With the Oscars so close, the Buffer editors love nothing more than to debate the outcomes of each category. Here are our predictions for the winners of some of the top categories for this year’s Academy Awards.
All posts by Will Pinke
Autobiographical Comedy: The Good Kind of Reality TV
Lena Dunham, Tina Fey, Larry David, Jerry Seinfeld, Louis C.K., Mindy Kaling: Notice any similarities? We do too. As creators and stars of television shows modeled after their own lives, today’s comedy heavyweights suggest there might be some truth to the old maxim: write what you know. Of course, television comedies that straddle the gap between fiction and autobiography have been around for a while (our favorites: The Dick Van Dyke Show, I Love Lucy, The Cosby Show). But in the past few decades and in recent years especially, an unusually high number of America’s best-loved and most syndicated shows have drawn heavily on the real life experiences of their creators. Below, we take a look at some different ways the writers of these shows have managed to turn personal foibles into comedic fodder.
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Ender’s Game: Reread, View, Review
I read Orson Scott Card’s science fiction masterpiece Ender’s Game for the first time when I was ten. When the main character Ender Wiggin was ten, he led the most successful army in the history of his “battle school” and then graduated early to become the commander of humanity’s forces in a war against an alien race. By the time Ender was twelve, he’d singlehandedly won the war and become a global icon considered the savior of the human race. As I write this, I’m twenty-two and I’ve never even had a paying job.
This is the End, of the Good Comedy Film
This summer my mother saw the Seth Rogen/Evan Goldberg directed apocalypse stoner comedy This is the End, upon my recommendation. The following is a close paraphrase of her reaction: “One of the worst, if not the worst movie I have ever seen. Just a bunch of random shit thrown together by funny guys with big egos playing on the fact that people know they’re funny.” I hadn’t heard a reaction that negative to a movie I recommended since I forced my Dad to take me to the Pokémon movie when I was seven. (He wouldn’t let me pick a movie again for years.)