TCB Debriefing 3/9-3/11/24: Oscars, Kevin Casey White, Comedy Central, Fahim Anwar, Wicked Little Letters, Deadspin
1. Welp, the 2024 Oscars are in the books and while comedy probably got more nominations than it ever has in the history of AMPAS, it didn’t win as big as we had hoped (or like it did last year with Everything Everywhere All at Once). Best Picture went to a more traditional Oscar type movie with Christopher Nolan’s epic Oppenheimer, a biopic dedicated to Robert J. Oppenheimer, a man who might have altered the course of human history as much as any historical figure on record.
For the major categories, here are the comedy Oscar winners for this year:
Best Actress-Emma Stone, Poor Things
Best Supporting Actress-Da’Vine Joy Randolph, The Holdovers
Best Adapted Screenplay-Cord Jefferson, American Fiction
Best Live Action Short Film-Wes Anderson, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar
To see all the winners of the 2024 Oscars, take a gander at them here.
2. For all the years that go into getting good enough to do a stand-up comedy special, then the additional year(s) or so that it would take to get ready for that special, there’s is so very much riding on the night of taping for a comedian to get through their hour flawlessly and stick the landing. That said, that dynamic often differs vastly from what actually makes a great night of live stand-up comedy, full of vibrant connection with the audience and truly unplanned surprises mined by a seasoned comedian.
NYC comedian Kevin Casey White, in a refreshing move against the grain, really goes for broke and letting chaos ride in his just released special, Harangue. To be clear, it’s not all crowd work (which so often feels manufactured at this point too, especially if you’re telling the audience, then the subsequent viewers at home that it’s a “crowd work” special) or a large swath of the audience heckling. White has plenty of great material about his rambunctious life choices.
That said, he puts his money where his mouth is and goes as deep as he can with an audience member who got stood up on a date that was supposed to happen at his taping. The jumping back and forth between succinct material and what is a really wild audience interaction (NOT born out of heckling) isn’t something that could have been entirely foreseen in the months White prepped for the special. And yet, he’s so present on stage and so quick to follow the comedy in the moment that the journey is so damn fun. Harangue showcases that perfectly and is one of those rare specials these days that not only clues somebody as to how much damn fun a night of comedy could be as well as capturing that ever elusive “lighting in a bottle”.
Kevin Casey White: Harangue is now streaming on YouTube. Please enjoy it here.
3. Comedy Central’s latest batch of digital only, short form sets, Comedy Central Stand-Up Featuring has the latest batch (season 15) coming very soon; Wednesday this week to be exact. Take a gander at the likes of Sean Patton, Amberia Allen, Morgan Jay, Amy Silverberg, Logan Guntzelman, and more recorded live at LA’s Lodge Room here.
4. Fahim Anwar’s latest hour special seems to have been flagged by YouTube after Anwar thought he took all the necessary precautions, even going so far as to have someone at YouTube to make sure everything is up to code. Despite all his efforts, Anwar’s special was algorithmically slowed down causing Fahim and his team to scramble to cut a cleaner version of his special and retitling the original video as the “uncut version”. Fahim goes into great detail about how all of this happened over, pretty much, just one bit (that he was willing to cut) where he says a certain slur.
5. Olivia Coleman and Jessie Buckley will be swearing the most that ever have on screen in their entire careers with their upcoming film, Wicked Little Letters. A period piece with two celebrated actresses cursing up a storm? We’re fully on board. Take your first look and listen to Wicked Little Letters with the film’s first trailer here.
6. Deadspin, the often alt-comedic voice in sports, had already been sold and bought and turned inside out once, but is going through yet another regime change that has resulted in their entire staff being let go (Variety). The irreverence of the brand will supposedly still be intact, but we shall see. Maybe they’ll get Katie Nolan to do Garbage Time again?
7. We’ll leave you with this: If there is a single issue to bolster voter turnout, maybe it will be finally abolishing Daylight Savings?
