Rita Rudner

Miami, Florida, USA

Biography

Rita Rudner is an American comedian, actress and writer. She began her career as a dancer, appearing in several Broadway musicals, but switched to stand up comedy at the age of 25 when she saw a gap in the market for female comedians in New York City. She became one of the premier American female comedians to come to success in the 1980s and '90s and at one point Rudner was working successfully both in her native America (with HBO specials and acclaimed appearances on The Tonight Show) and in the UK (with her own six part TV series for BBC2). In 1989 Rudner married her long term partner, the English producer Martin Bergman and together they have collaborated on numerous films, writing and producing Peter's Friends in 1992 which starred Kenneth Branagh, Fry and Laurie, Emma Thompson, Imelda Staunton and Rudner herself, and in Bergman's 1995 directorial debut A Month In The Country which she starred in alongside Jack Lemmon, Dudley Moore and Richard Lewis. Presently she has the longest running solo comedy show in Las Vegas history a twelve year run with over 2,000 shows and one and a half million tickets sold to date.

Movies

Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist is an American animated series that originally ran on Comedy Central from May 28, 1995 to December 24, 1999—with a final set of three shelved episodes airing in 2002—starring Jonathan Katz, Jon Benjamin, and Laura Silverman. The show was created by a Burbank, California production company Popular Arts Entertainment, with Jonathan Katz and Tom Snyder, developed and first made by Popular Arts for HBO Downtown Productions. Boston-based Tom Snyder Productions became the hands-on production company, and the episodes were usually produced by Katz and Loren Bouchard. The show was computer animated in a crude, easily recognizable style produced with the software Squigglevision in which all persons and animate objects are colored and have constantly squiggling outlines, while most other inanimate objects are static and usually gray in color. The original challenge Popular Arts faced was how to repurpose recorded stand-up comedy material. To do so they based Dr. Katz's patients on stand-up comics for the first several episodes, simply having them recite their stand-up acts. The secondary challenge was how to affordably animate on cable TV at the time. Snyder had Squigglevision, an inexpensive means of getting animation on cable, which could not afford traditional animation processes. A partnership between Popular Arts, Tom Snyder Productions and Jonathan Katz was formed and Dr. Katz: Professional Therapist was born.

More info
Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist
1995