Comedian

Rating:
Summary: Insight into comedy
Review: Being a huge Seinfeld fan, I saw two of his shows that were held in Seattle. The first one was super awesome; the second one was not so good. After watching this DVD, it made me realize that comedy is hard work and that great comedians, including Jerry, can give bad shows. It was really interesting to note how often comedians use the same material. If you are a Seinfeld fan, you should watch this DVD. Leno and Cosby also are very interesting.

Rating:
Summary: Life on the comedy club circuit
Review: Seinfeld, who is one of the most highly paid television stars in history, went back on the comedy circuit after the finish of his groundbreaking tv show. Why would anyone do that? What does he have to prove? Jerry shows us what life is like on the comedy club circuit, and brings in a new comic to show how a guy who is just breaking into the big leagues thinks and feels. And Jerry meets briefly with Bill Cosby.

Seinfeld, whose comedy is a series of short observational jokes, is hard-pressed to come up with one hour of totally new material that works. Yet Cosby goes on for hours sitting on stage in a huge theater. What's the difference? Seinfeld doesn't figure this out, but Cosby is a storyteller and Seinfeld tells jokes. Not the same thing. An hour of jokes is a long hour to put together.

Much of what is said about the comedy life was affirmed by someone I know who played clubs for a while. It is a tough business, even for a seasoned professional like Seinfeld. The digital video is not scripted, sometimes it's boring, but it's very true to life and an education for anyone dreaming of making it big in the clubs or on Comedy Central. (I gave it three stars for being boring and not terribly insightful.)

Rating:
Summary: Inside
Review: It took me a couple of years to tap into the Seinfeld TV show. Frankly, his standup 'frame' struck me as uninspired. Not until I realized how it was worked into the subtle quirkiness of the sitcom did I see the genius.

'Comedian' held me at 'standup's' arm's-length, too, when my wife suggested watching it. I just breathed deeply and plunged in. Wonderful stuff. I've seen standup routines live, and of course I've had half-a-century's worth of TV and a generation's video of it. As a teacher, I engage in elements of it: timing, audience massage, surprise, attention-focus. This CD views the comic's profession from varying stages of success. Not a showcase for Jerry Seinfeld, though he's the documentary's center.

'Comedian' sure tells the story of all the performance and career anxiety! There's something about human ambition and insecurity that can be skimmed like cream off the top of this one. Great as humor, psychology, showbiz gossip, or glimpses of human loneliness amidst what should be glamor.

Rating:
Summary: Good movie, but that Orny guy ruined it!!!
Review: Oh yeah, Seinfeld is great no doubt... I enjoyed him every minute, BUT that Orny guy is just not a comedian at all... He's pompous, rude and so-not-funny!! He thinks he's all that too and at one point, he pointed out the audience 'sucked'! Hmm... and he thinks he's a professional...

Why did Seinfeld include him in the movie? That's questionable. My roommate said Orny definately is psychologically imablanced. Hey, maybe that's all part of his skit?!? Naaaaah!

Rating:
Summary: The only Jerry we've got on DVD
Review: "Comedian" may be a little hard for some viewers to take because it was shot entirely on a handheld digital camera in some of the darkest locales (NYC pubs, nightclubs, penthouses) known to man. But if you can pay attention long enough, and ignore the motion sickness induced by the camerawork, you'll find that "Comedian" is a riveting, almost dramatic documentary about the greatest living comedian (certainly the most successful one) who intentionally goes back to Square One with his comedy routines. Why do it, especially when money for Seinfeld is no object? That's the driving theme of the movie, and the great mystery of it.

Seinfeld is, of course, Seinfeld, always charming, always elusive, though a lot more candid here than in any of his other incarnations. He allowed the documentary cameras access to a great deal of his personal process, showing us that developing good comedy is as much work for a millionaire superstar as digging a ditch is for the average joe.

"Comedian" contrasts Seinfeld's struggle for 20 minutes of decent material with the equally up-hill battle waged by unknown comic Orny Adams, who is fueled by ego and a desire to become rich and famous. Orny isn't necessarily bad, it's just that he wants the fruits of success without first slugging it out in the trenches. One gets the feeling that Orny, if he were ever as successful as Jerry Seinfeld, would never go back on the comedy club circuit, but simply rest on his laurels. That, indeed, may be the reason he fails.

"Comedian" is valuable because it is, in the end, about work. Sure, Seinfeld has it a little easier than the rest of us trying to make ends meet -- his t-shirts alone probably cost more than I bring home in a year -- but it's inspiring to see a genius of his level work so hard to maintain his own integrity.

Also: BRING OUT "SEINFELD" EPISODES ON DVD! ENOUGH WAITING! Thank you.

Rating:
Summary: interesting
Review: I enjoyed Comedian for the glimpse of the not-so-public side of Jerry Seinfeld. I admire him for not taking the path of least resistance after his TV show ended. He could have gotten lazy and soft, making the occasional appearance on Leno and People magazine and otherwise doing not much of anything. Instead, he chose to throw away all his old material and undergo the apparently painful process of developing new routines and then polishing them in front of audiences. This film allows you to watch as the jokes don't work, as routines are completely forgotten onstage, as the audience talks and yells through his performance, and as he waits, alone, backstage, a bundle of nervous insecurity and doubt, before his performances. It does not look easy.
The other part of the film that warrants comment is the striving young comic Orny Adams whose struggle to become known is contrasted with Seinfeld, whose enormous popularity precedes him. The contrast is that Seinfeld is generally a very likable guy with a lot of warmth and humanity. His humanity shows not only during his act but offstage, as he speaks to people on the street, is respectful to everyone around him, and listens when other people talk. Orny Adams, by contrast, is a titanically
self-obsessed, massively irritating, bug-eyed motor-mouthed bore. He goes on and on about how talented he is. He complains that even though he is so talented he has to lower himself to actually perform in a comedy festival in Montreal. He obsesses about "what people in LA are saying about me right now...what deals are being made?". He displays for the camera all the notebooks full of jokes that he has written as evidence of the astonishing sacrifices he has made for his career. Excuse me, aren't you a comedian? Your job is to write jokes. Don't expect a medal because you did your job. The most telling and damning moment regarding Orny comes when an acquaintance comes backstage and gives Orny some outstanding advice, i.e. stop being so stridently ambitious and arrogant and let your work speak for itself, and as soon as the guy leaves the room Orny
dismisses the guy as a string of unprintable obscenities.
I realize I have spent a lot of my review focusing on Orny Adams. The film itself is interesting. Seinfeld is a very funny and talented comedian with enormous integrity and a huge work ethic. Orny Adams is profoundly unlikable, maniacally self-absorbed, and he makes me retch. Message to Orny: Go away.

Rating:
Summary: People have actually reviewed the Bible on this site.
Review: If you ever thought about the fact that once you date someone, then break up, you have a history. Once that history exists you will "never" be the same 2 people again. This intangible history that causes people to wind up on Springer begging the fat girl to take him back, and the fat girl says mean things to him when she once danced for him and made his favorite desert on his birthday. Then the guy finds himself sitting in prison after shooting his fat ex girlfriend thinking, "if I could just get that millisecond of my life back, if I could just get back that millisecond of squeezing a trigger shooting my fat ex after we taped Springer". "If I could get that millisecond of subtle finger squeezing back, then I would have another chance to convince my fat ex that we could get the tingles again". If you ponder thoughts like this, Comedian will be a good thing for you to devote a chunk of your life to watch.
I watched carefully and did not spot Kaufman in the background of any shot. I plan to take some time to slow-mo shots to verify this.
Once comedian was over I was compelled to ordered 3 tickets to Bill Cosby at Clowes Hall in Indianapolis. We plan to take a woman whose young husband died of a heart attack 3 years ago. We took her to Gallagher last year and she had a ball. For that evening she slipped out of that "repeat stories from your childhood and talk about the weather" shell. This woman will spend the remainder of her life with memories of seeing Bill Cosby in person and the feelings it brought to her. This is the power of Comedian.

Rating:
Summary: Remarkably surprised by this one...
Review: My wife is a Seinfeld fanatic. It used to get on my nerves ('honey, life is not a Seinfeld episode' I would tell her) and it took me some time to warm up to the show. After all, the characters are really just neurotic, selfish, and insensitive to anybody and everybody (which, ironically, is the shows saving grace). But it obviously worked because it was successful and is funny. In the later years it got to be a bit over the top and lost its charm. And it is this that Seinfeld realized. I believe this is why he wanted to get back to standup.

Seinfeld attempted, apparently quite live before the camera, what few comedians do. He wiped out his material that had taken him so many years to develop. He literally scratched it and began anew. It is this aspect that is most intriguing about the film. We see Seinfeld forget his material, we see him performing in small clubs and we see very human emotions eminate from him in regards to actually struggling to begin again. In a paradox, his status helps him get in the doors of clubs that no names would have a difficult time getting into but his big name also works against him in terms of expectation. You really can't go back again. But it gives great insight into what makes him so unique and so good at comedy. It really is serious business.

I give this four stars because Orny, the other comedian shown in the film, is just plain annoying. I never found him funny and his neuroses are so over the top and so out in the open that it becomes painful to watch him. I don't know if that was the point or if they merely had to include him because they had followed him for so long. Either way, it's a drag. Perhaps I am being too harsh and it does provide another view into what it's like to rise from being nobody to actually making a name for yourself in the comedy circuit.

If you are interested in what's behind the Seinfeld mystique, it's a great place to visit. Cameo appearacnes by other famous comedians adds to the film's depth. These are very real people and it's refreshing. It's not polished and it isn't Seinfeld the sitcom. It's a documentary but it's well worth it.

Rating:
Summary: A look at the life of a working comedian
Review: A documentary about the hard work and angst that goes on behind the scenes of a stand-up comedy act, focusing on the super-famous Jerry Seinfeld, who is struggling to develop an all-new act, and newcomer Orny Adams, who is just trying to make a name for himself in the business. The insecurity and fear never seem to go away. There are many fascinating aspects of this film: the camaraderie between stand-ups, the importance of coming up with an hour of solid, audience-tested material, the compulsive need of comics to perform in front of a live audience for fear of losing their edge.

I was fortunate to catch Seinfeld's act a few months after watching the movie, and I enjoyed comparing the two. The act was smooth and polished and betrayed none of the insecurity I had seen earlier in the film, which featured the genesis of some of the bits that I saw on stage.

Rating:
Summary: An honest look inside a performer's psyche
Review: Like other viewers, I rented this expecting it to have more 'comedy' with the documentary, but instead was treated to a refreshingly honest behind-the-scenes look at what makes comics tick. For those who don't have (or never had) aspirations to be a performer, this may not be terribly interesting. The myriad of emotions, frustrations, self-doubt, ambition, and underappreciated hard work that goes into the 'performance' is not limited to comics, but to just about anyone involved in a creative endeavor. As an aspiring actor and musician myself, it is reassuring in a strange way that the emotional roller-coaster one endures with the creative process doesn't really change for those who have become successful AND are still dedicated to their craft such as Jerry Seinfeld.

In defense of Orny, the love/hate relationship he has for his audience, his work, and those around him is not unique to him or comics in general - but is something that many performers grapple with constantly. The difference is that Orny verbalizes them for all to hear and see. Hearing his contempt for an audience or for critics giving blunt advice when he's having a bad day is not arrogance - it's an all too familiar defensiveness that many performers feel at that moment when there's self-doubt, because it's hard not to take everything personally when there's so much hard work and sacrifice involved, with career progress measured in baby steps - which is probably why many of you may not hear about Orny for a while, because its a LONG hard road.

As a documentary it did its job: it was honest in tone and spirit to its subject matter.