Writing
Nov 18, 1975
Michael Colton
Writing
Biography
Michael Colton (born 1975) is a an American screenwriter, producer, comedian, and former journalist. Colton was a staff writer for the Washington Post Style section and has also written for the New York Times Magazine, the Los Angeles Times and the Boston Globe. While a senior at Newton North High School in Newton, Massachusetts, he co-wrote the SAT guide "Up Your Score." He graduated in 1997 from Harvard University, where he was an editor at both the Harvard Lampoon and the Harvard Crimson. Before moving to Los Angeles, Colton and Aboud founded and ran Modern Humorist (2000-2003), an award-winning online magazine and comedy collective based in Brooklyn. In addition to a daily magazine, Modern Humorist published three books with Crown Publishing, including the best-selling My First Presidentiary: A Scrapbook by George W. Bush. Modern Humorist also helped develop ad campaigns for Microsoft, Time Warner Cable and Amazon. For most of the ’00s, Colton and Aboud appeared regularly as panelists on Best Week Ever and other VH1 shows. They also appeared on I Love the 70s/80s/90s/00s etc. They have been panelists, separately and together, on CNN, Fox News, ABC News, CMT, NPR, The Today Show, and the DVD releases of Beverly Hills 90210 and Melrose Place. During the Writers Guild of America strike of 2007-8, Colton and Aboud created AMPTP.com, a parody of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers' official website, AMPTP.org. He is half of the writing and production team Colton & Aboud; their production cards are designed like record album covers and can also be seen on their website. They were executive producers on the HBO Max show Close Enough for seasons two and three. We wrote for Comedy Central’s The Fake News with Ted Nelms, which won a 2019 Writers Guild Award for Best Variety Special. Other credits include the DreamWorks Animation film Penguins of Madagascar; TNT’s Leverage; Adult Swim’s Childrens Hospital and Newsreaders; and Fox’s animated shows Allen Gregory and Sit Down Shut Up. Colton and Aboud wrote and produced A Futile and Stupid Gesture, a biopic about Doug Kenney and the origins of the National Lampoon. They wrote and produced an animated Zoolander series that’s streaming on Paramount+; co-wrote the film The Comebacks; and have written pilots and specials for ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, Comedy Central, TBS, VH1 and Adult Swim. Their writing has also appeared in Esquire, Cosmopolitan, Fortune, New York and Time. They are the creators and showrunners of ABC’s Home Economics which debuted in April 2021.
Feature Films (2)
In a life full of triumph and failure, "National Lampoon" co-founder Doug Kenney built a comedy empire, molding pop culture in the 1970s.
A Futile and Stupid Gesture
Television & Series (7)
Best Week Ever is a weekly television program on the United States cable/satellite network VH1. It started airing in 2004 and was put on hiatus in the summer of 2009. In January 2010, it was announced that the show was cancelled. On August 3, 2012, VH1 announced the return of Best Week Ever. New weekly episodes began January 18, 2013. On the show, comedians analyze the previous week's developments in pop culture, including recent happenings in entertainment and celebrity gossip. The show's tagline is, "It's everything you love, everything you missed, and all the stuff you need to see again."
Best Week Ever
Judging Amy is an American television drama that was telecast from September 19, 1999, through May 3, 2005, on CBS-TV. This TV series starred Amy Brenneman and Tyne Daly. Its main character is a judge who serves in a family court, and in addition to the family-related cases that she adjudicates, many episodes of the show focus on her own experiences as a divorced mother, and on the experiences of her mother, a social worker who works in the field of child welfare. This series was based on the life experiences of Brenneman's mother.
Judging Amy
I Love the '90s: Part Deux is a miniseries on VH1 in which various music and TV personalities reminisce about 1990s culture. It premiered on January 17, 2005. This series is a sequel to I Love the '90s. Its title is a reference to the 1993 comedy, Hot Shots! Part Deux.
I Love the '90s: Part Deux
I Love the '70s: Volume 2 is a television mini-series in the I Love the... series presented by VH1. The sequel to I Love the '70s, it premiered on VH1 July 10, 2006 until July 14, 2006, airing at 8pm and 9pm ET each night.
