Why Dane Cook is a bad comedian

There's a consensus that Dane Cook just isn't a funny comedian, which is belied by the fact that he sells out stadiums to crowds who cheer wildly at nearly every sentence that comes out of his mouth. There aren't many comics who can fill a big hall like that: last one I recall was Steve Martin's mid-70's period, and Richard Pryor in his prime. And the guy works his Internet fan base really, really well, and I'll give him credit for that.

But he just is't very funny, and since you all know me, then you know what's next-- several paragraphs working out _why_ I don't think he's funny. 

First of all, the guy directing this show is a moron-- he cuts between camera angles every half-sentence. And when the camera angles aren't very different, the whole thing is jittery and clippy, as though a film had been sliced into foot-long segments and tapes back together. 

I'll focus on two routines Dane Cook did in the show I'm watching. And yeah, my paraphrases aren;t going to try to capture his performance, which involves a lot of arm-waving and gesticulating. One was a riff on Oprah Winfrey, who's not exactly unplowed comic territory. He says there are two kinds of Oprah shows. The first is the happy show, where she gives away things, "Everybody gets a _school_!" You get a school! You get a school!" The second is the serious one about pedophiles. 

Now, in this routine, Cook had a couple of lines that could have been funny. Parodying Oprah's gifts can be done neatly by having her give out almost surreal gifts, like schools. Good choice on Cook's part. As for the Oprah-pedophile show, he had a line about being diddled by your uncle in a closet, and how you'd focus on the board games on the shelves which _commented on the situation_, like "Sorry!" and "Risk" and "Candyland." 

These are actually good lines, and could be very, very funny... but Cook's delivery is _awful_. He spouts them off quickly and frenetically, when he could have gotten a lot of mileage out of a slower, calibrated, properly _timed_ delivery. And you have to wonder; since everyone understands that standup comedy requires careful delivery and timing, why doesn't Cook work on this even with good material? I think I know, but I'll use another example to lead up to it.

Cook also did a routine about those late-night commercials showing starving children in some African shithole. He mentioned the Burl Ivesish fellow who steps in and pleads for fifteen cents a day to send these kids to Oxford. And he suggests that, maybe, they should get as a spokeman some tough-looking biker who yells at the viewer, "What is wrong with you? Fifteen cents a day? Get two friends with nickels!" Etc., etc. 

Okay, so Cook tends to go for easy, well-worn targets; faithless girlfriends, late-night commercials, Oprah's gifts. But this routine _begs_ for a comparison with the late Sam Kinison's routine, one version of which is below.



In case you can't see or play the video, Kinison's routine is _really_ aggressive: he demands to know why starving people don't _move to where the food is_. In the version on one of his alvbums, he pantomines yanking a starving African over to look at the ground. "See this?" he says, in a patronizing, angry voice. "This is _sand_. You know nothing can _grow_ in this shit? nothing's GONNA grow here. You live in a FUCKING DESERT." And it's one of the funniest routines I've _ever_ heard. 

And heres where I think Dane Cook might never become a good comedian. He projects himself, and perhaps _needs_ to project himself, as a _nice, normal guy_. One who makes the occasional sick joke, or who plays a bit of a goofus, or capable of doing something craven to his girlfriend, but he'll _never_ do a joke that puts him in the position of possibly being a really awful human being. With Kinison, you _embraced_ the chance to laugh at some genuinely _awful_ thoughts; he came at you without any fear of what you'd think, batter down any moralism you had, and have you laughing at things you knew you _should_ be shocked at. 

And if a comedian has to say something awful or evil or offensive for a joke, he _shouldn't care_ if people thought less of them. Take Bill Hicks, who had the following opener: "Speaking of Satan, I was listening ro Rush Limbaugh the other day.... Doesn't Rush Limbaugh remind you of one of those gay guys who likes to sit in a tub and have other men pee on him?" WONDERFUL line. Hilarious, shocking, offensive, _accurate_, and nastier than anything the Oxycontin King could come up with. And Hicks simply didn't _care_ if you thought it was homophobic or disgusting. It was _funny_. Comedy is NOT about being _nice_.

And it's not just being a _nice_ guy, but a nice _normal_ guy. The better standups-- Pryor, Tomlin, Carlin, and others-- have _not_ come from the mainstream culture. Pryor came from shitty Peoria, Carlin was an Irish street kid and hippie, Tomlin was an intelligent woman. You watch people like Mitch Hedberg or David Cross, and you know that they're just not like most of the thuds you deal with in the office cube farm every day. Hedberg had a wonderfully surreal imagination, and Cross is a fiercely intelligent crank. (He's brilliant, by the way.) I hate to resort to glib terms like "outsiders," but comics have always worked best as an "outsider" of some sort or another. Comedy is also NOT about being _normal_. 

Dane Cook's stage presence, his dress, jokes, mannerisms, delivery, persona in movie comedies-- are all pretty much that of a fairly average twentysomething. And his audience likes him because he's, well, just like one of them, and like a lot of people they know. This alone doesn't make him a bad comedian-- Seth Rogen plays average guys too, and he's fine-- but Dane Cook's way with a joke indicates that he does _not_ want to risk having people _dislike_ him. Which is sort of a guarantee that he could have the biggest crowds a comoedian's ever had, and still never become better than the mediocre comic he is now.