Monday, November 30, 2015

Succotash Chats Epi 121: Talkin' Ear Movies with Franklin Leonard

Yes, it’s me — Marc Hershon, your host and rattan patio furniture, covered for the winter — and this is Epi 121 of Succotash, the Comedy Podcast Podcast. It’s another Succotash Chats edition, featuring my recent interview with Franklin Leonard, the creator and host of The Black List Table Reads.

Franklin’s got a pretty fascinating history, including working with both Leonardo DiCaprio and Will Smith’s production companies, and we talk about that and more.  The Black List Table Reads is a pretty unique podcast, just starting its second season, featuring recorded table reads of full-on, feature-length motion picture scripts that have not yet been produced but have been voted as the most popular on the Black List website, which our guest is also the brains behind.

(Just to give you a taste of what it’s like to hear a movie being read aloud — it's a bit like an old-style radio drama from the 1930's an d40's — we feature a few minutes from a couple of the film scripts Franklin features, one from their last season and one from the first movie to kick of Season Two, just last week.)

A Succotash Exclusive!

In the spirit of  The Black List Table Reads, after my interview with Franklin is over, I play a few minutes from an unproduced screenplay I help Dana Carvey to write almost a decade ago. It's a comedy called The Happy Idiot…and hearing these few minutes on Succotash is likely to be the most of it you're ever going to find.

But That's Not All

We’ve also got our Burst O’ Durst segment with our own political comedian and social commentator Will Durst (if you're in the San Francisco Bay Area this holiday season, be sure to check out Will's Big Fat Year-End Kiss-Off Comedy Show, playing all over the place between Christmas and into the New Year.); a classic ad for Henderson's Holiday Pants;, a dip into the Tweetsack and, at the very end of the show, yet another acapella masterpiece by our friend Abner Serd, whose Tall Tales & Shaggy Dogs podcast offering is available via iTunes.

A Holiday Plea

Please, friends, remember that we need YOUR favorable reviews and comments to grow the crap out of Succotash and, if you’re NOT going to give us money by clicking on our Donate button, or shopping through our Amazon link or buying merch from our Succotashery — all availalbe through http://SuccotashShow.com — you can at least throw us a bone and give us a glowing review on iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher, or wherever you might run across our humble podcast.

Our next installment is going to be a Succotash Clips episode, I’m pretty sure, and we’ll bring you a buffet of podcast snippets from all over the place. In the meantime, won’t you please remember to pass the Succotash?!

— Marc Hershon
 

Monday, November 23, 2015

Succotash Clips Epi120: Passin' The Thanksgiving Succotash

What? Me, Marc Hershon, your host and toaster pastry? Back within a week with another installment of Succotash, the Comedy Podcast Podcast? Yes, it’s true.

This is Succotash Clips, Epi 120. And we have a Thanksgiving Feast of comedy podcast clips for you. It’s a veritable spread of different flavors and — given the humor in some of them — truly a groaning board of a clip buffet in store for your ears this time around.

We’ve got The All-Seeing Guys, Bitter Sound, Ear Goggles, Ice & The Face, The McCue Report, Primalcast, The Reigning Lunatic, Rob & Slim, The Vince Wylde Show and Who Charted? 

In addition to that earload, we’ve got a visit to the Podcast Graveyard, courtesy of our associate producer Tyson Saner, who also harvested a number of the clips we’ve got on hand. We also have another double dose of our Burst O’ Durst with political comedian and social commentator Will Durst, a rummage around the ol’ Tweetsack, and a brand new Henderson’s Pants commercial.

Other than our ads from Henderson’s Pants, Succotash remains fitfully sponsor-free. The good news: you aren’t burdened by listening to those pesky ads. The bad news: money to keep this show going basically comes out of my pocket. You can help out with one of several methods, all done by visiting our homesite at http://SuccotashShow.com. You can click on the Donate button and shoot us some moolah. You can click on the Amazon banner at the top of the page and buy stuff at Amazon, then they give us a slice off the top. Or you can click on the link to our Succotashery and purch some merch, a percentage of which comes back to us after they print up whatever you buy. Or you can keep on listening to this show for free and just know that, in the back of my head, I’m thinking you’re just an electronic freeloader. No guilt, no judgement, though.

The Clips

Ear Goggles
So you might remember when I announced on this show earlier this year when the 10-year-old podcast known as Sibling Rivalry celebrated its decadeness was re-branded as Ear Goggles. I ran into 2/3’s of the hosting team – Jeremy Grater and Susan Black – last September at the 4th Annual Los Angeles Podcast Festival. Host #3 – Aaron Ristrow – lives on the East Coast, as opposed to his Seattle-based compadres. I chatted with them, which we featured during the PodFest upload frenzy, and they chatted with me for their show, which just dropped recently.

The Rob & Slim Show
Just this last week I was a call-in guest on the LIVE partycast known as The Rob & Slim Show. They’ve been retweeting our stuff the past few months and I had just had Tyson clip me off a chunk of a recent show but, I figured as long as I was going to be on their show, we may as well use THAT clip. Rob and Slim — I haven’t been able to find much else about them or the other voice that seem to float around during their ‘cast — run a 3+ hour live whoop-de-doo, in the style of a morning radio show as they put it and they cover the gamut of topics that are fresh in and around the news. Plus they drink. How can you lose?


The Bitter Sound
This clip comes to us from The Bitter Sound, uploaded directly to us by host Davian Dent. He and sidekick Matt Bubbles managed to get OUR booth announcer, Bill Heywatt, to call in for a visit. (I can’t get the guy to stand still in Studio P long enough to do another Boozin’ With Bill segment yet these jokers get him just like that. I even pay the guy’s salary!) Oh well. If the only way we can get Bill on the show is with him being slightly tanked and yammering on a clip from someone else’s show, so be it.


The Reigning Lunatic
Friend-of-Succotash Geoffrey Welchman, who was the former host of the now-kaput Inverse Delirium podcast, came roaring back after a time away from Podcastland with a brand new offering! The Reigning Lunatic is a scripted situation comedy about a crazy king and his hapless servants and subjects. Geoffrey asked me to play a part in the series opener as Sir Jerry, and I, being an audio whore, was only too happy to comply.

Ice & The Face
So we had several direct uploaded clips this week (through our upload link at http://hightail.com/u/Succotash) including one from someone named Rick. His cover note with the upload reads: “Hello, my name is Rick, and I had a conversation with someone on twitter today from Succotash. I said I would provide a five minute clip from our comedy show, Ice and The Face, for your show. This clip is from episode #75 - 10.9.15. We hope you enjoy it! If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me via email or twitter DM if you like. You're show is awesome, and we very much appreciate your interest and are looking forward to hearing back. Thank you, Rick” Cool. Thanks, Rick!

Who Charted?
I’m not sure we’ve ever featured a clip from this next show before. Not sure why. Who Charted? has been around forever and is quite beloved. They cover the hits that are charting in music and movies, with lots of comedy guests. The hosts are Howard Kremer and Kulap Vilaysack normally, but in this episode clipped by our Associate Producer Tyson Saner, Kulap is off, replaced by guest co-host Emily V. Gordon, who hosts another podcast – The Indoor Kids – with her husband, Kumail Nanjiani. Their guest is James Adomian, who’s gotten some attention lately because of his Bernie Sanders impression.

The Vince Wylde Show
Tyson harvested us a clip from a new-to-me show, The Vince Wylde Show, part of the AM Podcast Network. (Not sure what that is, but the AM comes from the network founder, Adam Mulholland.) The Vince Wylde blurb on the homesite reads, “The Radio Show with Attitude, Humor, and great production. From Schizophrenic Studios on the 36th Floor of the FMI Building.” I don’t know where the Fmi building is, either. In this clip, Vince and his partner on the show, a guy named Ben sample some soft drinks from a company called Carbonated Atrocities. Bottoms up!


The McCue Report
There’s a show from the Boston area that reached out to Tyson Saner directly, which is another way to go if you’re looking to be clipped on our show, called The McCue Report. It features comedian Jim McCue interviewing interesting and entertaining people, according to their homesite. The show’s been chugging along for about a year and a half now, and is part of Boston Comedy Festival Radio. In this clip, which was furnished to Tyson via Twitter, McCue chats with his guest, standup comedian Al Parks, about working on the road.


The All Seeing Guys
Our man in Great Britain, Davian Dent, when he’s not producing his own podcasts – The Bitter Sound and Strange Times – is out looking for other fun stuff to put in his ears. This time he’s sent some of it along to us. It’s a clip from a show I’ve not caught yet, called The All-Seeing Guys, and features two blokes — are guys still called blokes in England? — named Greg and Joe.

As I said, a cornucopia of podcasts for your Thanksgiving week listening pleasure. Take us with you on that long drive to the relatives' house or listen while you're digesting on the couch after stuffing your face. And for those of you NOT in the United States, have a great Thursday and Friday.

Whether you're celebrating Thanksgiving or not, remember that I don’t care if you pass the turkey or the stuffing or the pumpkin pie, but I will always thank you for passing the Succotash!

— Marc Hershon
 

Saturday, November 14, 2015

Succotash Chats Epi119: Takin' Haley's Comments

Oh, yes, it’s me, Marc Hershon. Your host and benign growth for Epi119 of Succotash, the Comedy Podcast Podcast. And finally we have a Succotash Chats episode for you!

The last chats I had were in relation to the Los Angeles Podcast Festival about two months ago. And while I enjoy featuring comedy podcast clips as much as the next guy who hosts a show featuring comedy podcast clips, it’s enjoyable for me to sit back and chat it up with some fun and/or funny people.

Our special guest this episode is actor/comedian Brian Haley, a guy I’ve known for 30 years, dating back to when I used to run the Comedy Underground club in Seattle. As you’ll hear in this interview, he quickly leapt from the standup stage to roles on television and in the movies, and he talk about his regret at not spending more time in the comedy realm.

We talk about some of the roles you’d know Brian from, including the season he did on NBC’s Wings, the Coen Brothers’ The Man Who Wasn’t There, the film Always, directed by Steven Spielberg, Baby’s Day Out, which made him a huge star in India of all places, and more.

But Succotash IS a podcast about other podcasts, primarily comedy-based but when there’s a comedian involved somewhere in the mix, that pretty much makes any podcast a comedy podcast, right? And Brian has a role in a new podcast being produced by GE of all people, something called The Message. I’m fascinated by it, and we talk about that show and Brian’s role in it. We’ll give a listen to a clip from The Message as well.

What Else?

In addition to our chat with Brian Haley, we have a double dose of our Burst O’ Durst segment with political comedian and social commentator Will Durst. We also have a Henderson’s Pants ad, we’ll take a gander into the Tweetsack, AND we have a new acapella song by our friend Abner Serd, a sweet ditty about Autumn, which we’ll play at the end of the show.

I wanted to take a moment to thank those of you who have been using the Amazon banner at the top of our homesite, at http://SuccotashShow.com, to do your shopping at Amazon.com. Every time you do that, we get a little taste off the top of your purchase at no extra cost to you. And lately we’ve been getting a nice tidy direct deposit from Amazon into the Succotash coffers, which is helping to defray the costs of producing this show.

The other thing that helps us out is when you take the time to rate and review Succotash on iTunes. I wanted to give a shout out to Rick from the Ice and The Face podcast and also CEO Pistol Petey for posting a couple of lovely 5-star reviews! Thank you guys very much.

We’ll be back really soon with a Succotash Clips episode, with soundbites from a whole bunch of comedy podcasts. In the meantime, let your friends know about us and we’ll cheerfully thank YOU for passing the Succotash!

 — Marc Hershon