If you’re gonna be the King of All Douchebags, you’d better at least be funny. Cook isn’t.
Oh, I beg your pardon. I personally felt that “Click” was a fantastic movie. I didn’t mean for my opinion to offend the experts at Rotten Tomatoes. 72% of the audience gave it positive reviews. Tomato, tomato…
I think Sandler’s a different animal - while he did do standup for a few years (and from what little I saw, was pretty funny - he had an early-Woody Allen-ish sort of neurotic stage persona), he got his writing gig at SNL in his mid-20s. Comedy writing/sketch performing is much different than standup, and I wouldn’t compare Sandler to Cook except to say that IMO, when Sandler did do legitimate standup (not the frat-boy music tours he did in the 90s) he was much funnier than Cook is now.
And apropos of nothing (except that a former SNL performer was brought up) - Jim Breuer sucks Goat Boy ass.
I’ve chuckled at perhaps a couple things he said. Other than that, he’s rather tedious.
And what is it with the so-called comedians like Cook these days? Collectively, you couldn’t get three minutes of funny material from the lot of them. Steve Martin, Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Jerry Seinfeld, early Eddie Murphy–THOSE are (or were) comedians.
(And get off my lawn!):mad:
Stealing one joke will earn you more hatred than hitting it big in 5 seconds with your own amterial would. Among comics, joke stealing is just a bit worse than genocide.
Just got back from listening to the interview (which I highly recommend to anyone really interested in the guy).
Douchebag? You probably can’t judge a guy by his stage persona.
So he has this stage persona that is very intense and focused. That persona wasn’t on display during the interview. I heard what sounded like a regular guy talking about a successful but embattled career. On more than one occasion he admits to feelings of inadequacy and social anxiety in his private life coming up as a comedian (though now at this stage in his life — having had some measure of success while simultaneously losing his parents to cancer — has left him a little more grounded and balanced.
He’s got a less-than-stellar standing within the stand-up community, but I have a hard time finding any fault with him.
Much has been made of the theft, but in my estimation, it outsizes any infractions he’s guilty of. He mentioned the charge that he stole one of Louis CK’s bits about naming your children outrageous names. But Cook pointed out the fact that as it turns out, Steve Martin did a bit like that from his “A Wild & Crazy Guy,” but who’s going around accusing Louis CK of stealing from Martin? Still not an original joke, nonetheless. But Cook maintains that it just turns out that more than one comedian got to the same place through independent circumstances and asks critics to look at his entire body of work to find the kind of stealing that Mencia is notorious for. He maintains you will not find it. I found it rather ironic that the internet medium that he used to catapult his career is the same force that has branded him with a scarlet letter.
Some of his unpopularity within the comic world is that his explosive energy made it hell for other comics to follow him. And when he came to New York, (a) the alternative comedy ruling class didn’t cotton to his style for whatever reason, and (b) he didn’t make any attempt to ingratiate himself to that group; he says that he felt rejected out of hand by the group and so he “went home,” though in retrospect, he sees that that could easily be perceived as arrogant and cocky.
There was also backlash when Comedy Central aired his shirt-ripping comedy special on heavy rotation. He said he did the shirt-ripping thing to stand out in a crowded field, thinking it would be aired the few times that most specials are. But when that took off, combined with promoting himself online, his fast-track to the top is going to make any comic who is pounding away in obscurity feel resentful — that he didn’t earn it.
And finally, the notion that he is guilty of “shameless” self-promotion. I don’t see it. What I do see is everybody else doing what he did before anybody else thought to do it. Cook actually shares a story of how the promotion thing was a lesson he learned from his dad, who was a small businessman.
In summary, I still don’t care for his style of comedy, but I don’t think he deserves the enmity he gets.
Touche, sir. I apologize for being pedantic and elitist.
(I have this thing about the lack of any kind of attempt these days to distinguish between opinion and fact. I think journalism and political discourse is suffering as a result of it. So I’m keyed into it and bristle even when it happens in perfectly innocent and innocuous comments about someone liking a movie, when what I should really do is take a deep breath and lighten up.)
Maybe I should start another thread about this, but I would have thought that stealing jokes would be fairly common and oftentimes done inadvertantly. If I were gonna get into stand-up comedy I’d start hanging around at clubs, buying more comedy dvds, seeing what others were like, and I can imagine it would be easy enough to pick up material or ideas without realising the source.
The reason I don’t really care for Dane Cook is the majority (not all) of people I know who really like Dane Cook are like Will Ferrell’s brother in Step-Brothers. Douchebags love Dane Cook.
Standup comedy is a lot more specific, polished, and focused than you might think. Comics don’t just write jokes, they slave over them. You know explicitly what you’re saying.
And you’re right – comics DO expose themselves to outside comedy. Generally speaking, they expose themselves very deeply and frequently to it. I think it’d be hard to accidentally steal jokes without realizing it. I don’t speak from experience, but the general vibe I’ve gotten from comics is that it’s just not very likely.
It’s possible that Cook’s quick rise made it easier for this to be the case – his exposure might have been more limited and “subconscious” lifting more possible. Not really an excuse, though: I’m not sure screwing other, talented individuals is better if it’s merely done from ignorance.
I think you’re right. Again, after having been on a regular diet of Marc Maron’s WTF podcasts in which he broaches these topics with Dane Cook, Carlos Mencia and Robin Williams, it’s evident that this does happen: people soak things in without even knowing it. Some comics arrive at similar destinations by different routes. From what I’ve heard, the respectful way this is addressed is for the two comics getting together and saying something like “Hey man, I heard you have this bit and it seems a lot like my bit. Here’s mine, I’ve been doing it since 2004 (or whatever). How can we work this out?” So I think there’s something to the notion that if it the duplication of material is an anomaly, there will be a greater benefit of doubt. But it it keeps happening, that’s when an individual will find themselves on the outs of their professional community.
I think that also speaks to the notion of how increasingly difficult it is to develop completely original work in any creative field. We all stand on the shoulders of those that have gone before us, and while that can be a great boon, it can also be a great hurdle.
I think it has a lot to do with the guys’ reputation in the comedy world. Sandler is not known as a joke thief. And while he did get his big breaks early on - he was on the Cosby Show at 21, on SNL by his mid-20s, so it’s not like he slaved away for years in no-name clubs for chump change and free beer - he still followed a pretty traditional route to fame.
From my experience working with comics (long story), stealing jokes is practically a hanging offense. But, at the same, it’s not all that uncommon for comedians to arrive at similar jokes through independent means, especially if they’re doing topical material. Even Leno and Letterman have been known to tell almost the same exact joke about the same pop culture topic on the same night (one instance that pops to mind happened in the wake of the Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction). Some subjects just lend themselves to pretty obvious jokes. When that happens though, the good comics will either drop the joke, or find a way to craft it into something unique.
I remember reading an interview with a stand-up comedian (the name escapes me at the moment, but I’m fairly sure it was a recognizable name) in the late 80s or early 90s, who said that comedians hated to see Robin Williams show up in the audience. The rap was that he’d swipe your best bits, and do them ten times better than you ever did. 
I don’t think he’s funny. I WISH he was funny, as I’m always wanting a laugh, and I like to think I’m not so much a hipster that I find fault in genuinely worthwhile things that are popular, but I don’t find him funny. I watched a Comedy Central broadcast of one of his stand-up performances. After he ran around the stage maniacally for a few minutes desperately avoiding the funny, he referenced the beginning of the song, “Under Pressure”
“Dum dum dum dada dumdum. . . Remember that? How cool was that?”
But as he continues, I find out he isn’t talking about “Under Pressure”. He’s talking about the Vanilla Ice song, “Ice Ice Baby.” That kinda sums up Dane Cook, IMO - or maybe me, or just the reason why I hate him. It’s sums up something, I’m sure.
The allegations of joke-theft didn’t help him with me either.
I don’t mind him in movies, assuming he does justice to the part, but I’m not interested in his stand-up. Not much interested in his movies either, actually, but I won’t avoid one if he has a supporting role.
Ah, this thread reminded me of an Onion story – Shaken Manchild Syndrome
For those wondering why joke theft is a big deal, I think of it like this:
You and your SO are gonna have a child. One of the biggest parts of having a child is naming it… picking a name that is meaningful, and sounds good, and won’t get the kid picked on. You buy books on it, search the web for hours and hours on meanings and spellings and literally stay up at night trying to think of a good name.
The time has come, you have a name picked out, and it’s great. It’s the perfect name. Sounds good, looks good, balances well with the last name. Pays homage to both sides of the family, and still is unique enough not to be confusing. It’s literally perfect.
Then, a month later, your friend says it’s such a great name, they are gonna name their kid that too! “Won’t it be great? They’ll be like twins!”
That annoyance you feel? Imagine that multiplied by a huge amount. As if naming babies was your job, and when someone took a name idea because it was good, you no longer got paid.
I’m not sure how well this works as an analogy, but how great would the name “Cain Xavier Asskicking Smith” be? Awesome, right?
Personally speaking I just don’t find Dane Cook even slightly funny.
As for Adam Sandler; well I’m not a huge fan of him either. My basic theory is that any movie that Adam Sandler is in where he has to make a fake baby voice; I"m not going to like. There are exceptions, but not many.
ETA… As an actor Dane Cook is OK in what little I’ve seen him in; I just don’t think his stand up is funny at all.
Family Guy’s take on Dane Cook.
I regard Dane Cook as a so-so comic, myself. I wouldn’t pay to see him, but enjoyed a few of his TV specials.
I may be one of the few people who has no strong opinion of him, as a person OR as a comedian.
The one thing I’ll say in his favor is this: in my limited experience, professional comedians are a scummy bunch (apologies to RickJay). Hence, it doesn’t bother me much when I hear that So-and-So is hated by his fellow comedians. I figure it’s a GOOD sign when contemptible people don’t like you.
Dane Cook is hot.
It’s jealousy and spite.
DC is like when you tell this really hot chick a joke and she sort of politely laughs but you know you just bombed, then DC walks in tells the same woman the same joke and she laughs really loud and immediately leaves with him.
It’s just hatin’.