12 Minutes on 1 Liners with Sean Donnelly

I am off having babies and not as they say "camera ready". HOWEVER, i found this lovely interview I did in 2021 with Sean Donnelly that still holds up and is long overdue for a posting. You know him from The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Comedy Central and basically every late night show, here's our 12 minute chat on 1 liners, crowd work, and what crowds really want. Thanks for the chat Sean, and please forgive me for taking 2 friggin years. Enjoy!

Laurel's Little Book Review #3: Twice Upon A Time in Hollywood

Admittedly, I put off reading the third book Harper Perennial sent me to review, because of some personal distractions needing my attention, but when I picked up the tome from first-time novelist  out of Knoxville, Tennessee, I read all 333 pages in less than two days. 

Not all up-and-coming writers have blurbs of praise on their paperbacks from Chris Willman of Variety, and this writer, unlike many freshman in the publishing world who boast M.F.A.s and snooty lit magazines in their credits, earnestly lists his outsider, a-typical background in his author bio: “Born in 1963…he is the writer-director of nine feature films and the winner of two Academy Awards for Best Original Screenplay. He lives in Los Angeles and Tel Aviv.” I’ve always rooted for the dark horse, and am happy to support this budding talent with a review. 

THE BOOK: Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, by Quintin Tarantino  

WHAT HAPPENS: We open in the office of Marvin Schwarz in Hollywood, 1969. Rick Dalton a fading TV actor who (among several characters in this book) drinks heavily and-not-in-the-fun-way to mask his undiagnosed bipolar, has taken a meeting to see about shifting his career from playing the Bad Guy on Westerns at home to playing the star of probably bad Westerns in Italy. 

We soon learn that Rick’s best-friend-on-the-payroll is Cliff Booth, a roguishly-handsome blonde 46-year-old stunt double whose scenes interested me more than Rick’s. Perhaps because Rick mostly runs lines at home while drinking himself into a stupor or grapples with his insecurities on set while Cliff gets away with murder at least three times, briefly considers being a maq aka Parisian pimp after WW2, and adores his pitbull Brandy except for when he enters her in deadly dogfights –  but only when he really needs thee money.

Or perhaps, because Rick’s scenes felt oddly familiar while many of Cliff’s did not. 

Rick lives next door to Roman Polanski and his “sexy little me” bride, Sharon Tate. We cut back and forth between these characters and the misadventures of dumpster diving hippies who happily pass Venereal Diseases to every man who gives them a ride or day-old potato in hopes of pleasing their pimp daddy, Charlie Manson. 

WHAT I THOUGHT: The irony of the auteur who made his name for writing movies like novels writing a novel like a movie does not escape me. Neither did certain scenes and backstories that I would go out on a limb to guess the studio asked Mr. Tarantino to please omit because audiences tend to have a hard time rooting for a dog-fighting, homicidal pimp, even if he is Brad Pitt. 

I enjoyed the three-page non-sequitur in which we learn why Polanski asked the DP on Rosemary’s Baby to replace a well-framed single shot of Mrs. Castevet with a dirty one. * DISCLAIMER: I did attend and graduate from NYU and spent freshman year saying things at parties like “how can you say Tarantino is entirely derivative when he’s freshly effective enough for us to be talking about him right now?”  *

READ IF YOU LIKE: Tarantino movies, or inside-Hollywood shows like Reboot, Episodes, and Entourage but think they lack politically incorrect rhetoric and anti-heroes who chop their wives in half with spear-guns for being “f*cking c*nts”. 

GOOD FOR: Reminding yourself how much you’ve grown since freshman year of NYU, and having an answer when haters say, “You bum, all you do is stream movies. What was the last book you even read?” 


RATING: 🥓🥓🥓🥓 Thank you for the book, Harper Perennial. I see great things to come from this new voice!

Laurel's Little Book Review: Spies & Lies with The Vixen

Here is my very first "Laurel's Little Book Review". I'm very excited Harper Perennial asked me to start reviewing new titles for them and happy this new historical fiction by Francine Prose was the first one. Here are my review and brand agnostic Cliff's Notes:

THE BOOK: The Vixen by Francine Prose. Published by Harper Perennial.

WHAT HAPPENS: We open on Coney Island, June 19, 1953, the night of the Rosenberg’s execution. For those who don't remember A.P. US History, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were charged and convicted of spying on the behalf of the Soviet Union, and became the first American citizens to be put to death in the McCarthy Witch Hunt-bonanza. Our protagonist, Simon Putnam, a young Jewish Harvard student, is watching this ghoulish activity with his parents, who happened to be neighbors with the couple. Also, I Love Lucy is on TV.

We cut to Simon on his first day at work. He’s a junior editor at fledgling publishing house Landry, Landry, and Bartlett, and his boss Warren (who hires women based on breast size) has hired him to replace a female editor he fired for getting pregnant. He may have gotten her pregnant, but still. How unsightly.

Warren asks Simon to edit his first big assignment: the story of the Rosenbergs told as a tawdry bodice-ripper, written by a femme fatale type who lives in a mental institution and likes to have sex on roller coasters. His conscience doesn’t like this, but his penis is intrigued…

WHAT I THOUGHT: There’s twists, there’s turns, there’s 5 martini lunches. I laughed out loud at some of the character descriptions and was chilled by some of the dark spots.

READ IF YOU LIKE: LA Confidential, The Paris Wife, and stories of conspiracy, the 50’s, and naughty CIA agents.

GOOD FOR: Reminding everyone you’re learned while reading fiction at the beach.

RATING: 🥓🥓🥓🥓

Laurel's Little Book Review #2: What to Know about What Jonah Knew

Here we go, Laurel’s Little Book Review, by way of Harper Perennial who decided to start sending me free books to ramble on about, Episode #2: 

THE BOOK: What Jonah Knew by Barbara Graham. Published by Harper Perennial.

WHAT HAPPENS: We open in true thriller fashion with a downright scary cold open from the POV of Henry, a handsome young musician with a loving partner and baby on the way who has just been kidnapped by an unnamed assailant – but he doesn’t know it yet. And here I thought SVU didn’t premiere till Sept 22nd. Dun-dun.

What happens to Henry? We have to wait and see as we cut forward, back, and forth through the early aughts between his mother Helen Bird’s desperate search for him and arrested grieving (she refuses to accept that he’s truly gone) in a seemingly idyllic Hudson Valley type of town, and a young NYC couple, Lucie and Matt Pressman (a women’s magazine writer and eye surgeon, respectively) with a son of their own on the way. 

Tempted by the siren song of suburban life, Lucie goes to that same exact seemingly idyllic town solo at 9 months pregnant to see if it might be time for her growing family to do that thing. She doesn’t find a house with a white picket fence and a dog, but she does go into labor in a bakery owned by Helen Bird – who ends up being the first person to hold Lucie’s son, Jonah. This is our set up. 

As time jumps forward, Lucie can’t help but notice Jonah acts a little…strange. He seems to know things about the missing Henry Bird and almost think he is him…

Can Jonah help solve this cold case? Can Helen move past the loss of her son (aka cut her hair which she has sworn not to do until he’s found). And most importantly, WHODUNNIT?? 


WHAT I THOUGHT: An easy, breezy read though some of the dialogue and descriptors read like Stephen King’s list of writing “don’ts” (adverbs abound, adorable little kids as sweet as sugar plums, etc.). Not to say every thriller has to haunt your Kubrickian dreams; let’s call this an Aperol Spritz version of The Shining. 

There were a few minor inaccuracies that bugged me and the kids were just too darn cutesy for me. This is not to say you won’t enjoy it over a weekend. I kept picturing what nest Helen’s long hair must be after not cutting it for a decade which was as scary a thought as the set-up. Split-end maintenance is so important. Think if Mare of Easttown was on Lifetime, this is that.

READ IF YOU LIKE: Psychics, cupcakes, and Netflix thrillers like The Weekend Away. 


GOOD FOR: Proving you can take a break from streaming Shondaland by reading a book that pairs well with popcorn.


RATING: 🥓🥓🥓1/2

Dilettante on Dilettante with Dana Brown!

This episode kicks off our author series as I sit down with writer Dana Brown, whose memoir "Dilettante" recounting his tenure as a Vanity Fair editor during the roaring ’90s and aughts is making waves from book clubs (mine) to big media (articles linked below). We discuss his process from book deal to publication, underwhelming ayahuasca, and if the infamous truffle mac ’n’ cheese at The Waverly Inn is really worth the price tag.


I highly recommend "Dilettante" for his pithy narrative, celeb-drenched hijinks, and the welcome hit of nostalgia for a bygone area of excess, glossy magazine glamor, and robust corporate expense accounts. Catch the full interview coming soon to Laurel’s Little Show in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and IHeartRadio.



More on Dana:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/10/books/magazine-industry-memoirs-anna-wintour-dana-brown.html

https://www.forbes.com/sites/johntamny/2022/05/18/book-review-dana-browns-entertaining-and-insightful-memoir-of-vanity-fair-dilettante/ https://airmail.news/issues/2022-5-21/divine-intervention



Also Mentioned:

The Chiffon Trenches, Andre Leon Talley (mispronounced here as "In The Chiffon Trenches")

Airmail, https://airmail.news/

"Hi Anxiety," with Joe List!

I chat with comedian and fellow traveler in the pothole-filled road of anxiety Joe List (Netflix, The Tonight Show, Letterman, Conan) about his late night debut back in 2014 on Letterman, his new special "This Year's Material," (out April 29 on YouTube), and the best advice he received to calm green room jitters. Catch him on "Tuesdays with Stories" his weekly podcast with Mark Normand, his 2020 special "I Hate Myself" on YouTube, "Joe and Raanan Talk Movies" with Raanan Hershberg, the Comedy Cellar, and many other places that aren't McDonald's (you'll get it once you watch). Please give our interview a watch, like, and subscribe, and thank you Joe for the chat!


EMMYs, Oscars, and Tony Morrison!

I first met ABC producer and host Tony Morrison through my former roommate Deb (we’ve made a collection to no longer refer to each other as “old roommates,” since we are both spry young fawns in the forest of life), and since then every interaction has been colorful, interesting, and fun, fun, fun.

Courtesy of Plus Magazine

Good Morning America’s Senior Social Producer by day (and by day we mean like 4 am, this show tapes EARLY), Tony also hosts Disney’s D23 podcast for which he’s interviewed everyone from the passing Marvel star to Shiloh’s mother Angelia Jolie.

Courtesy of ABC/Disney

Born in the Philippines and raised in Florida, Tony first joined the ABC Disney family as a photographer on Main Street, USA, smack dab in the middle of Disney World. From there, he proved that, as Disney would put it “if you dream it, you can do it,” and arrived in NYC camera in hand to take the fashion world by storm. A twist of fate led him to a graveyard shift PA gig at CNN, then off to the iconic studios of Good Morning America, which featured pretty much every celeb you’ve ever heard of, including my and Deb’s dogs (thanks Tony and Ginger Zee) .

Courtesy of Plus Magazine, ABC’s Tony Morrison, Ginger Zee, and Amy Robach

Tony has won two EMMY awards to date and a GLAAD award for his work with the show, specifically his coverage of the outdated policy restricting gay men from donating blood which has sparked an FDA investigation on the subject.

In August 2021, Tony published a bombshell personal essay on goodmorningamerica.com in which he he revealed his HIV status and the subsequent daily struggles he’s been managing privately for the past eight years. The story went viral, and since then Tony has been named Plus Magazine’s person of the year, and featured everywhere from The Sun to People to the New York Times. Thank you for the chat Tony, and thanks for taking a look, world.

WATCH, LIKE, SUBSCRIBE, YOU’RE GREAT!

5 More Apps Getting Into The Social Media Game

As any 16 year old social media manager will confirm, social marketing is a slam dunk way to build community and increase buzz for your app, brand, and personal brand. Here are just a few of the apps on your smart phone that can now be leveraged to expand your reach and tell privacy to shove it.

Chase Mobile Banking

Remember the feeling you got when your Venmo app notified you that your ex of five years ago just Venmoed $84 to someone named “Sassy” for kiss face emojis and champagne emojis? Well that’s how you can make others feel when you publicize your debit and credit card charges on the Chase Mobile Banking app. Were you charged a $34 overdraft fee for overspending at a store called “Pleasure Hutt”? Maybe, but your sex positive baby, and everyone in your life has a right to know it, and know that Chase Mobile Banking now offers overdraft protection. A win-win!

DrinkControl: Alcohol Tracker

If the pandemic done you dirty, and both “Dry January” and “Dry February” didn’t work out so, perhaps now you’re thinking maybe you should track your booze consumption. Perhaps what in your twenties was “fun” in your thirties is “an addiction”. And maybe you’re just a damn good time. Why not let your followers decide, as they cheer you on and comment every time you knock back a vodka soda solo? Because you’re not drinking alone if it’s on social media.

Google Maps

It’s so great and safe that apps like Strava and Map My Run track your movement and show all your followers exactly where your workout led you, especially at night. Why limit the Internet’s ability to track your every move to workouts? Now Google Maps can publicize every step you take, so that every move you make, we’ll be watching, well, you get it.

Talkspace

Everyone loves hearing about swimming super star turned mental health oversharer Michael Phelps promote Talkspace, the online counseling service that allows you to address your most personal afflictions from anywhere. And he has gold medals. Starting in March 2022, TalkSpace is socializing their services so your network can monitor your therapy sessions gift you varying medal emojis every time you have a breakthrough or major emotive moment. A depressive episode that prevents you from hitting a work deadline is a bronze, a suicidal ideation is a silver, and a crippling anxiety attack that lands you in the ER? That’s a Wheaties box gold, baby! Get TalkSpace Pro today and have you followers rooting for you “S-S-R-Is” all across the “U-S-A”!

iMessage

Do you and your bestie get your jollies from screenshotting boys’ texts, then completely shredding them? Did you recently text your partner lamenting that your property taxes increased by $324 dollars and what the eff do you care if your county has good public schools or street cleaning? Did you confide to your brother that you did NOT like The Batman? Well, get ready to go viral, because iMessage is rebranding to weMessage, so everyone in your contacts can steam everything you text! In a partnership with March Madness, your followers can bracket your most shocking 64 texts and vote on which one will finally get you cancelled. We’ll see YOU the next time you text “ubering now!” when your really still watching Bad Vegan on Netflix while AmazonPriming “cheapest still cute underwear” and updating your Hinge photos, because you best believe we track all that stuff too. 2022 is fun!

Apres Apres Ski with Andy Haynes!

We’re back baby! You my have caught one of comedian Andy Haynes’ (Fallon, Conan, Corden, Comedy Central, JFL) many late night sets over the years, like this one:

In the season 3 premiere of my little show, Andy was nice enough to take time out of his Apres Ski tour to sit down with me all the way from Salt Lake City, home of this great country’s tamest Mormons and wildest Real Housewives (I’m looking at you, Jen Shah).

I ask all my guests to walk me through the flop sweat and Fiji bottles of a pivotal gig in their career, a first TV set, premiering their first film at Sundance, or moving out of their parent's’ homes at 35 (I’m looking at you, Italian people).

Andy and I chat about his first Late Night set (aptly on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, where I may or may not have fetched him a greenroom Fiji), how writing for animation differs from writing stand-up, married life with SNL writer (and last season's guest) Rosebud Baker, and the secret motto of France. Treat yourself to his JASH show "After Sheldon" which parodies "The Talking Dead" and "After Bad" and had me cracking up alone ay my computer more than I have in a very long time.

His writing credits range from animation to sitcoms, and his inky black dark sense of humor can only be matched by that of his wife, “Find Your Beach” podcast co-host, and last season’s guest Rosebud Baker, who was announced as one of SNL’s newest staff writers just before this recording and is already making a splash with sketches like this one:

We ramp up to discussing his marriage advice and brand spanking new (and very funny) album "The Coward of Gramercy" – which is available on Spotify, and as a special on YouTube – how long it takes to build a special, and how to determine which jokes to use (the ones bitter, jaded, dead inside New Yorkers like or the ones smiling happy but probably actually just as dead inside weirdos do). Check it out here:

And now…..the first episode of Episode 3 of Laurel’s Little Show:

Watch! Like! Subscribe! You’re great!

**LC NOTE: Please excuse the editing glitches; I know. sigh. boy do I know. This was my first time braving a big kid editing program, and I promise they’ll get better and less “Breathless”-y. Or maybe, its jump-cut art? Only my heart and Premiere Pro trial subscription know for sure. And please note that the red and blue flannel joke is a reference to a throwback Sarah Cooper bit about diversity in tech that I’ve always really liked and didn’t even realize was lodged in my subconscious.**

Thanks for supporting, watching, and giving us so many dollars and awards (**LC Note: we have not yet received any dollars or rewards). Stay tuned in the coming weeks as Season 3 continues with EMMY and GLAAD winning producer Tony Morrison, and comedian Joe List!

PICKED UP FOR SEASON 3!!!!! (by me, by deciding to pick it up again)

I started “Laurel’s Little Show” in May of 2020 in an excruciatingly small Manhattan apartment with questionable dust, mold, and definitely no dishwasher. It was eight weeks into the First Wave of Coronavirus, we were still hoarding toilet paper, disinfecting our mail, and watching the First Wave of Tiger King. People were dying by the thousands every day. The economy was dropping faster than Coach Monica dropped Lexi when she was caught with “illegal stuff”– even though she was Navarro’s top tumbler!! I hadn’t seen a human face since March 10th, and was experiencing clap anxiety clap (to clarify, I was not experiencing “the clap,” just the usual anxiety and depression but amplified by a lot. Oh, and I think there were murder hornets?

I missed doing stand up comedy around New York and I missed having a reason to take a shower. I’m not a banana bread person, and I was finished with Cheer. My job also involved overseeing social creative for Snapped on Oxygen, so my dreams were three act nightmares of women who SNAPPED! So I figured maybe I’d reach out to comics and other creatives I found interesting to have a little chat. The name “Little Show” comes from how annoying I found it the 6,5000 times people (usually men) minimized whatever creative project I was doing. “How’s your little stand up show, Free Puppies?” “How’s your little book coming?” “How’s your little teeny not real very small girl art pretend game?” The name “Laurel” comes from it’s my name.

Pre-pandemic I was the creative lead for Bravo TV’s social creative, which meant I oversaw a very talented team of editors, designers, writers, and animators in the pitching and execution of over 400 pieces of Bravo content a month and sometimes directed “little” talent shoots at 30 Rock, playing Real Housewife fashion police with the Project Runway contestants or getting side-eyed by Below Deck’s Kate Chastain (I’m sure I had it coming). ANYWAY, my TEAM knew all about editing video, I did not. So each of the videos took me 6+ hours to edit, most of which was done from 5am-10am before work. Not saying it’s good, just saying it was hard.

Since then “Laurel’s Little Show” has had traffic of 42,000+, and the guests have absolutely EXPLODED! Sarah Cooper signed with CAA, starred in her own Netflix special, and sold a CBS show. Mark Normand had a Netflix special on The Stand Ups Season 3. Mary Beth Barone now has a show in Comedy Central. Usama Siddiquee’s in Inventing Anna. Maddy Smith is back on MTV. And just this week, it was announced Rosebud Baker is the newest SNL writer.

I couldn’t be prouder to know all these talented superstars and I’m looking forward to starting things back up again with even more. I got a better camera. I got a dishwasher and a new address. Covid’s still happening but that’s out of my hands. If you’d like to like and subscribe to the YouTube channel “Laurel’s Little Show” and newsletter that would be pretty cool. New episodes a-comin’ this spring. Please bare with me as a stumble through the tech. I’m really just a writer who likes to talk to comedians and other people I find interesting and peppering the captions with little jokes. Hope you like it too!