As multi-hyphenates who together have premiered a pair of acclaimed indie comedies at Cannes — first The Climb in 2019, and more recently, Splitsville — Michael Angelo Covino and Kyle Marvin have a unique perspective on the old adage that comedies don’t travel internationally.

“At the advent of cinema, what were the first blockbusters?” asks Covino in an appearance alongside Marvin on our Comedy Means Business podcast. “It was like Charlie Chapman and Buster Keaton and a ton of Pre-Code stuff where everyone was naked. But for the most part, it was slapstick. It was silent films where people were falling down or crashing into things or a hose was spraying them in the face, and that is universal and goes worldwide.”

In the case of “very specific, topical comedy that is of a pl

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