Martin Olson

Martin Olson is an author, comedy writer, songwriter and poet who plays Hunson Abadeer, Lord of Evil, on Cartoon Network's Adventure Time. As a television writer, he has received four Emmy and two Annie nominations. He is known for his work on Phineas and Ferb, his New York Times bestselling The Adventure Time Encyclopaedia (Abrams, 2013), and his satirical book Encyclopaedia of Hell (Feral House, 2011). Olson has just published his second book for Adventure Time, The Enchiridion & Marcy's Super Secret Scrapbook (Abrams, 2015), and he is currently writing/songwriting for Milo Murphy's Law, a new Disney series by the creators of Phineas and Ferb. His adopted daughter is Olivia Olson BACKGROUND Raised in Boston, Massachusetts, Olson began writing for comedians before there were any comedy clubs in Boston. He sent pages of jokes to Rodney Dangerfield, which were returned with the same polite note scrawled at the bottom, "Sorry, Marty!" (According to his agent's press kit, years later when writing for Penn and Teller in Las Vegas, Olson produced comedy bits with Dangerfield and the two became friends.) In an interview for the Writers Guild of America's magazine Written By, Olson stated that as a child he saw the eccentric German comedian Brother Theodore ranting and raving on The Merv Griffin Show, and from that moment on he knew he would be a comedy writer. (Before his death in 2001, Brother Theodore became a fan of Olson's first book ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF HELL, and wrote one of the quotes on the book's dust cover.) OLSON AND THE BOSTON COMEDY SCENE Olson started the first comedy club in Boston in 1977 with local producers Paul Barclay and Bil Downes. There, he became "house piano player"and performed as a comedian for the first two years with an absurdist deadpan act. At the club every night for four years, Olson worked for and wrote with the comedians who became his friends — Lenny Clarke, Bobcat Goldthwait, Jimmy Tingle, Steven Wright, Denis Leary, Steve Sweeney, Joe Alaskey, Sean Morey and many others. "THE BARRACKS" Olson and comedian Lenny Clarke became roommates in an apartment near Harvard University where comedians from all over the country "crashed" while performing in their comedy club. Olson wrote for Clarke, who soon became the most popular comedian in Boston. Their apartment became known as "The Barracks", a legendary hub of comedy and depravity that was the subject of a television special on Boston comedy in the 1980s, and also of the award-winning documentary on the Boston comedy scene When Standup Stood Out (2006) directed by filmmaker-comedian Fran Solomita. OLSON, THE DING HO AND "LENNY CLARKE'S LATE SHOW" When Barry Crimmins started the second comedy club in the Boston area called the Ding Ho, Olson became piano player and created Lenny Clarke's Late Show, a late-night comedy TV series on TV-38 hosted and co-written by Clarke. This bizarre, two-hour weekly show attracted a small but dedicated cult following. After two years Olson and Clarke were fired for airing two controversial segments ("News for Negroes" and "The Mentally Retarded Faith Healer" featuring Bobcat Goldthwait). OLSON AND THE WEST COAST COMEDY SCENE Olson took his tapes from the show and drove cross-country to San Francisco with Boston comedian Don Gavin. There by coincidence the 1980 SF Comedy Competition was starting up, with a First Prize of $10,000.00. Olson helped Gavin audition and make it into the finals. There Olson met his future wife Kay Furtado, a writer who had been flown to SF to coach another comedian in the competition. A year later they married in a ceremony in San Francisco attended by all of the local comedians. Olson and his wife moved to Los Angeles where they raised two children, Casey Olson and Olivia Olson. COMEDY WRITING Olson's Los Angeles home became a halfway house for comedians coming to L.A. to perform and audition for shows. Meanwhile Olson wrote HBO comedy performance specials, became staff writer for the Screen Actors Guild Awards, wrote an Ace-Award-winning series for Comedy Central in London and became head writer for a number of animated series voiced by his comedian friends. IMPACT AND AFFILIATIONS IN CONTEMPORARY COMEDY Specializing in writing comedy specials and directing one-man shows, Olson became producer-writer for Penn and Teller on their notorious FX variety series Penn Teller's Sin City Spectacular. When Olson was a writer for Rocko's Modern Life, director Stephen Hillenburg showed Olson a comic book called "The Intertidal Zone" that Hillenburg drew in college. Olson loved it and suggested that Stephen rewrite it as an undersea cartoon series, which became Spongebob Squarepants. Selling comedy screenplays to Dreamworks, UA, Touchstone and Warner Bros, Olson was able to dedicate his time to writing books, composing music and directing live stage performances in Hollywood at the HBO Theater, The Steve Allen Theater and Comedy Central Stage featuring well-known comedians and actors. ACTING As an occasional actor, Olson guest starred in a live action sequence in Spongebob Squarepants ("Mermaid Man 5"), in "Don't Watch This Show" by director-comedian Bobcat Goldthwait, in the documentary "When Standup Stood Out" by filmmaker Fran Solomita, on The Tonight Show playing an Indian Yogi with Bobcat Goldthwait, in a featured role and as a fundamentalist professor in the film The Anna Cabrini Chronicles by filmmaker Tawd b. Dorenfeld. Olson has also made many appearances in comedic director Katie Schwartz' web shorts as well as in Garfunkel and Oats' music videos. Currently, Olson voices "Lord of Evil" in Cartoon Network's Adventure Time!, playing the evil father of his real-life daughter Olivia Olson who plays Marceline the Vampire Queen in the series.