Draft:Julie Seabaugh

Julie Seabaugh is an American journalist, author, producer, and documentary filmmaker whose work chronicles stand-up comedy and explores the relationship between humor, personal experience, adversity, and resilience. A professional comedy journalist for more than two decades, Seabaugh wrote for The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Rolling Stone, The Hollywood Reporter, Variety, GQ, The A.V. Club, Entertainment Weekly, The Village Voice, HuffPost, Vulture, Spin, Revolver, Alternative Press, Time Out, L.A. Weekly, Seattle Weekly, Nashville Scene, Riverfront Times, Phoenix New Times, Dallas Observer, Denver Westword, Houston Press, Miami New Times, and Las Vegas Sun. She served as an A&E staff writer at Las Vegas Weekly and has reported extensively on comedians, comedy clubs, festivals, television, film, and the business and culture of stand-up comedy.

Seabaugh's journalism encompassed profiles, interviews, cultural reporting, criticism, and long-form features. Her subjects have included George Carlin, Joan Rivers, Carl Reiner, Mitch Hedberg, Dave Attell, Marc Maron, Amy Schumer, Michael Che, Bridget Everett, Brody Stevens, Wyatt Cenac, David Wain, and The Amazing Johnathan, among numerous other performers. Her reporting has covered the development of regional comedy scenes, the economics and infrastructure of stand-up, representation within the comedy industry, the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on performers and venues, and the ways comedians incorporate personal hardship into their work.

Recurring themes in Seabaugh's work include grief, trauma, loss, recovery, mental health, identity, family, social change, and resilience. Her profiles frequently place a comedian's material within the larger circumstances of the performer's life, examining how personal experiences become creative material and how comedy can provide a means of confronting experiences that are otherwise difficult to articulate. Her work on comedians including Mitch Hedberg and Brody Stevens has also contributed to the documentation of comedy history and the personal lives behind well-known performers.

Seabaugh's books include Ringside at Roast Battle: The First Five Years of L.A.'s Fight Club for Comedians, which chronicles the origins and development of the Roast Battle at the Comedy Store in Los Angeles. Her collection A Tight 20: Two Decades of Comedy Journalism brings together selections from her reporting and profiles of comedians and other figures in the comedy world.

Seabaugh co-authored The Hardest Part of Schizophrenia Is Spelling Schizophrenia with comedian Byron Bowers, published by Grand Central Publishing. The memoir examines Bowers's childhood, family, experiences of loss and adversity, mental health, spirituality, and development as a comedian.

Seabaugh moved from journalism into documentary filmmaking with directing Too Soon: Comedy After 9/11, a 2021 feature documentary. The film examines how comedians responded to the September 11 attacks and the role of comedy in confronting tragedy and collective trauma. Its subject connects to recurring themes in Seabaugh's journalism, including the use of humor to process traumatic events and the relationship between comedy and survival. The documentary premiered at the TLC Chinese Theatre as part of the Dancing With FIlms Festival and aired on Vice TV for two years in the United States and Australia.

She subsequently created and produced Are We Good?, a documentary about comedian Marc Maron following the death of his partner, filmmaker Lynn Shelton. The film follows Maron's grief, return to stand-up comedy, and development of new material while examining loss, creativity, relationships, and personal change. Are We Good? premiered at South by Southwest and the Tribeca Festival and is available through The Criterion Collection.

Seabaugh has also produced audio documentaries about comedians, including Hope on Top: A Mitch Hedberg Oral History for SiriusXM's Comedy Central channel and Positive Connections: A Brody Stevens Oral History for SiriusXM's Raw Dog Comedy Hits. Her work on comedy history also includes liner notes for the 50 Years of the Comedy Store vinyl box set.

Across journalism, books, documentary film, and audio, Seabaugh's work focuses on documenting comedians as both performers and people, with particular attention to the intersections of humor, hardship, creativity, loss, recovery, and resilience.

Selected works

Documentary films

• Too Soon: Comedy After 9/11 (2021) — director
• Are We Good? — creator, producer, story editor

Books

• Ringside at Roast Battle: The First Five Years of L.A.'s Fight Club for Comedians
• A Tight 20: Two Decades of Comedy Journalism
• The Hardest Part of Schizophrenia Is Spelling Schizophrenia — with Byron Bowers

SiriusXM audio documentaries

• Hope on Top: A Mitch Hedberg Oral History — producer and host
• Positive Connections: A Brody Stevens Oral History — producer and host

Other work

• Liner notes, 50 Years of the Comedy Store vinyl box set