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Lewis Black

Lewis Niles Black<tr><td colspan="2" style="text-align: center;">Lewis Black:
Lewis Black on The Daily Show</td></tr>
Born: August 30, 1948
Silver Spring, MD
Occupation: Stand-up comedian

<tr><th style="text-align: right;">Website:</th><td>http://www.lewisblack.net/</td></tr>

Lewis Niles Black (born August 30, 1948) is an American stand-up comedian, author, playwright, and actor. He is best known for his regular appearances on Comedy Central's The Daily Show delivering his “Back in Black” commentary segment, in which he ridicules (often simulating a nervous breakdown or rant) recent trends and cultural phenomena. He currently lives in Hell's Kitchen in New York City.


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Background

Lewis Niles Black was born of Jewish parents in Washington, D.C. and raised in Silver Spring, Maryland, graduating from Springbrook High School in 1966. He was exposed to playwriting as an undergraduate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he was also a brother of Pi Lambda Phi International fraternity. He earned a Masters in Fine Arts at the Yale School of Drama in 1977. Originally, his career was in the theater as a playwright. He served as the playwright in residence and associate artistic director of Steve Olsen’s West Bank Cafe Downstairs Theatre Bar in Hell’s Kitchen in New York City, where he collaborated with composer and lyricist Rusty Magee on hundreds of one-act plays from 1981 to 1989. Also with Rusty Magee, Lewis wrote the musical “The Czar Of Rock and Roll,” which premiered at Houston’s Alley Theater in 1990. Black’s stand-up comedy began as an opening act for the plays as he was also the master of ceremonies. After a management change at the theater, Black left and began working as a comedian as well as finding bit parts in television and films.

Comedic style

Lewis Black’s style of comedy is that of a man who, in dealing with the absurdities of life and contemporary politics, is approaching his personal limits of sanity. Sarcasm, profanity, shouting, and trademark angry finger-shaking bring emphasis to his topics of discussion. He once described his humor as being on the Titanic every single day and being the only person who knows what is going to happen.

Some examples include:

A good portion of Black's political material seems to be aimed at exposing both the comedy and tragedy of staunch conservatism, as well as disbelief at the mystifying combination of thick-headedness and condescending attitude in authority figures. Black seems just as disenchanted with Democrats as Republicans. He is quoted as saying: “You elected Bush, so that’s who I’m going to rant about. If you elect Kerry, I’m going to rant about him too. My problem is with...authority!” He decided that the best way to find the next president is to "throw a dart at a map of the United States, go into the jungle, find a monkey, take it on a plane, parachute it out to the location the dart hit, and whoever the first person the monkey touches, that is the new president." He is also quoted as saying “what is the difference between a Democrat and a Republican? A Democrat blows, and a Republican sucks” and “the only thing dumber than a Democrat or a Republican is when these pricks work together.” He has also stated that the way in which bipartisanship works is that "A Republican stands up and says, 'I got a really bad idea!' and then a Democrat stands up and says, '...and I can make it shittier!'"

Black describes his political affiliation as such:“I’m a socialist, so that puts me totally outside any concept ... the Canadians get it. But seriously, most people don’t get it. The idea of capping people’s income just scares people. ‘Oh, you’re taking money from the rich.’ Ooh, what a horrifying thing. These people really need $200 million.” Black's commentary

As a political comedian, Lewis Black is also not without negative response and criticism, however, his rage-like comedy style often defuses potentially difficult situations. In a performance of "Red, White, and Screwed" in Honolulu this year, Lewis Black responded to a heckler by saying, "Look -- all I'm trying to do is get these little shit pieces of information the government gives us and put in a little pile and piss on it!"

Black lists his comedic influences as George Carlin, Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, Lily Tomlin, Bob Newhart, and Shelley Berman.

Recent career

In 1998, he starred in his first comedy special on the series Comedy Central Presents. He starred in two additional episodes of the series in 2000 and 2002. He starred in another special for the network in 2002 titled Taxed Beyond Belief.

In 2000, Black and fellow comedian Jim Norton were arrested because of their involvement with “The Naked Teen Voyeur Bus,” a specially designed bus with Plexiglass walls that contained numerous (18 and 19 year old) “teen girls.” This bus was to ride around Manhattan while being broadcast on the famous “Opie and Anthony” radio show. Unfortunately, management at the radio station failed to inform the O&A show that the route the bus was planning on taking was also the route that the President was taking that same day. Twenty-eight hours after the arrest, Black and Norton were released. Black appeared on The Daily Show the following night and made numerous allusions to the event. Additionally, at a fundraising event for New York Attorney General candidate Mark Green on June 28, 2006, Black talked about how he was unable to make a previous fundraising event for Green because the arrest occurred on the very night of the event.

Since 2003, Black has hosted the World Stupidity Awards ceremony at Montreal’s Just for Laughs comedy festival for the three years the awards have been presented.

In 2004, he had an HBO stand-up special titled Black on Broadway. That same year Black appeared in an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit as a shock jock. He also released his autobiography, Nothing's Sacred, in 2005. Since November 9, 2005, Black has been making appearances in small segments on The Weather Channel. In December 2005, he appeared in an animated holiday special The Happy Elf, as the voice of the extremely tightly wound elf, Norbert.

He is slated to become the host of his own show, Red State Diaries, in development by Comedy Central to begin airing in 2006 [1]. Comedy Central says it will feature Black on the road exploring the red states for explanations of the subjects of his comedic rants. This will be the second spin-off from The Daily Show, after The Colbert Report.

On April 21, 2006 Lewis performed at the Warner Theatre in Washington, DC for an HBO special, Red, White, and Screwed. It aired on June 10, 2006 and a DVD release is set for October 3, 2006.

He plays Dean Ben Lewis of the school “South Harmon Institute of Technology” in Accepted, a film about high school graduates who create a college when they fail to get accepted into any. He also appears in the 2006 films Man of the Year and Unaccompanied Minors. Black will host Comedy Central's Last Laugh 06' on December 10th, 2006.

Published works

Media releases

CDs

DVDs

Selected acting roles

Categories


1948 births | Living people | American comedians | American dramatists and playwrights | American television actors | American stand-up comedians | American agnostics | The Daily Show | Law & Order: Special Victims Unit actors | Jewish American actors | Jewish American comedians | People from Washington, D.C. | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill alumni | Yale University alumni

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