"When you do a movie in the studio system, there's a committee. A committee of six or seven people you answer to. There's two or three producers, a studio executive and one or two people above that studio executive." -- Thomas Lennon
Thomas Lennon (born August 9, 1970) is an American actor, comedian, writer, director and producer best known as a cast member on MTV's The State and for his role as Lieutenant Jim Dangle on the Comedy Central series Reno 911!.
"All studio movies are the middle of the Bell curve. The only way to do something is to do it yourself. And the only way to do that is to not take any money from anyone or take as little money as possible from anyone and that's it.""I feel like I'm the most well-adjusted character on the show, even though I'm sure the other actors would tell you the same thing about their characters.""I was on the speech team, we called it forensics.""It's such a great thing to work with people and not have a plan.""Kerri and I met at theatre camp when were 16 years old, which is pretty lame. The rest of us met when we founded the State at New York University in 1988. Most of our adult lives have been spent bickering with these people.""Old School has humongous laughs all the way through it.""Our reward for Starsky and Hutch was getting to write The Six Million Dollar Man for Todd.""Super Troopers is hilarious. Everybody always thought we somehow - we did Reno way, way before any of us had seen Super Troopers. It sat on the shelf for a couple years.""That's the other thing about working on movies, the commitment is years. That's one thing that's so frustrating about the process is that it goes on and on and on for years.""The first record I bought with my own money was Rio.""The more people's money you take to do something, the more inputs you get.""The only guaranteed way to make something not very funny is to make it vague.""There was so long from when we did the pilot and then when the show was eventually picked up by Comedy Central - and, in fact, we had to shoot the pilot twice.""We did one pilot for FOX which was about this couple that moves to a town, and we play everyone in the entire town. So it was like a Peter Sellers film.""Yes, I am complimented on my work in Kids in the Hall once or twice a week. It's a nice feeling.""You hate to see yourself do one draft of a script and then have somebody else come back in and change what you've done."
Lennon is a native of Oak Park, Illinois and 1988 graduate of Oak Park River Forest High School. At age sixteen, Lennon met friend and future co-worker Kerri Kenney in a summer camp. The two also both attended NYU, where they joined a comedy troupe called The New Group.
The New Group later changed their name to The State. After performing their material at various theaters, bars and clubs in New York City, The State started work on the MTV show You Wrote It, You Watch It. This led to the self-titled series The State (1993—1995). The State was nominated for a Cable Ace award for Best Comedy Series.
Following the collapse of The State after a one-night stint on CBS, Lennon, along with Kenney, Ben Garant, and Michael Ian Black went on to create and star in the Comedy Central program Viva Variety (1997—1999). The show was based on a sketch that Lennon had written for the final season of The State," called "The Mr. and Former Mrs. Laupin Variety Programme". Viva Variety received a Cable Ace Nomination for Best Comedy Series.
After Viva Variety, Lennon, Kenney and Garant created and starred in another TV show, Reno 911! (2003—2009). Initially slated for FOX, the program later debuted on Comedy Central. The show is currently syndicated around the world.
Lennon appeared as Joey Tribbiani's blackjack dealing, "identical hand twin" on the Friends fifth season finale ("The One In Vegas," Pts. I and II). And he has appeared as a guest star on many television shows, and in supporting roles in dozens of films. In 2009 he and Paul Rudd were nominated for "Best Kiss" in the MTV Movie Awards. He has appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live, The Tonight Show, The Daily Show, The Jimmy Fallon Show, Talk Show with Spike Feresten, and made numerous appearances on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, both as himself and as Lt. Dangle.
Lennon has done various voice work, including the show Kim Possible and the forthcoming Planet Sheen, in which he plays the character of Pinter. In the early 2000s, he was the star of several Snickers candy bar TV commercials, many of which were associated and airing with the television show Survivor .
Lennon has also written stories for several comic books. For The Goon, he wrote a short story called "Jimmy Turtle and the Legendary Box Car of Well-Made Ladies Shoes" and another for Dwight T. Albatross's The Goon Noir #3. He also wrote "The Pigmy Elixir" for Bart Simpson's Treehouse of Horror #13.. He is frequently a presenter at the Eisner Awards, given out each year at Comic-Con.
In 2008, Lennon started doing stand-up comedy, during which he will sometimes play guitar. He appears frequently at Comedy Death Ray in Los Angeles, and he was the photo for the month of July in the Comedy Death Ray 2010 Calendar. In 2009, he opened for "Stella" at the Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles. Also in 2009, The State reunited for two shows at San Francisco's Sketchfest, performing all new material. The shows sold out in minutes.
Lennon and writing partner Robert Ben Garant created and starred in a 2010 sitcom pilot for NBC called The Strip. However, in May 2010 it was announced that NBC had decided not to produce it as a series.
In August of 2010, John Landgraf, president of FX, announced that his network had ordered a pilot episode for a new Lennon/Garant sci-fi/comedy series entitled "Alabama," set a thousand years in the future, aboard a United Nations Peacekeeping spaceship, the U.S.S. Alabama.
Screenwriting
Lennon is a screenwriter and script doctor. All of Lennon's screenplays are written in collaboration with partner Robert Ben Garant. Among his credits are the blockbuster film Night at the Museum, an episode of the Comedy Central series Strangers with Candy and four of IFC's "50 Greatest Comedy Sketches of All Time": "Mind Match" "Porcupine Racetrack,"$240 Dollars Worth of Pudding," and "Monkey Torture" AKA "The Barry Lutz Show."
