Film Comedy

Norman Wisdom's early years could easily have come straight from the pages of a Dickens novel. Left by their frightened mother and ill-treated by a brutal father, Norman and his brother were forced to fend for themselves, sleeping rough in London and stealing food to survive. This is a rags to riches tale of the man Charlie Chaplin said would take his mantle and who went on to make millions laugh around the world for over five decades.

The second volume of Michael Palin's diaries covers the 1980s, a decade in which the ties that bound the Pythons loosened as they forged their separate careers. After a live performance at the Hollywood Bowl, they made their last performance together in 1983 in the hugely successful Monty Python's Meaning of Life.

Mel Brooks' own words telling all about the players, the filming, and studio antics during the production of this great comedy classic. The audiobook is alive and teeming with hundreds of photos, original interviews, and hilarious commentary. Young Frankenstein was made with deep respect for the craft and history of cinema-and for the power of a good schwanzstucker joke. This audiobook will also rely on interviews with gifted director of photography Gerald Hirschfeld, Academy Award-winning actress Cloris Leachman, and veteran producer Michael Gruskoff.

While other books give you tips on how to “write funny,” this book offers a paradigm shift in understanding the mechanics and art of comedy and the proven, practical tools that help writers translate that understanding into successful commercial scripts. The Hidden Tools of Comedy unlocks the unique secrets and techniques of writing comedy. Kaplan deconstructs sequences in popular films and TV that work and don’t work and explains what tools were used (or should have been used).

Cuando El chavo del ocho se estrenó en los años 70, el programa ofrecía un retrato poco común de la vida de la clase trabajadora que resonó en la gente de toda América Latina. En el pico de su popularidad, 350 millones de personas lo sintonizaban cada semana. Y durante casi 50 años, el legado de “el chavo” se mantuvo vivo a través de una creciente base de fans multigeneracional y sus retransmisiones diarias. Hasta 2020, cuando El Chavo dejó de emitirse repentinamente.

Seth Grahame-Smith delivers the definitive, essential guide to making it through a horror movie in one piece. As hilarious as it is useful (if you’re trapped in a scary flick, that is), How to Survive a Horror Movie covers all the bases. Trapped in a haunted house? Check. Stalked by an evil doll? Check. Wandering aimlessly through the remains of the old world as a plague of zombies sweeps over the planet? Check.

The Blues Brothers hit theatres on June 20, 1980. Their scripted mission was to save a local Chicago orphanage; but Aykroyd, who conceived and wrote much of the film, had a greater mission: to honour the then-seemingly forgotten tradition of rhythm and blues, some of whose greatest artists.

The holiday film A Christmas Story, first released in 1983, has become a bona fide Christmas perennial, gaining in stature and fame with each succeeding year. Its affectionate, wacky, and wryly realistic portrayal of an American family's typical Christmas joys and travails in small-town Depression-era Indiana has entered our imagination and our hearts with a force equal to It's a Wonderful Life and Miracle on 34th Street.

Married . . . With Children writer-producer Richard Gurman takes us behind the scenes of this boundary-breaking show to reveal how its inner workings were at times as disruptive and contentious—yet at other times, as hysterical and raunchy—as the Bundy family themselves.

Kate, a journalist in a small northern town, is fed up with covering black-pudding championships for the Slackmucklethwaite Mercury and living with Mum, Dad, and Gran in a semi called Wits End. When evil tycoon Peter Hardstone takes over the paper, slashes budgets, and sacks staff, Kate's career hits an all-time low. However, gloom turns to glamour once Hardstone's sexy son arrives to work on the Mercury.

Robert Altman - visionary director, hard-partying hedonist, eccentric family man, Hollywood legend - comes roaring to life in this rollicking cinematic biography, told in a chorus of voices that can only be called Altmanesque.

Caddyshack is one of the most beloved comedies of all time, a classic snobs vs. slobs story of working-class kids and the white-collar buffoons that make them haul their golf bags in the hot summer sun. It has sex, drugs, and one very memorable candy bar, but the movie we all know and love didn't start out that way, and everyone who made it certainly didn't have the word classic in mind as the cameras were rolling.

New York Times best-selling author, comedian, and actor Patton Oswalt shares his entertaining memoir about coming of age as a performer and writer in the late '90s while obsessively watching classic films at the legendary New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles. Between 1995 and 1999, Patton Oswalt lived with an unshakeable addiction. It wasn't drugs, alcohol, or sex. It was film.

An in-depth celebration of the romantic comedy’s modern golden era and its role in our culture, tracking the genre from its heyday in the ’80s and the ’90s, its unfortunate decline in the 2000s, and its explosive reemergence in the age of streaming, featuring exclusive interviews with the directors, writers, and stars of the iconic films that defined the genre.

Released in 2004, iconic teen comedy Mean Girls remains as relevant now as ever. But what made an adaptation of a parenting guide by SNL writer Tina Fey so successful? And why, two decades later, can we all just not stop quoting it? Drawing on revealing interviews with the director, cast and crew, Jennifer Keishin Armstrong takes us behind the scenes of the film’s genesis, production and release.

In I'll Have What She's Having, entertainment journalist Erin Carlson tells the story of the real Nora Ephron and how she reinvented the romcom through her trio of instant classics. With a cast of famous faces including Reiner, Hanks, Ryan, and Crystal, Carlson takes listeners on a rollicking, revelatory trip to Ephron's New York City, where reality took a backseat to romance and Ephron - who always knew what she wanted and how she wanted it - ruled the set with an attention to detail that made her actors feel safe but sometimes exasperated crew members.

Party girl actress Mercy Valentine is nobody’s hero, and that’s how she wants it. She’s sarcastic, sharp and always defensive—so no one can hurt her ever again. Mercy’s starring in a major theatre show and hitting the gossip headlines, but her glamorous world is about to come crashing down. And when Mercy crashes, there will be fireworks.

Carter - Relationships - who needs 'em? Fortunately, as far as my options go...well, let's just say I'm used to getting what I want, whenever I want it. Unless your name happens to be Sawyer Burke. Sawyer - I've always been a relationship guy. I never understood the urge to bed a different guy every night. Unfortunately, I can't get Carter James out of my head. I told myself I hate him - and I should. He's everything I'm not - loud, sassy...and more than a little annoying. But I want him too, and he's made no secret of wanting me.

In this gloriously over-the-top tale, Aoyama, a widower who has lived alone with his son ever since his wife died seven years before, finally decides it is time to remarry. Since Aoyama is a bit rusty when it comes to dating, a filmmaker friend proposes that, in order to attract the perfect wife, they do a casting call for a movie they don't intend to produce. As the resumes pile up, only one of the applicants catches Aoyama's attention - Yamasaki Asami - a striking young former ballerina with a mysterious past. But she is a far cry from the innocent young woman he imagines her to be.

Die Lage ist besäufniserregend. Ja, sind denn alle endgültig verrrückt geworden? Kaum ist die Pandemie vorbei, geht der Wahnsinn weiter, wie Monika Gruber und Andreas Hock feststellen müssen. Egal, ob grüne Wärmepumpenfetischisten oder notorische PS-Protzer, verblendete Woke-Aktivisten oder ideologisierte Lehrer, besserwisserische Medienmacher und weltfremde Politiker: hier bekommt jeder sein Fett weg, der den gesunden Menschenverstand gegen Hysterie oder ein paar Gendersternchen eingetauscht hat.