Lewis Black Popular Books

Lewis Black Biography & Facts

Lewis Niles Black (born August 30, 1948) is an American stand-up comedian and actor. His comedy routines often escalate into angry rants about history, politics, religion, and cultural trends. He hosted the Comedy Central series Lewis Black's Root of All Evil and makes regular appearances on The Daily Show delivering his "Back in Black" commentary segment, which he has been doing since The Daily Show was hosted by Craig Kilborn. He was voted 51st of the 100 greatest stand-up comedians of all time by Comedy Central in 2004; and was voted 5th in Comedy Central's Stand Up Showdown in 2008 and 11th in 2010. In 2015, he appeared as the voice of Anger in the Pixar film Inside Out, a role he will reprise in the 2024 sequel, Inside Out 2. Lewis Black is also a spokesman for the Aruba Tourism Authority, appearing in television ads that first aired in late 2009 and 2010. He has served as an "ambassador for voting rights" for the American Civil Liberties Union since 2013.When not on the road performing, Black resides in Manhattan, but also maintains a residence in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Early life Lewis Black was born on August 30, 1948, in Washington, D.C., the elder son of Jeannette Black (née Kaplan; 1918-2022), a teacher, and Samuel Black (1918–2019), an artist and mechanical engineer. He had a younger brother, Ronald, who died of cancer in 1997 at the age of 47.He is Jewish and was raised in a middle-class Jewish family in the Burnt Mills neighborhood of Silver Spring, Maryland. His grandparents emigrated from the Russian Empire, including Chornyi Ostriv in Ukraine and Białystok in Poland and his paternal grandfather was originally named Leib Blech, later changed to Louis Black. Black graduated from Springbrook High School in 1966.Black recounts in his book Nothing's Sacred that he scored highly on the math section of his SAT exam and later applied to Yale, Princeton, Brown, Amherst, Williams, and Georgetown. Every college he applied to except Georgetown rejected him, but by that point he had decided he did not want to go there, so he attended the University of Maryland, College Park for one year before transferring to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. There, he studied playwriting and was a brother of Pi Lambda Phi International fraternity and a member of Student Congress. After graduating in 1970, Black moved to Colorado Springs with a group of performers based in Chapel Hill, purchased an old log cabin theater and attempted to establish a theatre company. Calling themselves the Homestead Arts Theatre, the group performed regionally at parks, schools, and prisons, but were unable to open the theatre due to code violations. He eventually returned to Washington where he worked at the Appalachian Regional Commission, wrote plays, and performed stand-up comedy at the Brickskeller in Dupont Circle.He earned an MFA degree at the Yale School of Drama in 1977, and was married for ten months when he was 26 years old.Black's career began in theater as a playwright; however, he has stated that he was always doing stand-up "on the side." He served as the playwright-in-residence and associate artistic director of Steve Olsen's West Bank Cafe Downstairs Theatre Bar in Hell's Kitchen in New York City, where he collaborated with composer and lyricist Rusty Magee and artistic director Rand Foerster on hundreds of one-act plays from 1981 to 1989. Also with Rusty Magee, Black wrote the musical The Czar of Rock and Roll, which premiered at Houston's Alley Theatre in 1990. Black's stand-up comedy began as an opening act for the plays; he was also the master of ceremonies. After a management change at the theater, Black left and began working as a comedian, as well as finding bit parts in television and films. Comedic style Black lists his comedic influences as George Carlin, Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, Lily Tomlin, Bob Newhart and Shelley Berman. Career Stand-up comedy In 1994, Black appeared on A&E's An Evening at the Improv.In 1998, Black starred in his first comedy special on the series Comedy Central Presents. He starred in two additional episodes of the series in 2000 and 2002. He starred in another special for the network in 2002, titled Taxed Beyond Belief. In 2004 and 2005, Black hosted the World Stupidity Awards ceremony at Montreal's Just for Laughs comedy festival. In 2004, he had an HBO stand-up special titled Black on Broadway. Black hosted Comedy Central's Last Laugh '07, which aired on December 2, 2007, along with Dave Attell and D.L. Hughley. In 2006, Black performed at the Warner Theatre in Washington, D.C. for an HBO special, Red, White, and Screwed. It aired in June and a DVD was released in October. When explaining his choice of venue, Black said that "some asshole" was paid to count the number of times the word "fuck" was said in his previous HBO special, Black On Broadway, and that the original location, the Kennedy Center, wanted him to cut back on its use. Black was told the number was 42, when actually it was approximately 78.Black received a 2007 Grammy Award for "Best Comedy Album" for his album The Carnegie Hall Performance. He hosted the Comedy Central television series The Root of All Evil in 2008. The show pitted two people or pop-culture topics against each other as a panel of comedians argued, in the style of a court trial, which is more evil, e.g., "Paris Hilton vs. Dick Cheney" and "Internet Porn vs. YouTube". After hearing arguments from both sides, Black, acting as judge, made the final decision as to which is more evil. In 2008, Black hosted History of the Joke with Lewis Black, a 2-hour comedy-documentary on The History Channel. Comedy Central's "Stand-Up Month" in 2008 featured specials originally presented on HBO by Black, along with programs featuring Dane Cook and Chris Rock. That year, as part of Comedy Central's "Stand-Up Month", Black's routine finished at #5 on "Stand-Up Showdown 2008", a viewer-based countdown of the top Comedy Central Presents routine. In 2009, Black filmed two shows at the Fillmore Theater in Detroit, Michigan. These were the basis for the concert film Stark Raving Black, which appeared in theaters for a limited time in October, and was released on video the next year. At the end of 2009, Black returned to the History Channel to host Surviving the Holidays with Lewis Black, in which he discussed the year-end pressures of Thanksgiving, Channukah, Christmas, and New Year's. In 2011, Black filmed two shows at the State Theatre in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The shows were used for Black's comedy special In God We Rust. The special premiered on Epix HD. An extended and uncensored version of the special was released on DVD and Blu-ray on September 11, 2011.In August 2013, Black recorded his ninth stand-up special Old Yeller: Live at the Borgata. Deadline reported that Black and the company that was releasing the stand-up special, Image Entertainment, would later air it in the form of pay-per-view and V.... Discover the Lewis Black popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Lewis Black books.