So you might have heard him, too. Plus, he’s a best-selling author, with two books to his name and two more coming out soon, so you may have read his name somewhere.
Plus he writes a weekly column in the top comedy website The Interrobang called “Jumping Around With Jeffrey Gurian,” widely read on both coasts, in which he covers whatever’s going on in the New York comedy scene. His reputation, backed up by known names like Paul Provenza and Nick Kroll, is that you can effectively judge whether you are truly a comedian by whether or not you know Jeffrey. It’s said that he knows everyone in comedy and they know him.
His Comedy Matters TV You Tube channel attests to that, with over 400 video interviews he’s done with A-listers in comedy like Jimmy Fallon, Chelsea Handler, Jon Stewart, John Oliver, Seth Meyers, Trevor Noah, Mike Epps, D.L. Hughley, Amy Schumer, Amy Poehler and even women not named Amy!
Comedy writers, like book editors and music arrangers, are unsung heroes and heroines of the entertainment world – they get their accolades second-hand. When the novelist wins the Pulitzer, when the comic gets a sustained laugh, theirs is a quiet pride.
One of Jeffrey’s proudest moments as a comedy writer was being given his own column in the legendary Weekly World News, (the pre-cursor to The Onion), called “ Gurian’s World of the Bizarre,” in which appeared stories like “Man Crawls Across the Ukraine” and “ Rare Virus Sweeps Japan; Victims Too Weak to Bow.” He says with pride, “They said my stories were so strange, I needed to have my own column.”
In addition to being a part of comedy history since the late 70’s, Jeffrey is an historian of comedy. His book, “Make ‘Em Laugh,” with an intro by Chris Rock, is a history of the Comic Strip, a legendary comedy club in New York, that has been open since June 1, 1976. “It’s where Eddie Murphy was discovered,” Jeffrey says, “and where he, in turn, discovered Chris Rock; and where Jerry Seinfeld spent the first four years of his career. It’s where Ray Romano came out of, as well as Jim Gaffigan, Lisa Lampanelli, and Larry Miller. .So I interviewed everybody over a period of four years,” he goes on.
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