← The Town with Matthew Belloni
The Town with Matthew Belloni
The F-You ‘South Park’ Episode and the Precarious State of Comedy in 2025
00:35:23
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- [00:00]
Matt Bellany
A reminder before we get to today's show that our next live taping of the Town will be on August 27th in Los Angeles with me and a very, very special guest. We'll be at the El Rey Theater in LA and tickets are on sale now@theringer.com events. Again, that is Wednesday, August 27th. Just click on the link in this episode description to get your tickets. Hope to see you there. This episode is brought to you by Contentful Marketers. You know that feeling when your content just works? When you crush a viral trend before 10am when one tiny tweak to a landing page sends click through rates through the roof? That's contentful. Dynamic content made blissfully simple. Contentful helps you create and launch personalized experiences instantly across any digital channel. No stress, no limits, only possibilities. Come get the feels@contentful.com hi, I'm Ben.
- [00:53]
Michael Lasker
Mankiewicz, and on this season of the Plot Thickens, we're going behind the scenes on a film whose history it's a little close to home. Cleopatra was my Uncle Joe's biggest gamble and his greatest failure. It had everything you could want in a Hollywood blockbuster, but the budget and the on set love affair both went off the rails, creating a story even more dramatic than Cleopatra herself. The plot Thickens. Cleopatra available now wherever you get your podcasts. Visit tcm.compodcast to learn more.
- [01:23]
Matt Bellany
It is Thursday, July 24th. For as long as we've been doing this show, it's been a pretty depressing conversation around comedy in film and tv. The studios don't think comedies are theatrical anymore, and the streamers don't make that many because they're global platforms and the genre doesn't travel as far as dramas and action does in tv. Pilot season is dead. The broadcast networks are barely making scripted comedies. I counted six total comedies on the entire fall schedule across the four networks. Maybe seven if you include Ryan Murphy's 911 show, which is unintentionally funny. And many of the shows that are considered comedies like the Bear or Shrinking aren't all that funny. That, combined with the ongoing implosion of late night and the broadcast TV model in general, the proliferation of comedy on social media and YouTube and podcasts means it's pretty scary out there for traditional comedy writers. But lately I've noticed a slight difference. A few more comedies in the mix tires the Shane Gillis series that he self financed and sold to Netflix that popped up on the Nielsen chart of most watched originals in movies. We've got three big comedies about to come out. Naked Gun theaters and Freakier Friday, also in theaters. And Happy Gilmore 2 on Netflix, though all of those are based on pre existing IP. The number one movie on Netflix for the first half of 2025 was back in Action, an action comedy with Cameron Diaz and Jamie Foxx. Ryan Gosling and Will Ferrell are doing a big action comedy called Tough Guys at Amazon. And slowly but surely, I'm seeing more trade announcements for script sales or interesting castings for studio comedies. So is comedy creeping back? Is this all cyclical and comedy is poised for a comeback? I'm skeptical, but our guest today is more optimistic. Michael Asker is a big comedy manager. He's got tons of director writer clients like Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stipnitsky from the office. No hard feelings, who mail Nanjiani. Jake Szymanski, who's done a bunch of tv, a bunch of others. He's talked Oscars with us before. And today Michael's here to talk about the state of the scripted comedy business, what the studios and networks are buying, and is there a slow but sure comedy comeback in the offering from the ringer and Puck. I'm Matt Bellany and this is the town. All right. We are here with Michael Lasker, manager, helped run one of the bigger talent shops around town. Mosaic specializes in comedy, which is why we wanted you here. Welcome back.
- [03:49]
Michael Lasker
Thank you. I'm so, I mean, I'm just honored to be here. Not for an Oscar related episode.
- [03:53]
Matt Bellany
I know. I thought you go into a hole for six months outside of the Oscar season and then come back.
- [04:00]
Michael Lasker
It's the only way I can prepare. Although an agent who is involved with one of the big, big shows that was nominated for an Emmy was like, I need you to go on Bellamy and talk about the Emmys. We need to get like some good, you know.
- [04:11]
Matt Bellany
Oh, no, no, no, no, no. Like taking pitches to promote certain people. We will ban you if you start doing that.
- [04:19]
Michael Lasker
I couldn't agree more.
- [04:20]
Matt Bellany
This is a no spin zone. All right, so we're going to talk about the state of the comedy market right now. But I want to start just with the news because last night, I mean, this south park episode, everybody is talking about it. It is kind of amazing that these guys 27 years into the show have that in them. And it is such an F you to Trump, to Paramount, to Skydance, to basically everyone that has been negotiating this $1.5 billion deal that they closed in anticipation of this season. Have you ever seen a flex like this in the comedy world? Where you sign a deal that big and then you just shit all over everybody involved in that deal.
- [05:11]
Michael Lasker
No, and I, I, it's funny, I, you know, I was at a dinner last night and I got several texts from friends being like, you need to watch south park tonight. And I don't remember the last time I watched south park in linear, you know, fashion. And I, you know, turned it on at 10 o' clock and I couldn't stop laughing and my mind was blown and I felt how you felt.
- [05:28]
Matt Bellany
Yeah. If you haven't seen it, it goes after Trump. There are multiple references to Trump's micropenis. You see Trump's micro penis multiple times. There's an AI generated PSA ad at the end that is like, it's hard to even describe. The whole plot centers around them paying off a lawsuit by Trump. It's basically ripped from the headlines, which south park often does. And they work on these episodes right up until airing. But the fact that this whole deal was such a contentious back and forth for months and they were at each other's throats and finally these guys got a five year deal that is gonna pay them $275 million to write and produce the show. And then they got a $300 million a year deal with Paramount plus to air the show. And they get 50% of that revenue. I mean, we're talking like just 10 to them. We're talking so 1.5 billion for the streaming deal, they get half of that, so 7 50, then 275 times 5. So what is that, 1250? They get $2 billion to share. So not bad, right? And then they just go out and absolutely firebomb everybody. Is there anyone else in comedy who could do this?
- [06:55]
Michael Lasker
Well, no. I mean, those guys are, you know, they sit above the fray in very rarefied air and they've, you know, they've been marching to their own, you know, beat for literally 27 years. And this is what the show is supposed to do. And my takeaway watching it last night was just frankly being thankful that there's people like this that can still do this. Trust me, there's dozens and dozens of other people working in comedy who want to be able to do this, but they don't quite have the power to do it right now, and they don't have the platform to do it. But this is why comedy is important. And this is also why, frankly, you know, we don't have to dwell on it. But it's like it is also just comedy. I mean, people should have A thick skin.
- [07:33]
Matt Bellany
Oh, wait. Have you ever met the President or heard him speak?
- [07:37]
Michael Lasker
I'm aware. I'm aware of how he views the world. But that's why, you know, when, you know, it's like, what's happening with Colbert? What could happen with other people? You know, are they making a difference? I hope so, but they obviously all are in a bit of an echo chamber themselves, and so why should they be penalized? You know, so. So I felt a. I felt really some relief and I was excited and I had some gratitude, honestly, of, like, glad these guys are still out there doing it. And it's really funny. I watched the episode. It was hysterical. And it was also. What the episode was really doing is it was talking about religion in schools. And it, as always, had a brilliant take on why, you know, what the issue is and what the different sides of it are. So I thought it was hilarious. I've seen the clips of it passed around like a hundred times today.
- [08:21]
Matt Bellany
Well, those guys are the best to ever do it in terms of poking people.
- [08:26]
Michael Lasker
It's amazing.
- [08:27]
Matt Bellany
All right, so let's talk about the bigger issue here, the comedy market. Because since we launched this show, we've been talking about how comedy is in the crapper. Nobody wants to make theatrical movies because comedy is not perceived as a theatrical genre. We've been talking about how the market for comedy in television is so down because most of the streamers are global. They don't want shows that have American centric comedic sensibilities in them because they won't play overseas. The definition of a comedy is. Has been kind of changed, I think, especially when it comes to awards. Most of the shows that are nominated for comedies are not that comedic. And the broadcast model which supported the comedy sitcom genre for 30, 40, 50 years has basically imploded. So where is comedy now? Because I've seen some headlines lately and I've been hearing around town that comedies seem to be not hot, but at least lukewarm these days.
- [09:37]
Michael Lasker
Everything you just said is correct as far as, like, the trending patterns. But I am a big believer that, like all things in this business, it's cyclical and it's really funny because some clients of mine sold a pitch to New Line this week. I can't talk about what it is yet. We still have to actually make the deal. But we sold it to New Line, and the lawyer for the clients is a lawyer that works with a lot of my clients, guy named Jeff Frankel. And he was talking about in some of the emails we were going Back and forth to New Line execs about the time he had sold a movie called American Pie. It sold a movie called Wedding Crashers. And my point is, I was in college when American Pie came out. There hadn't been a movie like that since Porky's. Right. And then the irony is we now know, like, Porky's was really, like a B movie. American Pie is a really, really well done movie that, like, my parents saw that movie and loved it because of what the themes it had about growing up. And so. And then mid 2000s, you get the amazing R rated, you know, rush of like, Wedding Crashers, old school. And then you have the massive explosion of, you know, Will Judd, Jay Roach, McKay, Todd Phillips, and on and on and on. And my point is, it was cyclical. It was just time for it to come. You didn't have any of that in the 90s. In the 90s, you just had, like, rom coms with Julia Roberts and Sandra Bullock. And so my point is this stuff always has a way of bouncing back.
- [10:49]
Matt Bellany
You think so?
- [10:50]
Michael Lasker
I do, I do.
- [10:51]
Matt Bellany
Because the model changed. The difference between the 90s and 2000s was just a trend piece. It wasn't a business piece. And the studios have decided that certain genres are not theatrical. They should go to streaming. And comedy is among them.
- [11:08]
Michael Lasker
Yes and no. Because so it's funny. I got to mosaic in 2008, and so that was a year after our client Judd had produced Superbad. And then a couple years later, we made the movie Bad Teacher, which was written by my clients, Lee Eisenberg and Gene Zemnitsky. Bad Teacher we made for 20 million bucks. It was this new type of deal. I think they paid Cameron like a million dollars, and then she owned a huge piece of the movie. And so my point is, there was this moment, and I think, and it's coming back. I'm seeing it in comedies that my clients are making at the various studios. Where the studios want to make the comedies, they want to prop up all these people in the next stars. Shane Gillis, Nate Bargazzi, all these people, obviously Seth Rogen, they want to make them at smaller budgets because that's how they were doing it in the 2000s. Even if you look at, like, Will and Adam, you know, what they made Anchorman for was not nearly as much what they then made Talladega for. But Talladega was their big win because anchorman made like $80 million. And then they took out this big pitch. It was the right timing because of nascar, and they got more Money to make it and it was going to be a bigger movie.
- [12:07]
Matt Bellany
But you can't make a Talladega Nights because it's not going to gross to $300 million.
- [12:12]
Michael Lasker
I don't agree.
- [12:13]
Matt Bellany
Really. Okay, but you see the market. You're seeing the spec market right now. Spec is a script written without any attachments or anything. It's just a script that you sell to a studio original. Are studios buying more specs for comedies?
- [12:27]
Michael Lasker
They are. I think this will be in the trades in a couple days. There's a television writer who wrote this great script that's a very high concept comedy, kind of in the vein of like Liar, Liar, Groundhog Day. And the guy took like 25 producer meetings the last two weeks as the script went around town. And all the studios already had it anyways. And a client of mine who's a director read it and thought it was great and thought he could help develop it even more. And so a studio bought it and really, really big sale on Monday. So another client of mine, this guy, Ryan Engel, he has a movie that's shooting right now.
- [12:55]
Matt Bellany
Yeah, didn't he do Rampage?
- [12:57]
Michael Lasker
He did. He did do Rampage, that's right. And he has a movie shooting right now for Universal called Italiana. This was an idea that his wife gave him a couple years ago. He wrote it on spec. And then we set up Universal with Will Packer and the executive Eric Byers, who's a good friend of mine at Universal, had said to me, you know, we're really trying to buy more specs. Frankly, from the perspective of if you have a spec that's pretty good, you're like halfway, you know, down the road already ready to make the movie that pitches, especially if you don't have big pieces of talent. The thing you have to understand, you read about these giant pitches selling with giant movie stars. Most of them become nothing. You know, most of them are just these like fast, kind of heat seeking missile, you know, sales.
- [13:35]
Matt Bellany
How dare you suggest that an article in the trades doesn't end up coming true.
- [13:40]
Michael Lasker
Well, but like, so Eric said to me, you know, they're making Italiana in Italy right now and they're making this movie called One Night Only with Will Gluck, I think in the fall that was also a spec they bought. And then there was a spec that I believe the Shipley brothers, really talented writers who did this show, wrecked on TBS years ago. There's something that they'd set up over at Sony a couple months ago. So here's my point. The studios really really want to be buying specs right now. They will buy pitches from the right people. If Seth and Evan went in with their next idea tomorrow, if my clients, Anderson Morris, who have made a bunch of comedies, went in with a pitch, that's. That's gonna sell. You have to be proven.
- [14:13]
Matt Bellany
So it is. So the market is picking up. People are buying this stuff. Why? Why are they buying it? Now, let me go back a step.
- [14:22]
Michael Lasker
And I'm gonna give you my theories on why we have been in these doldrums. If you go back and you look at the explosion of the mid 2000s and you look at who really led the charge, you know, Judd, Adam, Will, Jay, Todd, Phillips, most of those people migrated out of comedy.
- [14:37]
Matt Bellany
They got old.
- [14:38]
Michael Lasker
Well, maybe, but also they had even bigger aspirations. And so you and I are old enough to remember when, like, Bill Murray was doing, like, the Razor's Edge and Mad Dog and Glory, he won an Oscar nomination, which came with Lawson translation in 2003.
- [14:51]
Matt Bellany
So you're saying there's a hole that's been opened up.
- [14:54]
Michael Lasker
Exactly. Even look at Ross and Thurber. He did Dodgeball and Where the Millers, two of the more. More successful comedies of that era. I guess it turned out he wanted to be a huge action director. Good for him. You know what I mean? That's what he does. He just made Voltron for Amazon. So it's like a sports team. The town has to replenish all these directors and writers to want to tell these stories.
- [15:12]
Matt Bellany
Yes, but you talk to studio executives and they say two things. There is no up and coming class of writers. For whatever reason, whether there's no training, whether there's just a different sensibility in the air, where comedies that were outrageous and fun are now considered offensive and inappropriate, or there is not a business model to support those kinds of films because the bottom has fallen out of theatrical and dvd. Yeah, Michael, you say all of these specs are selling and a lot of stuff is going on, but are these movies going to be in theaters or are these going to be on streaming? Because that's the difference.
- [15:51]
Michael Lasker
All the ones I'm talking about are all theater movies. These are movies that are signed to Universal, Sony, New Line. Look, I'm one of the few people, I never understood during the strike why people were so mad at Netflix, because it's like, well, they are only brought like a hundred billion dollars into our business. And so the streamers play a vital role in all of that. With all that said, I still believe fervently that you want to see a comedy in a theater. When I think about if I had to name my top 10, like, moviegoing experiences of my life, never laughed harder than the first time I saw something about Mary or Old School or Wedding Crashers or Borat.
- [16:27]
Matt Bellany
Right.
- [16:28]
Michael Lasker
And so the executives of these studios, I think, are very smart. And what they have realized is comedy can come back if we nurture it enough. But we have to make it at a budget. And the way to do that is to build the next wave of stars. And that's my other kind of theory, Matt, which is that if you also go back and look at the explosion in the 2000s, so many of the men and women who were in those hit movies, for whatever reasons, decided not to stick around and do comedies. Because when you think about, like the biggest comedy star of our entire era, of the modern, modern era, is obviously Jim Carrey, right? And Jim Carrey made all these huge comedies. He definitely dabbled in dramas. He wanted to be, you know, do that stuff too. But you knew that he was good every couple years for like a Bruce Almighty. A liar, liar, Right, Yeah.
- [17:11]
Matt Bellany
But Jim now is doing comedies, but he's doing them under the guise of Sonic the Hedgehog. And that to me is where comedy has evolved. You can do a theatrical comedy, but it has to have IP attached. You can do a gross out comedy, but it's gotta be called the Naked Gun. You can do, you know, these things, but there has to be a plus on top of it. And that's what studios have said for the past couple years. What's the plus that makes the comedy theatrical?
- [17:43]
Michael Lasker
I think you're right at a certain budget level. And don't forget, you know, the Hangover. I don't know the exact number, but I mean, they paid the three guys nothing. Todd gave back a bunch of his money, which became the biggest payoff of his career. They made that movie relatively cheaply. So that's all I'm saying. And if you. All the execs I talk to every week, they feel the same way. They want, like, I know at New Line, they've realized that one of their old bread and butters had always been these rom coms. And I believe there's an exec there that they basically just designated that she's going to basically oversee doing the rom com. So everybody on that side of the aisle believes this is possible. We've got to find the right stories and the right people. And again, you go back to the actors outside of Will, Jim and Adam, and obviously Adam and What might turn out to be one of the most brilliant business moves of all time migrated to Netflix. So what happens, Adam Sandler, excuse me, is that we didn't have enough people staying around. Remember when it was like, it's going to be Steve Carell. Right. And I love Steve Carell. But now all of a sudden, Steve Carell is doing Foxcatcher, being nominated for an Oscar. He's doing the big short. Okay, it's gonna be Jonah Hill. Nope. Now he's in Moneyball. Oscar nomination, Wolf of Wall Street Oscar nomination.
- [18:47]
Matt Bellany
Well, because they know the career longevity comes with prestige and drama. It's tough to be a 50 year old comedic actor.
- [18:54]
Michael Lasker
Jonah's a good example. Right. I mean, if you go back to the late 2000s and you look at, you know, Superbad and some of those movies, everyone had their money on Jonah. He's brilliant. And then you look at the 2000 and tens. He made, like two comedies. He wanted to do other things. He directed a movie. He just directed another movie that's coming out from Apple next year, I think. So my point is, when Jim Carrey hit, Jim Carrey was like, give me all the comedies, I'll do them back to back to back. When Will Ferrell hit, how did he use his capital? Okay, I've made Anchorman, now I'm making Talladega, now I'm making the Other guys, now I'm making Stepbrothers. And so we have to get back to that. And I. And the other thing about all this is I don't know how anybody could think comedy is dead when standup comedy has taken over the world. And you know, Nate Barghazi just made his movie at TriStar. He's setting up stuff left and right. Shane Gillis, whenever he wants to be in a movie, could go be in a movie. He's on the road and focusing on his show.
- [19:45]
Matt Bellany
Well, but a generation ago, Shane Gillis would have gotten a big studio movie and they would have tried to Kevin James him. And he's not doing a big studio movie. Probably by his choice. Probably because he makes way more money touring.
- [19:57]
Michael Lasker
Yeah. But I think there will be a meeting in the middle where, because Shane Gillis has his crew of guys who make stuff with him, he'll come with his own idea and they'll have a story. Yeah, I mean, it's funny. You talk about. You made a good point about TV comedies that are not comedies. Right. Here's another perfect example. I'm not just saying this because I'm from Tulsa and Bill Hader's from Tulsa, but there were times on SNL where I thought, oh, my God, Bill Hader, he's the goat. He might be the best one who's ever done it. When he was doing like Italian Charlie Rose, he was amazing. He leaves snl, he's been in Superbad, he's, you know, he's in train wreck. And it turns out he wanted to go make a Coen brothers film for four seasons on HBO called Barry and it was brilliant. Same thing with Donald Glover. He's on a huge NBC hit. Turns out he wants to go make a tone poem for four years on fx, which was brilliant. And so my point is, these were the people, men and women, that we were looking at as like, oh, they're going to go become the thing, but they didn't all want to do it. And I think that's okay, you know? Yes. I think some of this stuff feels a category fraud. There are shows not to be named that are not funny, that are being nominated for the Bear.
- [20:56]
Matt Bellany
The Bear is not funny. Didn't.
- [20:58]
Michael Lasker
Didn't say that.
- [21:03]
Ben Mankiewicz
This episode is brought to you by Turner Classic Movies. With a collapsing studio, skyrocketing budget, and two married stars having a secret affair, Cleopatra had disaster written all over it. One man tried to hold it all together, the director, Joseph L. Mankiewicz. Hear the behind the scenes story of how Cleopatra changed his life and his career forever. TCM's the plot thickens. Cleopatra available now wherever you get your podcasts.
- [21:30]
Michael Lasker
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- [22:00]
Matt Bellany
All right, so you're getting into tv and I want from you, insider comedy person. What is the market like for actual television comedies that are funny and are not trying to be a tone poem? Is the market good, bad, where is it?
- [22:19]
Michael Lasker
No, it's really good. And I'll tell you exactly why. First of all, Netflix on the streamer side, I mean, they're really leading it.
- [22:25]
Matt Bellany
You're saying the comedy market is good. I think a lot of people are going to spit in their coffee when they hear that.
- [22:30]
Michael Lasker
Here's why people think it's not good because they're equating it to the old network system where the four broadcast networks bought 80 comedies every summer. Right. So that was 320 slots that people could sell comedies. And, you know, Matt, if you were a comedy writer, you'd walk in and you would say, my wife and I got into an argument over the weekend about toast. And they would buy that idea. That's how easy it was in like 2005. That doesn't exist right now. But with that said, these streamers are desperate to do comedy. And so what's happened is that it's just. It's just migrated and, like, it's just harder to sell things.
- [23:03]
Matt Bellany
Are the streamers desperate to do comedies? Really?
- [23:07]
Michael Lasker
The streamers, as you know, specifically Netflix, they want to do everything. As you guys pointed out in an earlier episode this week. That's why they do the Mulaney show. They know people aren't watching it as much as they watch, you know, some of their other shows, but they want to support Mulaney because he's a genius and because Ted loves comedy and because why not, let's be all things everybody. Hulu massively leaning into comedies. Apple, massively leaning into comedies. They obviously has a humongous hit with the studio. They just renewed Stick. So it's out there. The problem is there's just less of it because you have way less of. And we're going to get to the network stuff. You have way less of the network comedies. And yes, I mean, between hbo, Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, Apple, they can't make as many comedies as the networks used to make. So maybe they're making five, six or seven. But all the opportunities are still there. Look at hbo. They just made the Rachel Senate show. They're still in the business of saying, let's take a new young person that nobody outside of LA and New York knows who this person is. And let's bet on their voice, they're still going to make that show time and time again.
- [24:02]
Matt Bellany
Yeah, they're doing a Tim Robinson show. I get that. But then you look at broadcast and even the shows that the broadcast networks are making this DMV comedy that is coming this fall on cbs. CBS is making it for what I'm told is less than $2 million an episode, which is nothing. I mean, these shows typically cost at least double, sometimes triple more than that. So CBS has basically turned into Comedy Central now doing low budget comedy, and Comedy Central is dead. So what kind of a business is that?
- [24:38]
Michael Lasker
Okay, but let me give you Some perspective on that. So, first of all, I represent Joe Port and Joe Wiseman, who do Ghosts, which is the number one comedy on tv, which is in that whole CBS framework.
- [24:47]
Matt Bellany
Disclaimer. My wife has a client on that show. So continue.
- [24:50]
Michael Lasker
And so they make that show in Montreal. Okay. And they're making DMV at the next stage over in Montreal. The reason that show is being made at such a low budget is that one, they're doing it in Montreal where the dollar stretches more. Two, that show does not have like a Kelsey Grammer at the lead. It doesn't have massive actors. You have to pay upfront. And also, I know for a fact this was connected into. This is the strangest year in the history of CBS to be doing anything at cbs. Because of the merger, budgets are being scrutinized in a bigger way. Money is tighter.
- [25:23]
Matt Bellany
So you're saying that's an anomaly, that that is not the new network comedy business.
- [25:28]
Michael Lasker
I'm not saying that it's an anomaly going forward, but I'm saying that it's not like they're giving them so little money they can't make a proper television show. They still can do it. And when the show actually starts to do well, the budget will get bigger the same way the budget got bigger on Ghosts as that show exploded. And God bless cbs. I'm not just saying this because they pay some of my bills. And, you know, they're still leaning into comedy.
- [25:50]
Matt Bellany
I don't know that you can call four shows a week leaning in, but.
- [25:54]
Michael Lasker
They'Re leaning in more than some of the other places. But I was thinking back to, like when, you know, Mike Schur did the Good Place, you know, his really big, big follow up to Parks and Rec on NBC. And he could have gone and just done the streaming he'd already done. Master of None. I believe that if the Porton Wisemans, the Mike Schur's, if I could get Lee and Jean to do network TV again. You know, Mindy, if all these people, and you're seeing it already, you have Justin Spitzer and Eric Legend have. With which have St. Denis over on NBC. I believe that if you get more of these really, really great, talented writers, kind of from that late 2000s NBC era of the Office, 30 Rock and Parks and Rec and so forth. If you get more of those people to come back to the network television, the momentum will create more momentum because you can still have a huge hit on television. You can get people to actually watch appointment tv. It's possible. They all want to do it.
- [26:40]
Matt Bellany
You think so?
- [26:41]
Michael Lasker
They do. I know they do, but they just ceded too much of the territory to the streamers for so long. Here's another perfect example. She's not a client. She's a really good friend of mine, great writer named Katie Dippold. She wrote the heat with Melissa McCarthy and Sandra Bullock and she wrote on Parks and Rec. She's making a show right now at Apple called Widow's Bay, really funny horror comedy. And Katie Dippold could have created network TV shows, but she veered towards streaming. If you can get the Katie Dippolds, you can get some of those people to come back and give them a reason to come back. And I think you can, because remember, you and I again, are old enough to remember where, like a comedy on HBO was very different than a comedy on NBC. Now you can get away with all kinds of stuff on network television. Maybe you're not going to do nudity, but you can push the envelope. And so I think the talent, frankly, has to decide they want to lean into something bigger. And going back to like the strike, which you've obviously talked about a thousand times, a lot of writers would like to be on an 18, 19, 20, 22 episode a year show because, as you know, the eight episodes, 10 episodes streaming, the money gets stretched out and it's harder. It's harder to make a living. And that's when you talk about like, is there opportunity for writers? There is opportunity for writers, but there are less shows and less episodes. So, yes, between the strike, between the agent packaging thing, between the COVID between the fires, between everything, there has been a culling of the herd. Of course there has.
- [27:57]
Matt Bellany
That is what I want to hear because that is what I think is happening. And I think it's going to get worse when these late night shows implode, because that is a huge employer of comedy writers. It's a place where you can get in relatively young and learn how to be funny and develop relationships. And those people often go off and do big things. Like Mike Scher was at SNL and then he's doing the Office in Parks.
- [28:27]
Michael Lasker
You're absolutely right that all those places, they are breeding grounds for really, really talented people.
- [28:34]
Matt Bellany
Maybe they go to YouTube and they create stuff there.
- [28:36]
Michael Lasker
But I, I'll say there. Here's a little bit of the difference, though. I think like in the mid-90s, when, like, really, really great Harvard writers would, like, head to Letterman, that was when there wasn't something like the Office or 30 Rock also on NBC. And then a generation later, people like that didn't go to places like Letterman because we have to remember. And I represent all these people every day. From a narrative standpoint, you're not really exercising your narrative writing skills on a late night show.
- [29:03]
Matt Bellany
You're doing jokes.
- [29:04]
Michael Lasker
Yeah. You might get one thing in the show every 10 days. So look, I think what's happening in Colbert is terrible. I love Stephen Colbert. I think he's been incredible. But the late night talk show thing, if that's going away, that is going away because of podcasts. Again, you and I remember when 911 happened and everybody tuned into David Letterman like every night for three weeks because he talked about what it meant to be in New York and what had happened to the country. And people now go to get that from Bill Simmons, they go to get it from Joe Rogan, they go get it from Michael Barbaro, maybe Derek Thompson, and on and on and on. Right. And so I was thinking about this. When Colbert got canceled, I said to some friends of mine, how much is this going to disrupt the celebrity promotion game? And I thought, I don't know if it's really going to. Because podcasts have become so ubiquitous.
- [29:48]
Matt Bellany
Yeah. And they're all video now.
- [29:50]
Michael Lasker
Exactly. It's all on video. So the other thing too is that, remember, whether it's podcasts or Twitter or X or whatever, there was also a time when we were growing up where you got all your news and all your commentary from what Johnny Carson, Jay Leto or Dave Leto has done. That's been gone forever.
- [30:05]
Matt Bellany
Yeah, I get it. But it's like there needs to be the hybrid of the user generated launch of a career on social media and the kinds of career that will pay you to learn, which is what we traditionally had, where you could score a job on a late night show and make a good salary and do that. I mean, honestly, we're kind of seeing it with the tires, model tires, the show on Netflix, which was actually set up at Quibi, if you can believe it or not. That's the Shane Gillis show. And Quibi imploded. And then Shane Gillis got SNL and then got fired from SNL and then came back to it. And he was so successful in stand up and with his podcast that he said, actually, we will just make this. I will pay for it. We will make tires. And then they sold it to Netflix and now it's going into its third season and it's a hit on Netflix and it's a show that was owned by its creators. Is that a one off or is that a new model that others are looking at?
- [31:08]
Michael Lasker
I don't think it's a one off, but I don't think you can say it's a new model. And it's funny. We represent Tom Segura. He did a miniature, a miniature version of that with this show that just aired called Bad Thoughts where he made the pilot. He didn't make the whole series. And then they went and made the whole series and turned out really well. He was nominated for an Emmy for it a couple weeks ago. It's not. It's not a one off. It's not a model. It's somewhere in the middle. Meaning that these standups and people have overplayed. Yes, there are standups. Bargazzi, Jim Gaffigan, Nikki Glaser, who's incredible. These people are making crazy, crazy money. Right? Obviously, the Seinfelds and Shane Gillis. There's going to be people like that that will have the money to say, I can spend a million and a half bucks my own money. A lot of standups really don't make that much money to be able to do that. With that said, anytime anybody a standup, an independent person, there's all these, you know, Andrew Singer just started his company review. There's all these companies that are sort of like, I want to be the new Jason Blum to comedy. Anytime somebody can actually do the work for one of these networks ahead of time and say, we already did the R and D, I think that's what's valuable because I don't think Netflix, this is. No, shame on Shane Gillis or anybody. I don't think that they watched Tires and said, let's lock it. You know, it's all ready. They just said, oh, you know what? We see what it can be. Ken Alterman, when he ran Comedy Central, always, I think, had the wisest view of pilots, which was that a pilot doesn't have to be something that is perfect to be aired. It's just trying to teach you what you need to know about what you're thinking about already making. There's a lot of brilliant shows. I'm not trying to pick on anybody, but, like, I don't remember thinking the 30 Rock pilot was that strong. My client, Ellie Kemper, who did Kimmy Schmidt with Tina, when they made that pilot, Jane Krakowski wasn't even in the pilot. It was literally just her and Titus. And then Tina and Robert realized we need to add another character to bounce off these two characters. Then they shot that's funny, because Jane.
- [32:51]
Matt Bellany
Krakowski wasn't in the 30 rock pilot either.
- [32:54]
Michael Lasker
That's right. That's right. Because Rachel Dratch. And my point is these things are really hard to do. You know, the tire scene is great. More people want to do it, but also not everybody's Shane Gillis. So the answer is like it's kind of somewhere in the middle.
- [33:08]
Matt Bellany
All right, well, you are much more optimistic about the state of comedy than I am, but you are closer to it than I am. So we're going to give you the benefit of the doubt here.
- [33:16]
Michael Lasker
It's the only way I can get up in the morning is to stay optimistic. I'm not afraid of AI. I'm optimistic about comedy. I mean, maybe in AI is going.
- [33:25]
Matt Bellany
To be put to use like they used it on South Park. I am officially pro AI.
- [33:29]
Michael Lasker
That's what many of my clients told me this morning. People are okay with AI right now.
- [33:34]
Matt Bellany
Yeah. All right. Thank you. Appreciate it, Michael.
- [33:36]
Michael Lasker
You're welcome. Thank you.
- [33:37]
Matt Bellany
All right, that's the show for today. I want to thank my guest, Michael Lasker, producer Craig Horbeck, our editor Jesse Lopez, Trump's tiny penis. And I want to thank you. We'll see you next week.
- [33:49]
Ben Mankiewicz
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