Dane Cook's Tourgasm
Y
June 8, 2006
11-11:30 p.m. Sunday, June 11
HBO
Dane Cook is the comedy world's flavor of the month, and anyone older than 25 who watches him perform in "Dane Cook's Tourgasm" is bound to scratch his or her head in befuddlement as to why this is so. He seems to be a cool enough guy, he's quick, he's good looking, and you'd want to hang with him tipping a few brewskies. But he isn't funny.
This might be seen a problem if you're a stand-up comic, given that it's about making people laugh and all. Except that in Cook's case, it doesn't much matter. He has tapped into the youth market and captured the college-age (and younger) crowd by peddling himself as comedy's version of a rock idol, self-packaged on the Internet via MySpace and other Web sites as the very essence of hard-core hip. He is a savvy businessman first and a comedian second, and in the age of quick-cut entertainment and style over substance, you don't need actual charisma so much as the popular perception of it.
This brings us back to "Tourgasm," which is HBO's opportunistic attempt to cash in on the Cook zeitgeist. It's beneath a network with the kind of grand comedic tradition ("The Larry Sanders Show," "Sex and the City," "Curb Your Enthusiasm") as this one. The nine-part "docu-comedy" (as it's billed) panders in a fashion that's akin to a neon sign flashing, "Yoo hoo! Young demographics! Over here!" The latest project to emerge from Cook's HBO development deal, it finds the comic centering a contrived real-life version of the genuinely clever "Entourage," the show that premieres its third season the same night at 10 that "Tourgasm" does (at 11).
The show revolves around an all-the-bells-and-whistles tour bus that transports Cook and three of his even less amusing comic pals (unknowns Gary Gulman, Jay Davis and Robert Kelly) from town to town for concerts staged before throngs of screaming, easily satisfied college students. We ride shotgun as the quartet bonds, stages petty squabbles and behaves as if they're on a road trip together between junior and senior year of high school. All four perform at every stop on the tour, and let it be said that if Cook chose these three so they'd make him shine by comparison, mission accomplished.
These are the kinds of jokes we're talking about: "They should have named Hurricane Katrina after my ex-girlfriend -- Hurricane Bitch!!!" Wow, that's talent. Then we have this one: "Why can't we catch Osama bin Laden? Why can't we catch that skinny little crack-addicted Santa Claus-looking bitch?" Pretty much every line draws the same "Wooooh!" reaction you would expect from an audience that views "Jerry Springer" as high culture and is just out killing time between keggers. Cook, for his part, has a more sophisticated patter in his act and has some actual comedic instincts. But on his own you would never single this guy out for a headliner. More like the comic carrying the headliner's bags while angling for a shot to prove himself.
It also doesn't help matters that "Tourgasm" tries so hard to be self-consciously edgy, from the hand-held jittery cameras to graphics that flash things like "Law of Travel #67: Never Trust an Anti-Semitic Horse." These guys perform 20 shows in 30 days across 28 states, and I'd like a nickel for each time someone begins a sentence with "Dude" and every instance where Cook's boys are shown shamelessly sucking up to the Man a la "Entourage." This is a comedy for the iTunes generation, engineered by a comedian who knows how to exploit his multimedia omnipotence. In the new millennium, that's sufficient to construct an icon.
Dane Cook's Tourgasm
Super Finger Entertainment, New Wave Entertainment and HBO
Credits: Executive producers: Dane Cook, Barry Katz, Brian Volk-Weiss, Jay Blumenfield, Tony Marsh
Supervising producer: Brielle Lebsack-Cohen
Line producer: Jay Chapman
Director: Dane Cook
Story producers: Susan Baronoff, Barbara Carratala-Bonds, Erin Comerford, Jennifer Hagedorn-Mikacich, Jeff Nucera, Erin Paullus, Maria Schwartz
Tour managers: Matt Frost, Bryan Billig
Production coordinator: Jim Sharon
Editor: Pierre Dwyer
Music: Jeffrey Hepker, Marc Jackson
Camera: Sarah Beth Kochendorfer, Landon Hosto, Euripedez Nunez
Sound mixers: Lee Ascher, Erik Llauger Meiselman
Starring: Dane Cook, Gary Gulman, Jay Davis, Robert Kelly
HBO
Dane Cook is the comedy world's flavor of the month, and anyone older than 25 who watches him perform in "Dane Cook's Tourgasm" is bound to scratch his or her head in befuddlement as to why this is so. He seems to be a cool enough guy, he's quick, he's good looking, and you'd want to hang with him tipping a few brewskies. But he isn't funny.
This might be seen a problem if you're a stand-up comic, given that it's about making people laugh and all. Except that in Cook's case, it doesn't much matter. He has tapped into the youth market and captured the college-age (and younger) crowd by peddling himself as comedy's version of a rock idol, self-packaged on the Internet via MySpace and other Web sites as the very essence of hard-core hip. He is a savvy businessman first and a comedian second, and in the age of quick-cut entertainment and style over substance, you don't need actual charisma so much as the popular perception of it.
This brings us back to "Tourgasm," which is HBO's opportunistic attempt to cash in on the Cook zeitgeist. It's beneath a network with the kind of grand comedic tradition ("The Larry Sanders Show," "Sex and the City," "Curb Your Enthusiasm") as this one. The nine-part "docu-comedy" (as it's billed) panders in a fashion that's akin to a neon sign flashing, "Yoo hoo! Young demographics! Over here!" The latest project to emerge from Cook's HBO development deal, it finds the comic centering a contrived real-life version of the genuinely clever "Entourage," the show that premieres its third season the same night at 10 that "Tourgasm" does (at 11).
The show revolves around an all-the-bells-and-whistles tour bus that transports Cook and three of his even less amusing comic pals (unknowns Gary Gulman, Jay Davis and Robert Kelly) from town to town for concerts staged before throngs of screaming, easily satisfied college students. We ride shotgun as the quartet bonds, stages petty squabbles and behaves as if they're on a road trip together between junior and senior year of high school. All four perform at every stop on the tour, and let it be said that if Cook chose these three so they'd make him shine by comparison, mission accomplished.
These are the kinds of jokes we're talking about: "They should have named Hurricane Katrina after my ex-girlfriend -- Hurricane Bitch!!!" Wow, that's talent. Then we have this one: "Why can't we catch Osama bin Laden? Why can't we catch that skinny little crack-addicted Santa Claus-looking bitch?" Pretty much every line draws the same "Wooooh!" reaction you would expect from an audience that views "Jerry Springer" as high culture and is just out killing time between keggers. Cook, for his part, has a more sophisticated patter in his act and has some actual comedic instincts. But on his own you would never single this guy out for a headliner. More like the comic carrying the headliner's bags while angling for a shot to prove himself.
It also doesn't help matters that "Tourgasm" tries so hard to be self-consciously edgy, from the hand-held jittery cameras to graphics that flash things like "Law of Travel #67: Never Trust an Anti-Semitic Horse." These guys perform 20 shows in 30 days across 28 states, and I'd like a nickel for each time someone begins a sentence with "Dude" and every instance where Cook's boys are shown shamelessly sucking up to the Man a la "Entourage." This is a comedy for the iTunes generation, engineered by a comedian who knows how to exploit his multimedia omnipotence. In the new millennium, that's sufficient to construct an icon.
Dane Cook's Tourgasm
Super Finger Entertainment, New Wave Entertainment and HBO
Credits: Executive producers: Dane Cook, Barry Katz, Brian Volk-Weiss, Jay Blumenfield, Tony Marsh
Supervising producer: Brielle Lebsack-Cohen
Line producer: Jay Chapman
Director: Dane Cook
Story producers: Susan Baronoff, Barbara Carratala-Bonds, Erin Comerford, Jennifer Hagedorn-Mikacich, Jeff Nucera, Erin Paullus, Maria Schwartz
Tour managers: Matt Frost, Bryan Billig
Production coordinator: Jim Sharon
Editor: Pierre Dwyer
Music: Jeffrey Hepker, Marc Jackson
Camera: Sarah Beth Kochendorfer, Landon Hosto, Euripedez Nunez
Sound mixers: Lee Ascher, Erik Llauger Meiselman
Starring: Dane Cook, Gary Gulman, Jay Davis, Robert Kelly
Share on LinkedIn
