Carmen Angelica
Carmen Angelica is a comedian originating from Minneapolis, Minnesota. She received a BFA at NYU Tisch School for Film and Television and moved to LA to pursue writing, directing and performing. Carmen has studied at UCB since 2007, studying in New York and LA. She performed on the UCB Harold team Nomi Malone and writes on the UCB Maude team Judith. She formerly wrote on the UCB Maude Team TUT, directed the UCB Maude team Baseball in addition to writing and directing for UCBcomedy Los Angeles Digital. Carmen can be seen in the indie comedy scene around LA and in the festival circuit with her teams Kanyay! West, Sing Sing and Second Pancake. Independently Carmen has been doing her solo show, Who Am I And What The Hell Am I Doing? (directed by Rebecca Drysdale) since January 2013 and has toured it around the country. You can see more of Carmen’s work on Cracked.com, SRSLY, and First Ave., Reductress and the UCB Show. If you want to see all her work in one place check out her website carmenangelica.com.
Guest Appearances
November 13, 2017
Remember the LOST pilot? It was basically an incredible JJ Abrams movie with plane crashes, polar bears, and dreamy Matthew Fox. If only that first episode aired– it would’ve been a cult phenomenon– an all-time pop-culture “what-if?” But instead we got LOST– the time-traveling, island-hopping sci-fi adventure of diminishing returns.
On this week’s podcast, Alex Schmidt is joined by Carmen Angelica and Brett Rader, the two hosts of Cracked’s newest podcast series Best Episode Ever, to talk about 10 innovative TV pilots that almost made it to series but will forever be “what-ifs.”
And make sure to subscribe to Cracked’s newest podcast Best Episode Ever, where Carmen and Brett will dissect your favorite TV series and try to find each show’s best episode ever. Tomorrow they’ll discuss Friends with Cracked favorite Katie Willert. Search for “Best Episode Ever” in your podcast app of choice or click on the footnotes below to find links to it on Apple Podcasts, Google Play and Stitcher.
Footnotes: https://goo.gl/G8GfYZ
November 2, 2017
John Hughes month begins on Cracked Movie Club! Back in the 1980s, John Hughes changed the idea of a teen movie from a bunch of dopey kids dancing on the beach to a bunch of mopey kids talking about their depressing, broken lives (and also dancing). No other film more perfectly exemplifies this than 1985’s The Breakfast Club, Hughes’ hit film about five misfits sharing a Saturday detention together, which set a template for teenage dramedy that Hollywood still follows to this day.
On this week’s episode, Tom is joined by Cracked’s Carmen Angelica and Jenny Jaffe, the creator and star of IFC’s Neurotica, as they discuss the impact The Breakfast Club still has on teenagers decades after its release, how Nicolas Cage was too expensive for Hughes to cast (a problem no film made in the past five years has encountered), and whether John Bender is actually cool or just an insufferable, boring asshole.
September 21, 2017
Kathryn Bigelow month continues on Cracked Movie Club! On a special live episode recorded at UCB Sunset, Tom and Abe are joined by Cracked’s Soren Bowie and Carmen Angelica as they discuss 1991’s Point Break, Kathryn Bigelow’s first major studio success and the movie that launched Keanu Reeves’ action career. Listen as they discuss the film’s themes of duality, its expertly directed action sequences, and whether or not Johnny Utah is secretly some kind of robot.
May 22, 2017
Even though drugs and alcohol have been a social lubricant since before we could write anything down, we like to think of history as this boring, stuffy museum exhibit where kings and queens drank iced tea, ate flavorless biscuits and had sex like our parents did (they’ve never had sex!). But hold onto your molly water, legal marijuana and fidget spinners, kids: history is as shitfaced wasted as any frat party or music festival, you just have to dig a little deep to find it. Also, it’s hard for high school history teachers to talk about how great Ulysses S. Grant was and talk about how drunk he was the whole civil war. So they just don’t mention that last part. American hero!
In this week’s episode, Jack O’Brien is joined by Cracked’s Carmen Angelica, Alex Schmidt and Michael Swaim, as well as comedian Blake Wexler, for a deep dive into some of history’s most secretly inebriated moments. They’ll talk about wars that were almost started and wars that were ended thanks to booze, some surprisingly great accomplishments powered by LSD (please don’t try them at home) and the American president who was so drunk all the time, it sort of puts the whole Trump presidency into horrifying perspective.
Footnotes:
Check out Blake Wexler’s New Podcast ‘Ya Booze Ya News’: https://goo.gl/6Y1ZxS
Article: Cracked: 6 Historic Events You Didn’t Realize Everyone Was Drunk For: https://goo.gl/kOTF2F
Article: Cracked: The 5 Most Important Things Done While Blackout Drunk: https://goo.gl/TNzBHt
Article: Cracked: The 7 Most Unexpectedly Awesome Parties in History: https://goo.gl/eZHm2
Article: Cracked: The 5 Greatest Things Ever Accomplished While High: https://goo.gl/psM6y
Article: Cracked: The 5 Most Inspiring Things Ever Accomplished While Drunk: https://goo.gl/RWKf
Article: Cracked 5 Epic Bouts of Drunkenness That Made The History Books: https://goo.gl/cUhjDU
Article: Cracked: 7 Great Works of Literature Written While Wasted: https://goo.gl/XbMxOI
Article: The Guardian: Drunk in Charge: https://goo.gl/JuPlE0
Article: The AV Club: 45 Years Ago Today Dock Ellis Pitched a No-Hitter While High on LSD: https://goo.gl/kFK1yv
Video: Bill Clinton Laughs At Drunk Boris Yeltsin: https://goo.gl/aEcvkT
This episode is brought to you by Squarespace (www.squarespace.com code: CRACKED) and Blue Apron (www.blueapron.com/CRACKED).
March 27, 2017
We all know consciously to take advertising with a grain of salt. Those McDonald’s burgers can’t look as manicured in person the way they do in the ads. Examples like that are easy to catch. It’s harder to spot false advertising when companies are bending the truth so much, your bullshit detectors don’t know which way is up. Take Listerine mouthwash. It was originally sold as a surgical antiseptic until some ad men in the 1920s were like, “if we told everyone to wash their mouths out with this industrial cleaner every day, then we’d make so much money we could light our cigars with the cash, but how…”. The answer was in a book of medical terminology. They looked up the fanciest word for bad breath — halitosis — and made an ad campaign telling everyone it was a chronic disease with only one cure.
“Hey, sonny boy! Does your dame ever tell ya you have bad breath?”
“Why, yes mister!”
“That’s simply because you’re dying son. Say here, drink this poison, BUT SPIT IT OUT FIRST. And do it every day for the rest of your life.”
And 90 years later we still use Listerine and still think halitosis is is a disease and not just latin for brush your damn teeth.
Modern movies do this too. Sometimes if studios have a real clunker on their hands, they’ll cut a trailer that’s so unrepresentative of the movie, you would want to sue to get your money back. A lot of times this happens to children’s movies with disastrous results for the parents that think they’re about to spend 2 hours with a rapping kangaroo.
So on this week’s podcast, Jack O’Brien is joined by Cracked writers Carmen Angelica and JM McNab and producer Brett Rader for a discussion of horribly misleading movie trailers, straight-up advertising lies and the contemporary commercials that are messing with your perception of reality.
Footnotes:
Article: Cracked: Movies That Were Waaaaay Darker & Crazier Than Advertised: https://goo.gl/w918NK
Article: Cracked: The 6 Most Hilariously Misleading Movie Trailers: https://goo.gl/9BLjqf
Article: Cracked: 5 Things Movie Trailers Need to Stop Doing: https://goo.gl/C8nfA5
Article: Cracked: 6 Dumbass Publicity Stunts That Fooled Everyone: https://goo.gl/ypXnqc
Article: Cracked: 6 Iconic Things You Won’t Believe Began as Publicity Stunts: https://goo.gl/0Rq4G
Video: Helpful Honda Ad: https://goo.gl/WfKsEn
Video: Chevrolet “Real People” Ad: https://goo.gl/PfPrvN
Article: The News Wheel: Are Chevrolet’s “Real People, Not Actors” Car Commercials Fake?: https://goo.gl/aX2sua
Video: If “Real People” Commercials Were Real Life: https://goo.gl/n7agpC
Video: Aaron Paul on The Price is Right: https://goo.gl/LoUkIW
Video: Josh Androsky on The Price is Right: https://goo.gl/3abpcs
Follow Jack O’Brien on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jack_obrien
Follow Carmen Angelica on Twitter: https://twitter.com/carmesancheeses
Follow JM Mcnab on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jmmcnabagain
Follow Brett Rader on Twitter: https://twitter.com/brettrader
March 6, 2017
It’s not something that you consciously notice, but movies speak to us in a secret language. They use a special shorthand to convey ideas or explain plot in the most efficient way possible. There’s one problem though: they do it in the same couple dozen ways and recycle them over and over. And they need to stop. Or at least invent some new ones.
Is someone’s life crumbling away after a break-up? Just give them a beard and litter their apartment with Chinese food cartons. Want to show someone has a house or apartment, but no possessions? How about some well-placed Chinese food cartons? Is someone pulling an all-nighter with their work? More Chinese food cartons!
If you’re a person who even casually watches movies, you’ll know so many of these the instant we bring them up and you’ll never unsee them in any film going forward. To break down 25 of the biggest offenders, Jack O’Brien is joined by Cracked’s Carmen Angelica, Soren Bowie and Daniel O’Brien. They talk about how people brush their teeth in movies, how men try to steal kisses and why you can never trust a fictional male nurse.
Remember to buy tickets to our next live taping of The Cracked Podcast on this Saturday, March 11th at 7pm at the UCB Sunset Theatre in Los Angeles. Jack and the gang are going to talk about Amity Island, Jurassic World and movies where vacations go awry in an attempt to figure out the best spring break you should take while vacationing in a fictional universe.
Tickets are $7 and available here: https://goo.gl/Li0ocH
Footnotes:
Podcast: Cracked: Dumb Movie Tropes That Need to Die Already: https://goo.gl/oMk0jv
Video: Cracked: 6 Bizarrely Specific Scenes Hollywood Won’t Quit Using: https://goo.gl/i1Bll2
Video: Cracked: 4 Movie Straw Men Characters That Keep Showing Up: https://goo.gl/17JVkG
Video: Cracked: 7 Bizarrely Specific Ways Movies Get Normal Jobs Wrong: https://goo.gl/lvqPpo
Article: Cracked: 4 Bizarrely Specific Rules That Exist in Movie Universes: https://goo.gl/Hs9iGT
Article: Cracked: 3 Bizarrely Specific Job Trends in Movies: https://goo.gl/a4NL9
Article: Cracked 4 Products That Only Exist in Movies: https://goo.gl/q4RAF
Cracked Photoplasties About Movie Tropes: https://goo.gl/2BsDGG, https://goo.gl/x4QfQ, https://goo.gl/qnQZQr, https://goo.gl/gYZfr
Article: The New Yorker: What Did Jesus Do? (Actual Logic vs. Narrative Logic): https://goo.gl/4c126Q
Article: The Hathor Legacy: Why Film Schools Teach Screenwriters Not To Pass The Bechdel Test: https://goo.gl/MMdcbt
This episode is brought to you by Casper Mattresses (www.casper.com/cracked) and Squarespace (www.squarespace.com code: CRACKED).