The Lou Perez Podcast - Brandon Bassham

The Lou Perez Podcast

PODCAST COPY

Check out my book, That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore: On the Death and Rebirth of Comedy https://www.amazon.com/dp/1637582455

If you’ve been following my work over the past 10 years, you’ve met Brandon Bassham. Although Brandon hasn’t appeared on screen in any of my projects, he’s been behind some of my favorite sketches and darkest jokes, like The Problem with Apu-inspired “The Problem with Bumbleebee Man.”

On this episode, I talk with Brandon about horror, comedy, and his work with Troma, which includes his feature film Fear Town, USA and his latest, Bring on the Damned! (in which I play a small but memorable sex-creep role). And we spend a little time remembering the great Robert Schimmel, a dirty comic who was so good, even Brandon’s mother—who hated dirty comics!—loved him.

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Who am I?

Lou Perez is a comedian, producer, and author of That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore. You may have seen him on FOX's Gutfeld! and Open to Debate (with Michael Ian Black). Lou was the head writer and producer of the Webby Award-winning comedy channel We the Internet TV and produces Comedy Is Murder, a sketch comedy series with Free the People. Lou is a FAIR-in-the Arts fellow, on the advisory board of Heresy Press, and hosts the live debate series The Wrong Take and The Lou Perez Podcast.

During my tenure at We the Interent, I made the kind of comedy that gets you put on lists and your words in the Wall Street Journal: “How I Became a ‘Far-Right Radical.”

How’d I start out?

I began doing improv and sketch comedy while an undergrad at New York University, where I was part of the comedy group the Wicked Wicked Hammerkatz.

For years, I performed at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater (both in NYC and L.A.) in sketch shows with the Hammerkatz and my comedy duo, Greg and Lou. G&L are probably best known for our sketch "Wolverine's Claws Suck," which has over 20 million views across online platforms.

I was a writer for Fox Sports' @TheBuzzer; produced The Attendants with the Above Average Network; produced pilots for FOX Digital and MSN Games; and was a comedy producer on TruTV's Impractical Jokers.

I hosted the stand-up show Uncle Lou's Safe Place in Los Angeles, performed at the Big Pine Comedy Festival, Bridgetown Comedy Festival, and co-created the political comedy podcast Unsafe Space.

I taught creative writing at the City College of New York, "writing the web series" for Writing Pad, and comedy writing workshops for the Moving Picture Institute.