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The real stand-ups who helped punch up Bradley Cooper’s comedy-drama ‘Is This Thing On?’

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It was abundantly clear to actor-director Bradley Cooper that if “Is This Thing On?,” his comedy-drama set in New York’s stand-up scene, lacked authenticity, the film would fail. With the iconic Comedy Cellar at its heart, he found the key to unlocking that — by casting several of the real-life comedians who regularly take the stage there. Among them were two women at the top of their game right now with sold-out shows and substantial social media followings: Chloe Radcliffe and Jordan Jensen.

“Bradley fell in love with the Comedy Cellar and the relationships that go on there,” Jensen recalls.

‘Is This Thing On?’ Review: The art of finding therapy through comedy

Is This Thing On? follows couple Alex (Will Arnett) and Tess Novak (Laura Dern), who have both amicably agreed to end their marriage. As they try to navigate this new change in their lives, Alex finds healing through performing open mics at local stand-up comedy shows. He turns out to be quite good at making people laugh, and while using comedy as a form of therapy, Alex and Tess begin to see they’re more compatible apart than they ever were together.

When it comes to things that tend to make people unhappy, I imagine divorce is pretty high up on that list. It’s even worse when the two partners have been married for decades, and if that’s not bad enough, have young kids on top of it. At a glance, it’s not a good situation for anybody, but just like marriage isn’t all sunshine and roses, perhaps divorce isn’t all doom and gloom.

How the life of UK comic John Bishop became Bradley Cooper’s latest directing effort ‘Is This Thing On?’

Screen quizzes Cooper, writer/star Will Arnett, writer Mark Chappell and producer Kris Thykier about the film’s zigzag production journey

It was the autumn of 2022, and Bradley Cooper was on a short break between two shooting blocks of his film Maestro, and returning from Los Angeles to New York. Will Arnett – his friend for more than two decades – was flying in the same direction to meet up with his London-based writing partner Mark Chappell and continue work on their screenplay for a relationship-comedy film.

Taking the same flight together, Cooper asked Arnett what he was working on. It was then that Arnett shared the premise of Is This Thing On?, and its perhaps unlikely inspiration: how Liverpool-born pharmaceutical salesman John Bishop, feeling low during the dissolution of his marriage, had entered a Manchester bar hosting an open-mic comedy night, put his name down on the performer list to evade the entrance charge, and found himself in front of an audience improvising material about his own divorce. Bishop returned to the stage in subsequent weeks, using stand-up as personal therapy, and finally pivoting to a career in comedy. Along the way, stand-up also provided the key to mending his broken marriage.

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