Paul Mecurio

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Paul Mecurio is a Rhode Island-born comedian once featured on Comedy Central Presents. A lawyer by education (graduated from Georgetown University Law Center). After working as an investment banker and merger and acquisitions lawyer, he took up stand-up comedy.

1 Early Career
2 The Daily Show
3 Sex For Sam
4 Stand-Up/TV/Film
5 Sports Central
6 External links

[edit] Early Career

A native of Providence, Rhode Island, Paul Mecurio graduated with honors from Georgetown Law School and began his career on Wall Street as a mergers and acquisitions lawyer at the law firm of Willkie Farr and Gallagher and later as an investment banker at CS First Boston. All the while, Paul was honing a second career writing and performing comedy and was hired by Jay Leno to write jokes for “The Tonight Show.” In 1995, with the encouragement of Jay, Paul moved center stage, leaving Wall Street and starting his career as a stand-up comedian.

[edit] The Daily Show

In 1996, Paul was invited to be on the original writing team for a new Comedy Central show called “The Daily Show.” In 2001, as a writer for “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” Paul won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Individual Achievement In Writing In A Variety, Music or Comedy Program. For his work on “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart: Indecision 2000,” Paul was honored with a Peabody Award for Excellence in Broadcasting (think The Pulitzer Prize for Broadcasting). In 2002, Paul received his second Emmy nomination for his work on “The Daily Show.” Paul has also been featured in “The Daily Show” segment, “Second Opinion,” in which he skewered the medical profession playing an HMO representative with a less than sympathetic mindset.

[edit] Sex For Sam

Mecurio was a recurring guest on the Opie and Anthony show when the duo were broadcasting on WNEW-FM in New York City. As a "friend of the show", he became a spotter for "Sex For Sam", the third edition of a promotion encouraging competing couples to have sex in public places, like Tiffany's department store. Mecurio's responsibilities were to "spot" his couple, recording the points that they accumulated, and report the proceedings back to the hosts in-studio.

Allegedly, Mecurio's couple wound up at St Patrick's Cathedral, and in the course of events, all three were accosted by a security guard at the church. Eventually Mecurio and the couple were arrested.

The rest is history. The news media and The Catholic League created a public frenzy over the incident, and The Opie and Anthony Show was canceled two days later. They didn't return to the airwaves until 2 years later, sitting out the contract they had with Infinity Broadcasting. The Sex For Sam incident also took down an entire radio station - without the Opie and Anthony show to anchor it, WNEW had a massive shakeup, and flipped formats 5 months later. [1]

Since then, Mecurio's name has been brought up only a few times on the "new" O&A show, but it's widely regarded that he's "dead to the show". Surprisingly, it's fellow comedian Jim Norton who had the most vitriol concerning Mecurio, probably because Norton was not compensated as well as Opie or Anthony during the "time-out" the show had between Fall 2002 and Fall 2004.

[edit] Stand-Up/TV/Film

A national headliner in clubs across North America and in Europe, Paul has performed at the prestigious Just For Laughs Comedy Festival in Montreal and has made numerous TV appearances including “The Late, Late Show with Craig Kilborn,” Comedy Central’s “Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn,” NBC’s “Late Friday,” Comedy Central’s “Dr. Katz” and numerous appearances on VH1’s popular clip shows. Paul has been a guest on Fox News Channel and makes regular appearances on CNN, CNNfn and MSNBC as a political satirist.

Paul was seen in a guest-starring role opposite John Cleese in the ABC sitcom “Wednesday at 9:30” and shot a television pilot set in New York City for famed producer/directors Barry Levinson and Tom Fontana. He can also be seen in the upcoming film drama, “High Art, Low Life,” written and directed by Peter Nourjian and recently shot the lead role in the independent film “Faux Pix.”

Paul has written, produced and directed five short films, the latest of which, “Gloves,” an off-center dark comedy has been screened at several prestigious film festivals including “The US Comedy Arts Festival” in Aspen, “The Toronto Film Festival,” “The Los Angeles Independent Film Festival” and “The San Sebastian Film Festival” in Spain. Paul also worked on the film “American Buffalo,” starring Dustin Hoffman and Dennis Franz based on the award winning David Mamet play of the same name.

On May 21, 2004, Paul premiered his own “Comedy Central Presents” half-hour special. Paul was featured as a political satirist in the 2004 Presidential Election coverage by The Daily News, CNN, MSNBC, CNNfn, and ESPN2.

[edit] Sports Central

Paul recently shot the television pilot “Sports Central,” in which he starred, co-created and executive produced. Using a news format, “Sports Central” is a funny, smart look at the controversial off-the-field issues and player behavior plaguing sports. [2]