"It's in the rules: Every comedian will get at least one major documentary dedicated to them before we've all departed this earth. And quite a few of them will have been directed, co-directed, or produced by Judd Apatow, who's already given us Mel Brooks: The 99 Year Old Man, The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling, and George Carlin's American Dream."
"At first glance, the idea of Apatow making a film (alongside co-director Neil Berkeley) about Maria Bamford might not seem like a particularly noteworthy endeavor. Bamford, 55, is an active comedian still in the middle of an influential and admittedly offbeat career. Isn't it too early to try and provide perspective and context on her life and work?"
""Ninety-nine percent of comedians will tell you they have anxieties, and you understand it's a shtick," Conan O'Brien says in the film. "Maria is like a lobster whose shell has been removed." As Bamford herself puts it while receiving a prescription for the tremors she gets from her mood stabilizers: "Weakness is the brand.""
Judd Apatow and co-director Neil Berkeley created Paralyzed by Hope, a documentary focusing on Maria Bamford and premiering at Sundance. The film approaches Bamford with genuine curiosity instead of a predetermined thesis, probing the tensions between mainstream visibility and an acquired, confessional comedic voice. Bamford foregrounds mental-health struggles, nervous breakdowns, suicide attempts, and fraught parental relationships as core material for her humor. Her career includes voice roles, notable Target ads, and the Netflix series Lady Dynamite, yet her comedy remains unconventional and emotionally exposed. Commentary contrasts typical comedic shtick about anxiety with Bamford's raw vulnerability as a defining trait.
Read at Vulture
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]