The Point Radio: Why Chelsea Peretti Owns The Internet

Comedian Chelsea Peretti has led the pack in using social media and her reach in the online community to guide her successful stand up and TV career. Her popular podcast, Twitter feed (TIME MAGAZINE called it one of the Best of 2013) and her new association with Netflix mark her as having both feet firmly planted on the edge. We talk about how she got there plus life on BROOKLYN 99. On the flip side of being funny is Fox’s BOBS BURGERS. After winning an Emmy, H. Jon Benjamin and the cast talk about their dedication to getting weekly laughs.

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Transcript

! Now Chelsea had a childhood friendship with her Brooklyn Nine-Nine co-star Andy Sandberg. And that's something that got written into the show. Yeah, we went to elementary school together and so they definitely have incorporated that into the show, which I love.

It's like we have this childhood friend feeling organically and then they put it into the script, so it's nice. Chelsea's new stand-up special, one of the greats, debuted this month on Netflix. And I ask her exactly what she covers on stage. I talk a lot about social anxieties and fantasies of, you know, I hate small talk, I'm talking about that. I'm talking about dogs, I just got a dog, so I talk about how people are weird other dog owners and fedoras, people wearing fedoras.

There's all of it, you know, it spans all of our, you know, runs the gamut. But one thing I'm excited about is, you know, normal stand-up specials or the audience reaction shots are just like someone looking kind of confused or something, which drives me crazy. Like, I'm like, why did you use that reaction shot? So I wrote all these different little Easter eggs of like, you know, I have dogs in my audience and I have different things that I've planned out so that even the reaction shots hopefully will be entertaining for people. So why choose Netflix to premiere her special?

I really wanted to work with Netflix, and so I was so happy that they were interested in making this special with me. You know, look, I have a podcast. I'm on Twitter. I'm on Instagram. And, you know, I have this interface with my fans and people who like my comedy. So for me, it was just so crucial and exciting to be able to think about, oh, I can tweet about the show and then someone can immediately watch it, you know, and you don't have that luxury with a normal network. So for me, I was that was the absolute ideal for a stand-up special.

Chelsea has been a real innovator in social media with a huge following on Twitter and a pretty popular podcast as well. I asked her how she chose to make that path. You know, I didn't choose social media. Social media chose me. My feeling is like, you know, I came up in a time in which everyone was just using these things, you know, and even more so with the next generation of comedians. But, you know, I remember when every comedian was like, I have a website, and everyone was excited that they have a website.

And now it's like, you know, that's just the standard and par for the course. But technology is just evolving so rapidly that, you know, you kind of have all these different opportunities to grow. And, you know, it's a luxury because you get to talk directly to people and tell them what you want them to know. So I just have always, you know, embraced it because I felt like I have a specific voice, and I never trusted that someone would just tap my shoulder. I always wanted to kind of make my own way.

After making your mark as a writer, I was curious, is it easier to be funny and write something in your voice or to write something for someone else? I guess, you know, I really, really enjoyed, you know, writing for Parks and Recreation, writing for Sarah Silverman, writing for Nick Kroll. Like, I love writing to other people's voices and kind of thinking how they talk and what would they say. And I also like writing for myself. I mean, I really like both.

And I know that there's some comedians only like writing for their own voice. I like everything. So I'm open. I'm open if you have a job you're thinking of hiring me for. Chelsea Peretti's new stand up special on Netflix right now.

It's called One of the Greats. And catch her in Brooklyn Nine-Nine every Sunday on Fox or with the app Fox Now. The flight radio. A lot of stuff going on in the world of pop culture. Casting rumors are pretty much centering on the DC films that are scheduled over the next few years.

In particular, Suicide Squad, Margot Robbie from Wolf of Wall Street looks like she may be in talks to play Harley Quinn in the Suicide Squad film. She'd also been reportedly talking to someone about being in the Ghost of the Shell feature as well a few weeks back. And Jared Leto is the name is being associated with the Joker role in that movie. If it all works out, this would be Jared's first geek centric role. However, he was one of the names associated with casting in the lead for the Doctor Strange film for Marvel a few weeks back as well.

A strong October and comic bookstores have given graphic novels and comics a big boost when you compare the sales so far this year to the ones in 2013 as well. Stores reportedly had sales that were great in October and again, DC manages to fall back to the second place position as where they usually are as far as the market share goes. Who's at the top spot? But we'll check that. Plus give you a rundown of what did sell in comic bookstores during October.

I'll come it up in a few minutes. The comedy expelled starring various Internet creators, including Vine creator Cameron Dallas, makes a theatrical debut in December. It will hit theaters on the 12th of the month. It also features people like Andrea Russell, Liam, a read Johnson and Marcus Johns to as well. All popular names from online.

The film will then move to cable and video on demand at the end of December. Over the weekend, Warcraft fans got a look at the Warcraft movie all at Blizzcon where there was some footage shown, but also some things set up so that even if you didn't make it to the convention, you can certainly take part in this and get updates as well. There are two places to sign up online. One is FightForTheAlliance.com or FightForTheHoard.com. Do that.

You can also celebrate your allegiance and get regular updates on the movie, including some links to footage as it's revealed on the web and be the first to see that as well. Another comedy casualty for the TV season. This time it's Selfie, the one starring Karen Gillian and John show that was a modern riff on My Fair Lady. Again, it all came down to the numbers. ABC has decided not to order any more episodes, so those remaining will play out and that'll be that for the series.

And the meanwhile forever got a boost. Nine more episodes were ordered by the network, giving it a full season on ABC. Numbers for this show have not been incredible, but they do hope they can eventually gear it toward the castle audience. It's all on the inflation and the title says it all. The six billion dollar man is the revival of, yes, the six million dollar man.

Mark Wahlberg has been cast to star in the updated film from the 70s TV show. Peter Berg will direct the film. A good October behind the counter in comic bookstores managed to give comic sales a big boost when you compare to where they are right now to where they looked this time last year in 2013. Three point six four percent on the plus side. That's where sales are as we head into the last two months of the year.

Again, when compared to 2013 during the same period, Marvel slid back into the number one spot for market share. DC back into number two where they've been pretty much for the whole year and in years past as well. Interestingly enough, though, image at the most growth almost hitting the 10 percent mark just under that at nine point seven seven percent. And that's not all the good news for images. You'll find out as we look at the top 10 best selling comics for the month in comic stores at number 10 Avengers and X-Men.

Access number two at number nine. These is Harley Quinn annual number one at number eight. Amazing Spider-Man number eight at number seven. Amazing Spider-Man number seven. Only other DC titled the top ten falls at number six and that's that bad number thirty five Avengers and X-Men access.

Number one is at number five. Death of Wolverine number three hits at number four. The revamped and re-genderized Thor comes in at number three. First issue of that new run. At number two, the death of Wolverine number four and the top selling comic for the month in comic stores in October.

Walking Dead number one thirty two from image. The point, the point. Fox's Emmy Award winning Bob's Burgers is an interesting show to look at. It's sandwiched in between, of course, animated jargon as the Simpsons and Family Guy. Yet it's pretty much held its own with over 70 episodes so far and no end in sight.

According to voice actor John Benjamin, a lot of the success is the fact that, well, the humor comes in most cases from the kids on the show, which makes a lot of sense to him. No, I mean, I think that kids are funnier and they're dumber, I guess, or in their riskier and they're more sometimes a lot more honest and vulnerable in real life. So and the actors who play all the kids are like extremely funny people. So, yeah, like in any show, I guess in animation, I guess you have the luxury of being able to have adults play kids. So that really helps them as characters.

You don't have to hire a kid actor who that's probably harder to do. Yeah. So in that case, the kids can be much more like you'll fully realize funny characters. John's even written an episode for later this year. I did. I wrote one.

Yeah, John's. It's not coming up. What's the title of that? Oh, it was called Spray Anything. It's a Tina story.

Yeah, Tina's. Tina's. Tina's great. Yeah, no, it's just she falls in love with the graffiti artist. With his other cable network show on his resume, John feels that he pretty much has both sides of the basic animated characters covered. Yeah, it's nice because I get to do Archer, which is a pretty insane character. And that seems to be like the alter ego.

So it's fun to play. I'm glad I have two shows to do that. But I love playing Bob. I have a kid, so I tap it. So it's a lot easier to tap into that.

And Bob's a better dad than I am. So it's easier to do it in animation than in real life. I haven't failed totally yet. I don't know. We'll see. Unlike some other animated shows, the cast of Bob's Burgers all gets together in the studio at the same time, at least on each coast.

Christian Charles says that makes it a lot of fun. So after recording the show, we're all in the room together. And so each scene we take and we go through and improv is completely welcome and they want it. So I would say probably 95% of the show is improv. I would say 90, 95 scripted and then there's like some 5% of stuff that make it in.

So after 70 episodes, is it tough to keep up the pace? I asked executive producer Lauren Bouchard. It's not that hard. I will say, you know, it's a really fun job. It's a really, really good job. So it's hard to think of a challenge.

I mean, it gets a little bit harder, I suppose, to tell stories, you know, because you don't want to repeat yourself. And so that looms a little bit. You've got to start looking in your rearview mirror a little bit and be like, oh, we kind of did that already. But that's a good problem to have. Nobody ever complains about it and never will.

I'm sure the people who work on The Simpsons have that times 500 or whatever. And I bet you they don't complain about it either. I bet you, you know, when you're lucky enough to have that job, you don't say, oh, darn it. Why are there so many episodes of our show? But it gets a little challenging because you want to keep telling great stories.

And we've done, you know, we've explored some really fun aspects of these characters. And so it's sort of like, all right, figure out a way to do it fresh. Get ready for some big holiday plans on the way to. We're excited about all of them. We have three holiday episodes coming up, I believe, in a row.

Or if not, there might be one other. That's what we're going to air this this fall is we're running the table. So Halloween next, Tina and the real ghost, it's called. She falls for she believes Tina believes that she is having a relationship with a 13 year old boy ghost named Jeff, who's in a shoe box. Donna, the pack is our Thanksgiving episode, which is going to be scarier than our Halloween episode.

That is straight up kind of a bird slash zombie sort of story where these very dangerous poultry kind of take over the town. And then Father of the Bob is our Christmas episode where we meet Bob's dad and Linda tries to sort of facilitate a little reconciliation between Bob and his dad. New episodes of Bob's Burgers every Sunday on Fox and you can always see more with the app Fox now. That's it for right now. But the great thing about pop culture is who knows what will happen between this moment and the time we get back together again in just a few days on websites like comicbigs.com.

Michael Davis World dot com. Get the point radio dot com and in the iTunes podcast. We'll keep you up the best we can in the meantime with our Facebook, Twitter and Instagram feeds. Follow us under the point radio. We'll see you right back here then in just a few days. You.