I love stand-up comedy. I love watching it, I love listening to it. If I didn't have a fear of public speaking, I would love to do it. So I think I should warn the next person who rents or buys Tourgasm thinking it's going to be about comedy.
The premise for Tourgasm is actually quite good; stick a gang of stand-up comics on a bus for 30 days and see what happens. Admittedly, there are a few genuinely funny moments in Tourgasm. Are there enough to justify its pretentiousness? No.
There are many reasons why I wish I had never shelled out the money to watch this gawd-awful series. Reason one: the lack of actual stand-up comedy. A show about comics, and you'd think that there would be a fair amount of comedy involved, right? The footage of actual comedy, taken together out of all the episodes of this monstrosity, would not add up to a single stand-up act. That's just pathetic. Tourgasm might have been tolerable if there had actually been a fair amount of comedy in it.
Which leads me to the reason why I loathe Tourgasm. Dane Cook. I never heard his name before watching the series, never saw one of his acts. He seems like a pretty funny guy, but if all I have to judge his character by is this series, my assessment would be that he is a narcissistic prig who really likes hearing himself talk, and does a LOT of talking on these DVDs. Tourgasm should not be in the stand-up comedy section of your local video store, it should be in documentary. And even then, it is a bad documentary. Ninety percent of the series is Cook languishing on about himself and the secrets of his success. It was so boring I started to do other things while the DVDs were playing, make food, take out the trash, dust. Every now and then a juicy little comedy tidbit would come up and I would have a little chuckle, but then it would just dive back into the same self-obsessed introspective. Even the special features were mostly Dane Cook talking about his wonderful self. (And, by the way, you can also replay the episodes with commentary - with commentary! - so you can hear Cook talking about talking about himself). The only people who could enjoy this series would have to be super-devoted fans of Cook's, and I mean their heads need to be way up his ass. He even had the gall to think that he was pretty much the first person to make rock-star status out of stand-up comedy. Hmmm. Are we forgetting about Carlin, Pryor, Eddie Murphy, Denis Leary, even the most recent Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle?
Though truthfully, after watching this show, he strikes me as kind-of a dirt bag. I mean, his "friend" Jay Davis gets him his first major stage work, and how does Cook repay him? Invites him to tag along for Danefest while making him look like a complete stand-up comedy failure. Yeah, I'm sure that Davis will get plenty of work now that he's been portrayed as a comic hack. What a friend!
The only breath of fresh air comes with level-headed Gary Gulman, who seems reluctant to jump on the "Dane train" (i.e. he doesn't worship the ground Cook stands upon). It was good to see him in something big after his top-notch performance in Last Comic Standing (which had PLENTY of comedy in it, by the way).
When Cook reads this (and he will, because I'm sure he Googles his own name at least 100 times per day) he should take some good advice and leave directing a series to the people who know how to do it, and just do what it is he's good at; talking about himself in ways that people actually find funny.
The premise for Tourgasm is actually quite good; stick a gang of stand-up comics on a bus for 30 days and see what happens. Admittedly, there are a few genuinely funny moments in Tourgasm. Are there enough to justify its pretentiousness? No.
There are many reasons why I wish I had never shelled out the money to watch this gawd-awful series. Reason one: the lack of actual stand-up comedy. A show about comics, and you'd think that there would be a fair amount of comedy involved, right? The footage of actual comedy, taken together out of all the episodes of this monstrosity, would not add up to a single stand-up act. That's just pathetic. Tourgasm might have been tolerable if there had actually been a fair amount of comedy in it.
Which leads me to the reason why I loathe Tourgasm. Dane Cook. I never heard his name before watching the series, never saw one of his acts. He seems like a pretty funny guy, but if all I have to judge his character by is this series, my assessment would be that he is a narcissistic prig who really likes hearing himself talk, and does a LOT of talking on these DVDs. Tourgasm should not be in the stand-up comedy section of your local video store, it should be in documentary. And even then, it is a bad documentary. Ninety percent of the series is Cook languishing on about himself and the secrets of his success. It was so boring I started to do other things while the DVDs were playing, make food, take out the trash, dust. Every now and then a juicy little comedy tidbit would come up and I would have a little chuckle, but then it would just dive back into the same self-obsessed introspective. Even the special features were mostly Dane Cook talking about his wonderful self. (And, by the way, you can also replay the episodes with commentary - with commentary! - so you can hear Cook talking about talking about himself). The only people who could enjoy this series would have to be super-devoted fans of Cook's, and I mean their heads need to be way up his ass. He even had the gall to think that he was pretty much the first person to make rock-star status out of stand-up comedy. Hmmm. Are we forgetting about Carlin, Pryor, Eddie Murphy, Denis Leary, even the most recent Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle?
Though truthfully, after watching this show, he strikes me as kind-of a dirt bag. I mean, his "friend" Jay Davis gets him his first major stage work, and how does Cook repay him? Invites him to tag along for Danefest while making him look like a complete stand-up comedy failure. Yeah, I'm sure that Davis will get plenty of work now that he's been portrayed as a comic hack. What a friend!
The only breath of fresh air comes with level-headed Gary Gulman, who seems reluctant to jump on the "Dane train" (i.e. he doesn't worship the ground Cook stands upon). It was good to see him in something big after his top-notch performance in Last Comic Standing (which had PLENTY of comedy in it, by the way).
When Cook reads this (and he will, because I'm sure he Googles his own name at least 100 times per day) he should take some good advice and leave directing a series to the people who know how to do it, and just do what it is he's good at; talking about himself in ways that people actually find funny.