Billy Kimball (born July 8, 1959) is an American writer and producer.
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He was born in New York City and graduated from Harvard College where he was an editor of the Harvard Lampoon.[1] He is currently married to the former Alexandra Manuela Vargas Hamilton[2] and has two daughters.
Kimball began his career writing for the HBO series Not Necessarily the News. He was the host and executive producer of the satiric game show Clash! and the co-host (with Denis Leary) of the talk show Afterdrive both on the Ha! Network, a predecessor of Comedy Central.
As a writer, Kimball has worked on Saturday Night Live, Cedric the Entertainer Presents, and Lateline. He has written the Independent Spirit Awards since 2002 and been a producer on the show since 2005.[3] He has written five episodes of The Simpsons, and co-wrote four with Ian Maxtone-Graham.
Kimball was the original executive producer of The Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn from 1999 to 2001.[3]
He has been nominated for an Emmy Award for writing[4] and won the CableAce Award for Best Documentary. His Simpsons' episode "24 Minutes" received an Annie Award in 2007 for Best Writing in an Animated Television Production.[5] He won the Writers Guild of America Award for Outstanding Script for Comedy/Variety Special for the 2008 Film Independent Spirit Awards.[5]
In 1994, he served as a senior manager for the United States Agency for International Development's Market Reform Project in Kiev, Ukraine.[1][6]
Kimball has a long association with Al Franken. He was the executive producer of "InDecision '92," Comedy Central's coverage of the 1992 United States Presidential Election, which was anchored by Franken.[4] From 2005 to 2007, he was the executive producer of The Al Franken Show on Air America Radio and Sundance Channel.
In 2009, Kimball began to appear as a commentator on TruTV Presents: World's Dumbest... He is currently the editor-in-chief of the on-line humor magazine The Old Yorker.[7]
Kimball co-wrote the 2010 documentary Waiting for Superman, about the failures of American public education, with filmmaker Davis Guggenheim. The film received the Audience Award for best documentary at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival.