Joe Bob Briggs

Appeared on Last Podcast on the Left March 28, 2019.

In 2018, the horror-themed subscription video on demand service Shudder, owned and operated by AMC, signed Joe Bob for a new series The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs, which premiered as a 13-film marathon on July 13, 2018. During the premiere, Shudder's servers crashed as a result of an overwhelming amount of subscribers attempting to access the service's new Live Stream feature. Despite the server errors, the series received critical acclaim from critics and horror fans alike. On July 20, Shudder announced on social media that Joe Bob would return, which was realized as two shorter marathons on Thanksgiving and Christmas Day. Beginning on March 29, The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs marked the return to his classic format of a double feature, streaming live on Friday nights at 9pm est, and streaming on-demand on Shudder after streaming premier. With the final episode of the first season of The Last Drive-In airing on May 24, social media posts on May 22nd confirmed that the series would be returning for a second season.

Appeared on Astonishing Legends Podcast December 9, 2018.

In 2016, also under his given name, he wrote the critically acclaimed nonfiction book Eccentric Orbits: The Iridium Story in which he traces the conception, development, and launching of the Motorola's Iridium satellite "constellation" and the race to save it from destruction.

"Briggs" appeared on Ken Reid's TV Guidance Counselor podcast on June 16, 2016.

During these TV years, Briggs remained active as a writer, working as a contributing editor to the National Lampoon, freelancing for Rolling Stone, Playboy, the Village Voice, and Interview. He was the regular humor columnist and theater critic at National Review, and he published five books of satire--Joe Bob Goes to the Drive-In, A Guide to Western Civilization, or My Story, Joe Bob Goes Back to the Drive-In, The Cosmic Wisdom of Joe Bob Briggs, and Iron Joe Bob, his homage to the men's movement. He also wrote and performed in special shows for Fox and Showtime, and collaborated with veteran comedy writer Norman Steinberg on an NBC sitcom that remains unproduced. His two syndicated newspaper columns--"Joe Bob Goes to the Drive-In" and "Joe Bob's America"—were picked up by The New York Times Syndicate in the '90s, and he continued to write both until putting the columns on hiatus in 1998. For one year he wrote a humorous sex advice column in Penthouse. In November 2000 he started writing the "Drive-In" column again, this time for United Press International, along with a second column, "The Vegas Guy", which chronicles Joe Bob's weekly forays into the casinos of America. In 2003, Briggs delivered Profoundly Disturbing: Shocking Movies That Changed History.

Joe Bob Briggs appeared as himself in the 2008 novel Bad Moon Rising by Jonathan Maberry. Joe Bob is one of several real-world horror celebrities who are in the fictional town of Pine Deep when monsters attack. Other celebrities include Tom Savini, Jim O'Rear, Brinke Stevens, Ken Foree, Stephen Susco, Debbie Rochon, James Gunn and blues man Mem Shannon.

In 1998, Bloom retired from writing newspaper reviews, only to return two years later due to popular demand and continue his column as Joe Bob with UPI. Bloom has also appeared on television as a host of TNT's MonsterVision horror movie marathons, and has an internet website, The Joe Bob Report, with collections of movie reviews and other articles.

Joe Bob's Drive-In Theater ended when TMC changed its format in early 1996. He was off the air for only four months before joining the TNT network, where he hosted MonsterVision for four years. That show ended in July 2000, when TNT likewise changed format. In 2011, the most definitive account of the MonsterVision series (including interviews with Briggs and series mailgirl Honey Gregory) appeared on the cult movie website, Mondo Video. In the late '90s he also spent two seasons as a commentator on Comedy Central's The Daily Show (under his given name John Bloom), with a recurring segment called "God stuff" beginning on the 2nd ever episode in 1996. He starred in Frank Henenlotter's documentary Herschell Gordon Lewis – Godfather of Gore.

In 1986, as a result of the stage show, Joe Bob was asked to be a guest host on Drive-In Theater, a late- night B-movie show on The Movie Channel (TMC), related network of Showtime. Briggs went over so well that he was eventually signed to a long-term contract. Joe Bob's Drive-In Theater became the network's highest-rated show and ran for almost ten years, and was twice nominated for the industry's Cable ACE Award. He appeared on some 50 talk shows, including The Tonight Show (twice) and Larry King Live. He was also a commentator for a Fox TV news magazine for two seasons. He also made a couple of appearances in season 8 of "Married....With Children" as Billy Ray Wet Nap, co-owner of Pest Boys Pest Control.

In July 1985, Joe Bob's one-man show, An Evening with Joe Bob Briggs, debuted in Cleveland, Ohio. Later re-titled Joe Bob Dead in Concert for home release, the show evolved into a theatrical piece involving storytelling, comedy and music. The show was performed in more than 50 venues over the next two years, including Carolines in New York and regular engagements at Wolfgang's and the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco, as well as convention centers, theaters, music clubs and other comedy clubs. In 2019, Joe Bob began performing a new one-man show, How Rednecks Saved Hollywood, at genre film festivals and revival movie houses across the United States.

In 1985, "Briggs" wrote a column about the "We Are the World" video, in which he wrote a mocking description of starving African children, and made derogatory comments about the American Negro College Fund. The resulting controversy ended Bloom's position at the Dallas Times Herald, though his syndicated column merely changed distributors.

Under his given name, John Bloom, he also co-wrote the nonfiction book Evidence of Love: The Candy Montgomery Story (1984). The book recounts the 1980 Wylie, Texas, murder case in which Montgomery killed her ex-lover's wife, Betty Gore, by striking her a total of 41 times with an ax and whose highly publicized trial ended in an unexpected "not guilty" verdict. The book was made into the CBS television movie A Killing in a Small Town (1990), starring Barbara Hershey.

During the early 1980s when New York City was in the planning stages of redeveloping its run-down 42nd Street, Times Square area, which included closing many grindhouses showing B-movies on double and triple bills around the clock, as well as many porn theatres, Joe Bob expressed great opposition. He encouraged a "postcard-fu" campaign, i.e., encouraging film fans to write to New York City officials and pressure them into saving "the one place in New York City you could see a decent drive-in movie." He felt the 42nd Street movie houses rightfully belonged to all Americans and should be preserved as places where "Charles Bronson can be seen thirty feet high, as God intended".

John Irving Bloom (born January 27, 1953), known by the stage name Joe Bob Briggs, is a syndicated American film critic, writer, and comic performer.