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ing it was a piece of crap, was probably like, ‘Ugh,
fucking shoot me.’” He later apologized.
Cook is just one of several comedians to take a
drubbing recently for controversial material performed during the course of his act. From Tracy
Morgan’s gay son rant to Daniel Tosh’s rape ad lib,
comedians are no longer operating in the semiprivacy of a dark, smoke-filled club. But if you ask
them, they’re not the ones with the problem.
“It used to be that when you were in a comedy club, it almost felt private,” Susie Essman
told The Huffington Post back in June. “It used to
feel like we’re all in this dark club, and we’re all
smoking and drinking and we’re having this experience and we’re all in this together.”
Thanks to camera phones, blogs and social networking, a controversial joke can leapfrog from a
scribble in a notebook to a national news headline
in minutes. There’s very little that’s not caught on
tape, which is a particular problem if you’re a comedian who has a new “chunk” you’re hoping to
work out at your local club.
Stand-up comedy is a unique art in that
it can’t exist without an audience. Rehearsing and honing jokes has to happen
in front of people, as their reaction is the
only gauge of how a joke should proceed,
change or be scrapped. Not so with other
creative fields. No one heckled Paul McCartney when he sang “Scrambled Eggs” instead of
“Yesterday.” Comedians have no such luxury.
While McCartney’s non sequitur is an order of
magnitude less potentially offensive than Cook’s
“Dark Knight” punch line, the fact remains that comedians depend on being able to perform untried
material without it being offered up to the scrutiny
of anyone outside the room where they’re telling it.
Chris Rock explained the problem to The New
COMEDY
HUFFINGTON
08.12.12
COMEDIC
MISFIRES
Dane Cook/
Jeffrey Ross
Less than a week after
the Aurora shooting,
Dane Cook performed
a joke at Los Angeles’
Laugh Factory that
played off the tragedy.
“If none of that would
have happened, I’m
pretty sure that
somebody in that
theater, about
25 minutes
in, realizing it
was a piece of
crap, probably
was like, ‘Ugh,
fucking shoot
me,’” Cook said. Last
weekend, Jeffrey
Ross also joked
about the shooting
during the taping of
Comedy Central’s
“Roast of Roseanne.”
“Congratulations,”
Ross said to fellow
roaster Seth Green.
“This is actually a