July / August 2005:

Stella
Call them the saviors of Comedy Central. Call them the oddest comedy group around. Call them whatever you want, but when you tune in to their show, you can just call them Stella.


It’s hard to fathom, but beginning this summer Jon Stewart may no longer hold the title of funniest Jew on Comedy Central. That mantle will most likely be passed on to Stella, a comedy troupe made up of three members of the tribe (David Wain, Michael Showalter, and Michael Ian Black), whose new sketch comedy show debuts on June 29th.

Unfortunately, describing Stella is painfully similar to trying to explain chaos theory to a 5-year-old. It’s difficult. Rolling Stone says their comedic stylings have an “off the cuff Marx Brothers meets Monty Python vibe.” We like to think of them as a modern day Three Stooges.

Giant Magazine predicts the new show is “guaranteed to be one of the strangest, silliest and funniest things you’ve ever seen on television.” And the trio has the resumes to back up that claim: The three of them were the brains behind the hilarious 2001 film Wet Hot American Summer which takes place in a Jewish summer camp in the 1980’s. As well, they were three-elevenths of the cult sketch show The State from the mid-90’s on MTV. “I got very disillusioned when I found out that all the rock stars aren’t there all day in the hallways,” jokes Wain about the music station.

After the show ended, they formed Stella in 1997 and have been selling out comedy clubs ever since. Black, whose resume includes appearing in a Teenage Mutant Nina Turtle costume at malls across America as well as being the voice of the infamous Pets.com sock puppet, believes it’s the group’s religion which helps make them a success. “Big noses are funny,” he says.

And how did they come up with the name Stella? While Black claims it’s an obscure Tennessee Williams reference, Showalter has a different response. “Actually, it was named after the Stella Dora breadstick,” says Showalter, who will also be making his directorial debut this summer with The Baxter, a romantic comedy starring his two buddies. “We like anything that is sweet and hard ... but it must be a breadstick. Make sure you write breadstick.” Um, ok. We will.