Trans am band ed helms biography

The motor that drives Ed Helms’ latest comedy, “Together Together,” is an impending birth.

Helms’s Matt, single and in his mid-40s, will soon become a father via a surrogate, Anna (Patti Harrison).

A hit at Sundance, “Together Together” follows this duo through each trimester while giving Helms another comic register.

“When I first read the script, I was immediately enchanted (I think that is the right word). I didn’t know what to expect,” Helms, 47, said in a Zoom interview.

“I was immediately struck by how simple the story was. And yet at the same time poignant and hilarious. The thing that I was most impressed by is that it never took the turns that I expected.

“It was always surprising me! In how these characters were talking to one another and the types of things they were saying and in the sort of narrative twists and turns it never did what I expected it to do. And I loved that.

“It’s also,” he added, “a very sort of ambient, peaceful movie. As a comedian, that’s intimidating and a little bit scary. But that’s part of the reason this felt like an exciting challenge.”

What’s also exciting is that with Harrison, a trans actress, writer and standup, “Together” marks a historical step forward: She’s the first trans actress to star in a film as a cis character.

“For a single cis male like Matt to pursue parenthood through surrogacy, I’m sure it’s out there a lot. But it’s not a story that’s told very often,” Helms said.

“I certainly know families that have used surrogates — it’s much more common to see with gay couples. But people, single middle-aged men, who have seen the movie have told me that this is something that they’ve thought about quite a lot.

“I think it is something that a lot of people can connect to. Even if it’s just not out there as mu

Find Andy Greene’s book: The Office: The Untold Story of the Greatest Sitcom of the 2000s: An Oral History

As the first season of NBC’s The Office drew to a close in the spring of 2005, the show was on life support. Much of the press had dismissed it as a pale retread of the groundbreaking Ricky Gervais-led U.K. original, and its ratings had fallen each week it had been on the air. But over the next two seasons, the series, starring Steve Carell as the manager of a Scranton, Pennsylvania, paper company called Dunder Mifflin, gradually found its footing. Going into its fourth season, The Office had strong ratings and serious momentum, despite a looming writers’ strike that would eventually shut down most of Hollywood (including a good chunk of that season of The Office). But no one could have quite predicted how great the season’s 13th episode was. On April 10th, 2008, TheOffice topped itself with its best half-hour ever – and perhaps the best comedy episode of the decade.

Taking the action away from the Dunder Mifflin office, “The Dinner Party” provides a rare glimpse into the home life of regional manager Michael Scott (Carell) as he hosts an impromptu get-together for three couples: salesman Jim Halpert and receptionist Pam Beesly, salesman Andy Bernard and accountant Angela Martin, and party-crasher Dwight Schrute and his former babysitter/current lover, Melvina. The previous season had seen Jim and Pam finally get together after years of flirtation; Michael had also found love – with Jan Levinson, his former boss. Despite some huge differences with her new boyfriend – she was an accomplished, Type-A corporate executive, he an affable doofus – Jan moved from New York to Scranton and into Michael’s cheesy condo. The dinner party was Jan and Michael’s attempt to show off their happy home;

from the it-should-be dept

Wed, May 25th 2011 10:01am - Mike Masnick

We just wrote about how the judge in the Hangover 2/Mike Tyson tattoo copyright case had said that she wouldn’t block the release of the movie, but would let the lawsuit proceed and indicated that the tattoo artist would likely prevail. I thought she just meant on proving the initial infringement, but other reports are saying that pretty clearly mocked Warner Bros.’ defenses, including fair use on the tattoo:

Judge Perry briefly discussed the defense’s claim of Fair Use, opining that there was no parody or transformative use, the entire tattoo in its original form was used (not in any parody form), the tattoo was not necessary to the basic plot of the movie, and that Warner Brothers used the tattoo substantially in its marketing of the movie.

This seems problematic for a bunch of reasons, but one part that troubles me (and we had some of this discussion in our comments) is whether or not the tattoo is parody. Frankly, I can’t see how it’s not parody. The reason that people claim that it’s not transformative or parody is that it’s an identical copy and thus isn’t parodying the original tattoo. But that seems entirely wrong. While it’s the tattoo itself that’s copyrighted, you have to look at the context of the tattoo — and in this case that includes the fact that it’s on Mike Tyson’s face. Putting it on Ed Helms’ character (in many ways the antithesis of Tyson’s character) is a clear parody of Tyson and his tattoo. I have trouble seeing how you could argue otherwise. If the point of the tattoo on Helms’ face wasn’t to parody the same tattoo on Tyson’s face, then what’s the joke here?

Here's one from the annals of pop-culture trivia: It turns out that comedic actor Ed Helms (of "The Office" and The Hangover fame) has post-rock roots. Can you place this image?

It's from the video for Trans Am's "Futureworld", off their 1999 album by the same name. Which Helms himself directed, and cameoed in (look for him playing the banjo around the 2:15 mark).

According to Trans Am's label, Thrill Jockey, Helms also helped design the cover of the band's 1998 album The Surveillance, pictured above.