The Comedians of Comedy

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The Comedians of Comedy is an occasional stand-up comedy tour featuring Patton Oswalt, Zach Galifianakis, Brian Posehn and Maria Bamford that was documented in a 2005 film and 2005 Comedy Central television series of the same name, both directed by Michael Blieden. Recently, Zach Galifianakis left the tour and has been replaced by comedian Eugene Mirman.

The idea behind The Comedians of Comedy — its name a play on The Original Kings of Comedy and similar tours — involves the comedians performing at smaller indie rock venues instead of comedy clubs. Both the movie and TV series alternate between footage of the comedians on stage and other aspects of their lives on the road.

The movie The Comedians of Comedy, shot during the fall of 2004, had its world premiere at the South by Southwest film festival in March 2005. It is one of the first films to be financed by DVD-rental service Netflix, also the film's distributor.

The film inspired Comedy Central to commission a six-episode Comedians of Comedy TV series, this one involving a six-city tour during the summer of 2005; the show premiered in November of that year. The episodes were shot in Baltimore, New York City, Philadelphia, Atlantic City, Boston and Martha's Vineyard. The show was notable for providing some publicity for Robert Kirkman's comic book Invincible, which Oswalt spoke about during the first episode while shopping at a comic book store.

After ending their run on Comedy Central, Oswalt, Posehn, Mirman and Morgan Murphy performed in a 2006 Comedians of Comedy tour. [1]

The Comedians of Comedy also appeared as one of the Friday opening acts at the 2007 Coachella Valley Arts and Music Festival, including San Francisco Bay Area comedians Brent Weinbach and Jasper Redd.

On October 2, 2007, a DVD of a live performance from the Troubador was released, featuring the cast of the movie alongside other notables like Mirman, Jon Benjamin, David Cross, and others.

The HBO series Tourgasm later used a very similar format.