Michael Showalter
Michael Showalter is a director, born 1970.
The State ran on MTV from 1993 to 1995 and it is still the origin story for everything Michael Showalter has done since. Born in Princeton in 1970, he came out of that sketch group with a permanent repertory company attached, and his projects have been quietly restaffing themselves from it ever since.
With David Wain he created the Wet Hot American Summer franchise, co-writing the 2001 film and playing both Coop and Alan Shemper in it, then returning for the Netflix prequel and sequel series. In 2005 he wrote, directed and starred in The Baxter, a romantic comedy told from the point of view of the man the heroine leaves, and it remains the purest statement of his sensibility: gentle, formally neat, interested in the person nobody writes films about. He is also a co-creator of Search Party, where he plays Max.
The last decade turned him into something the sketch career did not predict, which is a director actors want to work with. He made The Big Sick in 2017 and The Eyes of Tammy Faye in 2021, the two best received films of his career, and around them Hello, My Name Is Doris, The Lovebirds, Spoiler Alert and The Idea of You. All of them, in different registers, are films built around one central performance and shot so as not to get in its way. He is not a stylist. He is a director who knows what a scene is for and where the actor should be standing, which turns out to be the rarer skill.
Movies (19)
- The Idea of You (2024)
- Signs (2002)
- Verity (2026)
- Wet Hot American Summer (2001)
- The Big Sick (2017)
- Ma 2
- Oh. What. Fun. (2025)
- The Eyes of Tammy Faye (2021)
- Wanderlust (2012)
- Two Night Stand (2014)
- Reno 911!: Miami (2007)
- Spoiler Alert (2022)
- Hello, My Name Is Doris (2015)
- Safe Men (1998)
- Kissing Jessica Stein (2002)
- The Lovebirds (2020)
- Griffin & Phoenix (2006)
- The Baxter (2005)
- The Baxter (2005)
TV (10)
Where to start with Michael Showalter
Begin with The Big Sick. It is the most complete thing he has directed, it is funny in the unshowy way his comedy has always been funny, and it makes the case that a man trained in sketch can hold a two-hour emotional arc without flinching.
For the comedy that made his name, Wet Hot American Summer is essential and completely uninterested in whether you agree; it found its audience years late and has stayed found. Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp is the rare revival that understands the joke of casting the original adults as younger versions of themselves only improves with time, and The State is where all of it begins.
His own best film as a writer-director is The Baxter, which almost nobody saw. As a director for hire, The Eyes of Tammy Faye and Hello, My Name Is Doris are the performance showcases, and Search Party is the sharpest television he has been involved with.