Comedian Dane Cook talks about the haters
Posted by Mike McIntyre/Plain Dealer Reporter May 07, 2009 11:39AM
COMEDY PREVIEW
Dane Cook
When: 8 p.m. Thursday, May 14.
Where: The Q, East Sixth Street and Huron Road, Cleveland.
Tickets: $33-$103, call 216-241-5555 or 330-945-9400.
Don't think his lofty status high above most stand-ups makes the air too thin for him to hear. Don't think he just covers his ears with his double-platinum records, or stuffs them full of the cash he pulls in for all manner of entertainment, from arena acts to TV specials to starring movie roles.
He hears it.
"I stay very close to the word on the street, so it does hurt. It definitely affects your veneer from time to time," he says, musing aloud about how jealousy and frustration play a role, but some people just aren't ever going to like you, two gazillion MySpace friends be damned.
It hurts more when it hurts those around you, said Cook: "The stuff on the bathroom wall that needs a good scrub down, that's the tricky part. When you see it hurting your fans and your family, that's when it hurts me. . . . There's more good than bad at the end of the day, sometimes the bad is really bad."
Cook, the gel-haired frat boy who stalks the stage, has been feeling very introspective lately. His parents died. His half-brother faces charges of embezzling loads of cash from him. He's not the college kid anymore. He's taken the pain and the maturity and boiled it down to a new, more personal act. He performed it in front of a handful of people -- fewer than are usually in the bathroom at any given time during one of his arena shows -- and taped it for a Comedy Central special, "Isolated Incident," premiering Sunday, May 17. He's bringing the material to his usual humongous audiences now, including a gig at The Q on Thursday, May 14.
"It was cathartic for me to share some of this material of what I've lived through over the last few years, the good and the bad. And now that I've brought that smaller, more intimate show to an even larger venue, it's an incredible feeling," he said. The response, said the most fan-connected comic in history, has been "overwhelmingly positive."
He even spends a good chunk of time talking about all the haters.
"I get goose bumps sometimes performing this material about dealing with those tough moments, and the reason I get so emotional about it when that wave of laughter finally comes is because now I own it, now I am giving that to other people and not in an egotistical, narcissistic way, but in a very . . . healing way," said Cook. "I speak about it. People laugh. It makes me feel not so bad, and it doesn't have the same pain and impact as the person who tried to deliver that blow."
Cook says he was shy and insecure when he was young and "had nowhere to share these strange and fantastical ideas." The comedy club stage was safe for that and feels safe again.
"To come full circle and to lose both of my parents and deal with the white-hot spotlight and the negativity that goes with that . . . I found myself feeling like I did in 1990 again where [the stage was] the one place I could share everything, kind of hang it out to dry. By the end of the day it was just a healing for me," he said.
Heavy as it all sounds, Cook assures his singular goal is to make people laugh, to "bring a little bit of lightness" to someone else's bad day.
And maybe even his own.
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