When embarking on the road to comedic success, you’re likely to encounter slipping on a few banana peels or receiving some pies to the face. While there isn’t a single path to making it in the comedy world, these five insiders have garnered critical and commercial success, helped writers build a career, and want to help you boost your writing level by passing their knowledge to fellow writers like you.
By knowing a little about these writers, showrunners, managers, and programmers, you’ll have a glimpse into the varying opportunities available to help move you to the next level.
Tze Chun
Film and TV Writer, Director, Producer, and Showrunner
Most people start their artistic endeavors by creating something personal. For Stephen King, most of his stories take place in Maine, his home state. His knowledge of the tiny state’s rich history opens Maine up to the horrors that could lurk there for the sparse population.
Tze Chun does something similar. Chun’s first film, Children of Invention, is loosely based on his childhood and takes place near Boston, where he grew up. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2009 and has racked up more film festival screenings and accolades. His next film, Cold Comes the Night, is a thriller starring Alice Eve and Bryan Cranston. What followed was a stint on the TV series Gotham and Once Upon a Time.
Today, Chun is the Executive Producer and Showrunner of the Gremlins animated prequel Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai on Max. The show follows a young Gizmo and his human friend traveling throughout China. Chun is also the Showrunner and Executive Producer of the critically acclaimed, quirky, coming-of-age comedy/fantasy I’m a Virgo on Amazon Prime.
Whether it’s taking a classic like Gremlins and crafting a prequel or grabbing ahold of a unique concept like I’m a Virgo, Chun is the type of multi-genre creator who brings a fresh comedic style and personal vision to his projects. It’s no wonder he’s consistently been an insider worth paying attention to.
Read More: 7 Industry Pros You Should Know if You Write Comedy
Tze Chun
Josh Roemer-Ingles
Literary Manager, Odenkirk Provissiero Entertainment
Newer to the industry, Josh Roemer-Ingles has been making a name for himself as a literary manager at Odenkirk Provissiero Entertainment and managing several high-profile comedic actors such as Bob Odenkirk, Ayo Edibri, and Jay Duplass. Getting his start as an assistant to Marc Provissiero, Roemer-Ingles was able to be a part of the production of comedies such as No Hard Feelings and PEN15 and climb his way up to becoming the coordinator for the literary department.
Roemer-Ingles moved to entertainment after his inital career in finance and now represents several notable comedic insiders. Starting as a literary manager in November 2022, his job was to oversee his clients’ careers as they navigated the world of film and television.
Upon becoming a literary manager, Romer-Ingles shared in an interview with Deadline, “I’m thrilled to help discover the next generation of unique voices.”
‘No Hard Feelings’ (2023)
Rebecca Angelo
Screenwriter, Dumb Money and Orange is the New Black
Rebecca Angelo doesn’t excel in producing laugh-out-loud comedy; instead, she specializes in crafting thought-provoking narratives that highlight the absurdity of characters’ worlds. For her latest comedy/drama, Dumb Money, Angelo tells the true story of a social media movement to prevent the short squeeze of GameStop pulled off by a legion of Redditors intrigued by the video posts of a seemingly regular guy.
Angelo creates a story to explain the passion of Keith Gill (Paul Dano) and why he thought GameStop was a great price, eventually encouraging followers to buy the stock and prevent its short sale. The comedy comes from its too-good-to-be-true vibe and watching an army of Davids fight the high-level investing Goliaths.
Angelo started her career in journalism writing for The Wall Street Journal where she met her screenwriting partner Lauren Schuker Blum. In a recent interview, Angelo explains why she and Blum moved into screenwriting:
“… We had a lot of common interests and had both gotten into journalism because we admired people like Nora Ephron and Joan Didion. Women of a previous generation were revolutionary in how they told stories through journalism. We found ourselves starting to get a little frustrated with the limitations of the modern era of journalism so we followed our heroes into screenwriting.”
Angelo made her mark in comedy as a staff writer on Orange is the New Black and is a comedy insider whose career is worth following as she moves into the production of a Hollywood super-agent and even into a different genre with The Wolf Man.
Read More: Dumb Money Writers Channel Frank Capra for Stock Market Film
Lauren Schuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo
Lauren Schuker Blum
Screenwriter, Dumb Money and Orange is the New Black
We can’t talk about Angelo without talking about her incredible writing partner. Lauren Schuker Blum had been a reporter at The Wall Street Journal since 2007 after graduating from Harvard where she was president of The Harvard Crimson—the college’s daily student newspaper. As a national real estate reporter at The Wall Street Journal, Schuker Blum wrote several eye-opening pieces that garnered her a second-prize win in 2013 from the National Association of Real Estate Editors. She also wrote pieces about Hollywood and the entertainment industry, including its evolution into the digital age.
Angelo’s and Shuker Blum’s shift to screenwriting stemmed from their desire to tell stories in a more visual medium and speak to a broader audience beyond the newspaper.
Their first major success in their screenwriting careers came when they were staffed on the Netflix prison dramedy Orange is the New Black. Then, following the GameStop craze that was making headlines, the writing duo was approached by MGM to write Dumb Money.
These insiders find the comedy in genuine characters (both fictional and real-life) by placing them in extraordinary circumstances, such as sending a spoiled socialite to prison or turning a basement-dwelling everyman into a Wall Street rapscallion.
Dumb Money (2023)
Marshall Turner
Director of Current Programming at Lionsgate
Marshall Turner’s career didn’t start in the entertainment industry. He was a CPA at Ernst & Young for nearly four years before finding his way to an executive assistant position at CAA in TV packaging. Television seemed to be where Turner thrived as he moved to Lionsgate to serve as an Executive Assistant to the Chairman of TV.
From there, this insider became a manager at Lionsgate when they were pumping out critically and commercially acclaimed comedies and dramedies such as Julia, Ghosts, and Nurse Jackie. Today, Turner is the director of current programming at Lionsgate as part of the team led by Lee Hollin, head of current programming.
Read More: Let ‘Stranger Things’, ‘Breaking Bad’, and ‘The Sopranos’ Teach You How to Pitch a TV Series
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Author: Steven Hartman
