It never dawned on Dane Cook that he had agreed to do media interviews the day before the Fourth of July.
“Let me tell you something man, I work 24-f—-ing-7,” he said matter-of-factly by phone from Los Angeles. “It just never stops, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Cook is in the middle of his “Tell It Like It Is” tour, his first full-scale national comedy tour since 2013 that wraps up in Los Angeles in November, but he’s also spending the summer promoting a new independent film.
“American Typecast” premiered on the film festival circuit earlier this year, and Cook cleared most of his schedule this summer — save for this weekend’s Honolulu performance — to support that project.
“It’s something I co-wrote and directed and something very different from my stand-up,” he explained. “I really, really wanted to try to figure out a way to keep my summer as available as I could, so that I could really be there at all of these festivals and support the film.”
Before he gets back to his filmmaking duties, however, Cook will take some time to share with Hawaii fans how his life has changed since he rode the early wave of social media to superstardom.
HONOLULU STAR-ADVERTISER: I was reading a Hollywood Reporter story from February where you said to stop using the term “comeback.” This current tour is “mostly a trajectory,” is the phrase you used. You still feel that way?
DANE COOK: It’s funny, because over the course of this year touring, from time to time, I’ve been asked about that. And I always, you know, kind of jokingly, but it is true, I say, “No, you came back to me.” You probably tapped out for a little bit and lived some life and focused on other artists and comedians and whatever.
I never stopped working and never put the mic down, so I don’t really look at it as a comeback in terms of I stopped and I’m trying to regain the heavyweight championship by getting myself in a young man’s shape.
Q: How are new fans discovering your comedy?
A: It’s generational at this point. My comedy content is on everything. Spotify and Pandora and Netflix and HBO and Comedy Central. So it’s been incubating over the years, and I’ve also been fortunate that my stand-up has aged wonderfully. It was never one of those things where I was doing news of the day. Everything really holds up and continues to find new fans.
When I do the meet and greets, I’m meeting guys or girls that were fans of mine in college, and they’re there with their 18- or 20-year-old son or daughter, and sometimes they’re with their parents. So I feel like Aerosmith at this point, you know, everybody’s at the show.
The comedy is developed and evolved in a way that I think is what I’d always kind of hoped to become, as I entered the second act of my life and career.
Q: You talk about evolving as a person. It’s hard to expect someone to relate to things you did in your 20s when you’re in your 40s. When audiences see you perform now, to be clear, your new comedy isn’t the same style as before, right?
A: Thankfully, it’s better. It’s definitely more dynamic and it’s still got the LPMs, or laughs-per-minute as we call it, but it’s more introspective.
I think for many years, it was observational, because when you’re in your 20s, you don’t have a lot of life under your belt. So it’s a lot of observational humor — you’re talking about partying, you’re talking about sex, you’re talking about, you know, kind of just the 9-to-5 stuff that we experience.
Now you get into your 30s and 40s, and you’re experiencing death and loss, and strange happenstance on the road of success.
And then the flip side of it, what happens when it’s not always about success? What happens when it’s about everything’s falling apart? Well, when it’s happening, falling apart sucks. But it’s also some of the funniest s—- you can experience, in hindsight. So as a comedian, we’re really always pulling off the relics of time passing.
I grew up watching guys like (George) Carlin, and what I was so thankful for being able to watch guys like … Carlin and (Richard) Pryor and so many other guys from the ‘50s and the ‘60s.
By watching those guys, what I started to see was … it’s okay to change. It’s okay to grow up and expand your ideas. Sometimes it’s even okay to go back and talk about things you thought were funny when I was 22, and then make fun of myself for even thinking about those things.
I get to pull from all these artifacts in my own life. And when I say I feel like I’m just really getting good now in my 29th year in, I really feel that way. There’s a word that I always wanted to use that I never felt I could say until these last two years. I wanted to be of a certain pedigree. And it took me a lot of time, effort and energy to finally feel like I was a whole person and performer, and that’s what people are now getting with the show. The love of the game, the enthusiasm, the physicality, or just energy as people would call it, that’s all still there. But it’s been expanded upon with, you know, just living an interesting life.
Q: What is your preferred social media in 2019?
A: I try to keep myself tapped in. I still love social media. But it’s a different era. It’s a youth market situation, and I’m 47. The time that I used to spend on social media is now better spent mentoring, or working on other companies, or writing a script.
I accomplished a lot of things I hoped to through digital marketing, and I’m very happy to still be a part of it but not feeling like I’m throttling this thing and have to be the guy at the tip of it.
I just think that I was slightly ahead of the curve, and that’s because being a huge nerd, I was home after every one of my shows, not partying or drinking or doing drugs. I’d come home and get on my computer and talk to people.
Q: Do you think your career would have been any different if you were breaking through now as opposed to 29 years ago?
A: There’s always the yin and yang of any good or bad decision, it’s kind of incredible.
I can’t answer that question specifically, but I can tell you one thing. It’s something that sometimes irks me slightly about the conversation of my meteoric rise.
It doesn’t matter how good you are at whipping people into a frenzy through some new niche technology. If people get in the room and you’re not delivering at a high caliber, you’re not going to fill 100 arenas. You’re not going to fill one more arena.
You can’t yell “fire” more than one time if there’s no fire.
Q: Anything else you want to add about this weekend’s show?
A: I just know people come to these shows … even myself, when I go to a concert, I hope it exceeds my expectations. My expectations of my own shows are very high. So I know when people come and and they go, we’ve seen him on TV, or might have seen a comedy special, I just want to exceed expectations.
And I’m doing it this year. I get a DM, or an email, or a handshake at the meet-and-greet, and people are saying to me that this is their favorite show that they’ve seen.
So it’s about exceeding expectations, and I’m looking forward to doing more of that in Hawaii.
DANE COOK
Tell It Like It Is Tour
>> Where: Blaisdell Concert Hall
>> When: 7 p.m. Saturday
>> Cost: $39.50-$65 (VIP tickets available)
>> Info: 800-745-3000, ticketmaster.com
