Dan Pasternack

Dan Pasternack has dedicated decades of his life to the art, production, business and study of
comedy, television and digital entertainment. During his career, he has worked as a producer, a
programmer, a professor and a preservationist.

Beginning in 1980 as a precocious 11-year-old, Pasternack wrote, performed and produced two
novelty records, which enjoyed airplay on the popular Dr. Demento radio show, occasionally
even cracking the program’s Top Ten. This led him into filmmaking and two summer internships
at Paramount Pictures in Hollywood while he was still in high school. Pasternack then worked
his way through the U.S.C. School of the Cinematic Arts by performing at comedy clubs and
colleges all across the country as well as writing for some of the biggest names in stand-up.

After college, Pasternack embarked on a long run of high profile creative executive positions,
beginning in 1995 with The Fred Silverman Company, overseeing shows such as Diagnosis:
Murder with Dick Van Dyke for CBS and Bedtime for Showtime. He next served as the first
creative executive hired to establish the American arm of the British media giant Granada
Entertainment. There he supervised the development and production of numerous pilots and
series including Cracker for ABC, Holding the Baby for Fox and Cold Feet for NBC. While at
Granada, Pasternack also co-created When Athletes Attack with his friends Jimmy Kimmel and
“Cousin Sal” Iacono, resulting in several highly rated specials on ITV in the UK. During this
period, Pasternack was selected as a member of the Hollywood Reporter’s “Next Generation,”
identifying him as one of the top 35 rising entertainment executives under the age of 35.

Pasternack went on to hold similar senior roles at Studios USA (now NBC/Universal) and
Carsey-Werner before moving to Atlanta, Georgia to oversee content creation for the launch of
Turner Broadcasting’s digital comedy platform Super Deluxe, working with established and
emerging talent alike including Bob Odenkirk, Brad Neely, Maria Bamford, Tim and Eric, Aaron
McGruder, Nick Kroll and Norm Macdonald. Along the way, Pasternack also served as co-
producer on the Showtime series Beggars and Choosers as well as executive producer on the
Showtime sketch comedy pilot The Offensive Show, the FX series Starved, the Fox network
pilot Frances and Angela, and the Starz series Gravity on which he functioned as both a writer
and executive producer.

All of this experience paved the way for Pasternack’s tenure as VP of development and
production for the IFC cable network during the channel’s rebrand as a destination for original
comedy series. While at IFC, Pasternack worked closely with Fred Armisen, Carrie Brownstein
and executive producer Lorne Michaels shepherding the breakout Portlandia from web-series to
Emmy, Peabody and Writer’s Guild Award winning television sensation. He also developed
Comedy Bang! Bang! starring Scott Aukerman and Reggie Watts; the comedic docu-series
Whisker Wars about the international sport of competitive “bearding”; the animated comedy Out
There from writer/creator Ryan Quincy; The Birthday Boys from Executive Producers Bob
Odenkirk and Ben Stiller and The Spoils of Babylon starring Tobey Maguire, Kristen Wiig, Tim
Robbins and Will Ferrell.

In 2014, Pasternack left IFC to become the founding head of Big Beach TV where he
established a television arm of the indie film company and produced multiple projects including
New Timers for Comedy Central digital, the documentary Fatherless for Fusion, the comedy
series Debate Wars for Seeso as well as developing, packaging and selling the critically
heralded Starz series Vida, which ran for three seasons.

Today, Pasternack is an independent producer, heading his own Little Bear Bear Productions.
LBB’s first TV project, a special for Adult Swim entitled Wet Shapes, premiered in November
2017. Via LBB, Pasternack is actively producing and hosting the Obsessive Comedy Disorder
audio documentaries for SiriusXM and, in partnership with Comedy Dynamics, released the first
OCD vinyl LP set Jonathan Winters: Unearthed in 2021. In 2022, Pasternack produced and co-
hosted (with Paul Provenza) 10 episodes of Obsessive Comedy Disorder: The Podcast for the
Nacelle Company. Outside of LBB, Pasternack has executive produced a pilot for Amazon
alternative and another for Adult Swim. (The latter, entitled Lusty Crest, premiered at the 2020
SXSW Festival.)

Since 1996, Pasternack has donated his time to the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences
on their expansive oral history project The Interviews, which he helped to initiate and for which
he has conducted dozens of on-camera interviews with industry giants including: Milton Berle,
Sid Caesar, Jonathan Winters, Bob Newhart, Whoopi Goldberg and Billy Crystal. He has also
written articles for Vulture, Emmy Magazine, Paste, Splitsider, The Huffington Post as well as
the recurring column for McSweeney’s entitled “My Signed Comedy LPs: One Comedy Nerd’s
Obsessive Journey.” In 2021 Pasternack appeared in the acclaimed documentary Live at Mister
Kelly’s, providing his insights on the rich comedy history of the legendary Chicago nightclub.
And in 2023, he was featured in multiple episodes of the Vice TV series The Dark Side of
Comedy, sharing his thoughts about a broad range of comedians. He is currently contributing to
a forthcoming educational video series for The YIVO Institute For Jewish Research entitled “Is
Anything Okay? - The History of Jews and Comedy in America.”

Pasternack has also spoken on and moderated many panels at the New York Television
Festival, the Montreal Just for Laughs Festival, Atlanta’s Laughing Skull Festival, the New
Jersey WebFest and at the grand opening of the National Comedy Center. In 2021, he
embarked on a multi-city tour with the film National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation conducting
live conversations with its star, Chevy Chase in front of sold out crowds of thousands of fans. He
also served as moderator for the opening event of the comedy schedule at the 2022 South-By-
Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas with panelists Dulce Sloan, Jim Gaffigan, Ricky Velez and
the legendary John Cleese.

In the fall of 2016, Pasternack joined the faculty of NYU as an adjunct professor, where he
continues to teach several courses in television and digital development to third year graduate
students in the prestigious Tisch School of the Arts.