Dane Cook

Dane Cook (born March 18, 1972 in Cambridge, Massachusetts) is an American stand-up comedian and actor. He has released two full-length comedy albums, Harmful If Swallowed and Retaliation, the latter of which went double platinum and became the best-selling comedy album in twenty-eight years. He has performed on many television shows and in the fall of 2006 performed in his own HBO special, Vicious Circle. As an actor, Cook has appeared in fifteen films since 1997, and starred in the 2006 comedy Employee of the Month.

Biography

Early life

Cook grew up in Arlington, Massachusetts, a Boston suburb. He, and his five sisters and one brother, Darryl, were raised Irish Catholic. He worked at Video Horizons and used it for his material in a skit titled "Late." This environment provided comedy fodder for Cook, and his father observed that Dane's humor was often inspired by events in real life. The material used in his "BK Lounge" skit was from his job at the Burger King in Burlington.

His primary influences were television comedians, including Bill Cosby, Johnny Carson, George Carlin, Richard Pryor, and Bob Newhart. In performances for his family, he would re-interpret his favorite comedians' material to develop his own act.

Career

Cook began performing stand-up comedy in 1990. By 1995, he was performing stand-up comedy every night, usually in Boston and later at The Laugh Factory in Los Angeles. He stated in a 2005 interview with Entertainment Weekly that he "never walked toward a stage and felt heavy. Ever. Even in bad places, [he] always learned something." Also in 1995, Cook made his television debut as Kyle in five episodes of the short-lived ABC series Maybe This Time, starring Marie Osmond and Betty White.

In 1998, he was featured on Comedy Central's stand-up comedy showcase Premium Blend and, the following year, Comics Come Home. It would begin a partnership with the cable channel that would help launch Cook's career to new heights. A half-hour feature segment on Comedy Central Presents followed in 2000. He made his first appearance in a major motion picture as "The Waffler" (a superhero who uses a waffle iron and "truth syrup" to fight crime) in Mystery Men (1999).

1999 also saw Cook starring in the straight-to-video Dennis Rodman vehicle, Simon Sez. In the film, Cook plays Rodman's partner, Nick Miranda. The film was directed by Kevin Elders, previously known as the screenwriter for Aces: Iron Eagle III.

Two years later, Cook pooled $25,000 of his own money from savings and retirement accounts and launched DaneCook.com, his own interactive website to help further his career and help stay personally connected to his fans. His website and MySpace account generated upwards of 2 million fans.

In 2002 and 2003, Dane was featured as the voice of three puppets on the Comedy Central show Crank Yankers, which featured real prank phone calls being recorded in a studio and then re-enacted by puppets. Four of Dane's calls were aired between July 2002 and April 2003. He took on the aliases of Sav McCauley, Gene Winterbuck and Foreign Guy.

In 2003, Cook released his first comedy album, Harmful If Swallowed. Also that year, Cook released the film 8 Guys, which he wrote, directed, and starred in.

Later starring in the film "Waiting."

His first lead role in a movie is in Employee of the Month (2006).

2005 to present

In 2005, Cook launched a nationwide tour dubbed "Tourgasm" after releasing his album Retaliation, which debuted at #4 on Billboard magazine's Top Albums chart. That year, he also played a role as a cook named Floyd in the movie Waiting....

The success of Retaliation launched a slew of public appearances and magazine articles that fall, including a three-minute routine on the MTV Video Music Awards on August 28. He also performed three sold-out shows in two nights at Madison Square Garden Nokia Theater in mid-September.

During a May 2005 appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live, Cook parodied Tom Cruise's "couch jumping" Oprah appearance and made a "tattoo" of Katie Holmes (actually a picture taped to his back) and barged into the women's restroom to get her.

During an October 2005 appearance on The Tonight Show, Charlize Theron gave him permission to kiss her butt. Cook was re-enacting a previous joke in which Theron kissed Shirley MacLaine's butt at a Premiere magazine tribute to women in Hollywood.

Cook also appeared and performed on Dave Attell's Insomniac Tour.

He finished his own television pilot called Cooked, which he is writing and starring in, soon afterwards.

On December 3, 2005, Cook hosted Saturday Night Live. He performed the longest monologue in the show's history (around ten minutes long); the episode was one of the highest-rated SNLs of the season (until the Steve Martin/Prince episode in February of 2006). However, Entertainment Weekly named it the fourth-worst show of the year.

Cook hosted SNL for a second time on the premiere of its thirty-second season, September 30, 2006.

On January 13, 2006, after months of keeping a "BIG secret" from his fans, he announced via his website an April 15 gig at Boston's TD Banknorth Garden where his first HBO special, Vicious Circle, would be eventually filmed. A documentary series and a scripted program are also in the works for HBO. In the week prior to the televised gig, he performed at the Mandalay Bay Resort in Las Vegas (April 8) and Allstate Arena in Chicago (April 13), the largest venues he has ever performed in those cities.

Dane Cook also starred in the film "Employee of the Month" - October 2006

Current Developments

Cook was in Santa Fe, New Mexico filming a new movie called Employee of the Month, a comedy co-starring Jessica Simpson, Dax Shepard, Efren Ramirez, and Harland Williams. He is also currently filming the psychological thriller Mr. Brooks in Shreveport, Louisiana with Kevin Costner. He was named in Time magazine's list of the 100 most influential people of 2006.

Dane Cook's first HBO special, Vicious Circle, was aired on September 4, 2006. It was a 90-minte presentation which was filmed at TD Banknorth Garden in his hometown of Boston, Massachusetts on a circular stage surrounded by the audience. The stage had on it the impression of his Super Finger hand gesture.

The Super Finger

The Super Finger or Su-Fi is a hand gesture. It consists of raising the middle finger, ring finger, and thumb on the same hand while lowering (or curling) the index and pinky fingers. Cook's website explains his idea behind the Su-Fi:

"One night I did a bit on stage about 5 years ago at the Laugh Factory. I was talking about how the finger is lame now and it's lost its pizzazz. I said I wanted to upgrade the finger and so from now on people should use both the ring finger coupled with the middle finger. I called it the SUPERFINGER (or SU-FI)."

In 2005, Cook started his own company to produce his albums and videos, which he named Superfinger Entertainment.

Content

Cook's style is principally observational humor. He has commented that:

"I wanted to create a stage persona for myself that allowed me to really speak on anything I want... So I can be a storyteller, I can be jokey, I can be corny, I can be a little vulgar, I can be a lot vulgar. And I'm not afraid to go anywhere to get the point of the joke across."

Cook utilizes a unique slang vocabulary to match his talkative manner. For example: Burger King is the "BK Lounge" (a phrase first used by music group De La Soul), Walgreens is "The Wall," and a sandwich is a "sangwich". Similarly, he uses such acronyms as BAMF and SuFi, which are short for "Bad Ass Mother Fucker" and "Superfinger."

Material controversy

After the release of his CD/DVD Retaliation, similarities were noticed between Cook's work and the earlier work of Louis CK. The bits in question are Louis CK's "Itchy Asshole," "Guy On A Bike," and "Naming Kids." In 2005, Dane Cook performed and released three similar routines on Retaliation. These are "Itchy Asshole," "Struck By A Vehicle," and "My Son Optimus Prime," respectively. Cook has denied any plagiarism.

Criticism

Dane Cook was featured in an October 2006 Rolling Stone article criticizing his style. Some excerpts from the article:

"Yeah, we get it: the world's hottest comedian, a success story, the MySpace Generation, blah to the blah, but where are the fucking jokes?...It's like he's a lovable character Will Ferrell made up for an upcoming media-prank comedy, Funny Guy: The Legend of Dane Cook."

Discography / Videography

• Harmful If Swallowed DVD and CD. Comedy Central, 2003.

• Retaliation DVD and two CDs. Comedy Central, 2005.

Filmography