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Doug Stanhope is the least ingratiating of comedians.
By JASON ZINOMAN from the NY Times...
Whereas some comics go to Utah and make jokes about Mormonism, he goes to Utah and attacks audiences who want to see him attack Mormonism. “Just move,” he told a Salt Lake City crowd in his 2012 album, “Before Turning the Gun on Himself.”
Dave Chappelle might be thrown off his game by a bad crowd, but Mr. Stanhope, whose new stand-up special, “Beer Hall Putsch,” was just released on Netflix (with the accompanying album due on Sept. 17), seems to feed off hostile energy. So when he walked onstage in May at the B. B. King Blues Club & Grill in Times Square, it was no surprise that he insulted the club, New York and the Yankees. (“Rooting for the Yankees,” he once said, “is like going to a casino and rooting for the house.”) Or that he predicted that B. B. King would soon die. He was just getting started.
On that spring night, Mr. Stanhope spotted a woman sitting up front, stone-faced, looking away from him. He berated her, saying that she was not at a Broadway show and that he would not pretend that there was a fourth wall. She kept frowning.
The hostility turned into an odd grudge match. He told her to leave and cursed at her. Nothing changed. As minutes went by, the tension in the room turned to slight anxiety. Was he going to do his set? “I will focus in a minute,” he croaked, and then reconsidered. “I might not.”
His fans shouted approval. Mr. Stanhope insulted them, appearing far more interested in figuring out this unhappy woman. As he turned the show into a monologue about her stoicism, a certain note of admiration crept into his voice. He shifted gears, flattering her resilience and telling jokes directly to her. “I need you to love me,” he said, with a hint of desperation. “I don’t like me, either, if that helps.” (She never laughed and ultimately just left.)
With comedy that’s an acidic stew of prickly hostility, elaborately articulated self-loathing and righteous anger, Mr. Stanhope, 46, has earned his cult status. Living near the Mexican border in Arizona, he has only dabbled in television. A comedian’s comedian, he may have found his perfect television outlet in Netflix, since it is hard to imagine that he’d remain happy at any network for long. (He refers to his time on Comedy Central’s “Man Show” as piles of excrement “that I accidentally stepped in”). But he maintains a busy touring schedule, releasing a new album every year or two. His eloquent, seething rants are in the roaring comedic tradition of Lenny Bruce and Bill Hicks.
The danger for Mr. Stanhope has always been that his operatic scorn might become a kind of shtick. In his stand-up from the 1990s, you can hear the influence of Andrew Dice Clay. And most of his high-profile appearances — for instance, telling a long, obscene joke to a baby in the movie “The Aristocrats” — make him seem like a garden-variety provocateur, which he is not.
Mr. Stanhope’s tales of debauchery are typical (drugs, pornography, alcoholism), but his comedic mind is genuinely unusual, fearless and analytical. His targets are large, and he returns to the same ones, which is a good thing. Political pundits may be able to pretend that they are angry every week, but most people get really fired up about only a few things. When Mr. Stanhope’s rage appears rooted in righteous conviction forged over years of railing onstage, his comedy has the momentum of a bar fight escalating right after the first chair is thrown.
He loathes symbolic politics, liberal and bohemian pieties, the drug war and, most of all, the cult of children. Overpopulation is his primary enemy. “Babies are like poems,” he said years ago. “They’re beautiful to their creators.”
His new special, named after Hitler’s failed coup of the 1920s, reveals traces of a midlife crisis. Wearing a checked sport coat and bright slacks that seem a size or two big, Mr. Stanhope avoids his usual opening-line shock. My favorite is from 2009’s “From Across the Street”: “You know, the funny thing about child pornography, aside from the lack of credits at the end ...” Instead, he says he has given up Jägermeister, a confession that might surprise some fans, since Mr. Stanhope had long referred to this German liqueur. But he says he had a change of heart after seeing a video of himself talking about it, describing it as a “desperate cry to be young.”
Many of the fevered comics who regale audiences with stories about pornography and drugs have a teary-eyed romantic streak. Marc Maron speaks about his down-and-out past with a certain wistful nostalgia. Mr. Stanhope, however, is fiercely unsentimental (and much more judgmental than Mr. Maron about 12-step programs). The engine of his diatribes is rational argument taken to perversely logical or baroquely excessive conclusions.
Whereas the new special skewers the ineffectual politics of Occupy Wall Street, Toys for Tots and breast cancer awareness campaigns, its centerpiece is a personal story about the time Mr. Stanhope said he helped his mother into oblivion. Her life had become intolerable because of emphysema, so she asked Mr. Stanhope for help in ending it, as he recounts in the routine. His precise description of exploring options, settling on morphine and suggesting that route is ruthlessly frank and relatively unadorned. It’s an emotional story in a way, but there’s not a moment when he tries to make you cry.
His mother was no delicate flower. When Mr. Stanhope hosted “The Man Show,” she appeared in a segment reviewing pornography that revealed that his dark humor was inherited. So it seems like an act of love when he mockingly roasts her on her deathbed. “Mom, wait, they found a cure,” he says as she fades away.
What’s notable is that Mr. Stanhope’s matter-of-fact, even hopeful style does not invite sympathy or melancholy. In his telling, death does not come off as tragic or sacred. The incongruity of offhand tone and grave subject matter is part of a fairly consistent worldview.
Mr. Stanhope, who talked about running for president on the Libertarian ticket in 2008 and eventually endorsed Ron Paul, has said that there is no such thing as addiction. “There are only things you enjoy doing more than life,” he said.
In his 2011 special, he describes suicide with cold practicality: “Life is like animal porn: it’s not for everybody.” It’s no accident that Louis C.K. cast him as the bitter, suicidal comedian whom he fails to talk out of killing himself in the FX comedy series “Louie.”
Like many comics, Mr. Stanhope understands that death can be a fantastic punch line. But when he describes his mother’s suicide as “the best death you can ever be part of,” he isn’t joking. He really means it.
Here is a link to his complete show, "No Refunds" -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2noFZhLAVvU
By JASON ZINOMAN from the NY Times...
Whereas some comics go to Utah and make jokes about Mormonism, he goes to Utah and attacks audiences who want to see him attack Mormonism. “Just move,” he told a Salt Lake City crowd in his 2012 album, “Before Turning the Gun on Himself.”
Dave Chappelle might be thrown off his game by a bad crowd, but Mr. Stanhope, whose new stand-up special, “Beer Hall Putsch,” was just released on Netflix (with the accompanying album due on Sept. 17), seems to feed off hostile energy. So when he walked onstage in May at the B. B. King Blues Club & Grill in Times Square, it was no surprise that he insulted the club, New York and the Yankees. (“Rooting for the Yankees,” he once said, “is like going to a casino and rooting for the house.”) Or that he predicted that B. B. King would soon die. He was just getting started.
On that spring night, Mr. Stanhope spotted a woman sitting up front, stone-faced, looking away from him. He berated her, saying that she was not at a Broadway show and that he would not pretend that there was a fourth wall. She kept frowning.
The hostility turned into an odd grudge match. He told her to leave and cursed at her. Nothing changed. As minutes went by, the tension in the room turned to slight anxiety. Was he going to do his set? “I will focus in a minute,” he croaked, and then reconsidered. “I might not.”
His fans shouted approval. Mr. Stanhope insulted them, appearing far more interested in figuring out this unhappy woman. As he turned the show into a monologue about her stoicism, a certain note of admiration crept into his voice. He shifted gears, flattering her resilience and telling jokes directly to her. “I need you to love me,” he said, with a hint of desperation. “I don’t like me, either, if that helps.” (She never laughed and ultimately just left.)
With comedy that’s an acidic stew of prickly hostility, elaborately articulated self-loathing and righteous anger, Mr. Stanhope, 46, has earned his cult status. Living near the Mexican border in Arizona, he has only dabbled in television. A comedian’s comedian, he may have found his perfect television outlet in Netflix, since it is hard to imagine that he’d remain happy at any network for long. (He refers to his time on Comedy Central’s “Man Show” as piles of excrement “that I accidentally stepped in”). But he maintains a busy touring schedule, releasing a new album every year or two. His eloquent, seething rants are in the roaring comedic tradition of Lenny Bruce and Bill Hicks.
The danger for Mr. Stanhope has always been that his operatic scorn might become a kind of shtick. In his stand-up from the 1990s, you can hear the influence of Andrew Dice Clay. And most of his high-profile appearances — for instance, telling a long, obscene joke to a baby in the movie “The Aristocrats” — make him seem like a garden-variety provocateur, which he is not.
Mr. Stanhope’s tales of debauchery are typical (drugs, pornography, alcoholism), but his comedic mind is genuinely unusual, fearless and analytical. His targets are large, and he returns to the same ones, which is a good thing. Political pundits may be able to pretend that they are angry every week, but most people get really fired up about only a few things. When Mr. Stanhope’s rage appears rooted in righteous conviction forged over years of railing onstage, his comedy has the momentum of a bar fight escalating right after the first chair is thrown.
He loathes symbolic politics, liberal and bohemian pieties, the drug war and, most of all, the cult of children. Overpopulation is his primary enemy. “Babies are like poems,” he said years ago. “They’re beautiful to their creators.”
His new special, named after Hitler’s failed coup of the 1920s, reveals traces of a midlife crisis. Wearing a checked sport coat and bright slacks that seem a size or two big, Mr. Stanhope avoids his usual opening-line shock. My favorite is from 2009’s “From Across the Street”: “You know, the funny thing about child pornography, aside from the lack of credits at the end ...” Instead, he says he has given up Jägermeister, a confession that might surprise some fans, since Mr. Stanhope had long referred to this German liqueur. But he says he had a change of heart after seeing a video of himself talking about it, describing it as a “desperate cry to be young.”
Many of the fevered comics who regale audiences with stories about pornography and drugs have a teary-eyed romantic streak. Marc Maron speaks about his down-and-out past with a certain wistful nostalgia. Mr. Stanhope, however, is fiercely unsentimental (and much more judgmental than Mr. Maron about 12-step programs). The engine of his diatribes is rational argument taken to perversely logical or baroquely excessive conclusions.
Whereas the new special skewers the ineffectual politics of Occupy Wall Street, Toys for Tots and breast cancer awareness campaigns, its centerpiece is a personal story about the time Mr. Stanhope said he helped his mother into oblivion. Her life had become intolerable because of emphysema, so she asked Mr. Stanhope for help in ending it, as he recounts in the routine. His precise description of exploring options, settling on morphine and suggesting that route is ruthlessly frank and relatively unadorned. It’s an emotional story in a way, but there’s not a moment when he tries to make you cry.
His mother was no delicate flower. When Mr. Stanhope hosted “The Man Show,” she appeared in a segment reviewing pornography that revealed that his dark humor was inherited. So it seems like an act of love when he mockingly roasts her on her deathbed. “Mom, wait, they found a cure,” he says as she fades away.
What’s notable is that Mr. Stanhope’s matter-of-fact, even hopeful style does not invite sympathy or melancholy. In his telling, death does not come off as tragic or sacred. The incongruity of offhand tone and grave subject matter is part of a fairly consistent worldview.
Mr. Stanhope, who talked about running for president on the Libertarian ticket in 2008 and eventually endorsed Ron Paul, has said that there is no such thing as addiction. “There are only things you enjoy doing more than life,” he said.
In his 2011 special, he describes suicide with cold practicality: “Life is like animal porn: it’s not for everybody.” It’s no accident that Louis C.K. cast him as the bitter, suicidal comedian whom he fails to talk out of killing himself in the FX comedy series “Louie.”
Like many comics, Mr. Stanhope understands that death can be a fantastic punch line. But when he describes his mother’s suicide as “the best death you can ever be part of,” he isn’t joking. He really means it.
Here is a link to his complete show, "No Refunds" -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2noFZhLAVvU
