Dave Anthony

David Sean Anthony (born August 26, 1967) is an American comedian, actor, screenwriter, and podcaster.

Early life

Anthony was born on August 26, 1967, and raised in the town of Fairfax in Marin County, California. He said Marin County was "super rich and I was poor." He attended Marin Catholic High School.

He is open about his childhood and growing up with a neglectful, alcoholic, lawyer father and an emotionally unavailable mother who was raised by alcoholics. Many times as a child, Anthony was left sitting in the car for hours while his father drank in a bar. He cites his neglectful childhood as the source of his mental health and anger problems, and based his 2015 comedy tour and subsequent album Hot Head around this topic.

Anthony became politically active as a teenager after a teacher gave him a copy of Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. He worked on political campaigns but said "most of them lost."

Career

Anthony began performing stand-up comedy in 1989. He said that the fact that Robin Williams was also from Marin was "a big deal to me." Anthony began working as a stand up in San Francisco, then New York, and now Los Angeles. After moving to Los Angeles, Anthony also began working as an actor, writer and podcaster.

Podcasting

Anthony was inspired to start a podcast after listening to Uhh Yeah Dude. Anthony is best known in recent years for the comedy-history podcast The Dollop, which he co-hosts with comedian Gareth Reynolds. Anthony had planned to have a different comedian as a guest each episode, but after Reynolds was the guest on the first episode, the overwhelming response from listeners on social media told him that Reynolds was the man to stick with. Reynolds accepted Anthony's offer to become the permanent co-host.

On The Dollop, Anthony presents a notable event or person from American history to Reynolds, who usually has no prior knowledge of what the topic will be. The podcast is on the All Things Comedy Network. Anthony has said the Reynolds is the funniest person he knows. The two wrote a book based on the podcast titled The United States of Absurdity: Untold Stories from American History, which was released in 2017. The Dollop has toured across the United States, Europe and Australia, where the podcast has repeatedly sold out theaters. Anthony and Reynolds also collaborated on the web series Trash Toons, in which they watch and discuss old cartoons.

Anthony was the creator, producer, and editor of Walking the Room, a podcast that he co-hosted with comedian Greg Behrendt from 2010 to 2014. They had previously hosted a show together on the Comedy World Radio Network in 2001. They started the podcast to discuss the disillusionment they had with their careers and decided to "just be as honest as we can about everything -- about what's going on with our careers, about the kids, about, like, all of it." After Anthony and Behrendt learned that there was a podcast in Australia called TOFOP that had a similar feel to their podcast, they invited the hosts, Wil Anderson and Charlie Clausen, to be guests on Walking the Room. This collaboration led to Walking the Room gaining a significant following in Australia. In 2012, Anthony and Behrendt appeared on stage with Anderson and Clausen during the Melbourne International Comedy Festival in an event billed as Superpod. The recording was immediately lost by the Festival. The four podcasters discussed the loss that night on the episode The Death of Superpod.

Anthony regularly appears as a guest on other podcasts, including FOFOP -- a podcast started by Wil Anderson when his TOFOP cohost, Charlie Clausen, wasn't available to record. Anthony was the first guest host, resulting in the endearing nickname "Guest Charlie Number One".

Since 2019, Anthony has co-hosted the podcast The West Wing Thing with Oscar nominated writer Josh Olson.

Television

Anthony has had numerous acting roles on television shows, and in films and commercials. He has acted in various television programs including The Office, Scare Tactics, Arrested Development, Maron, Hello Ladies, Boston Legal, Veep, Hidden America with Jonah Ray, Comedy Bang Bang, and Entourage. He was a panelist twice on @midnight.

As a writer, Anthony worked on pilots with Bob Odenkirk. In 2006, Anthony's first staff writing job was on the The Greg Behrendt Show, a daytime syndicated talk show. He also appeared on the show as comedic characters, including the recurring character Waffle Man.

Anthony played a recurring character on Maron on IFC which was an exaggerated version of himself. Amy Smart played his wife. Anthony had known Marc Maron since the 1990s when they worked together as stand-up comedians. In the second season of the show, Anthony was added as a staff writer. In the fourth season, he became the show's story editor and directed an episode. In 2015, Anthony was nominated for a WGA Award for Outstanding Script in the category of Episodic Comedy for writing the episode of Maron titled "Racegate."

Anthony has written for a number of different mediums. He was a contributing writer for SuicideGirls and the Comedy Film Nerds websites, and had a blog called Stop All Monsters. As a television writer, Anthony has written on AMC's Talking Dead, Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis, Pretend Time, and The Greg Behrendt Show. In 2019, Anthony wrote an episode of Deadly Class for Syfy and was credited as co-producer.

Stand up

Anthony began performing stand-up comedy in 1989 and was a regular at the Holy City Zoo. He called it "a long and difficult process." He has done stand-up comedy on various late night shows including Jimmy Kimmel Live and The Late Late Show.

Anthony has performed stand-up all over the world, including the Just for Laughs Montreal Comedy Festival and the Melbourne International Comedy Festival in 2015, where the Herald Sun gave his show Hot Head a 4 star review and called it "Hugely Enjoyable." In 2015, he also appeared on the nationally televised Cracker Night as part of Sydney Comedy Festival 2015. He has released two comedy albums, Hot Head and Shame Chamber. Both albums charted on the Billboard Comedy Album Chart. Hot Head at #4 and Shame Chamber at #5. He frequently performs around Southern California.

Plagiarism allegations

On July 9, 2015, Alan Bellows of Damn Interesting posted an open letter titled "A Special Note to the Writers at The Dollop", accusing Anthony of plagiarizing Damn Interesting's original content for use on The Dollop. The post included a 2,670-word example of text Anthony copied, primarily from Damn Interesting, with smaller portions taken from KnowledgeNuts and Slate. In response to these allegations, Anthony stated on Reddit that he had made a mistake, the show was sourced, but they had no official website.

On August 25, 2019, author Josh Levin posted a thread to Twitter accusing Anthony of plagiarizing one of Levin's articles for a Dollop live show at Chicago's Athenaeum Theatre in 2017. The thread included screenshots of Dollop transcripts beside his own text, showing several nearly identical passages. Levin's article was cited by The Dollop in the show notes but was not mentioned in the recording. Levin stated that there was no way to click on the sources in the episode description, but it was then shown that Levin simply did not have the setting correct on his phone and that the sources were easily accessible. In a reply to the thread, author Paul Brown stated that The Dollop had also plagiarized sections of his own book The Rocketbelt Caper for a 2017 episode. Brown's book was cited in The Dollop show notes but not mentioned on the recording.

The Dollop hosts have stated it is a fair use podcast. Anthony told the San Francisco Chronicle, "we want people to find the source material and know who's writing it. The whole reason I'm doing the podcast is to get these stories out there because they're important."

Personal life

Anthony currently resides near Los Angeles, with his wife Heather, who is a psychologist, and their son. He is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.

Filmography

Actor

Self