Dave Anthony

Anthony began performing stand-up comedy in 1989[12] and was a regular at the Holy City Zoo in San Francisco.[13][14] It was a long and difficult process.[13] Anthony struggled with anger issues he traced to his upbringing.[13] Although he wasn’t angry on stage, Anthony could still scare audiences with his intensity.[15] He eventually changed from joke-telling to storytelling, a style he finds more authentic. As he honed his storytelling abilities, Anthony, without even realizing, was eventually doing a show that was closer to an Australian or UK style one-man show than to the American style of joke telling.[12][15]

Anthony has done stand-up comedy on various late night shows including Jimmy Kimmel Live and The Late Late Show [16] as well as on Comedy Central.[16] He has performed stand-up in every state in the continental US[11] and all over the world, including the Just for Laughs Montreal Comedy Festival[17] and the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.[18] In under 24 hours, his Kickstarter raised enough funds for him to get to Melbourne.[18] In 2015, the Melbourne Herald Sun gave his show Hot Head a 4-star review and called it "hugely enjoyable."[19] Also in 2015, he appeared on the nationally televised Cracker Night as part of Sydney Comedy Festival 2015.[20] His 2015 comedy tour and subsequent album, Hot Head, were based around his difficult childhood.[13][19] He has released two comedy albums, Hot Head and Shame Chamber.[13][21] Both albums charted on the Billboard Comedy Album Chart -- Hot Head at #4 and Shame Chamber at #5.[22]

Anthony has acted on television shows, in films, and commercials. Television programs he’s appeared on include The Office, Scare Tactics, Arrested Development, Maron, Hello Ladies, Boston Legal, Veep, Hidden America with Jonah Ray, Comedy Bang Bang, and Entourage. He was a panelist twice on @midnight.[16][23][24]

In 2006, Anthony's first staff writing job was on The Greg Behrendt Show, a daytime syndicated talk show. He also appeared on the show playing comedic characters, including the recurring character Waffle Man. He’s worked on several pilots with Bob Odenkirk.[25]

Anthony had multiple job titles on the show Maron on IFC. He played an exaggerated version of himself[23][26] and his wife was played by Amy Smart.[27] In the second season of the show, Anthony was added as a staff writer.[26] In the fourth season, he became the show's story editor and directed an episode.[26]

Anthony has written for a number of different mediums. He was the political editor for SuicideGirls,[11][28] wrote for the Comedy Film Nerds website,[29] and had a blog called Stop All Monsters.[30] As a television writer, Anthony has written on AMC's Talking Dead, Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis, Pretend Time, and The Greg Behrendt Show.[23]

In 2015, Anthony was nominated for a Writers Guild of America Award for Outstanding Script in the category of Episodic Comedy for writing the episode of Maron titled "Racegate.[31] In 2019, Anthony wrote an episode of Deadly Class for Syfy and was credited as co-producer.[23] He was a story consultant on the scripted audio drama Bronzeville written by Josh Olson and starring Laurence Fishburne.[32] He has written a screenplay based on the Piedras Negras jailbreak.[33]

In 2009, Anthony’s son was born and Anthony became a stay-at-home dad.[34][25] Around the same time, he began to feel like he was washed up and would never achieve his career goals.[35] After listening to the podcast Uhh Yeah Dude, Anthony was inspired to start a podcast of his own.[25] He approached his friend, comedian Greg Behrendt,[25] with whom he’d hosted an internet radio show called Manversation on Comedy World Radio in 2001.[36] Together they hosted the podcast Walking the Room from 2010 to 2014.[37] Anthony was the producer and editor of the show, which was named one of the AV Club’s best podcasts of 2012.[38] The podcast was recorded in Behrendt’s closet for sound quality.[18] The pair started referring to the podcast as a “podcuddle” and listeners as “cuddlaz.”[14][18] On the podcast, Anthony and Behrendt discussed the disillusionment they had with their careers and decided to just tell the truth about everything. They shared stories from their personal lives and Anthony contributed tales about his wacky neighbors.[18]

When Anthony and Behrendt learned that there was a podcast in Australia called TOFOP that had a similar vibe to their podcast, they invited the hosts, Wil Anderson and Charlie Clausen, to be guests on Walking the Room.[15] This collaboration led to Walking the Room gaining a significant following in Australia.[39] In 2012, Anthony and Behrendt appeared on stage with Anderson and Clausen during the Melbourne International Comedy Festival in an event billed as Superpod.[40] The recording was immediately lost by the Festival. The four podcasters discussed the loss that night on the episode The Death of Superpod.[41]

Anthony regularly appears as a guest on other podcasts, including FOFOP -- a podcast started by Wil Anderson when his TOFOP cohost, Charlie Clausen, was unavailable to record for an extended period. Anthony was the first guest host,[42] resulting in the endearing nickname "Guest Charlie Number One."[15] Anthony guested on the podcast The Naughty Show, where Gareth Reynolds was a co-host. [13] The pair hit it off and Anthony invited Reynolds to fill in for Behrendt on Walking the Room a couple of times.[13] Anthony has said that Reynolds is the funniest person he knows.[13]

As Walking the Room was coming to an end, Anthony started a new podcast called The Dollop.[18] He was tired of talking about himself and decided that the new podcast would be more structured.[13] The original plan was to have a different comedian sit in each week, and Anthony invited Reynolds to be the first guest.[13][25] As soon as fans heard the episode, they overwhelmingly told Anthony that Reynolds was the man to stick with.[25] Reynolds accepted Anthony's offer to become the permanent co-host. The Dollop is on the All Things Comedy network.[43]

On The Dollop, Anthony presents an event or person from American history that he has researched, to Reynolds, who usually has no idea what the topic is going to be about.[44] Reynolds then reacts and the pair improvise as they go.[39][44] When they tour, Anthony presents a topic from the state or country they are in.[39] The podcast was originally released bi-weekly, the hosts then changed it to drop weekly.[45] Anthony has said that recording The Dollop is the most fun he’s ever had.[46] Fans of the show have taken to calling themselves Rubes,[47] an homage to one of Anthony’s early subjects, baseball player and amazing moron Rube Waddell.[48]

Since its beginning in 2014,[49] The Dollop has toured across the United States,[50] Europe[51] and Australia, where the podcast has repeatedly sold out theaters.[25][52][39] Australian comedian Wil Anderson has been a repeat guest on The Dollop, contributing to the podcast’s popularity in that country.[53]

Anthony tells stories from points of view that are rarely represented in the history books -- including those of laborers, slaves, women and the poor.[39][54] He believes that by exposing people to a non-whitewashed version of history, one they weren’t given in school, he will open people’s minds.[54] Illustrating the parallels between historical events and what is happening today, showing how history repeats itself, is another way Anthony educates listeners.[39] Anthony credits Howard Zinn's book A People's History of the United States for radicalizing him[25] and now he’s looking to do the same for listeners of his podcast.[25][28]

By repeatedly calling his cohost as “Gary”,[55][56] Anthony set in motion a series of events that has culminated in thousands of people referring to Gareth Reynolds as Gary[57][58] including one Australian reporter who wrote an entire article repeatedly referring to Reynolds as "Gary."[59] At live Dollop shows, the audience can be counted on to chant “Gary” over and over as the hosts take the stage.[60][61]

Despite jokingly claiming that Reynolds is his nemesis,[62] the pair have collaborated on a number of projects including a book based on their podcast titled The United States of Absurdity: Untold Stories from American History, which was released in 2017.[63] They put out a limited-run series of England and UK Dollop episodes.[64] They also make a web series called Trash Toons, in which they watch and discuss old cartoons[65] and have put out webcasts of political coverage.[66][67][68] In 2020, they did a special episode of The Dollop on Comedy Gives Back to raise money for comedians affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.[69]

Since 2019, Anthony has co-hosted the podcast The West Wing Thing with writer Josh Olson.[70][71] The hosts are working their way through the TV show The West Wing one episode at a time and then using their leftist perspective to illustrate how that show has damaged American society.[70]

After fans of Anthony's podcast Walking the Room flew from around the world to be at a live show, Anthony thought this could be something bigger.[35] So in 2012, Anthony, along with Graham Elwood and Chris Mancini of the Comedy Film Nerds podcast and Andy Wood, producer of the Bridgetown Comedy Festival, founded the Los Angeles Podcast Festival.[72]

The podcast festival ran for six years[73] and featured many comedians including Marc Maron, Aisha Tyler, Doug Benson, Greg Proops and Paul F. Tompkins.[72] My Favorite Murder taped its first-ever live broadcast at the festival.[74] Their guest to tell a hometown murder story was Dave Anthony, who talked about a serial killer who stalked women on hiking trails near San Francisco.[75] After the Sofitel Los Angeles at Beverly Hills put a member of the Podfest community’s safety at risk, the festival moved venues and Anthony publicly recommended against staying at the hotel.[75]

On July 9, 2015, Alan Bellows posted a letter titled "A Special Note to the Writers at The Dollop", accusing Anthony of plagiarizing Damn Interesting's content for use on The Dollop.[76][77] In response, Anthony stated on Reddit, "I will admit to making a mistake here that has led to this situation. And it’s a Dollop worthy mistake. While every story is sourced, I have not posted them because we have had no official website. I now have one and am putting up all the sources and creating links of the episodes. I apologize for this. But The Dollop isn’t plagiarism, and it isn’t copyright infringement."[56] Writing about the incident for Plagiarism Today, author Jonathan Bailey concluded, "there is no debate that the podcast took text and facts written by others and used them, often verbatim, without attribution. That is the definition of plagiarism."[78]

On August 25, 2019, Josh Levin posted a thread to Twitter accusing Anthony of plagiarizing one of Levin's articles[79] for a Dollop show at Chicago's Athenaeum Theatre in 2017.[25] Levin's article was cited by The Dollop in the show notes but was not mentioned in the recording. Levin stated that there was no way to click on the sources in the episode description, but it was then shown that Levin did not have the setting correct on his phone and that the sources were easily accessible.[80] In a reply to the thread, author Paul Brown stated that The Dollop had also plagiarized sections of his book The Rocketbelt Caper for a 2017 episode.[81] Brown's book was cited in The Dollop show notes but not mentioned on the recording.[82]

The Dollop hosts have stated it is a fair use podcast.[83] Anthony told the San Francisco Chronicle, "we want people to find the source material and know who's writing it. The whole reason I'm doing the podcast is to get these stories out there because they're important."[25]