I think it was 1995. I’d graduated secondary school, and took a year out before I went to drama school. Didn’t get the predicted grades I wanted to go to Manchester University which was my first choice. My comedy heroes Ben Elton, Rick Mayall, and Adrian Edmondson My friend Simon, who worked in our local…
Author: Jason Peck
Jason Peck, is an award-winning English humorist, actor and comedian based in Chicago, IL. As a comedian, he performed stand-up on the London comedy circuit, worked as an improviser, wrote and performed material for Newsrevue and contributed material to The Treason Show.
What French Filmmaker Jacques Tati Taught Me About Film
I saw Mon Oncle for the first time in Sweden in 1999. I bought it on video. I’ve since seen Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot and Playtime. I’ll be honest, it took me a while to get into Tati’s movies. I think he’s an acquired taste. From what I read, he shot his films silently…
That One Time 49 People Thought I Was Having a Breakdown
In 2005, I was experimenting with character monologues instead of just stand-up. I wanted to draw more from my background in theatre. My solo show Please Stop Trying To Kill Me, Dad was more along the lines of stand-up theatre or stand-up storytelling. I had taken it to the Edinburgh Fringe in 2004 and was…
Restoration Comedy and Derek Zoolander
This is a period of English theatrical history I adore. When most teenagers in the ’90s were discovering Dylan, The Stones, Hendrix, etc. I was discovering comedy albums on C.D. and vinyl like Jonathan Winters, Bob Newhart, Steve Martin, and periods in comedy history like Restoration comedy, Commedia dell’arte, or comic playwrights like Aristophanes. Out…
What I Learned Editing Old Video Footage for Clients
In the freelance video editing work I’ve been doing, one company in particular, tasked me with updating their old videos library so that they don’t have to reshoot their videos. Sometimes reshooting a video is unavoidable. Sometimes the speaker might request it, sometimes the data is really out of date and there’s no way around…