{"id":438454,"date":"2026-01-30T07:48:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-30T07:48:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/438454\/"},"modified":"2026-01-30T07:48:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-30T07:48:07","slug":"paralyzed-by-hope-the-maria-bamford-story-review-the-comics-comic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/438454\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Paralyzed by Hope: The Maria Bamford Story’ Review: The Comic’s Comic"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tStand-up comedy is best live \u2014 and often lived. Judd Apatow<\/a> and comedy appreciator Neil Berkeley know this. In their admiring, at times achingly funny documentary \u201cParalyzed by Hope: The Maria Bamford<\/a> Story\u201d premiering at the Sundance Film Festival, the co-directors celebrate a comedian especially good at mining her life \u2014 including her struggles with mental health.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe film builds the arc of Bamford\u2019s life and career by utilizing clips from decades of her stand-up. Augmenting that spine are family photos and home movies, copious insights and praise from fellow comedians, anchored with interviews \u2014 awkward and endearing \u2014 with the comic herself, as well as her parents and older sister, Sarah Bamford Seidelmann.<\/p>\n

\n\tBorn and raised in Duluth, she\u2019s the second daughter of a doctor and a formidable mother. Around the time Bamford was 8 years old, she began experiencing a form of OCD that is marked by dark, intrusive thoughts that can be violent and or sexual. She also began having suicidal thoughts.<\/p>\n

\n\tEven so, Bamford might be an exemplar of Minnesota nice. She\u2019s got a whispery, high-register delivery, seemingly sped up by anxieties 1.5 times. She\u2019s modest, even mousy, but her self-deprecating revelations have a kind of muscular courage behind them. After sharing that she has a mild tremor from a medication, someone suggest she take another drug to counteract whichever one is causing the tremor. To which she responds, holding up her mildly quivering hand \u201cWeakness is the brand.\u201d That retort was also the title of her 2020 comedy special.<\/p>\n

\n\tIf you don\u2019t know Bamford\u2019s work, then \u201cParalyzed by Hope\u201d serves as an affectionate introduction. If you\u2019re familiar with her stand-up, then it\u2019s fun to listen to the parade of comics and friends try to get at what makes her such a great comedian in their estimation. In that sense, this is something of a comic\u2019s comic appraisal. <\/p>\n

\n\tPatton Oswalt, Brian Posehn and Zach Galifianakis along with Bamford made up the nerdly-hip comedy tour called The Comedians of Comedy, which was a Comedy Channel special and then series in 2005. Oswalt confesses being bewildered by Bamford at first. \u201cI didn\u2019t get it,\u201d he says. He has since called her \u201cthe greatest living comedian.\u201d And there are times in the clips from her stand-up when you might get why he didn\u2019t. Singing ever-so-familiarly the Old MacDonald tune Bamford swaps \u201cPterodactyl\u201d for \u201cfarm\u201d and why not? \u201cOld MacDonald had a Pterodactyl E-I-E-I-O. With a\u2026\u201d she sings. Then she lets out an unexpected and ungodly screech. Maybe you had to be there. Apatow and Berkeley make sure we are.<\/p>\n

\n\tNetflix\u2019s Ted Sarandos counts himself a fan. He greenlit the first season of her series, \u201cLady Dynamite,\u201d and then doubled down for a second season. That he\u2019s proud of doing the first and stumped by his impulse to do a second season, is amusing and perhaps says something about the well of fondness Bamford taps.<\/p>\n

\n\tTig Notaro, Ron Funches and Sarah Silverman also offer thoughts, sometimes smiling with a kind of incredulity as they do. Apatow tells Stephen Colbert and a few others that to test out new material, Bamford invited strangers to sit across a table from her at a caf\u00e9 and listen to her work her material. She then \u2014 wait for it \u2014 paid them.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile the film leans on other comics to celebrate Bamford\u2019s unique delivery, deft timing and exquisite plying of vulnerability, it\u2019s the time with her family \u2014 her parents and her sister \u2014 that grounds the documentary. Her husband, painter Scott Marvel Cassidy, also makes an appearance.<\/p>\n

\n\tThose moments give voice \u2014their own \u2014 to the people who figure mightily into Bamford\u2019s comedy. She also wrote about more deeply about them in 2023\u2019s \u201cSure, I\u2019ll Join Your Cult: A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere.\u201d (The book is an intentional tribute to the self-help genre and 12-step programs.)<\/p>\n

\n\tBamford helped raise the profile of a micro-comedy club in Altadena, Calif., where she lives, called PDA (Public Displays of Altadena) by staging a morning set. It burned in the Eaton Fire last year. It\u2019s not the only loss she faces in \u201cParalyzed by Hope\u201d \u2014 a phrase that comes from Bamford. But toward the end of Apatow and Berkeley\u2019s documentary, we know two things: She\u2019s a comic\u2019s comic; kindness keeps her moving.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Stand-up comedy is best live \u2014 and often lived. Judd Apatow and comedy appreciator Neil Berkeley know this.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":438455,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[88,133856,199642,206,206719],"class_list":["post-438454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-judd-apatow","tag-maria-bamford","tag-movies","tag-paralyzed-by-hope-the-maria-bamford-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=438454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438454\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/438455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=438454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=438454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=438454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}