When I was in 4th grade I saw “Animal House” and it changed my life. I wanted to be John Belushi. In fact, after I graduated from college I overdosed on cocaine and heroin and died. I grew up in Princeton, NJ. My parents were both college professors. My Father’s name is English; he teaches French. My Mother’s name is Elaine; she teaches English. Growing up I wanted to be a cartoonist; to draw pictures of ferns and lamp shades in the margins of The New Yorker. I hated middle school. I had a second life changing experience in high school when I visited my sister at Yale and she took me to see their improv group, Purple Crayon. I was blown away. That night I said to myself, “When I grow up I wanna do comedy.” Read More...
When I was in 4th grade I saw “Animal House” and it changed my life. I wanted to be John Belushi. In fact, after I graduated from college I overdosed on cocaine and heroin and died. I grew up in Princeton, NJ. My parents were both college professors. My Father’s name is English; he teaches French. My Mother’s name is Elaine; she teaches English. Growing up I wanted to be a cartoonist; to draw pictures of ferns and lamp shades in the margins of The New Yorker. I hated middle school. I had a second life changing experience in high school when I visited my sister at Yale and she took me to see their improv group, Purple Crayon. I was blown away. That night I said to myself, “When I grow up I wanna do comedy.” Foreshadowing. I had my first comedy group in high school. We were a hip-hop/improv troupe called The Disposable Rappers. After high school, I went to NYU. There I met the guys and gal of what would eventually become The State. At that time we were called The New Group. We made comedy our life. It was amazing yet I longed for the “traditional campus experience”. I transferred to Brown. I stayed involved with the New Group all through Brown. After college, The New Group changed its name to The State. We started making short videos for a show on MTV called “You Wrote It, You Watch It” hosted by Jon Stewart. There were 11 of us. We shared an office and a weekly paycheck meant for only one person. Michael Black and I regularly shoplifted bologna from Key Food. From our short videos on “YWI,YWI” we got our own pilot and then our own show. “The State” lasted four great years. We went on to make an album, a book, and an infamous Halloween Special on CBS (featuring Sonic Youth). After the State I chain smoked, read Stephen King novels and played chess in Washington Square Park. After that I was in the original cast of a play called “How I Learned To Drive.” In 1997, Michael Black, David Wain and I start doing a show in New York City called Stella. We made x-rated comedy videos (featuring dildos, group sex and necrophilia.) In 2000, David Wain and I made the sleep-away camp comedy “Wet Hot American Summer.” It went to the Sundance Film Festival in 2001; it was released that summer and re-released years later as a midnight cult movie with kids dressing up as characters from the film. Stella began touring around the country. I wrote a script called The Baxter, a romantic comedy about the paradigmatic “wrong guy.” IFC Films financed and distributed it. It was my directorial debut. The movie starred myself, Michelle Williams, Elizabeth Banks, Justin Theroux and Peter Dinklage. Stella got picked up as a series on Comedy Central and was named by Entertainment Weekly as one of the Top Ten TV shows of 2005
