How to win fans and fill arenas like Dane Cook
Four quick and easy steps to stand-up comedy stardom
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Even if you can’t stand Dane Cook—trust us, we don’t blame you—there’s no denying that the comedic bard of bro nation is one of the most popular funnymen working today. When Cook comes to D.C. on Friday, he won’t be performing at a comedy club or theater—he’ll be at George Mason University's Patriot Center, a 10,000-seat arena. How does a stand-up comedian like Cook get so big that he can draw thousands in practically every city he visits? The A.V. Club looked at the careers of other superstar comics with arena-filling powers to see if we could uncover the secrets of mega comedy success. Here’s what we found.
1. Be a comic visionary
Examples: Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Steve Martin
Let’s start with the easy one first, right? Not every boundary-pushing comedy trailblazer ends up drugged out and alone like Lenny Bruce. Sometimes, being brilliantly funny really can pay off in a big way. All you need is a cutting-edge sensibility, a disdain for convention, and the kind of razor-sharp wit that comes along only once in a generation. Along with ranking among the best and most influential stand-up comics ever, Richard Pryor, George Carlin, and Steve Martin were also popular enough at the peak of their careers to draw tens of thousands of people every night they stepped on stage. But restless creativity rarely sits comfortably with mass success for long, particularly in comedy, where successful comics get laughs just for showing up. In his 2007 autobiography Born Standing Up, Martin admitted that he quit stand-up because in part because it wasn’t challenging for him anymore. So he decided to make 27 Cheaper By The Dozen movies instead.
2. Be a TV star
Examples: Bill Cosby, Eddie Murphy
This just in: A lot of people watch TV. Millions and millions of people, in fact. The vast majority of those people wouldn’t get off their couch if it was doused in gasoline and set on fire, but even if one-half of 1 percent of a network television audience is willing to pay to see you crack wise in a basketball arena, that still equals a lot of paying customers. A big reason why Bill Cosby still sells out shows today is because he was Cliff Huxtable on The Cosby Show nearly 20 years ago. Before he was a movie star, Eddie Murphy’s red-hot stand-up comedy career in the early ’80s was fueled largely by the notoriety he gained from Saturday Night Live. By the time he made the classic concert movie Raw in 1986, Murphy had to play sports arenas because his ego wouldn’t fit any place else.
3. Adopt a really broad and really, really dumb persona
Examples: Larry The Cable Guy, Andrew Dice Clay
Let’s say you’re not particularly funny or smart. Fortunately, being funny or smart are not necessarily prerequisites for massive comedy stardom. Similar to how the dumbest, most obvious bands end up going over better in a large venue than some shoegazing band of indie-rock jag-offs, comedians who adopt a larger-than-life, über-stupid comedic persona stand the best chance of succeeding in front of 18,000 faceless Joe Sixpacks. Andrew Dice Clay enjoyed short-lived superstardom in the ’80s because his Neanderthal meathead shtick was a hit with dullards working up the nerve to beat the crap out of women and homosexuals later that night. Today, Larry The Cable Guy has similarly transcended his lack of talent, wit, and decency by mining the endless comic possibilities of farts and unabashed racism. We’re laughing already!
4. Work the Internet harder than a sexual predator
Example: Dane Cook
Cook hasn’t adopted a moronic comedic persona, he’s certainly not a TV star, and he’s definitely not a comic visionary. But he has an advantage over all the arena-filling comics that came before him: The interwebs. If the online echo chamber is good for anything, it’s for blowing up marginally good or popular things and making them seem like the most motherfucking important shit you’ve ever experienced!!!! Cook is neither a notably great comedian like Carlin or a memorably horrible comedian like the Diceman. He’s absolutely average. If comedy were a candy store, he’d be malted milk balls. But his ability to network—1.5 million Facebook friends and counting, dudes!—has created a bond with fans not smart enough to realize than you don’t have to pretend your Facebook friend is funny if he’s not your friend in real life. By the way, this is how every entertainment star will be created from now on.
