What's The Deal With...Oh Wait, He Doesn't Do That Anymore
I think I'm a somewhat funny guy. And other people tell me that I'm pretty funny. So I often wonder if I have what it takes to be a stand up comedian. All the famous stand up comedians will say it's not as easy as it looks. And to show how everyone how hard it really is, Jerry Seinfeld agreed to do this documentary about him returning to stand up with new material, after retiring his old stuff a few years ago on an HBO special.
Seinfeld starts with small clubs in New York, testing the material to small crowds. And hearing bits of them, I for one can say they're pretty funny. Colin Quinn, who works in the same clubs as Jerry, discusses with him how to perform new material, among other insightful things that Colin comes up with.
Also featured in this film is a new comedian named Orny Adams, who is from New York probably and he is starting to become pretty hot. He becomes so hot that famed manager George Sharpiro takes him as a client. Sharpiro, in case you didn't know, is also Seinfeld's manager, and managed Andy Kaufman. Seeing George in this movie made me wonder why they got Danny Devito to play him in the Kaufman bio-pic "Man On The Moon", he really isn't that short.
Anyway, both Jerry and Orny do their gigs and Jerry decides to go on the road. Orny gets a big gig in Montreal, at some comedy festival. His big thing was that he got written about in the Montreal Newspaper. And then Orny hit the big time: Letterman.
Orny had to agree to change one of his jokes around, because the Letterman people didn't think it was "P.C", which upset Orny at first, but hey, it's freakin' Letterman, you change it or else you go empty bedpans all day. So Orny went and Letterman liked him. And then...well, I guess we're still waiting to see if he will in fact be big.
Back onto Jerry, he decides to hit the road, going all over the U.S, armed with this material. And along the way he runs across:
Robert Klien
Ray Romano
Chris Rock
Garry Shandling
Kevin Nealon
Jay Leno
And Bill Cosby, who is the one that inspired Seinfeld to be a comedian in the first place.
After hearing how Cosby does a 26,000 seat stadium for 2 and a half hours, Seinfeld said hell with it and books a 20,000 seat place in Washington, D.C for about an hour and a half. I can only imagine that he kicked ass.
This was a pretty cool look into what comedians, even someone as big as Jerry Seinfeld, go through every night and how they feel when they get off stage and how they felt when they get heckled or get interrupted or just get asked a question. And for his new material, I can say it's pretty much like the old Seinfeld stuff...but just new. Yeah.
3 stars.
"Comedian" on IMDb.com:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0328962/