DANE COOK
Cambridge-born comedian talks the past, future, and getting deep on Clubhouse
Some comedians are famous, others are infamous. Few comedians fall in both categories like Dane Cook.
To Dane, it doesn’t matter which camp you’re in, he’s learned to keep on trucking on to the next comedy show and appreciate all he’s been given and everything he’s worked for.
It’s too easy to find some controversy or dramatic event in a comedian’s past, some their own doing, others put upon them. The Cambridge-born Cook, who grew up in Arlington and moved to NYC to pursue his career after not being able to get booked here because local headliners at the time refused to follow him, has been through both scenarios and is ready to move on. He has apologized for insensitive jokes, opened up about his financial debacle with his older half-brother Darryl, and received apologies from the comedians who’ve claimed he’s done them wrong. Some of that matters in the public eye, to others it doesn’t. He’ll forever be a hilarious comedian to most, or a joke thief to others. Cook is seen as a hard-working innovator by many, and a hack by others (many of whom are jealous they’re not on his level, in my opinion).
While the Employee of the Month star has opened about all this in the past, we rapped about the ways he’s dealt with difficult relationships, while Cook offered advice on how to handle those situations, and spoke about how he's excited to get past the “COVID pause.”
He’ll be home, performing at the Boch Center Wang Theater, at the end of October in April.
Since this interview was recorded, Dane has decided to postpone his Wang Theatre show/taping until April 23rd. Refunds are available at the point of purchase. All online and phone purchases via Ticketmaster will be refunded automatically, as well as any purchases with a credit card in person at the box office.
Boston, this show and taping mean so much and I want to do it the right way for you all. I’ve heard you loud and clear and we are going to be rescheduling this one for down the road when we can have a great show and we can enjoy it together -- being able to see all of your laughing faces, many who I’ve known since I was kid trying to get any gig I could when I was first starting out and earning my stripes. We’ll make it worth the wait and one to remember.
Dane Cook
How did you weather the great Facebook and Instagram fallout of 2021?
When social media goes down, my brain goes fantastical and I start thinking solar flare has hit. It's going to be 20 years of an electromagnetic pulse that's affecting all of our devices. Do I know how to build a fire from flint and some shards of wood?
Personally, I got a kick out of it because it is interesting to see how many people kind of lose their minds when social media disappears for a minute.
One would think you would be one of them since you’re so active on it and you built your career because of it.
Yeah, but not on a Monday. If it goes down on a Thursday or Friday, those are good ticket sales days. The algorithm later in the week is more robust. But Monday morning, I'll take a few extra hours to lollygag on a Monday afternoon.
You're coming back to Boston to the Boch Center Wang Theatre to record your new special, Tell It Like It Is, that you were touring for Pre-COVID. How different is 2019’s Tell It Like It Is, as opposed to 2021’s Tell It Like It Is?
Well, okay. So a couple of things, you can nix the, Tell It Like It Is title, because even though there are some elements from the Tell It Like It Is tour, for the most part, the special is made up of the year before’s material that I had cultivated. And now of course, because so much time happened with the pause and doing material this year, it’s actually kind of an advanced hodgepodge of what essentially would have been three tours. I’m sort of cherry-picking the material from those three shows. Like, What do I want this next foray to be? So, I don't have a title that I’ve decided on quite yet. Cause I wanted to do this special in March of 2020. The pause also gave me time to add some things. A happy accident to put it quite minor, but nonetheless exciting to finally be putting it up in front of the cameras.
You’re very well known for being very connected to your fans through social media, being ahead of the game of technology, and utilizing it to your advantage. And that’s why I was highly impressed when I listened to you a couple of months ago, talking on Clubhouse about loss and tragedy and the death of your parents. Was it important to you to have that conversation as a way of dealing with some of the trauma in your life, or was it more of, I know other people are struggling with some of the same things and maybe I can lend a hand with my experiences to them?
Yeah. I mean, certainly, a bit of both. I grew up loving standups, but I also really respected them when they would share their personal life. Maybe their struggles, maybe some of the things that showed the other side behind the humor. To me, it was always a bit false to only have an attitude, or what I looked at as a facade of just humor all the time. I felt more connected to funny people when I also realized some of the things that they overcame. So, 30 years into my standup comedy career I can look back and say a lot of the highlight moments off the stage have been intimate relationships that I’ve allowed people into my life and people have allowed me into their lives to share beyond just things that are comedic.
I find that Clubhouse conversations like that come easier because I don’t shy away from that. I am a wear-my-heart-on-my-sleeve kind of person. And I’m grateful my fans chose to come in and listen. They’re not unsettled by the fact that there’s not a punchline at the end of everything. I rather enjoyed those conversations.
I'm a comedian as well, and there's a lot of comedians who refuse to get along with me. And you've had a very similar history with that. How did you get through that? How did you deal with them? How did you get past knowing that there are people who're just not going to like you?
Well, it's at every level and it was early in my career. I didn't understand why sometimes there were people that would have problems with somebody who, you know, didn't have two pennies to rub together. I'm not walking in with an entourage. I barely have gas in my tank. What am I doing to disrupt the environment here? And you learn with some years under your feet, that people feel threatened; it has nothing to do with you. Some people that I'm very good friends with today that I had no relationship with out of the gate. It took them a long time to finally be able to come and say, “I just felt intimidated. I saw that you were there to work. I saw that there was something happening.” And for one reason or another, somebody wants to kind of snuff that out before you even have a chance to enjoy it or figure out you’re a fully formed person. It's hard in those formative years when people are kind of gunning for you, but it takes a minute to know that it really has nothing to do with you. As you climb up the ladder, then it's just par for the course.
There's not anybody that I've had experiences with over the years that they themselves haven't said, yeah, there was a period in my life where I was doing quite well for myself, and suddenly I went from the Belle of the ball to feeling like I was nefarious. dane cook
I just had to prepare for that and know that, especially in a competitive industry, like the entertainment industry. It's a badge in a strange way. You're earning your stripes as you advance and, fortunately, or unfortunately, it goes with the territory that there's always going to be people that will look at you as if you took that opportunity from them, but when the reality is it's anybody's ballgame.
I think it's fair to say that you're a person who is now capable of focusing on the joy of a situation. Where it's so easy for people like us to be able to focus on the negative, focus on the one bad review, focus on the one person who's not having a good time in the audience. And you've seemed to overcome that, is that just from years of working at it? Of having enough things to be able to say, Hey, I can be proud of these events, or have you had to work through this with the help of a professional?
I understood early in a career that you're going to step in it a lot, and it's going to be success through failure. And maybe having a dad that had come from athleticism, I just understood that it's wins and losses. But the biggest win that I had was starting stand-up at all because I had dealt with so much social anxiety and a myriad of emotional problems coming out of high school. An introvert riddled with anxiety, sometimes panic attacks. I just was really in need of a lot of self love and all the things that you gotta do off stage
So when the losses started to come, there was always, “but I do this for a living and I'm okay.” And I'm better than I was before. So dare I say, even in the worst, worst, worst, rains, you know, monsoon level, I was still holding on to what set me off in motion. I would never have lost my pride in myself for doing something that I felt like was an impossible moment to step from the ground level onto that stage. That coupled with years and years down the line, incredible mentors, people that have been in the industry a long time and they prepared me, they were like, “kid, you're going to get your pendulum swing.”
And you're going to have a comeuppance moment, whether you like it or not. Whether you make that headline or somebody else makes that headline, it's just gonna roll that way. So preparedness, appreciation, and never stopping stand-up. A movie comes out and flops. A TV show gets canceled. A girlfriend walks out the door and says, “I'm going to be with that headliner over there instead,” you realize, Hey, I've got another show set up for the next night. And it brings you a lot of joy to know I can still get on stage somewhere and share my ideas with a group of people.
I remember a couple years ago seeing American Typecast, which is a short film you co-created with Monib Abhat. Was it important for you, as someone who has a lot of success and pull in the industry, to help lend your voice to what Middle-Eastern Americans and other people of color face in the entertainment industry?
As a storyteller wanting to share stories that were outside of my own experiences, that collaborative effort with somebody like Monib, who I’d known for a number of years, and that story had been sparked from a lot of hardship on his part, in his experiences out in Tinseltown. I felt like it was a natural process with him, but as we both identified this is a unique story in partnership because of our backgrounds and how we’re linking arms. It became even more, I guess the mission statement of Duffel Bag Entertainment was let’s bring more people different from us into the mix and continue to tell stories that are even beyond just the Middle-Eastern experience.
And the thing that was so positive about that is that until COVID paused us, we had been meeting with Viola Davis’ company and Trevor Noah’s company, and building up friendships and relationships to this day that have been sparked by American Typecast. And then those people understand we have something that we want to put forward that we think is critical, which is it’s important to tell stories that have not been told, but it’s also imperative that we encourage and embrace each other and tell those stories.
Similar to standup comedy shows that become a night for one kind of comic and one kind of fan. To me, those are not the shows that are most alluring. The most alluring shows are, there are nine very different people from nine different walks of life. And we all bring a little of our audience by the end of the night, everybody feels like we’ve built new relationships and you get to laugh with and at each other. That’s truly what great storytelling can do.
What’s the one question you’ve always wanted someone to ask you in an interview that no one’s ever asked?
If anything, my mind just goes to my relationship with my younger sister and just how important it was for me. Nobody’s ever asked me if I am a role model to somebody. I always wanted to be somebody that my little sister could look at as if there’s a path forward out of a youth filled with a lot of hardship, that I know that we both experienced together. I think a lot over the years, focus got pulled into other elements of my family. And so for me, one of the greatest accomplishments in my life is just the relationship I have with her and watching her thrive in her photography and in her life.
Be part of Dane Cook’s newest, still unnamed comedy special taping at the Boch Center Wang Theatre in his hometown. Tickets are available now for both performances on October 29th and 30th for his newly rescheduled taping on April 23rd.