Martin Olson

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Martin Olson is a comedy writer, television producer, stage director and composer. He is also a playwright and poet known for comedic and unusual subject matter. Olson is best known as a "founding father" of the Boston comedy scene, as a collaborator with comedians, composers, artists and poets, and as a writer-producer of off-beat television series and stage plays.

Olson has received an Emmy nomination and an Ace Award for television writing and an Emmy nomination for song writing.

Background

In interviews for the Writers Guild of America, West's magazine Written By and thesop.org,^[1] Olson stated that as a child he saw the eccentric comedian Brother Theodore ranting and raving on The Merv Griffin Show, and from that moment on he knew he would be a comedy writer. (Before his death in 2001, Brother Theodore became a fan of Olson's first book, and wrote one of the quotes on the book's dust cover.)

Raised in Boston, Massachusetts (USA), Olson began writing for comedians before there were any comedy clubs in Boston. He sent pages of jokes to Rodney Dangerfield, which were returned with the same polite note scrawled at the bottom, "Sorry, Marty!" (According to his agent's press kit, years later when writing for Penn & Teller in Las Vegas, Olson produced comedy bits with Dangerfield and the two became friends.)

Olson first sold comedy material to the hosts of local "Gong Shows" which began his career as a comedy writer.

Olson and Boston comedy

Olson started the first comedy club in Boston in 1977 with local producers Paul Barclay and Bil Downes. There, he became "house piano player" between acts, and also performed as a comedian for the first two years with an absurdist deadpan act. His act consisted of playing the guitar and hosting "a show within the show" that featuring other comedians as his eccentric guests. At the club every night for four years, Olson worked for and wrote with the comedians who became his friends - Lenny Clarke, Bobcat Goldthwait, Jimmy Tingle, Barry Crimmins, Steven Wright, Denis Leary, Steve Sweeney, Joe Alaskey, Sean Morey and many others.

The Barracks

Olson and comedian Lenny Clarke became roommates in an apartment near Harvard Square where comedians from all over the country stayed while performing in their comedy club. Olson wrote for Clarke, who soon became the most popular comedian in Boston. Their apartment became known as The Barracks, a legendary hub of comedy and depravity that was the subject of a television special on Boston comedy in the 1980s, and also of the award-winning documentary on the Boston comedy scene When Standup Stood Out (2006) directed by filmmaker-comedian Fran Solomita.

Olson, the Ding Ho and Lenny Clarke's Late Show

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When Barry Crimmins started the second comedy club in the Boston area, the Ding Ho, Olson became the piano player there. He began showing short films he wrote and directed and in which he starred. This led to Olson writing Lenny Clarke's Late Show, a late-night comedy TV series on TV-38 hosted and co-written by Clarke. This bizarre, two-hour weekly show attracted a small but dedicated cult following. After two years, however, Olson and Clarke were fired for airing two controversial segments ("News for Negroes" and "The Mentally Retarded Faith Healer" featuring Bobcat Goldthwait).

Olson and the West Coast comedy scene

Olson took his tapes from the show and drove cross-country to San Francisco with comedian Don Gavin. There, by coincidence, the 1980 San Francisco Comedy Competition was starting up, which offered a first prize of $10,000. Olson helped Gavin audition and make it into the finals. There Olson met his future wife Kay Furtado, a writer who had been flown to San Francisco to coach another comedian in the competition. A year later they married in a ceremony in San Francisco attended by all of the local comedians. Olson and his wife moved to Los Angeles where they raised two children, Casey Olson and Olivia Olson.

Comedy writing

Olson's Los Angeles home became a halfway house for comedians coming to the city to perform and audition for shows. Meanwhile Olson wrote HBO comedy performance specials, became staff writer for the Screen Actors Guild Awards, wrote an award-winning series for Comedy Central in London and became head writer for many animated series voiced by his comedian friends. He was head writer for the first season of the Disney comedy series Phineas and Ferb.

Olson wrote, co-wrote or directed a number of off-beat stage plays in Los Angeles, including "The Head", "The Idiots", "I Never Knew My Father", "Torn" and "Cold Black Heart" at the Comedy Central Stage in Hollywood.

Impact on and affiliations in contemporary comedy

Specializing in writing comedy specials and staging one-man shows for comedians, Olson became producer-writer for Penn & Teller on their notorious FX variety series Penn & Teller's Sin City Spectacular.^[2]

When Olson was a staff writer for Rocko's Modern Life, director Stephen Hillenburg showed Olson a comic book called "The Intertidal Zone" that Hillenburg drew in university. Olson loved it and suggested that Hillenburg rewrite it as an undersea cartoon series for Nickelodeon, which became Spongebob Squarepants.^{[citation needed]}

Selling comedy screenplays to Dreamworks, United Artists, Touchstone Pictures, and Warner Bros., Olson was able to dedicate his time to writing and directing live stage performances in Hollywood at the HBO Theater, The Steve Allen Theater and Comedy Central Stage featuring well-known comedians and actors.

As an occasional actor, Olson has guest-starred in a live action sequence in Spongebob Squarepants ("Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy V"), in "Don't Watch This Show" by director-comedian Bobcat Goldthwait, in the documentary When Standup Stood Out by filmmaker Fran Solomita, on The Tonight Show playing an Indian yogi with Bobcat Goldthwait, and in a featured role as a fundamentalist professor in the film The Anna Cabrini Chronicles by filmmaker Tawd B. Dorenfeld.

Martin Olson's brother, Thomas Olson, is a well known actor, and his daughter, Olivia Olson, is a singer-songwriter, who starred and sang in the British comedy film Love Actually playing the role of Joanna Anderson as well as the voice of Vanessa on Phineas and Ferb as well as sings and writes a few songs for the show.^[3] She

Music and Songwriting

Olson is an Emmy-nominated and Annie-nominated songwriter. He has appeared as a singer on several television shows including Spongebob Squarepants and Phineas and Ferb. His songs have appeared on many television series, including London Underground (Comedy Central), Rocko's Modern Life (Nickelodeon), "Get That Puss Off Your Face" (HBO), Camp Lazlo (CN) and Twisted Tales of Felix (ABC). Olson also wrote the theme song for "Don't Watch This Show" (Cinemax).

Olson first collaborated with song-writer Jeff Root on four albums in the mid-70's, including "Idiot's Delight" (1975) touted by Beatles producer George Martin as "the best home-recorded record I have ever heard", also stating that "it's a pity there is an ocean between us." Being provincially-minded neophytes, neither Olson nor Root gleaned that it would be a good idea to arrange a meeting with the renown producer in England.^[4]

Music Awards: 2009 Emmy Nomination for Primetime Songwriting,^[5] 1997 Annie Award Nomination for Songwriting in an Animated Series.

Notes

Selected publications of Martin Olson

• Olson, Martin (2007). Invasion Manual of Earth. Martin Olson. http://martin-olson.com/invasion_manual.html. 
• Olson, Martin (2007). Hitler's Dog: The Poems of Martin Olson. Martin Olson. http://martin-olson.com/Hitlersdog.html. 
• Sheckley, Robert; Olson, Martin (2007). On the Good Ship Mandelbrot. Martin Olson. http://martin-olson.com/mandlebrot/mandlebrot.html. 
• Screenplays by Martin Olson

External links

• Martin Olson at the Internet Movie Database
• Official website
• Trainor, Lisa (Kiczuk) (February 27, 1999). "Lisa (Kiczuk) Trainor interviews Martin Olson, writer for Rocko's Modern Life". The Rocko's Modern Life FAQ. Pat Trainor. http://www.title14.com/rocko/contributors/martin.html. Retrieved March 10, 2009.