Andy Breckman

Andrew Ross Breckman (born March 3, 1955) is an American television and film writer and a radio personality on WFMU. He is the creator and executive producer of the Emmy Award-winning television series Monk on the USA Network, and is co-host of WFMU radio's long-running conceptual comedy program Seven Second Delay. He has written screenplays for a number of comedy films including Sgt. Bilko (starring Steve Martin) and Rat Race (directed by Jerry Zucker), and is frequently hired as a "script doctor" to inject humorous content into scripts written by other screenwriters.

Breckman wrote for Late Night with David Letterman from 1982 to 1984, and contributed sketches to Saturday Night Live from 1983 to 1996. One of his most well-known vignettes was a Saturday Night Live sketch called "White Like Me" (which he also directed), in which Eddie Murphy disguises himself as a Caucasian for a day. In 2003 he served as a jokewriter for comedian Steve Martin's stint as host of the Academy Awards.

Breckman's biggest success, Monk, was a murder-mystery with a humorous edge. Breckman told New Jersey Monthly that he was a voracious reader of the works of Arthur Conan Doyle, John D. MacDonald, and other authors of “solvable” mysteries, as well as being a big fan of the TV series Columbo. “In a way, it’s similar to comedy writing,” he says. “It’s puzzles and puzzle solving. Very logical.” In August 2009, USA Network launched Little Monk, a spinoff series that portrays the main character, detective Adrian Monk, as a child. Breckman was part of the show's team of writers.

He wrote seven episodes of the 2000-2001 Comedy Central series TV Funhouse, and in 2015 wrote "Dog Show" for The Jack and Triumph Show. In July 2016 he was part of a team of writers for Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog's coverage of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland and the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.

The Good Cop, another humorous murder-mystery series created and written by Breckman, debuted on Netflix in September 2018. (It ran for ten episodes before being cancelled.) The show starred Tony Danza as Tony Caruso, Sr., "a disgraced, former NYPD officer who never followed the rules," and Josh Groban as his son, Tony "T.J." Caruso, Jr., a squeaky-clean homicide detective. About the series, Breckman said, "Many cop shows feature dark and provocative material: psycho-sexual killers, twisted, grim, flawed detectives. Many address the most controversial issues of the day. I watch a lot of them. God bless 'em all. But the show I want to produce is playful, family-friendly, and a celebration of old-fashioned puzzle-solving."

In October 2018, TBS announced it would be launching a new TV series, The Misery Index, starring members of the Tenderloins comedy troupe, based on Breckman's card game, "Shit Happens". Breckman developed the TV version with Ben & Dan Newmark of Grandma’s House Entertainment. The series premiered on October 22, 2019. On December 3, 2019, it was announced the series was renewed for a second season.

Breckman is professionally represented by Creative Artists Agency and 3 Arts Entertainment.

Breckman was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, to a middle-class Jewish family. He grew up in Haddonfield, New Jersey and attended Moorestown Friends Schooland Haddonfield Memorial High School.Breckman dropped out of Boston University in his freshman year, and despite an admitted lack of musical ability, he launched a brief career as a satirical folk singer. He released two albums of original songs, Don't Get Killed and Proud Dad.

Breckman lives in Madison, New Jersey with his wife, documentary filmmaker Beth Landau, whom he met on the dating pages of Nerve.com and who is nicknamed "Boo." They have two children, Molly and Evan. In 2011, Andy and Beth were a featured couple in the documentary When Strangers Click, a film about internet dating. As an engagement present, Breckman applied his fiancee's name (spelled "Beth Landow") to the murder victim in Monk's season two (2003) première, "Mr. Monk Goes Back to School". He honored his wife again by naming a murder victim after her in The Good Cop, season 1, episode 6, "Did the TV Star Do It?".

Breckman has three children, Josh, Rachel, and Julie, from a previous marriage. His brother David worked on Monk and serves on The Good Cop in various production roles.

Since 1992, Breckman and WFMU station manager Ken Freedman have co-hosted a weekly one-hour comedy call-in radio program, Seven Second Delay. The premise of the program seems to be a never-ending series of dead-on-arrival concepts, with the comedic value hinging on Breckman's recurring acknowledgment of failure and his desire to go home as quickly as possible. Breckman has described his co-host as "a sad, bitter little man and [WFMU's] fundraisers are a good time to humiliate him and exploit his willingness to do just about anything, including prostituting himself, to raise money for his adorable little public hippy noise radio station."

From 2009 to 2012, Seven Second Delay broadcast remotely from the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater comedy club in Manhattan. In 2011 the UCB shows went bi-weekly. Guests on the program included Dick Cavett, Joe Franklin, Amy Sedaris, Peter Stampfel, Jules Feiffer, Andrew VanWyngarden (of the band MGMT), Dan Okrent, Nora Ephron, Wallace Shawn, Jim Downey, and numerous other celebrities with whom Breckman is familiar, as well as lesser-known fringe figures, whom Breckman ridiculed on the air for not being well-known celebrities.

In 1998, Gadfly Records released Death-Defying Radio Stunts, a CD of outrageous moments from Seven Second Delay studio broadcasts.

In 2003, Breckman took part in a USO tour to US military war zones, contributing material for his former Saturday Night Live colleague, comedian Al Franken.

In 2014 he launched a line of unusual toys under the brand name Uncle Andy Toys. Products which have reached the consumer market include Real Life Travel Bingo, Who Tooted?, and Rigged Trivia. In 2015 he launched "Feed a Puppy," a live-streaming interactive animal app featuring real rescue puppies, in which users purchase treats to feed the puppies, with a portion of sales receipts donated to rescue shelters. In 2016, he funded his new card game, Shit Happens, with a successful Kickstarter campaign. In October 2018, TBS gave the green light to a new TV series, Misery Index, based on Shit Happens.

Breckman taught a weekly course on television comedy writing at New York University in 2016.

Early in his singing career, Breckman was given the opportunity to perform as opening act for "American Pie" singer Don McLean, with whom he shared management. The two did not get along, and a feud developed that has persisted to the present day. Breckman and McLean have penned competing renditions of the origins of their mutual dislike, both of which are available online.

Films

• Moving (1988)
• Arthur 2: On the Rocks (1988)
• Hot to Trot (1988)
• True Identity (1991)
• I.Q. (1994)
• Sgt. Bilko (1996)
• Rat Race (2001)

TV and video

• Hot Hero Sandwich (1979)
• Late Night with David Letterman (1982)
• Saturday Night Live (1983–1985)
• Tourist Trap (1998)
• TV Funhouse (2000)
• Monk (2002–2009)
• The 75th Annual Academy Awards (2003)
• The Good Cop (2018)
• The Misery Index (2019)

• Don't Get Killed (Gadfly Records, 1990)
• Proud Dad (Gadfly Records, 1994)
• Death-Defying Radio Stunts (Gadfly Records, 1998)