A few years ago a friend of mine was preparing to do a half hour HBO stand-up special when he answered a call from a fellow comedian and got this blast, "How did you get that? I'm funnier than you." I'm sure Dane Cook is getting a little of that treatment right now. It happens every time the comedy gods yank a comic from the squirming mass at the bottom of the open drainage ditch that is the show biz waiting room. I don't know Dane, never even met him. There's nothing in this for me, other than the joy from tossing a few rocks at the pack of bitter poodles barking at Dane's passing freight train.
"Dane Cook isn't as funny as (fill in older standup star)
Every generation wants their own heroes, in sports, music or comedy. My dad loved Sinatra. My guy was Springsteen. We each liked the music that provided the sound track for our youth - the music we first danced and humped to. Dane's funny to his generation. Case closed. The comics of my generation had our time in the spotlight. We didn't hesitate to run the older comics off the stage. That we now complain about a lack of work is no surprise. There is no more myopic view than a show biz career, a perspective of one. In the Land of the Self, the mirror shall be king. A few years ago Cybil Shepherd hit fifty and suddenly made it her cause to tell the world of the injustice Hollywood serves to aging actresses. I bet the young, hot piece of ass Cybil wasn't turning down any publicity, "I've had enough attention for one lifetime, put Bette Davis on your next magazine cover." As John Huston told Jack Nicholson in "Chinatown, "Follow the money, Mr. Gittes." Young people spend the money, so young people pick the stars to entertain them. People hit their late thirties, settle down and look to their kids for entertainment. They shift from partying at concerts and comedy clubs to sitting in lawn chairs at their kid's soccer games.
"Dane Cook isn't saying anything that hasn't already been said."
If the jokes are new to Dane and his audience, then that is all that matters. Lenny Bruce said something like, "If I say something that sounds familiar it's because I speak the English language. I wasn't born in a vacuum. I pick up what I heard." When I first moved to LA in 1982, Morey Amsterdam, a great old comic best known for his role on the 60's sitcom, "The Dick Van Dyke Show" hung out at Cantor's Deli. You told Morey your hip and original material and then he told you how your brand new joke was done thirty years ago. Standup is a performance art. The only people who care about the origin of the material are the comedians. The audiences just decide they want to hear the funny from that man or that woman.
"He just got lucky with MySpace."
Comics today have to work so much harder to market themselves. All we had to do as print out a black and white 8X10 and show up at one of the showcase clubs where TV People were handing out six figure development deals as you left the stage. Twenty years ago there were only four networks and a hundred comics, so a few TV appearances might even be enough for a start-up fan base. Today there might be a channel dedicated to comedy but there are also ten thousand comedians trying to jam through the door. A comic needs to be seen and heard. It doesn't matter if the appearance is on the Tonight Show, Howard Stern or at a Cattle Auction. If Dane first gathered his fans on MySpace, it was no accident. He worked it. People saw what he was doing and liked it.
It's Dane's time. Go get 'em, man. I'm going to check the mailbox for a Roseanne residual. |
