#Bob odenkirk snl writer series

Though cancelled after 12 episodes, 'Stiller' took the Emmy Award for Best Writing later that fall. Critics embraced the show, but Fox's questionable time-slotting did little to help it find a regular audience. 'The Ben Stiller Show' proved to be everything 'SNL' was not, sending up the absurdities of American pop culture with unique sketches every week - some gleefully silly, some wickedly mean - all driven by a collective of soon-to-be comedy luminaries, including cast members Janeane Garofalo and Andy Dick, writers David Cross and Dino Stamatopoulos, and writer-producer Judd Apatow. Odenkirk worked another four years on 'SNL,' occasionally garnering some minor on-air parts, but ultimately found himself bridling at the formulaic grind, emphasis on recurring characters and repetitive schtick, as occurred with the devolution of one of his creations, Motivational Speaker Matt Foley, for cast member Chris Farley.ĭissatisfied and eager to do more on-camera work, Odenkirk and another disgruntled 'SNL' vet, Ben Stiller, created their own solution in 1992 when Stiller and HBO Independent Productions sold the fledgling Fox network on a new show. After the 1987-88 season, a Writers Guild strike sidelined the staff, and Odenkirk, Smigel and fellow 'SNL' writer Conan O'Brien returned to Chicago where they put on a sketch revue called the 'Happy Happy Good Show' at Victory Gardens Studio Theatre, starting a tradition of Odenkirk's return to live-stage comedy during the summers. Two years later Odenkirk joined him on the show. He studied with Del Close, the pioneer of improvisational theater and longtime consultant to NBC's 'Saturday Night Live,' and he joined the Second City-affiliated Player's Workshop, where he met fellow writer Robert Smigel who took a job writing for 'SNL' in 1985. After three years of college, Odenkirk dropped out and moved to Chicago to dive into its storied live comedy scene. Upon graduating Naperville North High School, he attended Marquette University in Milwaukee, WI, then transferred to Southern Illinois in Carbondale, IL, honing his sketch-writing and performance skills with live shows on both colleges' radio stations. By junior high school, Bob had begun putting together sketches that he would perform for classes. He grew up a fan of sketch-comedy impresarios Monty Python and 'SCTV' (syndicated/NBC/Cinemax, 1976-1984), and he and his brother Bill showed a penchant for showmanship early on, doing imitations of people in their lives to entertain the family. They raised Bob and his six siblings in the Chicago suburb of Naperville, IL.

22, 1962, in Berwyn, IL, to Barbara and Walter Odenkirk, who ran a printing business. A missionary of ironic over-the-top social satire, Odenkirk made himself a nexus of the edgiest comic circles.

#Bob odenkirk snl writer series

Maintaining a regimen of comic supporting roles and TV guest-work, Odenkirk in 2009 joined the cast of the Emmy-winning AMC series 'Breaking Bad' (2008-2013) as the cheerfully malignant TV lawyer Saul Goodman, a role he deepened and expanded on the seriocomic prequel 'Better Call Saul' (AMC 2015- ). Show.' (The pair reunited later for a second series, 'W/ Bob and David' (Netflix 2015).) He would expand his résumé as a producer-talent spotter of underground, post-structural comedy for online media and Cartoon Network's Adult Swim block, and as director of such offbeat, almost awkwardly silly comedy features as 'Let's Go to Prison' (2006) and 'The Brothers Solomon' (2008).

Finding the 'SNL' environment suffocating, he landed a cast role on 'The Ben Stiller Show.' Though the show only lasted a season, it would put Odenkirk in with Hollywood's comedy in-crowd, netting him work on HBO's groundbreaking single-cam 'The Larry Sanders Show' (1993-98), writing for fellow 'SNL'-alum Conan O'Brien's late-night talk show, and eventually creating his own HBO series alongside former 'Stiller' co-writer David Cross, 'Mr.

A native of Chicago's suburbs and later product of the Second City comedy fraternity, he followed that talent pipeline to a writing job on NBC's weekend institution 'Saturday Night Live' (1975- ). In the 1990s, Bob Odenkirk established himself as an avatar of the next wave of edgy, ribald American sketch comedy, initially as a cast member of the short-lived but portentous Fox series 'The Ben Stiller Show' (1992-1993), then as co-creator and star of the off-the-wall subversive HBO series 'Mr.