Ok, I know this is a bit self-serving, but I just did a big interview with Dane Cook. And I'm a comedy nerd, so I pressed him on the standard "other comics are just jealous" response he and his defenders tend to mount when talking about his critics. I also put audio up. To me, he sounded like he was getting defensive about it, but you can be the judge.
http://dailyfiasco.com/2009/05/20/da...omedy-critics/
"Charlie, there is no future in anything. I hope you agree."
Great interview.Originally Posted by SicSemper
Did anyone see his special? I keep hearing all this about this being a huge change for him, intimate, reserved, blah blah. Was it actually any good or same ol' Dane?
As someone who was never anti-Dane, I actively disliked the portion of his new special that I saw.
The first 10-20 minute or so is about Barack Obama, and there's maybe one good line the entire time. I remember him switching topics at some point and I actually said out loud to myself "Wait, where was the joke?"
Maybe it picked up after that, but I decided to do something else.
This special won't make your head hurt like his last two arena specials, mostly because he's not shouting over a crowd that won't shut the hell up for the entire show. I'd definitely recommend that he release all future material in such intimate settings.
I like him better in the arena. Even if I'm not laughing every minute, I'm still entertained by the energy of a huge crowd and him roaming a huge stage.
You kind of lose that in a claustrophobic club. So when the material isn't hitting, there's really nothing to enjoy.
A comic who was in town for Bridgetown told me that he heard firsthand that Dane reads as much negative criticism of his act as he can, and that he's very aware of AST. The walls have ears, people!
Good job! Did you ask him if he watched Kindler's deconstruction of his act? It would have been fascinating to hear his take on the beating he got from critics for his films as well.
In the promo for the new special, it says, "Dane Cook how you've never seen him before," and it mentions both his parents dieing in the same year. Cut to him air humping a stool. I doubt he's changed at all.
Why would someone be entertained by a crowd?
Bob LaRitchie, Brian's Friend
In Russia, crowd...
Fun is infectious.
Are you also entertained by the MRSA virus?
Cook mentions Kindler in the interview.
I'll bite. Enjoyed his first two albums, thought he was a good "general standup" comic. He was funny enough. First better than second. Couldn't get through Tourgasm, it was pretty insufferable and woefully unfunny. Vicious Circle put me off completely though (no, one performance doesn't sink a comedian but you could see the direction he was heading and I had no interest in seeing any more of that). "Wait where was the joke?" was one of my biggest problems with VC. It was just bad (to me).
So here we have a special that is more low key, intimate, etc. Trying to counteract some of the "huge celebrity" vibes some people may have been turned off by before (this is one in a long line of reasons why Dane Cook just doesn't understand why people were turning away from his comedy), he set the special in a 400 person room over a few nights.
Fine, what's different. Not much unfortunately... the inherent problems are still there even as he tries to take a slightly different approach to his style. Alot of times, the joke wasn't there and other times the special veered way too far into "personal territory" and it wasn't just the uncomfortable vibe of it (I fucked a girl with a remote control! True story!), but rather there wasn't a joke there (I guess I gave the punchline just now, that particluar one was set up with a three to five minute story about not having a condom when messing around with an LA chick). And that was the payoff.... seriously.
The interview above was really interesting, what I took most from that (not the comments about his peers' opinions) was that he recognized what he did earlier in his career and wanted to "grow" from that into more of a Cosby-Newhart type who could weave these fantastic stories where there wasn't a strict punchline, it was the way it was told and the language used to convey the idea with a great wrap up.
That was not on display here. I can actually see Dane attempting this angle, but it falls so uncomfortably flat, it was at times as hard to watch as VC. I'll give him a few jokes here and there, nothing I can recall, but I remember my overall reaction was "try again". Oh and "don't say some of this stuff on stage again, honesty's one thing, but jesus man, if you are going to go that far with the odd shit, you better have a hell of a punchline coming to make it worth it or else (like last night) it just feels gross" was in full effect here.
Real quick, I didn't know about both his parents' passing. That coupled with his massive and quick shot to stardom and hanger's on (brother stole money etc) may have influenced his shitty comedy (my opinion) over the last five years, we all do shitty work when there is that much stress and responsibility on your plate. I'm not giving him a pass for putting sub-standard material out there, I just thought it's an interesting perspective on someone who, now that most of that stress has passed (the events not the pain), maybe he can rebuild himself with better material.
But... probably not. If you've had extensive conversations with Steve Martin, Rock, Louis CK, etc etc, and you're still going to do material such as from Isolated Incident, maybe there isn't hope for something radically different (read: good) from you. Or maybe it's a stumbling start to something brand new.
GodHatesFlags - that was hilarious.
Last edited by Fentmore; May 21, 2009 at 1:44 PM.
Great interview.
I'd like to say that deep down, I feel like Dane Cook is probably a decent guy. I don't outright hate the guy, though I've proudly stated so in the past. It's just that if somebody likes his comedy, I'm going to judge them negatively. The biggest problem is his fans. For some reason, he really appeals to the non-comedy crowd, the people who don't really care about comedy and thus don't really appreciate it as an art form. That means the people who DO like comedy, the comedy nerds here at AST, anyone who can name more than 15 funny comedians off the top of their head that are currently performing... that means Dane Cook will never have that audience. I think he accepted that a long time ago, and went the other way and embraced it.
So, I get it. We're never going to like him, everyone else is. I don't really hold it against anyone.
Once again, great interview.
I know. I said, "Good job," and mentioned Andy by name. Cook, however, didn't address Andy's deconstruction of his act and left it at, "A lot of people just don't find me funny." I would love to know Dane's response to, "Why do you think they don't find you funny?"
Dane's defense of "they're jealous" would explain only a small percentage of the haters. How about the people more successful than him that dislike him? Or all the people that disliked him when his first comedy special came out? And do people dislike other things due to jealousy, like foods they don't want to eat at, political parties, films, musicians, literature, etc? I don't dislike pomegranates because I'm jealous of their success. I dislike them because there's no depth to their jokes.
Last edited by Keith Whitener; May 20, 2009 at 4:44 PM.
Maybe he's a little like Phish in that way. If you were hanging out in a bar that had a stage, and suddenly, unannounced, Phish or Dane Cook got up and started performing, it would probably be a really fun night. Maybe that's not the best analogy, but the point is that performers are sometimes saddled by shitty fans, and when viewed apart from the questionable people that follow them they're not all bad.
Then again, Dane probably *has* done drop-ins like that, so there are probably some people with AST-ish sensibilities that have seen him show up unannounced, and they can probably better speak to whether he can ever get more "real" on stage in an intimate setting.
I would at least understand this if you were talking about actually being there, but you're talking about watching it on TV. Why not just buy a dvd of crowd shots and pretend that Dane Cook's mic went out? Using this logic, it would be nearly as good.
I live near a big city and take public transportation to work. I can experience a 'crowd' just about anytime I want, and I almost never think to myself, "Wow. This is great!". If I ask someone how a concert was, and their response is, "There were so many people there", I know that the show sucked, and that that person doesn't want to admit they paid good money for something terrible.
I find that a much more effective use of my time is to avoid entertainment that needs a backup form of distraction in case the entertainment itself sucks.
Bob LaRitchie, Brian's Friend
This is my issue right here with the special. The special is disingenuous because the implication (as far as I was led on to believe through the near constant advertisements) was that the set would be for a small crowd. What he got was something entirely different. Why not just actually do it unannounced? Why not have it a more independent feel? If he wants to move on to a different type of image, why bother putting out a product that still have him perform in front of a large crowd of fans?
He dropped the ball on this one, I think. And he seems to insist that it was this very impromptu thing when everything else says otherwise.
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