Gianmarco Soresi is a stand-up comedian and actor who just released his first comedy special “Shelf Life“ on Amazon Prime, documenting the experience of writing and performing new material in the middle of a global pandemic.
I enjoy kind of dark, twisted humor. I focus on making this joke great, a great set, and more often than not people in pain will feel good watching it. . .I’m gonna make great comedy and if this is useful for people — that’s great. I think that’s where healing can happen — in that really dark place and sometimes I can figure out a way to make it funny. THAT’S the best part.
Produced by Jacklyn Thrapp and Lindsay-Elizabeth Hand, and directed by three-time Emmy Award-winning photojournalist Andy Buck, “Shelf Life” is unique in that it will also feature behind-the-scenes documentary-style footage that chronicles Gianmarco’s journey doing live comedy in the unpredictable and ever-changing world of Covid-19.
Gianmarco’s stand up has been featured on Netflix’s Bonding, PBS’ Stories from the Stage, SeeSo’s New York’s Funniest, Real Housewives of New York, NY1, New York LIVE, Vanity Fair, George Takei Presents and he was the winner of Amazon’s Comics Watching Comics Season 8. 1st Place at the Laughing Devil Comedy Festival, Devil’s Cup Comedy Festival, Empire State Comedy Festival, and Last Comix Standing at Mohegan Sun, he regularly headlines clubs, colleges and sordid basements around the country. As a storyteller, Gianmarco has also told tales on the RISK! podcast, The Moth (StorySLAM winner), Suitcase Stories, PBS’ Stories for the Stage, Story Collider and his autobiographical play, Less Than 50%, premiered at the New York City Fringe Festival before being accepted into the Fringe Encores Festival and then receiving a full Off-Broadway run at 59E59 produced by Tony-winner Michael Rubenstein and Robin Milling and directed by Jen Wineman.
As an actor, Gianmarco has professionally pretended in the movie Hustlers with Jennifer Lopez, TBS’s The Last OG with Tracy Morgan, Apple’s Little Voices, CBS’s Blue Bloods, ABC’s Deception and What Would You Do?, A&E’s Unforgettable, Lifetime’s I love You But I Lied, TruTV, Comedy Central, and he can be seen in the upcoming Billy Crystal/Tiffany Haddish movie Here Today. He was also the former spokesman for General Electric and Baby Bottle Pop and has done voice over work for GE, Coca-Cola, Audible, and so many podcasts you’ve never heard of.
Gianmarco is a member of the sketch team Uncle Function, which was recently granted a monthly show at the Upright Citizens Brigade that ran for three sold out performances before the entire theater shutdown forever. He’s also the creator of the sketch series Matza Pizza, which led to Funny or Die greenlighting one of his pitches as an FOD original.
His sketches, front-facing videos as Jeff Goldblum, tweets, and other writing has been featured in Esquire, The Atlantic, The AV Club, ABC News, The Huffington Post, The Daily Dot, Perez Hilton, Laughspin, Splitsider, Tubefilter, Metro NY (cover page), Fast Company and he’s written branded content for spoiledNYC, Hyperbolic Audio, Burrow, SHIFT, SpareRoom and South Eastern Washington Help. You can find him on Twitter, Instagram and TikTok @gianmarcosoresi or www.gianmarcosoresi.com
Jacklyn Thrapp (Executive Producer) is an Emmy® award-winning journalist and entertainment producer based in NYC. TELEVISION: Former news producer for CW, FOX, ABC and CBS affiliates across the country. OFF-BROADWAY: Good Morning New York: A New Musical and Park For Your Problems AUDIO DRAMAS: Hanukkah Haunting (October 2020), Christmas Pitch (November 2020) and Christmas F@%T (December 2020). AWARDS: Second Rounder in the Austin Film Festival’s “Fiction Podcast” competition.Twitter: @JacklynThrapp | Instagram: @JacklynThrapp | Website: JacklynThrapp.com
Andy Buck (Director/Editor) is a three-time Emmy Award-winning photojournalist and video editor who currently works for CNN’s news and documentary team in New York City, covering events all over the world. He recently served as photographer, editor, and producer for the CNN documentary “Inside the ER: The Incredible Fight Against Coronavirus,” which is in consideration for a Peabody Award. He also worked on the HBO Max original documentary “On The Trail: Inside the 2020 Primaries.” Andy grew up in Denver, Colorado, and has a Bachelor’s degree in Journalism from Metropolitan State University of Denver.
Lindsay-Elizabeth Hand (Producer) is the Owner and Founder of Edge In Motion Productions, a full-service production company specializing in one of a kind TV Pilots and viral internet content that can be seen on YouTube, Facebook, and TikTok. Lindsay was in consideration for the 2020 Emmy’s with her Amazon Prime digital series “Riding the D with Dr. Seeds.” In addition to producing, Lindsay is an award-winning screenwriter, formerly on the nominating committee for the SAG Awards, and mothers a human child. She is a passionate producer who has a hand in every aspect of production, from the development of the scripts to the logistics of filming and post-production. Lindsay’s work has caught the eye of several publications including HuffPo, Funny or Die, Broadway World, A.V. Club, Paste Magazine, Flavorwire, Laughspin, Theater Mania, Spoiled NYC, Downtown Magazine, IGN, Comedy Cake, The Front Row Center, Theater Geek, and Madame Figaro (France) to name a few.
The trailer for my Amazon special
And then best way to find me is on twitter, instagram and TikTok @gianmarcosoresi
First Online with Fran 
Naomi McDougall Jones: Defying Gravity
Naomi McDougall Jones is an award-winning storyteller, and thought leader for bringing gender parity to cinema. A long-time advocate for bringing parity to film, both on and off screen, she has spoken at film festivals and conferences around the world and written extensively on this subject.
Naomi’s TEDTalk on these issues and what to do about them, “What it’s Like to Be a Woman in Hollywood,” has been viewed over a million times and produced a global outpouring of support for the women in film movement. Her follow-up TEDxTalk, which she gave with fellow media maker and activist, Sarah Springer, “How to Become a True Agent of Change,” examines the journey each of us must take to unravel white supremacy and patriarchy in our own minds.
Naomi teamed up with former CFO of the City of Chicago, Lois Scott, to found The 51 Fund, an investment fund to finance films written, directed, and produced by women. Through The 51 Fund, Naomi became an Executive Producer of the documentary feature film, Cusp, which premiered in the US Documentary Competition at Sundance 2021 and received a global release and awards campaign through Showtime, where it now also available to stream.
In 2021, Naomi launched Avalon: Story — a center of practice designed to incubate and birth a new media ecosystem born out of two questions:
The inaugural Avalon: Story program was Constellation Incubator, which over the summer of 2021 brought together 60 filmmakers to participate in an 8-week incubator designed to scale innovation within the independent film industry and apply design thinking to re-imagine a more equitable and sustainable ecosystem – from development, film finance, production, to marketing and distribution. She co-founded this initiative alongside Abeni Bloodworth, Angela Harmon, and Liz Manashil. The final presentations from the participants of the incubator – 12 fully redesigned independent film ecosystems can be found on YouTube.
Avalon: Story launched its second program, The Avalon Fellowship, in Fall 2021, bringing 6 of today’s most pioneering cinematic storytellers to The Big Lost Campus in Ketchum, Idaho, for a week-long retreat during which they explored and innovated around the question, “What does Story need to be to build us a bridge to a more beautiful future? “
Naomi is currently at work on her third feature screenplay, Hammond Castle, a magical realism film that explores themes of identity, legacy and gender through a modern-day seven-month pregnant woman’s unexpected interaction with the brilliant, eccentric and deceased inventor John Hays Hammond, Jr., for which Naomi received the honor of being the first artist-in-residence at Ernest Hemingway’s final home in Sun Valley, Idaho. Naomi can be seen in this PBS documentary speaking about that experience and, alongside, Sheryl Strayed, unpacking Hemingway’s complicated relationship to women.
Naomi wrote, produced, and starred in the 2014 indie feature film, Imagine I’m Beautiful, which took home 12 awards on the film festival circuit including 4 Best Pictures and, for Naomi, 3 Best Actress Awards and The Don Award for Best Independently Produced Screenplay of 2014. The film was named as #8 of OscarWorld’s Top 10 Films of 2014 and was distributed theatrically and digitally by Candy Factory Films. The film is now available on AmazonPrime.
Naomi’s second feature film, Bite Me, is a subversive romantic comedy about a real-life vampire and the IRS agent who audits her. The film premiered at Cinequest, won Best Feature Film at VTXIFF, and then went on to the innovative, paradigm-shifting Joyful Vampire Tour of America, a 51-screening, 40-city, three-month, RV-fueled eventized tour that involved Joyful Vampire Balls, capes, a docu-series and a whole lot of joy. The film is currently available on BluRay, as well as VOD streaming platforms all over the world, including AppleTV, Amazon, and GooglePlay.
Naomi’s first book, The Wrong Kind of Women: Inside Our Revolution to Dismantle the Gods of Hollywood, is now available wherever books are sold in hardcover, audiobook, and e-book. It debuted as the #1 New Release on Amazon in the Entertainment Industry and received an electric response from reviewers with Booklist and Kirkus Reviews calling it “bold,” “convincing,” “passionate,” “well-written,” “urgent,” and “necessary,” and Publishers Weekly writing, “Film viewing will never be the same after reading Jones’ insightful look at the reality of being female in Tinseltown.” Rose McGowan said of the book, “We need truth. The curtain must be pulled back, and Naomi McDougall Jones has done just that.” It has been featured in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, NPR, BBC, Playboy, Ms. Magazine, Salon.com, among many other national and international media outlets.
She is the co-creator and showrunner for the scripted, short fiction podcast, The Light Ahead, which united over 120 creatives from entertainment with next-economy activists and social justice leaders to explore the question, “What would 2030 look like if the USA had an economy that truly worked for everyone?”, which is now available wherever you get your podcasts.
She was a writer for season 1 of Amazon’s original series, The New Yorker Presents, based on the world’s most award-winning magazine, which premiered at Sundance, for which she wrote the teleplay adaptation of Miranda July’s short story Roy Spivey.
A pilot Naomi wrote, The Dark Pieces, was named on the 2016 WriteHer List as one of the top 16 unproduced pilots by a female screenwriter and is now in development for TV in Canada.
During the early days of Covid-19, Naomi was invited to write an episode of Day by Day, a podcast of short, narrative radio plays exploring “stories from our new normal.” Her episode, Carry Me Home, was the series premiere.
Naomi is currently at work on her second book, Vivisection of a White Woman (by the Ghost of Ernest Hemingway and a Whole Host of Ancestors).
Naomi grew up in Colorado, before attending Cornell and The American Academy of Dramatic Arts for College. Following graduation, she lived in NYC for another 13 years, spent a brief stint in Atlanta, and now lives in Hailey, Idaho with her husband, Stephen.