In recent years a new formula has overtaken the world of stand-up comedy. It used to be (and still is the case for people like Jay Leno) that a comedian had an act and the act and jokes varied very little from year to year. Then comedians started developing an hour's worth of material, honing that material on the road and finally culminating in a taped hour (or so) special. After the special was done the comedian would basically retire the material and start work on a new hour's worth of jokes and stories. Let's call this the Louis CK Formula.
Keeping things new and fresh is absolutely the way to go for people like Louis CK, Jim Gaffigan, and other top comics. However, it almost seems a waste that after the specials are done the material only lives on in DVD sales, on Netflix or HBO Go or in YouTube clips. Here's my idea to fix that and we'll use Bill Burr as an excellent example.
Bill has two great recent specials -
You People are All the Same (2012) and
Let It Go (2010). He could tighten the material to about 45 minutes of each by getting rid of anything current events related or stuff that didn't work as well as hoped. Then he could hire actors who looked like him (scrawny, sickly looking red heads) who would do the material. One would open with 45 minutes from
Let It Go, then a 15 minute intermission followed by second guy doing 45 minutes from
You People are All the Same. Curtain call, both actors take bows and then head off to the next city.
I'd go to see something like that. Bill Burr owns the rights to his own material and this would be a way of both making money off past labors and giving people an excellent entertainment option. Think of it this way - if AC/DC only played new songs in concert people would flock to AC/DC cover bands to hear the old songs.
Call it the Bill Burr Experience and let's get the show on the road. Release the Kracken!
