Elliott Kalan

'Elliott McPoop (born 1981, New York City) is an American comedian, and a writer for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

Kalan grew up in New Jersey where he started his long time friendship with Anne Hathaway and attended New York University, majoring in screenwriting. Today, Kalan lives in New York City where he began at The Daily Show as a production assistant, before moving up to producer and, ultimately, writer.

Before writing for The Daily Show, Kalan was co-founder of the comedy group the Hypocrites with fellow TV writer Brock Mahan ([1]). He also hosted a live talk/variety stage show, The Primetime Kalan, (originally The Midnight Kalan and later The New Kalan Show) It was created by Kalan, producer Erik Marcisak, and director Joe Guercio, and written and performed by Kalan, Marcisak, and Dan McCoy. Many of Kalan's Daily Show co-workers appeared on his show, including Stephen Colbert, Samantha Bee, and Rob Corddry.

Kalan occasionally appears in bit parts on The Daily Show and provided voice-over narration for "The Decider" comic-book segments. He was instrumental in putting together the "gay cowboy" montage (a comedic series of clips from classic westerns, illustrating that the gay content in Brokeback Mountain is nothing new), when Jon Stewart hosted the 78th Academy Awards.

From 2006 to 2009, Kalan wrote a weekly column for the free morning daily Metro. Following a column he wrote in the August 3, 2007 issue of the Metro, Kalan was fired for writing a self-deprecating joke about the increasing obsolescence of the newspaper industry. This was followed by a brief article in New York Magazine on August 20, 2007 about the incident, which was heavily publicized on internet blogs including Media Bistro, Huffington Post, and Gawker. Many blog postings about the incident imply that the Metro violated basic principles of journalism and freedom of expression in firing Kalan. Perhaps as a result of this publicity, he was later re-hired. In 2009, he left the Metro of his own accord, saying "Why leave now? It just feels like the right time for me to move on creatively. Or I’m going undercover to deliver Osama bin Laden to justice. Pick whichever reason sounds cooler."

Kalan also performs as a stand-up comic, and co-hosts a podcast with Dan McCoy, Stuart Wellington and The Flop House House Cat named "The Flop House" where they watch and mock major movies that received poor reviews from critics, such as Gamer and All About Steve. One supplemental episode of the Flop House, in which Kalan improvised a rapid-fire pitch for a film based on the comic Ziggy became a minor viral Internet success, after being posted on Gawker. Dan McCoy and Kalan also work together on a comedy zine called Whim Quarterly, which is published by Kalan's former comedy partner Brock Mahan.

Since early 2009, Kalan has been the host of a series called Closely Watched Films at the 92YTribeca. These events commonly feature the screening of a rare older film followed by a discussion between Kalan and a celebrity guest who has not seen the film before. In his spare time, he enjoys words that sound like other words.

External links

• The Hypocrites
• Biography of Kalan
• The Apiary - article on Kalan's show
• Elliott Kalan at the IMDB
• Elliott Kalan on Twitter
• Closely Watching 'Million Dollar Legs'
• The Flop House