Andy Borowitz Popular Books

Andy Borowitz Biography & Facts

Andy Borowitz (born January 4, 1958) is an American writer, comedian, satirist, and actor. Borowitz is a New York Times-bestselling author who won the first National Press Club award for humor. He is known for creating the NBC sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and the satirical column The Borowitz Report. Early life Borowitz was born to a marginally observant Reform Jewish family in Shaker Heights, Ohio, and graduated from Shaker Heights High School. In 1980, Borowitz graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College, where he lived in Adams House and was president of the Harvard Lampoon. He also wrote for the Hasty Pudding Theatricals. Borowitz studied with playwright William Alfred and wrote his undergraduate thesis on Restoration comedy. Career Hollywood After graduating from Harvard, Borowitz moved to Los Angeles to work for producer Bud Yorkin at Tandem Productions, the company Yorkin co-founded with producer Norman Lear. From 1982 through 1983, he wrote for the television series Square Pegs, starring Sarah Jessica Parker. From 1983 through 1984, he wrote for the television series The Facts of Life. He wrote for various television series through the 1980s. During his marriage to writer and producer Susan Borowitz (1982–2005), the two co-created The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, which ran for six seasons on NBC and launched the acting career of Will Smith. The series won NAACP's Image Award for Outstanding Comedy Series in 1993. In 1998, Borowitz co-produced the film Pleasantville, starring Reese Witherspoon, Tobey Maguire, William H. Macy, Joan Allen, and Jeff Daniels. It was nominated for three Academy Awards, including Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Best Costume Design, and Best Music, Original Dramatic Score. In 2004 Borowitz appeared in Woody Allen's Melinda and Melinda, starring Will Ferrell, and in Marie and Bruce, starring Julianne Moore and Matthew Broderick. Marie and Bruce was co-written by Wallace Shawn and director Tom Cairns. In 2007 he appeared in the film Fired! Political satire In the late 1990s, Borowitz began e-mailing humorous news parodies to friends. In 2001, he founded The Borowitz Report, a site that posts one 250-word news satire every weekday. The site led to greater fame and widespread attention for Borowitz as a political satirist. The Wall Street Journal devoted a page-one story to him and his site in 2003 and readership ultimately grew to the millions. In 2005, the newspaper syndicator Creators Syndicate began syndicating The Borowitz Report to dozens of major newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times, The Seattle Times, and The Philadelphia Inquirer. It is also one of the longest-running features at the Newsweek website. He has served as a commentator on the National Public Radio programs Weekend Edition Sunday and Wait Wait… Don't Tell Me!, the latter on November 12, 2006. Borowitz is also a regular contributor to humor newspaper Funny Times. In 2007, he started blogging for the Huffington Post. His posts were featured on the home page of the blog and quickly became one of its most popular features. His popularity surged during the 2008 campaign, leading The Daily Beast to call him "America's satire king". In 2009, The Borowitz Report began a Twitter feed, which was voted the number-one Twitter account in the world in a Time magazine poll in 2011. Eventually, he abandoned the feed. On July 18, 2012, Borowitz announced that The New Yorker had acquired the Borowitz Report website, the first time that the magazine had ever made such an acquisition. In its first 24 hours as a New Yorker feature, The Borowitz Report garnered the most page views on the entire New Yorker website. Television performer In 2002, Borowitz joined the staff of CNN's American Morning and soon appeared on the program three mornings a week. In 2004, he covered the Democratic National Convention for the channel, paired with comedian Lewis Black of The Daily Show. He has made numerous appearances on other television programs including Countdown with Keith Olbermann, Best Week Ever on VH1 and Live at Gotham on Comedy Central. In 2010, Borowitz appeared on the PBS show Need to Know. Tom Shales, television critic for The Washington Post, singled out Borowitz for praise, calling him "one of the wittiest Web wags". Stand-up comedy Borowitz's success as a television performer led to his becoming a strong draw as a stand-up comedian, and he started headlining at major comedy clubs across the country, including Carolines on Broadway, where he hosts a monthly show called Next Week's News. Other major comedians who have appeared with him in that show include Amy Sedaris and Susie Essman. For four consecutive years starting in 2004, he performed at The Comedy Festival in Aspen, Colorado. In September 2007, he headlined an edition of Next Week's News at the Bumbershoot festival in Seattle, Washington, performing to standing-room-only audiences and critical acclaim in the press, including the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. He also performed to a sold-out house at the 2007 New York Comedy Festival, which featured other prominent comedians including Denis Leary, Bill Maher, and Sarah Silverman. In 2008, he hosted a series of sold-out shows at New York City's 92nd Street Y called "Countdown to the Election". The show earned rave reviews and featured such guests as Arianna Huffington, Mo Rocca, Jonathan Alter, Joy Behar, and Jeffrey Toobin. He continued to tour the country performing stand-up, including a performance at the University of California, Santa Barbara in April 2008. The university newspaper, Daily Nexus, reported that Borowitz played to a packed house and had the audience "erupting with laughter". Comedian Mike Birbiglia praised Borowitz in a May 2009 profile in Harvard Magazine: "Andy just picked up stand-up comedy as a hobby, and he's as good at it as anybody." On November 28, 2010, CBS News Sunday Morning aired a retrospective of his career as a comedian and writer, calling him "one of the funniest people in America". On June 28, 2011, he performed at New York City's Central Park Summerstage and drew a crowd estimated at 5,000, setting a new record for turnout at a Summerstage spoken-word event. The New Yorker In 1998, Borowitz began contributing humor to The New Yorker magazine. He quickly became one of the magazine's most prolific humor contributors, writing dozens of essays including "Emily Dickinson, Jerk of Amherst", selected as one of the funniest humor pieces in the magazine's history and included in The New Yorker's humor collection Fierce Pajamas. Two more humor pieces of his appeared in the magazine's 2008 collection Disquiet, Please! He has also performed at The New Yorker Festival's humor revues at The Town Hall in New York City with such other New Yorker contributors as Woody Allen, Steve Martin, and Calvin Trillin. Additionally, he has joined The New Yorker College Tour, where he has performed with improv group The Second City and David Sedaris. In ad.... Discover the Andy Borowitz popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Andy Borowitz books.