Elliott Kalan

Elliot Kalan (born 1981, New York City) is an American comedy writer and comedian. Kalan is co-founder of the comedy group the Hypocrites with Brock Mahan ( [http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2076495/] ) and a segment producer on the "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart".

Kalan grew up in New Jersey and attended New York University, majoring in screenwriting. Today, Kalan lives in New York City and hosts a live talk/variety stage show, "The Primetime Kalan", which has had several names and has been performed in multiple venues.

Kalan originally called his show "The Midnight Kalan". Fittingly, it was performed at midnight in Juvie Hall, a small NoHo black box theater. When the show moved to a start time of 10:00 pm, it was renamed "The New Kalan Show".

The show was created by Kalan, producer Erik Marcisak, and director Joe Guercio. Under the current title, the show is written and performed by Kalan, Marcisak, and Dan McCoy, with additional writing and support from Brock Mahan, and direction by Marcisak.

Kalan's "Daily Show" co-workers who have appeared on his show include Stephen Colbert, Samantha Bee, and Rob Corddry. Kalan's love of comics has influenced his choice of guests, demonstrated when he got Evan Dorkin to be a guest.

Kalan occasionally appears in bit parts on "The Daily Show" and provides voice-over narration for "The Decider" comic-book segments. He was instrumental in putting together the "gay cowboy" montage (a comedic series of clips from classic westerns, illustrating that the gay content in "Brokeback Mountain" may be nothing new), when Jon Stewart hosted the 78th Academy Awards. Kalan also writes a weekly column for the free morning NYC-area daily "Metro".

Following a column he wrote in the August 3, 2007 issue of the Metro, Kalan was fired for writing a self-deprecating joke about the increasing obsolescence of the newspaper industry. This was followed by a brief article in New York Magazine on August 20, 2007 about the incident, which was heavily publicized on internet blogs including Media Bistro, Huffington Post, and Gawker. Many blog postings about the incident imply that the Metro violated basic principles of journalism and freedom of expression in firing Kalan.

External links

* [http://www.thehypocrites.net The Hypocrites]
* [http://www.toobeautiful.org/waywo_elliottkalan.html Biography of Kalan]
* [http://www.theapiary.org/archives/2005/09/recap_the_prime.html The Apiary - article on Kalan's show]