Elliott Kalan | |
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 Kalan at the 2023 WonderCon | |
| Born | December 3, 1981 |
| Alma mater | New York University |
| Occupations |
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Elliott Charles Kalan (born December 3, 1981) is an American comedian. He was the head writer for the Netflix era of the cult series Mystery Science Theater 3000 and a former head writer for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart , as well as a comic book writer and co-host of the podcast The Flop House . [1]
Kalan grew up in Millburn, New Jersey and graduated from Millburn High School as part of the class of 1999. [2] He attended the New York University Tisch School of the Arts, where he majored in screenwriting at the Rita & Burton Goldberg Department of Dramatic Writing.
Elliott Kalan began his career at The Daily Show as a production assistant in 2003 before moving up to producer, staff writer, and ultimately head writer. [3]
Kalan was co-founder of comedy group The Hypocrites with fellow television writer Brock Mahan. [4] He also hosted a live talk and variety stage show, The Primetime Kalan (originally The Midnight Kalan and later The New Kalan Show). The show was created by Kalan, producer Erik Marcisak, and director Joe Guercio, and written and performed by Kalan, Marcisak, and Dan McCoy. Many of Kalan's Daily Show co-workers appeared on the show, including Stephen Colbert, Samantha Bee, and Rob Corddry. [5]
Kalan occasionally appears in bit parts on The Daily Show and has provided voice-over narration for "The Decider" comic-book segments. He was instrumental in putting together the "gay cowboy" montage (a comedic series of clips from classic westerns, illustrating that the gay content in Brokeback Mountain is nothing new), when Jon Stewart hosted the 78th Academy Awards. Along with the writing staff of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Kalan has won four Primetime Emmy Awards. [6]
From 2006 to 2009, Kalan wrote a weekly column for the free morning daily Metro . Following a column he wrote in the August 3, 2007 issue of the Metro, Kalan was fired for writing a self-deprecating joke about the increasing obsolescence of the newspaper industry. This was followed by a brief article in New York Magazine on August 20, 2007, about the incident, [7] which was heavily publicized on internet blogs including Media Bistro, Huffington Post, and Gawker. Many blog postings about the incident imply that the Metro violated basic principles of journalism and freedom of expression in firing Kalan. Perhaps as a result of this publicity, he was later re-hired. In 2009, he left the Metro of his own accord, saying "Why leave now? It just feels like the right time for me to move on creatively. Or I’m going undercover to deliver Osama bin Laden to justice. Pick whichever reason sounds cooler."[ citation needed ]
Kalan also performs as a stand-up comic, and in 2013 performed several USO shows in Afghanistan along with John Oliver, Rory Albanese, and Adam Lowitt. [8]
In August 2015 Kalan announced that he had left his position as head writer for The Daily Show. [9] In May 2016, it was announced he was joining the writing staff of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 revival as head writer. [10]
On April 14, 2017, Kalan appeared on Episode 1103 of the Netflix production of Mystery Science Theater 3000 along with series creator Joel Hodgson. The two portrayed characters in a "host segment" of that episode's source movie, The Time Travelers .
Kalan was a contestant on the January 25, 2021 episode of Jeopardy! He came in second place. [11]
Along with comedians Dan McCoy and Stuart Wellington, Kalan co-hosts The Flop House podcast, on which the hosts discuss and mock major movies that were either commercial or critical "flops", such as Gamer and All About Steve . One supplemental episode of the Flop House, in which Kalan improvised a rapid-fire pitch for a film based on the comic Ziggy became a minor viral Internet success after being posted on Gawker. [12] Dan McCoy and Kalan have also been published in comedy magazine Whim Quarterly and film zine I Love Bad Movies.
Kalan is also the co-host of the Audible podcast Presidents Are People Too!, along with American historian Alexis Coe. The podcast examines the life and times of the presidents of the United States. [13]
In 2024, Kalan co-hosted a year-long series on the podcast 99 Percent Invisible , taking the audience through the Pulitzer Prize winning book The Power Broker by Robert Caro about American urban planner and public official Robert Moses. [14]
From early 2009 until April 2012, Kalan hosted the screening series Closely Watched Films [15] at 92YTribeca. These events commonly featured the screening of a rare older film followed by a discussion between Kalan and a celebrity guest who had not previously seen the film.
Kalan is a comic book writer; among other titles, he has written the six-issue superhero limited series Spider-Man and the X-Men . An exchange of dialogue between the characters Spider-Man and Sauron from the series became a meme:
Spider-Man: “You can rewrite DNA on the fly, and you're using it to turn people into dinosaurs? But with tech like that, you could cure cancer!” Sauron: “But I don't want to cure cancer. I want to turn people into dinosaurs.”
Kalan lives in Los Angeles, California with his wife Danielle and their sons. He has a twin sister and a brother.
Mystery Science Theater 3000 is an American science fiction comedy film review television series created by Joel Hodgson. The show premiered on KTMA-TV in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on November 24, 1988. It then moved to nationwide broadcast, first on The Comedy Channel/Comedy Central for seven seasons until its cancellation in 1996. Thereafter, it was picked up by The Sci-Fi Channel and aired for three more seasons until another cancellation in August 1999. A 60-episode syndication package titled The Mystery Science Theater Hour was produced in 1993 and broadcast on Comedy Central and syndicated to TV stations in 1995. In 2015, Hodgson led a crowdfunded revival of the series with 14 episodes in its eleventh season, first released on Netflix on April 14, 2017, with another six-episode season following on November 22, 2018. A second successful crowdfunding effort in 2021 produced 13 additional episodes shown on the Gizmoplex, an online platform that Hodgson developed which launched in March 2022. As of 2023, 230 episodes and a feature film have been produced as well as three live tours.
Joel Hodgson is an American writer, comedian and television actor. He is best known for creating Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K) and starring in it as the character Joel Robinson. In 2007, MST3K was listed as "one of the top 100 television shows of all time" by Time.
Trace Beaulieu is an American comedian, puppeteer, writer, and actor. He is known for his roles on Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K) as well as his work with MST3K's successor Cinematic Titanic with the original creators and cast of MST3K.
William Michael "Bil" Dwyer is an American stand-up comedian, game-show host, actor, and writer. He is perhaps most well known as the host or play-by-play announcer on series such as BattleBots,I've Got a Secret, and Extreme Dodgeball, as well as several iterations of VH1's I Love the '70s, I Love the '80s, and I Love the '90s, and a 2006 appearance on Last Comic Standing. His debut comedy album, Am I Yelling?, was released in September 2020 by comedy label Stand Up! Records.
Patton Peter Oswalt is an American stand-up comedian and actor. His acting roles include Spence Olchin in the sitcom The King of Queens (1998–2007) and narrating the sitcom The Goldbergs (2013–2023) as adult Adam F. Goldberg. After making his acting debut in the Seinfeld episode "The Couch", he has appeared in a variety of television series, such as Parks and Recreation, Community, Two and a Half Men, Drunk History, Reno 911!, Mystery Science Theater 3000, Archer, Veep, Justified, Kim Possible, Modern Family, Brooklyn Nine-Nine and We Bare Bears. He portrayed Principal Ralph Durbin in A.P. Bio (2018–2021) and Matthew the Raven in the TV series The Sandman (2022–present).
Frank Conniff Jr. is an American writer, actor, comedian and producer, who is best known for his portrayal of TV's Frank on Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K). He is the son of journalist and editor Frank Conniff.
Robby Christopher Schrab is an American comic book creator, screenwriter, director, and producer. He is the creator of the comic book Scud: The Disposable Assassin, co-writer of the feature film Monster House, co-creator of the competitive film festival Channel 101, and the co-creator of Comedy Central's The Sarah Silverman Program. He has directed three seasons of The Sarah Silverman Program and episodes of Childrens Hospital, Blue Mountain State, Community, Parks and Recreation, The Mindy Project, Workaholics, Creepshow, and the second revival season of Mystery Science Theater 3000.
Mitchell is a 1975 American action film directed by Andrew V. McLaglen, written by Ian Kennedy Martin, and starring Joe Don Baker as an abrasive police detective. The film was released in the United States on September 10, 1975 by Allied Artists Pictures Corporation.
William DanielCorbett is an American writer and performer for television, film and theatre. He was a writer and performer on the cult television show Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K), for which he voiced Crow T. Robot during the show's later seasons on the Sci Fi Channel. During that time, he also played the character Observer, along with other minor roles.
Scott David Aukerman is an American writer, actor, comedian, television personality, director, producer, and podcast host. Starting as a writer and performer in the later seasons of the sketch series Mr. Show, Aukerman is best known as the host of the weekly comedy podcast Comedy Bang! Bang! as well as the IFC original television series of the same name. Aukerman is the co-creator of Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis and co-founder of the Earwolf podcast network.
Jerry Angelo Brooks, commonly known by his stage name J. B. Smoove, is an American actor, comedian and writer. After beginning his career in 1995 on Def Comedy Jam, he was a writer and performer on NBC's Saturday Night Live (2003–06). He is best known for his starring roles on HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm (2007–24) and the CBS sitcom The Millers (2013–15). He also portrayed a fictionalized version of himself on the BET improv-comedy reality television parody Real Husbands of Hollywood (2013–16).
Wyatt John Foster Cenac Jr. is an American comedian, actor, producer, and writer. He was a correspondent and writer for The Daily Show from 2008 to 2012. He starred in the TBS series People of Earth and in Barry Jenkins's first feature Medicine for Melancholy. He also hosted and produced the HBO series Wyatt Cenac's Problem Areas.
Maximum Fun is an independent, worker-owned cooperative podcast and radio show production organization founded by Jesse Thorn. The organization originated with Thorn's college radio show The Sound of Young America which continued in an adapted format and with a new name, Bullseye with Jesse Thorn. Maximum Fun has since grown to include several other programs. Shows on the network cover a wide variety of topics.
Jonah Ray Rodrigues is an American actor, comedian and writer from Los Angeles. He stars as Jonah Heston, one of the primary hosts of Mystery Science Theater 3000. He is a former host of The Nerdist Podcast and was the co-host of Comedy Central's The Meltdown with Jonah and Kumail.
Dan McCoy is an American comedian and was an Emmy-winning writer for the news satire program The Daily Show. He is the producer and co-host of the movie podcast The Flop House, which he co-hosts with comedian/bar owner Stuart Wellington and former Daily Show head writer Elliott Kalan. He is the creator and co-star of the animated webseries 9 AM Meeting, which won an MTV development deal at the 2010 New York Television Festival.
Revision3 was a San Francisco–based multi-channel television network that created, produced and distributed streaming television shows on niche topics. Founded in 2005, it operated as a subsidiary of Discovery Digital Networks since 2012. The network produced technology and gaming oriented programming in tandem with traditional comedic, political, DIY, and movie-related content. On March 31, 2017, Discovery Communications closed the website.
The Flop House is a comedy podcast about films that flop, either commercially or critically, produced every two weeks. It is made in Brooklyn, New York and hosted by Dan McCoy, Stuart Wellington, and Elliott Kalan. Each episode focuses on a specific bad movie, a film noted for being a critical or commercial failure.
Stuart Lenton Wellington is an American comedian and bar proprietor based in Brooklyn, New York. With Dan McCoy, he is a co-creator of the bad-movie podcast The Flop House, which he has co-hosted since 2007 with McCoy and Elliott Kalan, moving to the All Things Comedy podcast network in October 2012 and then the Maximum Fun network in September 2014. He has been featured in The A.V. Club's Podmass column for his work on the podcast.
Spider-Man and the X-Men is a six-issue superhero limited series of comic books written by Elliott Kalan, drawn by Marco Failla, and published by Marvel Comics between December 2014 and April 2015.
Cord Jefferson is an American writer and director. After studying at the College of William & Mary he started a career in journalism and wrote for numerous publications before becoming an editor at Gawker until 2014.
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