Samsung Punchable TV

I directed this bit for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert‘s Super Bowl show for a fake Samsung TV designed specifically for taking emotional anger – off the very real news trend of dude breaking their flat screens when mad at sports.

It’s always a ball making stuff with this team, but there’s a special pleasure in making multiple fake TVs just to smash them, drive over them with a car, and then hurl them off a building into a dumpster.

Our scenic and props teams are AMAZING. Major applause to our graphics team for some powerhouse 3D tracking and rotoscoping for all the screens. And kudos to all of our actors for just WAILING on these suckers all out. The perfect emotional release.

And it’s totally an honor to have this sketch be part of our Super Bowl show. It’s still wild and amazing to make silly bits, then several million people see it on CBS. BONKERS.

Written by Pratima Mani. Produced by Emily Potthast. Scenic design by Riley Mellon, Brendan Hurley, and Kate Duffy. Costumes by Antonia Xereas. VFX by Andro Buneta & Ryan Mauskopf. Lighting design by Hillary Knox. DP’d and edited by me.

Conservative Coffee Brand for “The Late Show”

I directed this fake commercial for a “manly” conservative coffee brand for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert off the increasingly real trend of far-right, upstart coffee companies marketing to anti-“woke” drinkers. (Sketch starts at 7:38.)

Big props to Steve Waltien & Michael Cruz Kayne for both writing and starring in this, and making their performances spot-on INCREDIBLY stupid. Plus, major kudos to scenic designer Brendan Hurley for designing a pitch perfect aggro-dude podcast set out of a corner of our conference room in only a few hours. The touches of authenticity are incredible!

Produced by Emily Potthast, costumes by Antonia Xereas, and directed/DP’d/.edited by me.

Too Much Reality TV

With the Hollywood actors strike lasting until November, TV networks were left scrambling to figure out how fill their Fall schedule with shows. And their answer was inevitably: Reality TV.

But with that many new shows needed, there’s probably more than you’ve even heard of. And not all of them are the best of ideas.

Luckily, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert is here to help by bringing an entire SLATE of new reality shows…to your TV this season.

Grateful to everyone at The Late Show for letting me make yet another round-up of “fake programs with way too many jokes to follow”. They’re always so much fun to make and this one was no different. Just with more shirtless guys.

Written by Gabe Gronli (and more)! Produced by Emily Potthast. Scenic design by Riley Mellon. Costumes by Antonia Xereas. Graphics by Andro Buneta & Ryan Mauskopf. And tons more thanks to the huge deep bench of awesome crew. Shot & edited by me.

(And if you’re interested in watching my previous The Late Show parodies for Christmas, Hannukah, and Fall movies you can do so here.)

Nokia Semaphore + Irish Name Awareness with Liam Nesson

Modern technology is intrusive and overwhelming. That’s why Gen Z has been embracing retro technology as what’s cool now. Tech from a simpler time – like flip phones and early digital cameras. So if retro tech is what’s cool, it’s only a matter of time before tech companies embrace the trend and start marketing REALLY retro tech. Like 18th Century Flag-Based Communication.

Enjoy this very dumb, fake ad for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert that goes REAL off the rails in the last 30 seconds.

Written by Pratima Mani, produced by Emily Potthast, and scenic design by Riley Mellon.

I forgot to share this back in March (so this is definitely a very belated share) but for St. Patrick’s Day, Irish national treasure Liam Neeson was kind enough to stop by The Late Show to share a very important message about Irish culture: Quit saying our names all wrong!

Learn how to say them right (and even wronger) in this incredibly important PSA that’s definitely NOT an excuse for us to have Liam Neeson say a bunch of joke names in his very serious tone. Written by Caroline Lazar and produced by Emily Potthast.

“Fall Movies” + George R.R. Martin

The Hallmark Channel is known for making an absolute gob of Holiday movies every year, but, if you didn’t already know, it turns out there’s actually a season between Halloween and Christmas! (I know, it’s a shock to me too). Well, they’re finally taking a advantage of it with a new slate of ‘Fall’-themed Hallmark movies just released this year.

But we at The Late Show with Stephen Colbert aren’t going to be left out in the cold (and out of subsequent profit), so we’ve introduced our OWN slate of Autumnal movie soon-to-be classics.

Written by Eliana Kwartler & Kate Sidley. Produced by Emily Potthast. And massive thank yous to all of our production teams who helped put this complilation of too many jokes together.

(And if you’re interested in watching my previous Hallmark holiday parodies for The Late Show, you can do so here.)

The Late Show has a new writer, but he’s taking a little longer than expected to finish tonight’s monologue.

Enjoy this cold open sketch, I directed & shot, featuring Game of Thrones creator George R.R. Martin (who was just a delight and I had a great time listening to him tell stories for most of a half hour). Written by Aaron Cohen & Gabe Gronli, and produced by Emily Potthast.

James Taylor Sings “You’ve Got a Work Friend”

I had the supreme pleasure recently of getting to direct American Treasure James Taylor a short musical comedy piece with Stephen Colbert for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, centering on Taylor’s classic song “You’ve Got A Friend”….but with lyrics more suited to an acquaintance from work.

Not surprisingly, he was an absolute gem and, as our live audience discovered, it’s pretty much just a total joy to watch James Taylor do about anything. Thanks to everyone involved for this super charming little slice of niceness.

It’s Hispanic & Latino Heritage Month! And even with all the strides that have been made for diversity across TV & film media in the past several years, Hispanic representation still leaves much to be desired.

Luckily, Late Show writer Felipe Torres Medina has a dirt-simple plan to fix that. Single-handedly, if needed.

Thanks to everyone who helped on this very silly bit, with a special shout-out to our fabulous costume & wardrobe team. Y’all are great! Written and starring Felipe Torres Medina. Produced by Emily Potthast. Directed, photographed, & edited by me.

“Wasted Time: The Rise and Fall of Clock App for iPhone”

More and more TV shows are highlighting the dramatic lives of egotistical tech founders, like The Dropout, Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber, and WeCrashed about the founders of WeWork. It’s a hot trend. Enough so that The Late Show with Stephen Colbert thought we’d get in on the action with a trailer for the latest upcoming limited series, about an app you definitely know…

Written by Pratima Mani & Carley Moseley. Produced by Emily Potthast. Directed, shot, and edited by me. And big thanks to everyone who worked on this very silly faux series trailer. I’m still blown away that we were able to pull off something at this scale in a day and a half, and I’m pretty sure we hit a new PR for number of camera setups in a day. It was super fun.

New Work: “UNTUCKit Shirts” & “ClearRights Home Test”

If you’ve heard of UNTUCKit brand shirts (a 100% real company), you might’ve thought the idea of men’s dress shirts that are “designed to look good untucked” is also just, you know…any shirt. You’d be wrong (apparently) because it’s a hugely successful company with very serious advertisements featuring a very serious founder.

However, if you’re looking for a shirt that can be tucked in, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert has a brand new sponsor that can help, and probably make you more confident than you ever should be.

Written by Gabe Gronli & Aaron Cohen. Produced by Emily Potthast. Groundbreaking costumes by Antonia Xereas. Featuring Abdul Howard, Mike Holt, and the incredibly prominent, very white thighs of Gabe Gronli. (You’re a champ and a good sport.)

Bonus thanks to the people of New York who didn’t care one single bit about anything we were shooting. You know that this is just general par for the course living in The Big Apple and good for you.

I’m both proud of (and sad that we needed to make) this piece of satire that I directed for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, related to the Conservative arm of the Supreme Court’s decision to repeal Roe v. Wade.

A ruling that, thanks to a mess of anti-abortion laws, has now left millions of women wondering what rights they actually have where they are. Luckily (I guess) The Late Show has a new advertiser with a product just for this eventuality.

Written by Kate Sidley, produced by Emily Potthas, and featuring the wonderful Pratima Mani, Carley Moseley, Caroline Lazar, and Gabe Gronli.

“NFT Heist”

With NFTs the becoming the future of the art market, they’re also the new frontier for art thieves. And with more and more high profile NFT thefts being reported, it’s only a matter of time before Hollywood tries to adapt NFTs into a new high-octane heist movie. Unfortunately, that time is now…

I directed & edited this short heist film about stealing NFTs, for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, and I could not be more proud of & thrilled how it turned out. I had an absolute ball lampooning this style of movie from the look, camera movement, costumes, hair/makeup, to the location, sound, and more. The team absolutely killed it with this one, and one million claps to everyone that helped put it together and in the can in an incredibly short amount of time.

Written by Jay Katsir & Gabe Gronli. Produced by Emily Potthast. Cinematography by Evan Jake Cohen. Scenic design by Brendan Hurley. Costumes by Antonia Xereas. Major thanks to everyone in hair, makeup, wardrobe, lighting, carpentry, props, SFX, and more. And a special kudos to Ryan Mauskopf for creating the “world’s most valuable NFT” (which is both beautiful and complete garbage simultaneously), and to our steadicam operator Kyle Fasanella, who was on his feet pretty much the entire shoot and it looks AMAZING.

Also, starring Gary Lee Mahmoud, Asher Perlman, Nahar Aminof, Joomin Hwang, Athena Reddy, David E. Chen & Talib Babb.

UPDATE: Thanks for the shoutouts, Mashable, BoingBoing, AOL, Investing.com, and of course…The Crypto Times.

“Jazz Cowboy: Cyber” with Paul Giamatti

A couple of years ago, I shot & directed a trailer for a fake spinoff show from The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, called “Jazz Cowboy”, that featured our house band drummer Joe Saylor fighting street crime with jazz percussion instruments. It’s was totally dumb, but was one of my favorite bits I’ve made at The Late Show, and even featured Samuel L. Jackson in a cameo as the Police Commissioner (which was…wow).

Now, we’re proud to premiere yet another spinoff to THAT fake spinoff series, where it’s exactly the same thing, but now the Jazz Cowboy fights CYBER crime with jazz percussion instruments. Oh and it features Academy Award Nominee Paul Giamatti (what?!). Please enjoy the entirely unnecessary “Jazz Cowboy: Cyber”.

This one was just so much fun to shoot and we had an absolute ball leaning into just about every dumb “cyber” trope we could think of (from “Mr. Robot” to “Hackers” to “Johnny Mnemonic” & “The Lawnmower Man”). It was a massive pleasure, and per usual, incredible kudos and accolades to our wardrobe, hair, makeup, scenic, props, lighting teams. We did SO MUCH with so little time and space. Y’all are the cybery-est!

Written by Gabe Gronli. Produced by Emily Potthast. Starring Gabe Gronli, Carley Moseley, Talib Babb, and of course the inimitable Jazz Cowboy himself: Joe Saylor.