Brian VanHooker
Brian VanHooker is a New York-based writer specializing in comedy, pop culture, food (especially pizza) and long-form oral histories. He is the Senior Staff Writer at CRACKED and was a staff writer at MEL Magazine. He has written for Inside Hook, Inverse, Maxim, Men's Health and more. He's the co-creator of the comic book/cartoon series 'Barnum & Elwood' and 'The Tramp,' an award-winning comedy pilot starring John O'Hurley. He also hosts a TMNT interview podcast called Turtle Tracks and was once called a "Good Guy" by Mr. T.
The Official Sequel to ‘Groundhog Day’ Is a VR Video Game
‘Groundhog Day: Like Father Like Son’ has you play as Phil Connors Jr., who gets trapped in the same time loop as his dad did nearly 30 years earlier
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- By Brian VanHooker
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Noxious Tales of Leslie Nielsen’s Legendary Fart Machine
Or as one of his closest friends puts it, ‘If you could just see the face he made when he did it — it was the best acting he ever did’
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- By Brian VanHooker
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The Legend of ‘Black Bart,’ the Failed ‘Blazing Saddles’ TV Adaptation
The pilot was without Mel Brooks, Cleavon Little and Gene Wilder, but it was far from a soulless retread and actually starred an eventual Oscar winner
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- By Brian VanHooker
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Creating ‘Bob’s Burgers’ Linda Belcher: How John Roberts Became the Funniest Mom on TV
Long before she was the matriarch of the beloved Fox sitcom, she was the hilarious materfamilias of Roberts’ own family
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- By Brian VanHooker
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The Five Best Recurring ‘Kids in the Hall’ Characters
It was a task that would intimidate even the great Paul Bellini
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- By Brian VanHooker
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Marie’s Most Passive Aggressive Mother-in-Law Moments on ‘Everybody Loves Raymond’
Never, ever admit to liking someone else’s braciole more — especially if it’s her daughter-in-law’s
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- By Brian VanHooker
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The Definitive Oral History of ‘Titus’
The traditional sitcom never would have died without the early aughts Fox series choking the life out of it with its brutal honesty and unadulterated laughs. Now, creator and star Christopher Titus, along with the rest of the show’s cast and crew, share how they found poetry and humor in his pain — pissing off network executives all along the way
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- By Brian VanHooker
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‘King of the Hill’: Peggy’s 10 Worst Mispronunciations of Spanish Words
She doesn’t even say ‘Español’ right
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- By Brian VanHooker
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‘Seinfeld’: All the Reasons Jerry Dumped a Woman, Ranked by Pettiness
‘She eats her peas one at a time!’
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- By Brian VanHooker
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A Perfectly Calm Oral History of ‘Pierre Bernard’s Recliner of Rage’ from ‘Late Night with Conan O’Brien’
‘Comfortable and furious, Conan’
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- By Brian VanHooker
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How the World Came to Believe That the Three Stooges Were on Hitler’s Death List
Their 1940 short, ‘You Natzy Spy!,’ was the first American comedy to satirize the führer — or any world leader for that matter. But it did satirize him so ruthlessly that he wanted them dead?
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- By Brian VanHooker
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On Its 20th Anniversary, We Forced Two Kangaroo Experts to Watch ‘Kangaroo Jack’
In a shocking twist, the movie knows practically nothing about actual kangaroos
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- By Brian VanHooker
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‘Half Baked’ Turns 25: A Highly Official Account of the Stoner Comedy Classic from Director Tamra Davis
The woman behind the camera on what the cast was smoking, how Snoop Dogg wanted none of it and why love trumped weed in the end
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- By Brian VanHooker
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There Are No Less Than 15 'Breaking Bad' Easter Eggs in ‘Malcolm in the Middle’
Did Hal’s goofy fatherly adventures foretell the saga of Walter White?
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- By Brian VanHooker
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‘Seinfeld’: 10 Times George Was Wrong and 10 Times George Was Right
Finding the ‘wrongs’ was way easier than finding the ‘rights’
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- By Brian VanHooker
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We Forced Jackson Galaxy to Watch ‘Cats’
‘Thank you for making me want to crawl inside my own couch and disappear’
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- By Brian VanHooker
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Beavis and Butt-Head Do Marvel: An Oral History of the MTV Duo’s Comic Book
For 28 issues in the mid-1990s, Marvel Comics got really, really stupid
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- By Brian VanHooker
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‘King of the Hill’: Luanne’s Love Interests, Ranked
They were all kinda losers, but only one of them was blown up at the Mega Lo Mart
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- By Brian VanHooker
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Behind the Music of ‘The Bob’s Burgers Movie’
The show’s creator and movie’s co-director Loren Bouchard explains how he got the big-screen adaptation of the beloved cartoon to really sing
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- By Brian VanHooker
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An Oral History of ‘Camp Candy,’ John Candy’s Saturday Morning Cartoon
At the height of his fame, the Canadian funnyman wasn’t just on the big screen, he also spent three seasons on the small screen as a cartoon camp counselor
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- By Brian VanHooker
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