Aw, man. What a fun time. For 3 years, I was a staff director, editor, and writer at Funny Or Die. I worked in both NY and LA.

While there, I made over 150 comedy videos of widely varying styles, scales, and budgets. I made some of my favorite work of my career, worked with tons of celebrities, filmed in the west wing of the White House, and even made a video that helped bring attention to an important bill that has since been ratified into law.

Below are some of my Funny Or Die highlights.

very cool, very proud

celebrities

GOOD OLD FASHIONED SKETCH COMEDY

At FOD I made many cool things I’m proud of. These ones are very cool, and I’m very proud.

Working with Sesame Street characters! I’m still pinching myself. I loved seeing my coworkers glow like they did between takes. I’ll always remain impressed by how the puppet performers balanced the technical and creative. The hardest part of editing this was cutting the scene I was in. But hey, that’s show business!

Written by the brilliant Mike Scollins

Bradley m-f-ing Whitford, everybody! Amy Landecker (who directed this, brilliantly I might add), and Bradley, connected with the sketch from the from the moment I pitched it to them. I enjoy new styles of comedy as they emerge, but I also love a classic premise, and this was so fun to write and edit and see come to life.

We had so much great stuff (written and improvised material from Bradley and the rest of the cast) on the cutting room floor that Amy and I got together to extend and turn it into more of a short film, which I actually think is a stronger piece and comes in at 11 minutes.

That time I directed a video inside the west wing of the White House with Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to then-President Barack Obama, in her office, with UCB founder Matt Walsh—and I had 40 minutes to do the whole thing—you KNOW I’m putting that in my highlights.

Did this video receive a metric ton of views across many platforms and help bring attention to a bill in congress written to help protect victims of sexual assault? Yes. Did that bill eventually get passed? Yes. Did my directing do almost all of the heavy lifting, and can the American population personally thank me for the new protections granted to them in their time of need? Sure, if you think so.

Working on this and having some small grain of influence on the American legislative system will forever be one of my proudest achievements. As a bonus, I got to throw in a stylistic homage to those delightfully gauche Schumacher Batman movies of my youth.

Proud of this because it’s just damn funny.

A celebrity’s late cancellation for a different shoot became an opportunity to pivot and make this sketch with a higher production budget than we were often afforded. Brilliant move by producer Rob Hatch-Miller.

Langan Kingsley is one of my favorite writers of all time, let alone to work with. She wrote this hysterical instant personal favorite.

I was lucky enough to direct it. It was fun to ape commercial style and push such a funny visual of the suit and wing.

Pom Klementieff is a mad genius. I had enjoyed her performance in Guardians of the Galaxy 2, but I didn’t know she could be so funny until I got to work with her on this project, written by my brilliant co-worker Jason Flowers. I just love how silly this video is and how believable and funny Pom and co-star Sheila Carrasco are throughout.

I am very proud of my directorial choice here to move from the bathroom to the cold, dark void. The surreality of it helps get to the core of the feeling writer (and star!) Ben Wietmarschen was getting at.

Also, it allowed me to achieve some of that ever-elusive depth directors and DPs are always after, since we didn’t have access to a studio bathroom set.

Minority Report is a favorite film of mine. Was fun to turn a few spaces in a garage into a pre-crime monitoring facility. Doing so much sketch, I wouldn’t often get to do more storytelling style camera work either. I planned and shot almost 30 setups in just a few hours (of course with the help of great producer and crew!). Was excited to bring this one to life.

Yelling Man is always fun, but with this one, planning and achieving all these VFX is the thing I’m most proud of. I planned and shot this, and then did all the VFX and editing in post.

The Yelling Man himself Matt Klinman wrote the oddly beautiful script.

I went on to do a lot of segment producing for TV, but Funny Or Die is where I first gained experience with celebrity talent. And I gained a lot of it.

Robert De Niro and Zac Efron

Mike Birbiglia, Keegan-Michael Key, Gillian Jacobs

John Hamm and Jack MacBrayer

Sacha Baron Cohen

Judd Apatow

Martin Sheen

DP Matt Sweeney took a pic of the monitor during some downtime. That’s me on the right! How cool is that?!

Will Arnett

Amy Poehler and Ike Barinholtz

Hannibal Burress

Nina Dobrev

Randall Park

We did our fair share of political comedy, which is a very challenging thing to do well, in sketch. Here are some of the ones I liked!

The viewcount across platforms on this first video was larger than the population of Finland. We cannot confirm, but we are sure every Finnish citizen watched.

This silly series was so fun to make. We used Finnish translators and actors, we shot at BRIC studios in Brooklyn, and we worked hard to make the video feel as real as possible.

Crooked Media Live was the pre-cursor to Pod Save America and the follow-up to Keepin’ It 1600. The Crooked Media empire would a short stint with Funny Or Die, where I developed a look for Facebook Live broadcasts and directed the live broadcast as well.