Paul Briganti: A Few Of My Favourite Things

As A Few Of My Favourite Things often shows, you can always trust a great comedy director to put together a list of items that is both heartfelt and hilarious

Paul Briganti, whose work spans Saturday Night Live, Please Don't Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain and campaigns for brands including Wendy's, Orbit and Hotels.com, surrounds himself with the cheery and the cheeky, from a treasured gift from Lorne Michaels to a bear deterrent bought during a late-night moment of parental paranoia.

Here, the RadicalMedia director shares the sprays, the snaps and the shrine to himself that keep his workspace weird.

The Canyon

My wife and I live in Benedict Canyon in Los Angeles with our three-year-old.

Benedict Canyon’s claim to fame is the Manson murders.

It’s a gritty point of reference, however it’s the most notable of all the infamous murders that’ve taken place here.

I have an office under our house, and my wife and I will often come here to the backyard to take calls and smoke Parliaments.

We obviously hide the smoking from our three-year-old (she only smokes Camels).

We moved in March 2020, literally the day our nation found out Tom Hanks had Covid.

It was a whirlwind, and Saturday Night Live was doing Zoom shows.

I pretty much had my laptop stacked on moving boxes out here, remoting with our New York editor Sean, hoping to get done in time for Saturday.

We bonded with this place real quick.

The World Series Hat

I grew up on the East Coast but never felt as at home as I do at Dodger Stadium.

I’ve been a fan ever since I moved here in 2014.

LA is so weird and sectioned off, Dodger Stadium is really the only place that feels like an equaliser.

All types of people go.

New York has that everywhere, and LA only has that at Dodger Stadium.

Also I love the song I Love LA and fireworks.

The Viewfinder

One of the perks of working at Saturday Night Live is that Lorne Michaels buys you a birthday present every year.

He hand-delivers it to you and sings the “how old are you now” extended version of the birthday song.

That part is a lie, but the first part is true.

This is one of those gifts he got me.

No shade to Artemis and all the others, but I prefer this over the apps.

I find better shots with it.

Also I look cooler.

The Self Shrine

An office in LA must be a shrine to yourself, at least a little bit.

Here we have a still from an Saturday Night Live Totino’s parody ad I directed.

Another is me and the Please Don’t Destroy guys with Judd Apatow.

Another is a drawing from a New Yorker feature that my father-in-law framed.

And finally we have my wife and daughter gallivanting down the streets of New York.

Not bad!

The Heating Pad (With Dog)

Dogs’ lives are short so they deserve to be spoiled.

I got mine a heating pad.

My dog’s name is Franny and she sleeps all day for the most part.

A lot of times I’ll be in a Zoom for an hour, and she’ll pop up and the other person goes “Oh!”, all startled.

She’s an amazing set dog.

There’s a pic of her watching a monitor with headphones on somewhere.

HMU if you want that.

The Pirate Guy Statue

Like all Italians growing up in the ’60s and ’70s, my grandparents were casual alcoholics and had a large, wonderful bar in their home.

This pirate guy is from that bar.

I think it held stirrers or something.

I always found comfort in him and he’s somehow followed me all these years.

I’ll never part with this pirate, unless someone reading this knows it’s worth a large sum of money.

Or any sum of money.

I need money.

(I was a majority investor in both Fyre Festivals.)