Albert Brooks, the quintessential comedian's comedian, recently did an interview
with The Onion where he spoke about his new movie Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World. Of course,
TV viewers know Brooks from his numerous appearances on late night talk shows, most notably on Johnny Carson's
Tonight Show. What I found especially interesting was his take on how stand-up comedians today often
don't stand a chance because everything they do is "focus grouped" within minutes:
"I just, man, I'm telling you—I don't know how you get a Sam Kinison out of that world. I don't know where Bill Hicks comes from. I don't know how anyone special can go anywhere, because the guards are right in the very embryonic stage."
That was refreshing enough, but what really capped it off was when he later said, "I just read where somebody got high on the Billboard charts with [a comedy album]. I forget who it was." If anything from that interview made me respect this iconic comedian more than I already do, it's that he neither knows, nor cares, who the hell Dane Cook is.
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