David Javerbaum

David Javerbaum is an American comedy writer. Javerbaum has won 13 Emmy Awards in his career, 11 of which he received for his work on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. He ran the popular Twitter account @TheTweetOfGod,^[1][2][3] which serves as the basis for his play An Act of God, which opened on Broadway in the spring of 2015 starring Jim Parsons, and ran at Los Angeles' Ahmanson Theatre and San Francisco's Golden Gate Theatre starring Sean Hayes in the winter and spring of 2016.^[4]

Work

Javerbaum was hired as a staff writer at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart in 1999. He was promoted to head writer in 2002 and became an executive producer at the end of 2006. His work for the program won 11 Emmy Awards, a Grammy Award, two Peabody Awards and Television Critics Association Awards for both Best Comedy and Best News Show. He was also one of the three principal authors of the show's textbook parody America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction, which sold 2.6 million copies and won the 2005 Thurber Prize for American Humor. He became a consulting producer at the start of 2009 and spearheaded the writing of the book's 2010 sequel, Earth (The Book): A Visitor's Guide to the Human Race; his co-production of the audiobook earned the 2011 Grammy Award for Best Spoken-Word Album. He left the show in 2010. In 2013 he was hired by Fusion to create and executive-produce two news-parody shows, No, You Shut Up! and Good Morning Today, in conjunction with The Henson Company. He most recently worked as a producer for The Late Late Show with James Corden on CBS.

Awards

Javerbaum is also a musical-theater lyricist and librettist who is an alumnus of the Graduate Musical Theatre Writing program at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. He won the $100,000 Ed Kleban Award for Outstanding Lyrics in 2005. Along with his frequent collaborator Adam Schlesinger of Fountains of Wayne, he wrote the opening to the 65th Tony Awards, "Broadway: It's Not Just for Gays Anymore!", which earned him his twelfth Emmy (and first apart from The Daily Show) in 2012 for Outstanding Music and Lyrics.^[5] The pair also wrote the score of the Broadway adaptation of John Waters' Cry-Baby, which opened on April 24, 2008 and was nominated for a 2008 Tony Award for Best Original Score; eight original Christmas songs for Stephen Colbert's 2008 television special, A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All!, which won a Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album; "TV Is a Vast Wonderland", the opening to the 2011 Emmy Awards; the opening "What If Life Were More Like Theater?" and closing ("If I Had Time") songs for the 66th Tony Awards, for which he won his 13th Emmy along with a Writers Guild Award for Best Writing in a TV Special); "The Number in the Middle of the Show", for the 2013 Emmy Awards; "We're Fusion!", the 2013 'opening number' to the Fusion TV network; "Are You Ready for Christmas?" for the 2013 Disney Christmas Parade; and the single "Text Me Merry Christmas" for Kristen Bell and Straight No Chaser.

Along with composer/co-librettist Robert S. Cohen, he wrote Suburb,^[6] which was nominated for Outer Critics' Circle and Drama League awards for Best Off-Broadway Musical in 2001.

Books

He is the sole author of two books: 2011's The Last Testament: A Memoir by God in conjunction with which he created @TheTweetOfGod,^[7] and the 2009 pregnancy satire What to Expect When You're Expected: A Fetus's Guide to the First Three Trimesters. In addition he co-authored Neil Patrick Harris's 2014 memoirs, The Choose Your Own Autobiography of Neil Patrick Harris. Javerbaum decided to quit the TweetofGod Twitter account in February 2016, after he was hacked for harassing a teenage girl.

Javerbaum's other work includes serving as head writer and supervising producer for both Comedy Central's first-ever Comedy Awards and The Secret Policeman's Ball 2012, writing and producing the original musical-comedy pilot Browsers for Amazon in 2013, and writing three episodes for the 2011 relaunch of Beavis and Butthead. He wrote for the Late Show with David Letterman from 1998-9.

"A Quantum Theory of Mitt Romney," his humorous essay written for The New York Times, appeared in April 2012^[8]

Javerbaum graduated from Harvard University. While there, he wrote for the humor magazine The Harvard Lampoon, helped edit the 1992 edition of travel guide Let's Go: USA (creating a unique entry for the fictional town of Asuogs'tel, North Dakota), and served as lyricist and co-bookwriter for two productions of the Hasty Pudding Theatricals. Later he spent three years contributing headlines to The Onion, and is credited as one of the writers for Our Dumb Century.

Life

Javerbaum grew up in Maplewood, New Jersey,^[9] where he attended Columbia High School.

He was a finalist on the 1988 Jeopardy! Teen Tournament and its 1998 Teen Reunion Tournament.^[10] Jon Stewart also called him as his phone-a-friend when Jon was on Celebrity Millionaire.

References

1. "Former Daily Show writer turns God book into Broadway show". The Guardian. 24 April 2014.
2. "George interviews comedy writer (and God's alter-ego) David Javerbaum.". http://www.cbc.ca/strombo/. George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight. External link in |website= (help)
3. "David Javerbaum Interview (@TheTweetOfGod)". Live Wire Radio.
4. "The Big Bang Theory's Jim Parsons Will Play the Almighty in An Act of God on Broadway". Broadway.com.
5. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/13/theater/theaterspecial/war-horse-is-best-play-and-mormon-has-strong-showing-in-early-tonys.html
6. http://suburbthemusical.com
7. "Comedy Writer & Satirist David Javerbaum". https://www.youtube.com. The Rush on Shaw TV. External link in |website= (help)
8. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/01/opinion/sunday/a-quantum-theory-of-mitt-romney.html?_r=0
9. Meoli, Daria. "That’s Entertainment", New Jersey Monthly, October 2005. Accessed December 26. "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart is still the best fake newscast on TV, thanks to Lawrenceville native Stewart and head writer and Maplewood native David Javerbaum."
10. "J! Archive - David Javerbaum". j-archive.com.

External links

• David Javerbaum at the Internet Movie Database
• David Javerbaum at the Internet Broadway Database
• David Javerbaum at the Internet Off-Broadway Database