ALAN ZWEIBEL
Comedy writer, TV, Books, Theater, Keynote Speaker
Alan Zweibel Knows You Want to Talk SNL—And He’s Good With That
BY BILL CARTER
November 14, 2024
He’s won five Emmy Awards, and the prestigious Thurber Prize for comic fiction, but Alan Zweibel knows where every description of his career begins.
“It always starts with: an original Saturday Night Live writer,” Zweibel said. “Those first five years are held in such reverence.”
Zweibel was there from that very first night in 1975, though all the antic and frantic moments from those first five years that are now legendary, so much so that many of them are memorialized in the new film Saturday Night. Like many veterans of that groundbreaking broadcast, Zweibel found himself admiring the movie despite the lax-to-non-existent effort to tell it like it literally was.
“Lorne didn’t find me in a bar when he went for a walk that first night,” Zweibel said, citing one scene from the film in which actor Josh Brener plays Zweibel. “But I think Jason Reitman captured what was going on, the chaos of the whole thing. I thought he did a terrific job.”
Review: Tilles Center’s CELEBRITY AUTOBIOGRAPHY will have you ‘Hooked on Phonics… I Mean Histrionics’
by Nicholas Pontolillo
October 4, 2022
“Legendary TV writer and 5-time Emmy award winner Alan Zweibel was HILARIOUS. He had the entire audience in hysterics with his readings of Justin Bieber, Geraldo Rivera and Joe Namath.”
Back in 2005, Comedy Central had a roast for Pamela Anderson. One of the roasters on the dais was the late, great Bea Arthur; she was there as both she and Anderson are advocates of P.E.T.A., which the roast was a fundraiser for. Instead of following the typical route of insulting Anderson and the other celebrities on the dais, Arthur decided to perform a live reading of Pamela Anderson’s autobiographical novel Star Struck. Anderson’s words mixed with Ms. Arthur’s wry delivery and infamous glares led this to be one of the funniest sets of the evening. After seeing that performance, I literally thought “My God, what a brilliant idea. Wouldn’t it be amazing if Bea Arthur, or any celebrity, performed dramatic readings of celebrity memoirs?” Luckily, Emmy award nominee Eugene Pack capitalized on this idea with co-creator Dayle Reyfel and together they brought Celebrity Autobiography to life…
CELEBRITY AUTOBIOGRAPHY at the Southamptons Arts Center
by Chloe Rabinowitz
August 22, 2022
Southampton Arts Center presented the acclaimed international comedy Broadway
sensation Celebrity Autobiography for one night only with an all-star cast including Christie Brinkley, Mario Cantone, Richard Kind, Susan Lucci, Eugene Pack, Sherri Shepherd, and Alan Zweibel.
July 1975
I was 25 years old and had taken the Long Island Rail Road from my parents’ house to New York City. I arrived at what was then called the RCA Building and rode the elevator up to Lorne Michaels’s office, on the 17th floor. It was our first meeting to discuss a new show premiering in the fall called Saturday Night Live.
Celebrity Autobiography at the Triad Theatre NYC
by Chloe Rabinowitz
May 13, 2022
Celebrity Autobiography, the international hit comedy Broadway sensation and winner of the Drama Desk Award returned to NYC for two LIVE performances Monday, May 2 at 7pm and 9pm at the show’s original home, The Triad (158 West 72nd St). The May 2 shows featured SNL’s Cecily Strong & Kenan Thompson, Paulina Porizkova, Mario Cantone, Tate Donovan, Alan Zweibel, and show creators, Emmy-nominated, Drama Desk-winner Eugene Pack & Drama Desk winner Dayle Reyfel.
Billy Crystal shares the real-life inspirations for heartfelt ‘Here Today’ movie he directed, stars in and co-wrote with Alan Zweibel
By Peter Sblendorio
May 7, 2021
What started as a disastrous lunch outing turned into a heartfelt Billy Crystal movie.
An early scene in the new comedy “Here Today” — which Crystal directed, co-wrote and stars in — is based on a real-life experience by co-writer Alan Zweibel, who shared a meal with a woman who spent only $22 at an auction to meet him…
By Donald Liebenson May 7, 2021
Billy Crystal’s “Here Today” charts the beginning of a beautiful friendship. The film is the result of another.
Crystal co-wrote the screenplay with Alan Zweibel, with whom he last collaborated on Crystal’s Tony-winning one-man show, 700 Sundays. But their friendship dates back almost 50 years to when the two twenty-somethings were aspiring stand-up comedians, carpooling from Long Island into Manhattan for gigs…
COLLECTOR’S EDITION PEOPLE MAGAZINE (Fall 2020)
45 YEARS OF SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE – FIRST PERSON
By Lisa Russell
Veteran Comedy Writer and SNL Alum Alan Zweibel — author of the new memoir LAUGH LINES: My Life Helping Funny People Be Funnier — talked to People about being on the ground floor for the creation of a TV classic.
Comedy Tonight: ‘S.N.L.’ Then and Now
May 29, 2020
By
In “Laugh Lines,” Zweibel looks back, affectionately and informatively, at a career that began when he was a young deli worker grinding out jokes for old-school borscht belt comedians in his spare time, and that, after his “S.N.L.” years, included rewarding collaborations with, among others, Garry Shandling, Billy Crystal, Martin Short, Larry David and Dave Barry.
How Alan Zweibel Made a Career of Helping People Be Funnier
May 28, 2020
By Steven Gaydos
Alan Zweibel clearly knows funny. He’s accrued multiple Emmy wins and nominations for his time on the comedy writing teams of “Saturday Night Live” and “It’s Garry Shandling’s Show,”
Alan Zweibel Shares Some ‘Laugh Lines’ and Sounds Off On The State Of Comedy
May 23, 2020
By Bruce Haring
THE BEST NEW BOOKS
April 27, 2020
“It’s the medicine we can all use right now” — People
E! Online selected Laugh Lines as one of the “10 Books Celebrities Love“
April 6, 2020
By Caroline Lehmann
Alan Zweibel Is Your Favorite Comic’s Secret Weapon
April 13. 2020
By Donald Liebenson
A chat with the writer who penned punchlines for the original cast of Saturday Night Live, survived Roger Ebert’s most devastating burn, and may be the only guy in the biz to have been flashed by both Farrah Fawcett and Milton Berle.
Q&A Top Pick
May 31, 2020
“Laugh Lines” is the candid, big-hearted story of a comedian’s comic.
Humor Writer of the Month: Alan Zweibel
June 2020
Alan Zweibel is a comedy writing legend whose memoir, Laugh Lines: My Life Helping Funny People Be Funnier, is receiving well-deserved acclaim. It’s included in People magazine’s “The Best New Books” section and earned a positive review in The New York Times this weekend…
‘SNL’ writer’s memoir co-stars Billy Crystal, Gilda Radner
LOS ANGELES (AP) — You may not know it, but if you treasure the early years of “Saturday Night Live” or are a fan of “It’s Garry Shandling’s Show” or “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” Alan Zweibel makes you laugh.
‘Let’s Just Make Each Other Laugh’: Inside the Chaotic First Week of SNL
In an excerpt from his new book “Laugh Lines,” original SNL writer Alan Zweibel remembers what it was like at the very beginning.
“Let’s just make each other laugh. And if we do, we’ll put it on television. . .
