic and hilarious extremes, all while avoiding heresy.

Author : Jeff Abraham
Publisher : Chicago Review Press
ISBN 13 : 1641602201
Total Pages : 240 pages
Book Rating : 4.04/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Show Won't Go On written by Jeff Abraham and published by Chicago Review Press. This book was released on 2019-09-03 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There has never been a show business book quite like The Show Won't Go On, the first comprehensive study of a bizarre phenomenon: performers who died onstage. From the comedy magician who dropped dead on live television to the amateur thespian who expired during a play called The Art of Murder, the book is a celebration of lives both famous and obscure, as well as a dramatic and accurate recounting of events leading to the moments they died "doing what they loved." The Show Won't Go On covers almost every genre of entertainment and is full of unearthed anecdotes, exclusive interviews, colorful characters, and ironic twists. With dozens of heart-stopping stories, it's the perfect book to dip into on any page.