Marshall Chiles - Executive Director
Marshall is the owner, operator and house comedian for The Laughing Skull Lounge. He put togeher this festival in order to help promote smart, fresh comedy to Atlanta and the comedy industry. His comedian credits include Last Comic Standing, Comedy Central, winning various comedy contest, performing in Boston Comedy Festival twice, Glasgow Comedy Festival 2009, and was called "the best feature act I've seen in years" by Dan Mer of the Tempe Improv.
His comedy club credits is building The Funny farm Comedy Club to be one of the top comedy clubs voted by numerous comedians and is re-opening in December 2009. Marshall is also building The Laughing Skull Lounge to be one of the best comedy clubs in the world.
An author, columnist and comedian, Steve Hofstetter is a cult hit on college campuses. Performing at over 100 colleges each of the last few years, Hofstetter has appeared on CBS's Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, ESPN’s Quite Frankly, Showtime’s “White Boyz in the Hood,” VH1's Countdown, NESN's "Comedy All-Stars," E!'s "True Hollywood Story," "Comics Unleashed," and ABC's Barbara Walter's Special. After hosting his own show on Sirius Satellite Radio for two seasons, Hofstetter left to syndicate a sports show now airing on over 150 radio stations each week. Collegehumor.com's original writer, Hofstetter has written for Sports Illustrated, the New York Times, Maxim, and ESPN magazines.
Hofstetter is also known for his business acumen, having produced over a dozen comedy albums, hundreds of live shows, and even a segment of a Barbara Walters Special. He currently serves as a marketing consultant for several comedy clubs, and his "Business of Comedy Seminars" are routinely sold out.
Dan Pasternack - Consultant
Dan Pasternack is a Los Angeles native whose love affair with all things comedy began in his early childhood. He wrote, performed and produced novelty records that were played on the popular Dr. Demento radio program beginning in 1980. He started making short films and videos in 1983 and became a paid intern at Paramount Pictures during the summer of 1985, when he was 16. He went on to pay his way through the USC School of Cinema/Television as a writer and performer during the stand-up comedy boom of the mid to late 1980s and early 1990s.
In 1995, Dan began his career as a TV creative exec and producer under the tutelage of the legendary producer and former network programming whiz Fred Silverman at the Fred Silverman Company. Dan’s career in episodic television continued through the 1990s and into the new millennium supervising the development and production of dozens of TV pilots and series for companies including a newly formed American arm of the British media giant Granada; Barry Diller’s Studios USA (now NBC/Universal); and Basic Elements, an “alternative” pod within the TV comedy hit factory Carsey-Werner. In 2007, Dan moved to Atlanta, Georgia to head content for Turner Broadcasting’s short-lived broadband comedy network Super Deluxe. Along the way, Dan served as co-producer on the Showtime series “Beggars and Choosers” and executive producer on the FX series “Starved”. He is currently executive producer on the Starz original series “Gravity” which is due to premiere in the spring of 2010.
In 2009, Dan returned to stand-up, performing in Atlanta, Los Angeles, Boston and New York with the likes of Kevin Nealon, Robert Klein, Larry Miller, Emo Philips, Roseanne Barr and Garry Shandling. Dan also has donated his time for many years to the TV Academy on their Archive of American Television project, conducting on-camera interviews with numerous industry giants including Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Jonathan Winters, Bob Newhart, Bernie Brillstein, Michael Eisner and Les Moonves. In addition, Dan has written articles for the Academy’s Emmy Magazine and was one of the earliest regular contributing bloggers to The Huffington Post. In April of 2008 Dan and his wife Amy returned home to Atlanta after six and a half weeks in Colombia where they adopted their daughter Abby.
Brian Heffron - Consultant
Brian Heffron is the president of Heffron Talent International and the owner of The Comedy Zone comedy club chain. The Comedy Zone comedy clubs can be found coast to coast and in the Bahamas producing over 130 shows per week. Heffron Talent has a current stable of 1200 top touring comedians from all over the world and produces dozens of celebrity concerts, corporate events and college shows per month. Brian is a mediocre tournament bass fisherman.Brian is in partnership with the McGlohon Theater, Belk Theater, and Knight Theater in Charlotte North Carolina and programs theaters across the country. Heffron Talent currently spends over 150k per month on celebrity talent and has worked with every prominent comedy act in the industry. Most of which Brian feels are overpriced.Brian's true passion is the project he founded 9 years ago with his wife Tammy. Laugh for the Cure has quickly become the premier charity comedy event in the country. He and Tammy host comedy shows featuring some of the finest stand up comedians in the industry. Along with a silent and live auction these shows have raised over 250k to help fight breast cancer. They are held in many cities across the country. Please check out www.laughforthecure.com for more information.
Brian is currently finishing up a construction project in Charlotte, NC that will house a state of the art Comedy Zone and casual dining restaurant. Opening is planned for February first 2010.
Court Sullivan is the founder and editor-in-chief of Points in Case, an online college humor publication reaching almost half a million readers every month. Court has worked closely with hundreds of talented comedy writers over the past 9 years to write and develop original comedy articles, weekly humor columns, and blogs for a college audience around the world. His own long-running "AIM Convos" parody feature helped earn him a top 3 finish in the Yahoo! IM Live competition broadcast on the Yahoo! homepage.