Comedian
Cooper, Rand Richards
SCREEN Rand Richards Cooper STANDUP GUY 'Comedian' Is it true, as F. Scott Fitzgerald famously remarked, that there are no second acts in American life? Few celebrities are better positioned to...
...Non-psychological, unintellectual, and impersonal as well, he's all surface and no interior...
...In his apartment Adams rummages through chests full of notebooks, reams of jokes filed in cabinets, and shelves of taped performances which he watches over and over again, analyzing his act down to the tiniest gesture...
...Seinfeld has jettisoned all his old bits and is slowly building a new repertoire, one joke at a time...
...As Adams pours out an agonized litany of doubt, describing his anxiety over being thirty years old and envying friends pulling down big bucks on Wall Street, Jerry stares as if he's from Mars...
...He comes across as that near impossibility, a comedian at peace with himself...
...But what are the alternatives...
...And now I'm back here...
...It's fun to listen in on Seinfeld hanging out with confreres he admires, talented comics such as Colin Quinn, Robert Klein, Garry Shandling, and Chris Rock...
...And as every young and tormented standup guy should know, that's gold, Orny-gold!'s gold, Orny-gold...
...Comedian, a documentary by Christian Charles, investigates the afterlife of a star, tagging along with Seinfeld as he tries to restart his standup act in a series of small comedy clubs like the ones he ruled almost three decades ago...
...Frequently the comics return to the agony of trying out new material...
...It didn't have the confidence I wanted it to have," he says after one show...
...Comedian shows us middle-aged success complacently condescending to, and also perhaps at some level envying, youthful monomania...
...he mutters, and we feel a flash of vicarious stage fright...
...Cosby's preternatural calm offers clues to his success as a performer-his immaculate timing-but also his success as a person...
...Other mega-comedians, like Steve Martin and Robin Williams, have transformed themselves into movie actors-unimaginable for Seinfeld, the only one of the four stars in his TV show who wasn't acting...
...Audiences adore him so much that even his failure to be funny becomes a joke...
...So he's trying to be a comedian again...
...Two and a half hours of killer shit...
...As an urban Jewish humorist, Seinfeld stands in minimalist opposition to Woody Allen...
...Seinfeld pulled that rarest of career feats-going out not as a dimming red giant, but still at supernova brightness...
...Yeah," Rock answers...
...I just wasn't good...
...What little of his new routine we get to see (alas, the film doesn't give us nearly enough of it) seems pretty sharp, and we sense Seinfeld gradually getting his funny muscles back into shape after his long hiatus...
...and that means developing new material and taking it to audiences...
...Of course, that's a problem for a comedian...
...The film juxtaposes Seinfeld's club tour with that of a brash younger comic, Orny Adams, who's been knocking his head against the door of success for a decade, pursuing fame with a ferocious intensity that makes Seinfeld seem like a guy relaxing on his yacht...
...In the film's final scene, Jerry tours a huge, empty theater where he's going to perform that night...
...I have no excuse," he says after a mediocre show...
...Any comic should be glad he's doing the thing he loves to do, is Seinfeld's message...
...But he is Jerry Seinfeld, and when a woman in the audience calls out, "Is this your first gig...
...part of his appeal has always lain in seeming essentially untroubled...
...From onstage he looks up at tier after tier of seats...
...he jokes at a club in Cincinnati...
...I made it- I had my own show...
...So much dread of the audience is involved, and so much confidence required to overcome it...
...His self-involvement is scary- fretting over every word in a newspaper review, obsessing about getting on the Letterman show...
...But Jerry is never satisfied...
...Indeed, Comedian catches him in an existential quandary...
...When Adams finally shuts up, Seinfeld reproaches him for fetishizing fame and money...
...At one point he boasts, without a trace of irony, that he's living on L.A...
...We see Jerry's genuine awe when Chris Rock describes watching Bill Cosby do a two-and-a-half hour show without a break...
...his manager, George Shapiro, congratulates him afterward...
...Finally he has a good night- "Wall-to-wall laughs...
...Late in Comedian, Jerry gets to meet Cosby, his lifelong idol, and as Cosby praises his work-generously and thoughtfully-Seinfeld gazes in gratitude and awe, authentically starstruck...
...In one revealing scene, Orny Adams, having finally succeeded in getting on Letterman, suffers a near meltdown over being forced at the last minute to change "lupus" in one of his routines to "psoriasis...
...and even there, Seinfeld seems a lot like TV Jerry (in one backstage shot he holds his baby and makes a lullaby out of the Cracker Jack song), presenting much the same smirky, mildly mischievous facade, albeit with a few swear words thrown in...
...Fortunately, the film offers plenty of relief from the unbearable intensity of comedian angst...
...First he does short stints-twenty minutes, thirty, forty-and finally, after six months, a full hour-long set, which he debuts at the Improv in D.C., where we see him sitting quietly backstage, trying to get himself in the zone...
...What am I doing here...
...Two and a half hours straight...
...time...
...everyone laughs...
...He's back where he began-though now he travels to his gigs in a Porsche and private jet...
...It's as if nothing in the world exists aside from his career...
...Few celebrities are better positioned to find out than Jerry Seinfeld, whose first act defined the pop-culture Zeitgeist for a decade and pushed TV star power to new heights, winning him a cool $1 million an episode...
...Early on, Seinfeld seems rusty and out of shape onstage-working awkwardly from notes, at one point losing his train of thought entirely, triggering a silence that would be excruciating if he weren't Jerry Seinfeld...
...There are just glimpses, little moments when I feel comfortable...
...It's all I think about," he says, looking at his watch...
...If s interesting to note Cosby's calm, deliberate presence, such a contrast to the edgy, brilliant, adrenaline style of most of the comics we've spent the evening with...
...Yet it also seems unlikely he could settle for the anonymity of being a writer/producer/director type...
...If something is good, if s good," he comments, trying to reassure himself after an impromptu appearance at a comedy club one night...
...Adams is a caricature of ambition, and when he meets Seinfeld offstage at a dub, Jerry seems appalled...
...Will it fly with the audience...
...Killer...
...If you're hoping to get to know the "real Jerry," you'll be disappointed by Comedian...
...It's a reminder of how deeply Seinfeld, the TV show, was a comedian's show, with a comedian's performance anxiety doled out among its characters, and then gently spoofed, in the form of narcissism...
...Even the change of a single word in a familiar routine is enough to unsettle a comedian...
...Not that he isn't worried...
...But what if his stuff was only OK, and they laughed anyway...
...Who's having lunch out there right now, who's talking about me...
...Over drinks or dinner they work out jokes and discuss the ups and downs of the profession...
...Can he still do it...
...The film stays out of Seinfeld's personal life, giving only a few glimpses of him with his wife and infant daughter...
...Seinfeld judges his performances harshly...
...Seinfeld says, incredulous...
...True enough, and yet it's clearly the kind of thing an already successful person can afford to say...
...he's disaster-proof...
...Still the film leaves us wondering, Can a comedian ever get truly comfortable...
...How am I going to make all these people laugh...
...Seinfeld's audiences are laughing before he even says anything...
Vol. 129 • December 2002 • No. 21
