Entertainment
Can this LA comic's seminar help stand-ups rewrite the rules to their success?
On Dec. 23, the day the comedy community learned 34-year-old L.A. performer Neel Nanda had died, Mike Lawrence took to social media. “There’s more opportunities to succeed in comedy which means there’s more opportunities to fail,” he wrote. “Rejected packets, videos with low counts, struggling podcasts … be kind to yourself. Celebrate the wins and personal milestones. Chase real happiness, not algorithms.”
It was the moment the veteran performer on “Conan” decided to offer comedians without insurance free Zoom seminars in scriptwriting and packet submissions. Following a pair of two-hour sessions in early January, a third is slated for Saturday from noon to 2 p.m. (with attendance capped at 150), the same night Lawrence appears in the Pasadena Ice House’s 8 p.m. show in the Legendary Room.
“What people charge and what they promise is criminal,” he posted after the initial session on Jan. 4. “I charge nothing, but that’s also what I promise!” He planned more, refusing to charge a fee or collect donations.
Lawrence reappeared onscreen Jan. 9 in a black X-Men tee, burgeoning Letterman beard and thick albeit stylish glasses. Advice to “have a plan” and “know who you are” were right up top. “Follow the rules” was another biggie. “Except when you need to break them!” References included Jo Koy’s Golden Globes bomb and Marvel movies.
“The impetus of why I wanted to do this,” Lawrence says of his Zoom sessions, “is the amount of comedians that are passing away, dealing with health issues, all kinds of things. You can be touring the country and still not be covered. It’s a rough existence. It sucks that it’s a luxury.”
Lawrence’s parents divorced early. He lived with his dad in the Paradise Village trailer park in Davie, Fla. His mother, Alice Colin, had been a SoFlo comedian at Uncle Funny’s and Coconuts alongside Todd Barry and Dan “Larry the Cable Guy” Whitney.
“No one wants to do what their mom does when they’re 15,” Lawrence says, “but I still needed attention and validation from strangers.”
At first, he went with slam poetry. His parents supported his hobby, driving him around South Florida for seven years to the library’s teen readings (until he got kicked out at 18), Borders Books’ senior-citizen audiences, and the Chocolate Moose cafe. In 2005, the first time he tried comedy at the latter, Lawrence says, “It was like Dylan going electric.”
Fourteen months later, he moved to New York City with $2,000 and nothing but McDonald’s on his resume. There, Lawrence worked at Pinkberry, hit the alt open mics on the Lower East Side and slowly found his community at Long Island City’s the Creek and the Cave.
Socializing wasn’t easy. Lawrence was quick and hard-hitting, yet had trouble connecting onstage. He was perceived as unfriendly, with difficulty maintaining relationships. Comic books and wrestling were all-consuming. There was his lifelong difficulty with math but uncanny aptitude for memorizing details; constant anxiety — a fear of being watched or judged. It still feels impossible to shop if he’s the only customer. Returning professional emails gives him panic attacks. He doesn’t drive to this day.
In 2008, as Barack Obama was elected president, Lawrence was bedridden with Crohn’s disease. It caused a severe rectal abscess. There was the chronic depression, too, and feeling like something else was different mentally. With no health insurance, he said, “I literally couldn’t take care of any of it.”
Mike Lawrence, far left, performs at the Just for Laughs comedy festival in Montreal in 2016.
(Troy Conrad)
A writing job on a 2012 pilot for comedian and radio host Tom Papa and two for E! came and went. Lawrence recorded his 2013 Comedy Central Records album, “Sadamantium,” at Sunset Boulevard’s now-razed Meltdown Comics. It wasn’t until becoming a writer on “Inside Amy Schumer” in 2015 — when he was in his mid 30s — that he became eligible to join the Writers Guild, complete with insurance.
“I could finally afford to have all this stuff addressed,” he remembers. “I basically bought my diagnoses.”
After 10 years in New York City and several high-profile appearances on Comedy Central’s original “@Midnight,” in 2017, Lawrence moved to Los Angeles. @Midnight was canceled six months later, but Comedy Central brought him aboard “The Comedy Jam” and kept him in rotation as a writer for roast specials. Recurring gigs included “Drop the Mic” on TBS, Jimmy Carr’s “The Fix,” co-producing on “Crashing,” the Independent Spirit Awards, reality fare and more. He has won a Writers Guild Award for “Triumph’s Election Watch” and earned three Primetime Emmy nominations.
Lawrence and producer Adina Pliskin (“Sesame Street,” “Mission Unstoppable With Miranda Cosgrove”) married in 2014. He started antidepressants in 2019 and began appreciating the importance of self-care. Lawrence’s low sperm count initiated the process of adoption in the summer of 2020.
“It was really, really important to me to get a handle on exactly who I was,” he says of the time.
As Lawrence and Pliskin made colorful profiles containing photos and letters, took parenting and CPR classes, and passed a home study from Child Protective Services, his therapist recommended a specialist. A lengthy, three-part process diagnosed him with autism, bringing with it a transformative clarity.
Giving Pliskin the results “was like RuPaul telling his friends he’s gay: ‘Well, I’m glad “you” can say it now!’ She always knew. And she said, ‘I love you for who you are.’ Watching ‘Love on the Spectrum’ together was eye-opening.”
Their adoption process took two years and three months, with two matches falling through. Son Logan — named for Lawrence’s favorite superhero — arrived in November 2022. Lawrence’s father died three months later.
“He could have just told me he didn’t want to be a grandfather,” Lawrence began joking onstage. It bothered him that his dad worked full-time to the end.
“It’s a testimony to my parents that they really supported whatever dumb thing I did,” he says of their influence. “It’s the template of how I want to be with Logan. Even if we think he’s wrong, whatever he’s into is fine.”
During the 2023 strikes, Lawrence heard from Pete Davidson, who originally sought his comic-book expertise for a DC project. He opened for Davidson’s theater dates for six months, entertaining the former “Saturday Night Live” cast member with stories of uneasy fatherhood. Lawrence was an “SNL” guest writer the October week Davidson returned to host.
It was the delayed season premiere following the strikes. No new writers were aboard. The Gaza Strip bombings had begun two days before. Lawrence was intimidated.
“It’s an institution. Can I hang? Am I good enough?” he asked himself. Though discouraged when a pitched sketch failed, his punch-up jokes successfully made it to air.
“I don’t have to feel like a fraud,” Lawrence realized. “Having imposter syndrome — the ‘Am I worthy? Can I say I’m a dad in the same way that person says they’re a dad?’ — it’s the stuff that gets into your head.”
Lawrence left Twitter in 2020. His professional focus rests on series writing, though he’s continued performing live “a few times a month.” Recent spots include at Blind Barber as well as evenings at Largo comedy club with Sarah Silverman, Pete Holmes and comedy hero Patton Oswalt.
“Because I don’t drive,” he insists, “it’s still that New York mentality that it costs me 60 to 80 bucks to do a show!”
Along with the writing seminar on Jan. 20 and the Ice House set, Lawrence returned to work this week on Season 2 of Davidson’s Peacock series, “Bupkis.”
“I’m still horribly depressed a lot of the time,” he admits. “But now I have a kid, so I can’t think about killing myself anymore.”
With a revitalized career and fatherhood on his plate, Lawrence’s perspective on success has notably shifted.
“The key to success is lowering your expectations of it,” he said. “It’s healthier to do [your passion] because you like it, and not be obsessed to the point of letting it define you,” Lawrence says. “I’ve never felt the fulfillment that I have in this.”
In the last decade or so, Angelina Jolie has been on screen less frequently. So when she is — and not in forgettable tentpoles like “Eternals” — it’s worth paying attention. There seems to be a thoughtful intentionality to the roles she now chooses, almost as if this astoundingly famous woman wants to tell us something vital about herself, offering clues into her understandably guarded personal life.
Take 2015’s “By the Sea,” which she wrote and directed. Coincidentally or not, that pained study of marital dissolution, co-starring Jolie’s then-husband Brad Pitt, intersected with the couple’s real-life breakup — not to mention Jolie’s grief over the death of her mother, Marcheline Bertrand. Two years ago, Jolie portrayed a version of the elusive, emotionally closed-off opera singer Maria Callas in “Maria.” The conception of the role, marked by a dim view of stardom’s suffocating alienation, was something Jolie clearly understood. Moviegoers should be careful not to read too much autobiography into an actor’s creative choices, but Jolie makes such speculation tantalizing, adding additional layers of drama to her films.
The intermittently affecting “Couture” feels similarly close to her heart, depicting a filmmaker whose life is interrupted by a cancer diagnosis — a reality Jolie knows all too well. In 2013, she underwent a preventive double mastectomy over concerns of her likelihood to develop breast or ovarian cancer. (Bertrand died of cancer in 2007.) Knowledge of Jolie’s circumstance will inform a viewer’s reaction to her wounded, resilient performance, but our inherent sympathies can only take French writer-director Alice Winocour’s ensemble piece so far.
Jolie plays Maxine, an American indie director hired to create a flashy opening film for Paris Fashion Week. Newly arrived in the City of Light, she has only a few days to put together the short, assisted by her trusted cinematographer Anton (Louis Garrel). As we deduce from the phone calls Maxine makes back home, she’s also going through an acrimonious divorce and has trouble connecting with her blasé teenage daughter. At least this Paris paycheck gig will bolster her finances — and get her ready for the feature film she’s been wanting to make for years.
Just then, though, Maxine’s future gets a rewrite. A French doctor (Vincent London) tells her she has breast cancer and needs a double mastectomy immediately. Maybe she can finish the Fashion Week film, but her passion project must wait. An artist and mother who has spent her adulthood in constant motion will have to learn what it means to stop everything and be still.
The film’s title would appear to be a reference to the story’s setting, but in French, “coutures” can also mean “stitches,” and indeed Winocour sews together three thematically linked story strands. As Maxine wrestles with her cancer diagnosis, an inexperienced South Sudanese model named Ada (Anyier Anei) works Fashion Week so she can send money home to her family. (Ada has no interest in modeling, hoping instead to become a pharmacist.) Meanwhile a makeup artist, Angèle (Ella Rumpf), longs to be an author, although she cannot get anyone interested in her writing. Each one becomes a part of the fabric of Fashion Week, but their disparate problems are a far cry from the glitzy event’s self-importance.
Winocour has often made films about women balancing their public-facing life with their private selves In 2019’s “Proxima,” Eva Green played an astronaut missing her young daughter. In 2022’s “Paris Memories,” Virginie Efira starred as an interpreter recovering from the shock of surviving a terrorist attack. Winocour shows us the intimate, vulnerable spaces within her characters that those on the outside don’t have access to.
“Couture’s” three principals rarely interact with one another, but those meaningful exchanges argue that, amid the mad clatter of the everyday, a brief, unguarded moment with a stranger can be supremely restorative. Unfortunately, the juggling of storylines ends up being more schematic than insightful. Angèle’s narrative never catches fire and while Anei is striking as Ada, that section of the film feels slightly patronizing, reducing this immigrant tale to yet another strained salute to perseverance.
This leaves Jolie as the movie’s magnetic center, with Maxine drifting through despair as she ponders what to do. Her doctor insists that the surgery cannot wait, but putting her ambitions on hold means losing a part of herself — a different kind of death sentence than the one she’s now facing.
The character is underwritten but Jolie picks up much of the slack through her silently shattered expression. As she’s gotten older, the Oscar winner has become more comfortable doing less in her performances, allowing for a fragile serenity that is belied by the anguish and anxiety roiling underneath. It’s not just our recognition of the real-life parallels that make Jolie so touching in “Couture” — it’s that ineffable star power she’s possessed for so long. In a story about a potential tragedy, what’s saddest is that Winocour’s film cannot match its lead’s effortless command.
‘Couture’
In French and English, with subtitles
Rated: R, for language, some sexuality, nudity and brief bloody violence
Running time: 1 hour, 46 minutes
Playing: Opens Friday, June 26 in limited release
By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Staff Writer
Posted: June 26th, 2026 / 08:03 PM
SUPERGIRL movie poster | ©2026 Warner Bros./DC Studios
Rating: PG-13
Stars: Milly Adcock, David Corenswet, Eve Ridley, Matthias Schoenaerts, Diarmaid Murtagh, Jason Momoa, David Krumholtz, Emily Beecham
Writer: Ana Nogueira, based on characters created by Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster
Director: Craig Gillespie
Distributor: Warner Bros./DC Studios
Release Date: June 26, 2026
The new SUPERGIRL doesn’t have that “Eureka! This is how you do this now” spark that galvanized its immediate franchise predecessor, last year’s SUPERMAN. Director Craig Gillespie and screenwriter Ana Nogueira, basing the film on characters created by DC Comics’ Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster, probably wisely, aren’t going for that.
Instead, the SUPERGIRL makers are intent on providing a lively adventure, getting to the point quickly and letting the action unspool with unquestionably strong motivation, abetted by plenty of punch-ups, kicking and frequent explosions.
Supergirl, aka Kara Zor-El (Milly Adcock), is from the now-dead planet Krypton, just like her cousin Clark/Kal-El/Superman (David Corenswet). However, where Clark has chosen to remain on Earth, where the yellow sun gives him superpowers that allow to help Earth’s residents, Kara likes to party on planets that have a red sun, where she has no unusual abilities.
This is because Kara seems to have taken to heart a dictum from a different comic book universe – with great power comes great responsibility – and decided the inverse is true: with no power comes no responsibility.
We get insight into exactly why Kara is so duty-averse over the course of SUPERGIRL, and it’s probably not a spoiler to say that she re-examines some attitudes as events unfold.
Kara plans to celebrate her twenty-third birthday on a backwater red sun planet. The bar where Kara chooses to drink is entered by preteen Ruthye Knoll (Eve Ridley), whose family has been murdered by brigands, led by the horrendous Krem (Matthias Schoenaerts). Ruthye is out for revenge. Kara thinks Ruthye is a bit young and pure-hearted to be on a murderous quest.
Even on a planet with a red sun, though, Kara is still handy with fists and feet. Ruthye sees what Kara can do and concludes she is the ideal ally. Kara absolutely refuses to help. Then something occurs that credibly rouses Kara to do whatever it takes to achieve her aims, which sort of line up with Ruthye’s.
No explanation is needed for why Kara feels such urgency, which we easily share. Her concern for Ruthye is understandable and her connecting to larger purpose is shown rather than spoken.
Intriguingly, the aesthetics of SUPERGIRL are largely those of STAR WARS, with some MAD MAX and BLADE RUNNER thrown in. The filmmakers have a good time with all sorts of utterly nonhuman alien people and figuring out how to make interplanetary versions of familiar items like vending machines.
The pace is pleasingly brisk and the structure doesn’t require much exposition. When they hit a hard-to-answer question like why Kara is Supergirl while Clark is Superman, they acknowledge it and then get out from under without irritating anybody.
For anyone wondering about the veracity of the recording from Superman’s parents that appeared in SUPERMAN, a quick line of dialogue here confirms it (sorry, Jor-El supporters).
There is the expected amount of CGI involved, including a great motion-capture performance by Kara’s dog Krypto (modeled upon executive producer/SUPERMAN director James Gunn’s dog), but a lot of the stunts and makeup appear gratifyingly practical.
Adcock is fine in all of Kara’s moods, from wasted to resistant to determined, with a delightful reaction to feeling her body’s response to the yellow sun. Ridley is an appealing young hero, and Corenswet offers wholesome support. Schoenaerts lets Krem revel in his own soft-spoken vileness, and Jason Momoa enthusiastically portrays an intergalactic bounty hunter. David Krumholtz is affecting as Kara’s scientist father.
SUPERGIRL isn’t going to redefine superhero movies, but it’s a perfectly enjoyable example of the form.
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In 2015, musician Roberto Carlos launched Boleros de Noche, an annual concert series held in Los Angeles that aimed at preserving and showcasing the Latin American bolero music genre.
This year, the event is celebrating its 10th anniversary with performances at the Ford on Aug. 1 by Puerto Rican singer and former Calle 13 member iLe and L.A.-based bolero trio Voz Bohemia
On Friday, the city of L.A. honored the series’ decade-long run and legacy of uplifting bolero music by declaring Aug.1 “Día del Bolero.”
Boleros are ballads noted for their slow tempo and romantic lyrics accompanied by a crooning vocal style. Though the genre originated in Cuba, it quickly gained popularity across Latin America, with each culture putting their own spin on it. In the early 20th century, the evolving sound of boleros was shaped by the Cuban group Trio Matamoros, Mexican composer Agustín Lara, Puerto Rican artist Rafael Hernández and Ecuadorian singer Julio Jaramillo.
The genre saw a resurgence in popularity in the 1980s and ‘90s when famed Mexican artists Juan Gabriel and Luis Miguel embraced the bolero sound. In recent years, the bolero movement has been modernized and electrified by artists such as Mon Laferte, Romeo Santos, Adrian Quesada and Kali Uchis. In the last five years, Quesada has released two bolero albums, “Boleros Psicodélicos” and “Boleros Psicodélicos II,” that mix the genre’s classic sounds with elements of psychedelic rock.
“Over the past decade, Boleros de Noche has presented numerous concerts featuring both local and international artists, has brought together thousands of people across the city to bask in the lush orchestration of this music,” said City Councilmember Nithya Raman, who presented Carlos with the honor. “For so many in the Latino community and beyond, this isn’t just music, it’s memory, it’s home, and perhaps most importantly, it’s heritage being carried forward.”
Raised in L.A. County by parents who immigrated from the Mexican state of Oaxaca, Carlos says he first fell in love with live performance and bolero music in his midteens, when he would frequent the now-defunct Teatro los Pinos in South Gate.
He yearned for that same level of comfort and awe at music and wanted to share that with a larger audience. The first iteration of Boleros de Noche took place in 2015 at an art gallery in Echo Park.
“Over the years, I have heard countless stories from audience members who tell me how this music reminds them of their parents, grandparents, first loves and family traditions,” Carlos said Friday at City Hall. “Ten years ago, bolero was rarely part of our city’s cultural conversation, and today bolero programming can be found across Los Angeles, and I’m honored that Boleros de Noche has been a driving force behind its growth.”
Boleros de Noche has sold out shows at the Ford over the last few years and has featured artists such as Gaby Moreno, Marisoul and the legendary trio Los Panchos. In 2025, the event made its debut at Chicago’s historic Symphony Center.
The bolero genre’s popularity and cultural significance has been spotlighted outside of L.A. in recent years as well.
On Dec. 5, 2023, UNESCO, the United Nation’s agency aimed at safeguarding social and cultural foundations, recognized the musical genre as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
As part of Friday’s ceremony, Carlos and his bolero group Los Rebeldes Románticos performed several tunes, including the Mexican bolero classic “Sabor a Mí.”
Last year, Carlos spoke with The Times about his ambitions for Boleros de Noche and the mentality that drives the event series.
“At Boleros de Noche, [I want] for us to speak in Spanish, to feel recognized, to do this music as a celebration for all these artists that unfortunately became background music for a lot of like weddings and quinceañeras,” he said. “How about if we celebrate them and give them recognition? How about if, through my events, I can take people back to the 1940s to my experience at Teatro los Pinos?”
Given recent attacks on Latinos on the local and national levels, Carlos said he hoped his events would create a safe and welcoming gathering place.
“It’s about bolero music. It’s about community. It’s about people. It’s about the musicians,” he said. “Many of the musicians were undocumented. They brought this music to L.A. through their hometowns.”
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