Brandon Gardner is in the trenches as he a journeys through fatherhood, conflicting script notes, and the search for representation. In the first of our One Year Projects (inspired by Gardner himself), Part 1 was recorded in the fall of 2018 and covers Brandon's quick ascension through the ranks of UCB NY, the anticipation of becoming a father, and the struggles with trying to get representation over the years. Part 2 (1:29:40) recorded one year later, follows up on his movie script, state of representation, and what it is like trying to juggle the daily responsibilities of fatherhood with an uncertain career.

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Lauren Ashley Smith (Black Lady Sketch Show, The Rundown) failed to get into a top MFA acting program two years in a row. But she never would have started writing if she did. We talk about how her day job as a producer helped prepare her to be a head writer, why it is a pleasure and privilege to fail, and the last minute packet change she made that got her hired at The Rundown (without having an agent or manager).

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Jack Dolgen (Emmy winning writer/songwriter for Crazy Ex-Girlfriend) was striving for something that was externally motivated instead of internally driven. So when there wasn't immediate interest from record executives in his first solo album, he quit music altogether. He chats about how his need to be great crippled him into multiple failures, the serendipitous moment that got him back into music, and the creative environment, philosophies, and songwriting process for Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.

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Nate Fernald (The Late Late Show, The Pete Holmes Show) developed a name for himself in Chicago but ate shit for years after moving to New York. We talk about his praised SNL packet that led to nothing, deflating meetings with managers, his creative nighttime routine, and what it was like to spend years designing book covers for romance novels.

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Geoff Garlock (Orchid, Panthers, UCB) talks about the ups and downs of his multiple bands, from touring nightmares to record label drops. We talk about his journey into comedy, how therapy and Capes Coaching challenged his punk way of doing things, and how his songwriting and sketch writing methods have changed over the years.

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Marcy Jarreau (Brooklyn 99, A Funny Feeling Podcast) spent over a decade improvising but just couldn't gain any traction professionally and was ready to quit. We talk about how she dealt with being cut from house teams, flying in from her grandfather's funeral for a callback, and how she finally managed her personal demons.

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Charles Rogers (Search Party, Fort Tilden) had a short film that was for sure going to get into a ton of festivals... until it didn't. We chat about how Season 2 of Search Party was the hardest creative experience of his life, the source of the characters he writes, and of course we talk about a Lisa Kudrow manifestation fail.

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Jason Mantzoukas (Big Mouth, John Wick 3) talks about all the gut-wrenching ups and downs of an NBC show he created that was never released and the silver lining postscript. We chat about what it was like to get positive performance feedback from peers and audiences but not from the industry, the point in his career where he decided to stop acting and auditioning, the importance of being allowed to perform in a bad show for a year, and how grateful he was to the casting director who told him he would not work for a long time.

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Scott Aukerman (Comedy Bang Bang, Between Two Ferns) felt like the golden boy of comedy in his early years but quickly got a showbiz education. We chat about how it took him over three years to get hired on Mr. Show, how producing his live show Comedy Death Ray helped sustain years of countless TV shows and movies he had written never being picked up, and how he was so broke at one point that his car was repossessed twice, he was on the brink of foreclosure and he was being denied an overall script deal because he was so behind on union dues.

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