Why men should pay for dates

From my album HOT FLASHES. Check it here.

Video: The truth about catcalling, race, and that creepy dude in your office

Hey, Beautiful! Springtime is here which means it's street harassment season. I explore the different ways dudes harass ladies in this brand new animated clip from my new album HOT FLASHES (download/stream here).

Please share if you dig it! Also, it's great for sending to that creepy dude in your office.

Animation by Joe Karg and he did a swell job – love the Alien bit at the end especially.

Also: Can I get a smile?

Vooza turns 150

Holy moly, we've made 150 (!) episodes of our Vooza show. Crazy. Here's the 150th which is about the latest pukey buzzword in the tech world: Storytelling. Good time to say I'm so proud of the awesome/hilarious team that makes it all happen. It's so cool to be able to give comics I love a platform to show what they can do (especially when they take some pretty iffy scripts and spin 'em into gold). And Jesse Scaturro is a hero who does an amazing job directing and editing it all. Can't believe this lil' experiment has turned into a legit show with millions of views and led to companies like Turkish Airlines and Mailchimp hiring us to make cool shit for them and it's kinda been like film school for me so thanks to everyone involved. More fun stuff on the way too. Onward!

How do we pay the bills at Vooza?

Lonnie Dama (Business Shaman) presents: Mo' Focus, Mo' Money

I gave a talk at the The East Meets West Medicine Fest in character as Lonnie Dama (Business Shaman) and explained to a roomful of yogis, healers, doctors, and other assorted hippies how they could use ancient wisdom to make modern profits, my Reiki work with Vladimir Putin, and the importance of starting each day with a Long Island Ayahuasca (a mixture of LSD, psilocybin, peyote, ketamine, DMT, molly, and bath salts). Enjoy!

How rappers are like entrepreneurs

Watch out, Kanye and Zuckerberg. Jordan Temple and I get all hip hop in the newest Vooza video.

 

Negotiating with The Marx Brothers

Jim Carrey takes over the room

Phew.

Inspiration for comedy pilot scripts and some of the best ones written previously

Some good info on comedy pilot scripts and some of the best that've been done. (Interesting note: Paul Simms wrote the pilot for both News Radio and The Larry Sanders Show. Pretty impressive.)

8 Most Wanted Comedy Pilot Scripts Get the Brooklyn Nine-Nine pilot script, The Mindy Project pilot script, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt pilot script and 5 more as PDFs you can download. GOODINAROOM.COM The Best Comedy Pilots of All Time (Check out the drama list here.) Most sitcoms grow into themselves over a few episodes. PAJIBA.COM The Ten Best Comedy Pilots in TV History More so than drama or sci-fi pilots, which get a full hour (minus commercials) to establish a premise and introduce all their characters, sitcom pilots… SPLITSIDER.COM

Top 10 Vooza videos of 2015

Here are the top 10 Vooza videos of 2015, ranked by number of views at Vooza.



More at Vooza.com.

This is the theme to Garry Shandling's Show

Lyrics:

This is the theme to Garry's Show,
The theme to Garry's show.
Garry called me up and asked if I would write his theme song.
I'm almost halfway finished,
How do you like it so far,
How do you like the theme to Garry's Show.

This is the theme to Garry's Show,
The opening theme to Garry's show.
This is the music that you hear as you watch the credits.
We're almost to the part of where I start to whistle.
Then we'll watch "It's Garry Shandling's Show".

(whistles)

This was the theme to Garry Shandling's show.

Presentation: "Laugh it up: how to use humor & native advertising to get noticed"

Me ➜ at a marketing conference in Nashville ➜ "Laugh it up: how to use humor & native advertising to get noticed". Description:

MATT RUBY:
Laugh it up: how to use humor and native advertising to get noticed

FILMED THURSDAY, APRIL 30TH 2015
CAUTION: Drinking beverages of any kind while watching Matt Ruby’s session may result in liquid spewing all over your screen due to uncontrolled laughter. In one of the most popular sessions at Marketing United, Matt shares tips for adding humor to your marketing to grab attention and personalize your brand. He also plays clips from Vooza, his video comic strip that spoofs tech startups. They’re awesome, smart and hilarious – you’ve been warned.

Geared toward marketing folks who want to learn how to make stuff that doesn't suck.

Giving terrible advice as the founder of Vooza

Couple of recent Vooza videos starring ME. First one filmed live in front of 2k people in Amsterdam...

Next Generation Marketing
Millenials? Been there. Generation Z? Done that. In this conference talk, Vooza’s CEO explains how to reach the next generation with your marketing.



Founder Tips: Innorupt
Vooza’s founder gives a crazy email tip, explains how to write a mission statement, and shows how to combine innovation and disruption. #innorupt

Live set from The Knitting Factory

Profile of me in Splitsider: "Comedy as a Startup"

Comedy as a Startup is a Splitsider profile on yours truly and the shows I produce. Well researched piece! Excerpt:

So it was with great joy and a few droplets of pain that I devoured the web series Vooza in more or less the afternoon I discovered it. Here is the startup world in all its sleek hubris and ridiculous jargon, its mosaic of turtlenecks and button-downs, its insistent self-congratulatory self-congratulation...

Like Vooza, Club Scale is directed by (Jesse) Scaturro with a sleekness befitting of the world it skewers. (Joe) List and (Dan) Soder bring a disorienting honesty that speaks to Ruby’s love for Christopher Guest; they’re almost adorable, in fact, once you overlook their characters’ unabashed dickery. This is sort of true of the series as a whole, though: behind the flashing lights and dancing bodies is the distinct feel of just some buddies hanging out.

The piece also says I am birthing "a bizarre new model for indie comedy." Well, that explains these cramps.

Does comedy have to come from a place of pain? Jerry Seinfeld and Garry Shandling discuss...

Garry: I think that getting into show business comes from some core dysfunction where you say, "I want to be seen."

Jerry: Or god forbid maybe you have some talent. God forbid maybe it's not all yawning chasms of human insecurity. Is it possible someone out there has some talent? And maybe they want to express that for the betterment of mankind!?

Garry: I think I hear rage.

Shandling's response (at :35) is just so goddamn perfect. Comedy, life, and the whole shebang. Shandling's WTF is amazing too btw.

In Sick in the Head: Conversations About Life and Comedy, Judd Apatow discusses this exchange (via MK) like this:

Judd: In personality, it’s different. There are some guys who are kind of smart and witty and funny, and there are some guys who are just a little bit off, and there’s some guys who clearly got a beat-down at some point during their young life and that made them feel the need to get attention.

Charlie: And so which one is he?

Adam: So many of those.

Charlie: All of the above.

Judd: There is a moment on Garry Shandling’s DVD commentary for The Larry Sanders Show where he talks about this with Jerry Seinfeld and Jerry Seinfeld says to Garry, “Why can’t you be a comedian just because you’re talented and you’re smart and that’s why you’re a comedian?”

Charlie: That’s what I would ask, yes.

Judd: And Garry just goes, “Why so angry, Jerry?” I think that captures it.

Ya can also check out "The 12 Best Stories, From Stephen Colbert to Amy Schumer, in Judd Apatow’s Book Sick in the Head" [Vulture].

And here's the Phil Hartman acting coach sketch that Seinfeld raves about later in that video.

Watch me on MTV's Girl Code

I was just on MTV's Girl Code giving menstruation tips. J/K, I was talking about diiiiiiicks. 🍆 Also, I wear an ugly suit and make fun of a guy with abs so, y'know, BIG STRETCH.

Get More:
Girl Code, Full Episodes

New from the guy who brought you Vooza (aka me): Club Scale

Club Scale is the hottest nightclub in the world and you need to meet the doormen who look a lot like Dan Soder and Joe List and there's more to come so sign up for the email list to get updates and that's it. (Directed by Jesse Scaturro and written/produced by me.)

Film school in a day

Three of the best avenues online that I've found to learn about filmmaking:

1) In the AV Club's Scenic Routes, Mike D’Angelo looks at key scenes, explaining how they work and what they mean.

2) Every Frame a Painting is dedicated to the analysis of film form. "My name is Tony Zhou. I am a filmmaker and freelance editor based in San Francisco. I make video essays that run from 3 to 9 minutes. Each one focuses on one filmmaker or one aspect of film form. So far I've tackled topics as diverse as Akira Kurosawa's use of movement, Satoshi Kon's unique editing style, and how movies depict texting and the internet."

3) The Story of Film: An Odyssey on Netflix. Award-winning film-maker Mark Cousins' documentary about the history of film, presented in 15 one-hour chapters.

Some cool excerpts from an AMA with Tony Zhou of Every Frame a Painting:

Funny story about China and filmmaking:
In 2007, I was traveling in Tibet and walked into a small teahouse in the middle of nowhere. The proprietor didn't speak Mandarin and neither did any of the patrons, so I ordered by gesturing.
Jaws was on TV, horribly subtitled in big white Chinese characters and dubbed in Mandarin. Everyone was watching. So I stuck around and watched, too.
Here's the crazy thing: the TV sucked, the image was obscured, the patrons couldn't understand the dialogue. And yet they were still scared of the shark. Tibet is a high-altitude desert, nowhere near the ocean. But man, there was one lady freaking out that the shark was going to eat Brody's kid.
I didn't think much of it at the time, but honestly, that viewing of Jaws is one of the most memorable experiences of my life. To this day, I refer to the "Tibet Test" when I think about filmmaking. Is this movie still comprehensible after bad dubbing, shitty subtitles, a crappy TV, and an audience who doesn't understand the context?
Jaws is a masterpiece of visual storytelling, and I can prove it because I saw some Tibetans scared of the shark.

...

I think this is a huge problem in filmmaking today too: the myth of the perfect first feature.
I am going to (at some point) make a video essay called "Everybody Used to Suck" comprised entirely of footage from everyone's earliest directorial work.
Scorsese's first feature was actually called Bring On the Dancing Girls and it bombed so bad at NYFF that he didn't do anything for a few years, before repurposing it into Who's That Knocking. Tarantino never finished his first feature, My Best Friend's Birthday. Kubrick hated Fear and Desire so much he destroyed every copy. The list goes on and on, but the myth of the "first feature" is exactly that: a myth. Everybody used to suck, it's just that everybody also hides their earliest work from the public.

...

Honestly, the #1 thing I look for when I'm watching a movie is the feeling that there's a human being on the other side talking to me.
Like, it can be the crappiest, most poorly made film in the world, but if it feels like a human being desperately trying to tell me something, I stick around and watch.

...

Editing ah my scourge.
1) Try editing standing up. I cut like this. Walter Murch cuts like this. We're gonna start a club. You may not end up doing it, but you'd be surprised how different your body feels. Just remember that you need to take care of your body because editing is very stationary. Even if you end up sitting, take breaks.
2) Always sleep 8 hours. Nobody edits well on lack of sleep, and it is a stupid belief in this industry that editors want to lose rest. No, we don't.
3) Trust your emotional instincts. If you watch a piece of footage and it gives you an emotional reaction (whether a laugh, a feeling of disgust, happiness), save that clip and mark it down.
4) Get to the rough edit as quickly as possible. The assembly is always brutal. Get to rough so that you have something passable to show people.
5) Show it to people. Do not trust what they tell you to change. People are extremely good at feeling when something is wrong, but not always at articulating it. Your best guide is to watch their reaction during the film. Wherever you see attention flag, or a laugh, mark it down. If they write up their notes afterwards, you can read em, but never trust those notes more than their actual reactions while watching.
6) Editing is largely mental and mostly about patience. Basically, there's you and there's the footage, and you're going to wrestle. You will eventually come out on top, but the footage will not make it easy for you. Subdue it. Kill it. Drink its blood. Mentally, of course.
7) Every once in a while, test yourself by doing a speed edit. Basically, knock out something in 8 hours. You will fly on instinct and get to the end and realize that hey, your instincts aren't half bad. Now go back and overthink everything.

I dig the Tibet Test.

How to be that guy with the Apple Watch who everyone hates

More at Vooza.com.