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The diversity of late-night writers rooms is not a new topic of conversation.

For years, these shows have been accused of being too white and too male, and while that still might be the case, there has been improvement across the board both in terms of gender and ethnicity. Progress is being made, slowly, in the right direction.

So, it was nice to see, earlier this week, that the new team behind the scenes at NBC’s A Little Late with Lilly Singh was incredibly inclusive.

Chelsea Davison, taking over from Sean O’Connor, leads a gender-balanced and diverse writing team of Vannessa Jackson, a former writing apprentice on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert; Sabeeh Jameel, who was a researcher on The Opposition with Jordan Klepper; Romen Borsellino, co-creator of Freeform’s Kal Penn Approves This Message; Nimesh Patel, a former writer for Saturday Night Live who was discovered by Chris Rock; Nelu Handa,...

The adversities of adolescence continues for Nick and Andrew. Netflix has renewed Nick Kroll and Andrew Goldberg's Big Mouth TV show for a second season. The subscription streaming platform has ordered another 10 half-hour episodes of the animated comedy, which should premiere in 2018. A sitcom that highlights the joys and (especially) horrors of puberty, Big Mouth centers on best friends Nick Birch (Kroll) and Andrew Glouberman (John Mulaney). The Netflix voice cast also includes Jessi Klein, Fred Armisen, Jason Mantzoukas, Jordan Peele, Maya Rudolph, Jenny Slate, Andrew Rannells, and Paula Pell. The Big Mouth season two renewal comes just about a month after first season's September 29th release date. Read More…...

On August 20, 2017, Jerry Lewis took a pratfall off this mortal coil, presumably knocking an unwitting dowager on her keister and sending a surprised cop into an open manhole on his way out. The durable enfant terrible was all of 91 years when he finally left the building though he had been making spirited public appearances as recently as January of this year.

For the inquisitive Jerry fan, Shawn Levy’s 1997 King of Comedy: The Life and Art of Jerry Lewis, remains the first and last stop for the straight scoop on America’s premiere nudnik. Levy, who endured the full fury of the comedian’s legendary wrath to get his story, is as admiring of his subject’s accomplishments as he was repelled by his whiplash mood swings. The hard knock apprenticeship in the Catskills, the Freudian-fueled soap opera of his partnership with Dean Martin, the boastful sex-capades, they’re all there and then some.

Jerry Lewis inspired generations of comedians and comedic filmmakers, as many of immediate tributes in the wake of his death at 91 prove. One of the more recent directors to emerge in American cinema to cite his work is Alex Ross Perry, whose 2011 sleeper hit “The Color Wheel” was a wily black comedy that owed much to Lewis’ madcap performances. Perry’s followup, “Listen Up Phillip,” showed similar influences.

Reached for comment following the news of Lewis’ death, Perry shared the following statement on his relationship to Lewis’ work.

Whenever I would cite Jerry Lewis as an influence, I would qualify the statement by saying he inspired me more as a philosopher than a comedian. The remark would get a laugh but I would elaborate, with total sincerity. The intellectual drive of this man, from the very beginning of his career through his instantly-legendary Hollywood Reporter interview last year (his final masterpiece,...

Netflix has ordered the animated Big Mouth TV show to series. Described as edgy and surreal, the half hour comedy about "teenaged adventures in puberty," comes from The League's Nick Kroll and Family Guy's Andrew Goldberg and is slated to premiere in 2017. Kroll and Goldberg have been friends since childhood.

John Mulany is voicing the character Andrew, while Kroll will voice Nick. The Big Mouth TV series voice cast also includes Maya Rudolph, Jason Mantzoukas, Jordan Peele, Fred Armisen, Jenny Slate, and Jessi Klein.

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Above: Danish poster for Geisha Boy (Frank Tashlin, USA, 1958).On March 16 Jerry Lewis turns 90 years old, making him one of the oldest living great filmmakers along with Jonas Mekas (93), Seijun Suzuki (92), Stanley Donen (91), D.A. Pennebaker (90), Claude Lanzmann (90) and Andrzej Wajda (90). And if you have any doubt about his status as one of the great auteurs go and see any of the films he directed at Museum of Modern Art's’s current retrospective: Happy Birthday, Mr. Lewis: The Kid Turns 90.To flip through the films of Jerry Lewis in poster form is to encounter an awful lot of crossed eyes, toothy grins and outsized heads on small bodies (a familiar trope for comedians in movie posters whether it's Fernandel or Cantinflas or Buster Keaton.) That said, Lewis also seems to have inspired illustrators around the world. The French love Jerry Lewis, as the cliché goes, but so, it seemed, did the Germans,...

Infinite Anticipation

Here at the Vienna International Film Festival there are no multiplexes devoted to the festival. Every cinema is a single screen—all quite beautiful and some, like the Urania, Metro, Künstlerhaus, and Austrian Film Museum, very special indeed—and, scattered at a bit of a distance from one another, they trace a lopsided kind of ellipsis, a loop of cinema if you plan your itinerary right.

Above: Out 1, noli me tangere.

I came anticipating this particular suggestion of cinematic infinity, not just because of my memories of the last two years of repeatedly treading this touring path around the constrained city center of Vienna, but because of the promise of a much desired (by Jonathan Rosenbaum since 1996, and thereafter by an untold multitude of tantalized cinephiles) festival pairing of Jacques Rivette and Suzanne Schiffman's improvised serial intended for television, Out 1, noli me tangere (1971), and Louis Feuillade's...

He was one of the last of the old school comedians. Rubber-faced Charlie Callas has died at age 83. A favorite of Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, Callas was a staple of variety TV in the 60s and 70s, usually incorporating sound effects to great effect into his act. Callas was not without controversy and, despite being a frequent guest on The Tonight Show, once so offended Johnny Carson that he was banned from the show- on broadcast TV! Callas also morphed into making feature films, appearing in Jerry Lewis' The Big Mouth and in several Mel Brooks films. Click here for more...

Charlie Callas, a versatile comedian and sidekick whose zany faces and antics made him a regular for more than four decades on television, in films and on casino stages, has died in Las Vegas. He was 83. A son, Mark Callas, tells The Associated Press that Callas died Thursday in a hospice.

Clark County Coroner Mike Murphy says the death was from natural causes.

Callas toured with Frank Sinatra and Tom Jones, and had a screen part with Jerry Lewis in "The Big Mouth" in 1967.

His facial expressions and rapid-fire comedy also made Callas a favorite on the "Tonight Show" with Johnny Carson.

He also worked with Mel Brooks and was the voice of Elliot in Disney's "Pete's Dragon."...