EXCLUSIVE: Random Home has taken the North American rights off the desk to I’m on the Moon, the debut comedy memoir by former Late Present and Late Night time With David Letterman producer Daniel Kellison.
The deal was sealed forward of a scheduled public sale that had already attracted affords from a number of main publishers.
Initially titled The Fuck-Up—a reputation that mirrored Kellison’s personal self-perception throughout these adolescence—the memoir now goes by I’m on the Moon. It chronicles Kellison’s darkly humorous and wildly unlikely journey from being raised by a four-time-divorced Vermont hippie mother and a one-eyed babysitter, to taking a success of acid and deciding, with sudden readability, that he needed to work for his hero, David Letterman. “From the ominous glow of the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Energy Plant to the brilliant lights of 30 Rock…”
The guide charts Kellison’s rise from a chaotic childhood via a near-disastrous internship—the place he’s practically fired 3 times—to finally discovering his footing and climbing via the ranks with encouragement from Letterman and others. Throughout his eight-year, against-all-odds tenure on the present, he produced and developed a few of its most iconic moments: from Drew Barrymore’s birthday-flash to Madonna’s notorious foul-mouthed tirade to Acapulco cliff divers risking their lives diving off the roof of the Ed Sullivan Theater on 53rd Avenue.
“That is my model of Virtually Well-known,” Kellison says, “however as an alternative of music and Rolling Stone, it was comedy and David Letterman.”
“I spent most of my adolescence as an unmotivated, bongs-before-breakfast lump—wallowing in an countless provide of self-doubt,” Kellison says. “My hope is that this guide finds somebody like I as soon as was: on the verge of maturity, uncertain what comes subsequent, however satisfied they’re already doomed. This isn’t a celeb memoir a couple of charmed life—it’s the alternative. If it resembles a celeb story in any respect, it’s just like the phoenix tattooed on Ben Affleck’s again: I rose from the ashes and located my approach out of the ruins.”
Kellison is a 3x Emmy-nominated TV producer and author specializing in stay, selection, speak and comedy programming. In 2013, he based JASH, a digital-first comedy firm, alongside Sarah Silverman, Tim & Eric, Michael Cera, Reggie Watts and Norm Macdonald. Via JASH, Kellison produced Sarah Silverman’s Emmy-nominated Netflix particular Speck of Mud and developed quite a few tv tasks together with A Dialog with Norm Macdonald on Netflix (which he govt produced alongside former boss David Letterman), The Excessive Courtroom (25 episodes for Comedy Central) and the speak present Offscript with Jamie Foxx. The corporate additionally produced eight Sundance Movie Pageant picks, together with a 2013 winner.
All through his profession, Kellison has produced and created unique content material for Quincy Jones, Jimmy Kimmel, Kanye West, Rosie O’Donnell, Andy Milonakis, David Blaine, Eminem along with Letterman.
Kellison served as a founding member of President Obama’s Leisure Advisory Council, collaborating intently with the DNC and Valerie Jarrett. He and Sarah Silverman wrote and produced a video in assist of Bernie Sanders that reached over 50 million viewers. Kellison additionally as soon as break up a burrito with Sanders earlier than a giant speech.
Kellison contributed to Invoice Simmons’ widespread ESPN website “Grantland”. He has additionally written widespread superstar interviews for his sequence “Dinner with Daniel” and an autobiographical piece, “My Letterman Years,” which was named Finest Journalism of 2015 .
Random Home Editor-in-Chief Ben Greenberg’s observe file for bestselling nonfiction consists of buying and modifying distinguished authors akin to Prince Harry, Jia Tolentino, Hanif Abdurraqib, Bob Odenkirk, Ali Wong, Lin-Manuel Miranda, David Lynch, Emily Nussbaum, Lisa Marie Presley & Riley Keough, and David Milch.
Greenberg mentioned, “In a publishing panorama stuffed with submissions that rightly mirror how darkish the world has develop into, Daniel’s proposal stood out as one thing particular—painfully humorous, deeply transferring and totally unique, but in addition stuffed with pleasure and hope. I knew instantly we needed to transfer rapidly and preempt the public sale.”
The memoir is repped by Kirby Kim, Literary Agent of Janklow & Nesbit Associates. Kellison is repped by Andy Galker of Jackoway, Tyreman and James Dixon of Dixon Expertise Inc.
