Dane Cook talks to Tim Nasson
Thirty-five year old Dane Cook, for those of you not ‘in the know,’ is a stand-up comedian and actor. He has released two albums, “Harmful If Swallowed” and “Retaliation,” the latter of which went double platinum and became the highest charting comedy album in twenty-eight years. Cook performs 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, including “Mystery Men” and “Waiting,” and starred in the 2006 comedy “Employee of the Month,” with Jessica Simpson.
This summer, Cook couldn’t be in films that are more different than each other – “Mr. Brooks,” a movie about a serial killer, and “Good Luck Chuck,” a good old-fashioned, vulgar comedy.
Cook was born in the Boston, Massachusetts suburb of Arlington, and, along with his five sisters and one brother, was raised as a Roman Catholic. Growing up, Dane worked at Video Horizons and Burger King. As a teenager, Cook was a big fan of comedian ManOMilk.
Cook’s first on-stage appearance at a comedy club was at a Catch a Rising Star show in Harvard Square, hosted at the time by comedian David Cross. In 1998, Cook was featured on Comedy Central’s stand-up comedy showcase Premium Blend. The following year he appeared on the comedy network’s Comics Come Home and the straight-to-video Dennis Rodman vehicle, Simon Sez as Rodman’s partner, Nick Miranda.
Two years later, Cook pooled $30,000 of his own money from savings and retirement accounts and launched www.danecook.com, his own interactive website, to further his career and stay connected to his fans. Later, Cook would also become one of the first celebrities to make use of the global networking site MySpace. To date, Cook has over 1.9 million fans listed as friends on his profile.
In 2002 and 2003, Cook was featured as the voice of three puppets on Comedy Central’s Crank Yankers, which featured real prank phone calls being recorded in a studio and then re-enacted by puppets. Four of Cook’s calls were aired between July 2002 and April 2003.
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.
In 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.
Dane Cook also appeared and performed on Dave Attell’s Insomniac Tour.
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.
Dane 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 The Boston Garden where his first HBO special, Vicious Circle, would be eventually filmed. His first show sold out during the pre-sale phase of the on-sale, and a second show was added for the same night. In all, Dane Cook’s Boston concert drew 36,000 fans in two shows, on the same night. 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. Aside from airing on HBO, Vicious Circle is also being screened in select theaters and it features an additional 40 minutes of material.
September 2006 saw the release of Employee of the Month, Cook’s first movie featuring him in the lead role. He co-starred alongside Jessica Simpson and Dax Shepard. Response to this movie was poor but since it cost next to nothing to produce, made an acceptable box office performance.
In the thriller “Mr. Brooks,” Dane Cook stars as a lowlife photographer who blackmails a serial killer (Kevin Costner).
Wild About Movies caught up with Dane Cook recently in Los Angeles.
Wild About Movies: Talk about submitting your own video to get this part (in “Mr. Brooks”).
Dane Cook: It was like auditioning for ‘American Idol,’ or something like that. [Laughs] Actors will tell you, when somebody says, ‘Will you go on tape?,’ it’s kind of the kiss of death. It normally is just a slow, painful death. You really want to be able to meet the producers and talk about your take on the character. When you send a tape, you never know if the person’s got a baby in their arms, or what’s going on in their life, so rarely does that seem to work in your favor. But, I did it. I went on tape. I was down in New Mexico. We were filming ‘Employee of the Month,’ and I literally ran between scenes, ’cause I had this one day to do it. I set up the camera and I had one of my good friends read the lines.
He was awful, too. He’s not an actor at all. I kept stopping because I would tell him how to act. Acting is reacting, and I was like, ‘God, you suck!’ So, I did these few takes, where I had to stop it, and I finally got the take I wanted. Truly, I had a real epiphany, when reading the script. I was already pacing. I was already reading the lines out loud. You always hear that, if it’s the right part, it just starts to take a hold of you, and I knew this guy. I’m an optimistic, encouraging, upbeat, glass is half-full person, and yet, I understood this deviant, lascivious side of this person. I drew from a few people that I’d met in my travels, and spun the wheel, sent the tape and got the call. ‘You did it, kid. You’re in the flick. You’re heading to Shreveport.’
Wild About Movies: How was it to go from writing your own material to not being able to go off the script much?
Dane Cook: For the most part, 95% of the time, it’s the writer and the director’s vision, and you’re a piece of their puzzle. It’s the polar opposite of comedy, where you’re in such control, as writer, director, producer and, sometimes, bouncer. The other 5% were scenes with Kevin . . . There’s a scene where, after we’ve just come back from one of our dirty deeds, we just started improvising together in the car, and Kevin was so open and available to that, and really encouraged it. I remember, I was punching the seat and I was just trying to get myself in a place where, honestly, you could do that and feel embarrassed in front of certain actors, who would look at you and be like, ‘What’s going on here?’
But, Kevin was like, ‘Do that, man! Do that! You’ve got to say that again.’ We really started improvising and I was like, ‘I’m in a dramatic scene, and we’re improvising about having just murdered this couple.’ It was being able to take the best of what I knew how to do, comedically, and the best of working with somebody iconic, like Kevin Costner, who you just trust and you know he’s not going to let you down, and then the material was solid. We couldn’t miss. It just felt right, and I know it’s the kind of thing that people will be able to watch and feel moved, in some way, by it.
Wild About Movies: Was William Hurt’s line about your character — something like, ‘If you were charming and funny, I still wouldn’t like you’ — improvised from your own personality, or was that always in the script?
Dane Cook: William’s line was always in there. I brought a few of my closest friends to see an early screening of the movie, one of my best friends, who knows me and knows my comedy, and knows that I have a good time on stage, I love my life and I love my job, turned to me, right around that part, and said, ‘I fucking hate you. I really do.’ It was the best compliment I have ever received. I was like, ‘Alright, then I did something right.’ That line just happened to be in the script.
Wild About Movies: Did you ever imagine that you’d do something this dark?
Dane Cook: I did do a short film about five years earlier called ‘Spiral,’ which I would say is on par, as far as darkness. It’s something I’d written and produced. It served two purposes. On a selfish or promotional level, it was like, ‘Let me show people what I can do. Let me show people that it’s more than just stand-up comedy.’ The only way I was going to have that was to do it myself because nobody trusted that I could do it. And then, I’ve done stand-up for 17 years and I needed to explore other things, whether it be doing a voice-over for this other movie I’m doing, or talking about doing this theater project coming up. I just want to be able to challenge myself. Now, comedy is safe for me. I can perform in front of 20,000 people at Boston Garden and I’m like, ‘I know how to do this. This is what I do.’ I want to be a little scared.
Wild About Movies: Talk a little about going from the comedy stage to being one of the biggest stars in Hollywood. What’s that transition been like for you?
Dane Cook: When I was in Boston, all of my comedic friends were going to New York. I said, “I’m not going to New York.” They were all like, ‘You’ve gotta go!’ I was like, ‘I’m not going to go to New York until New York calls me, and I have a purpose to go there.’ That is how I do everything. I don’t just say, ‘I need to do a comedy.’ I had other comedic scripts come along before ‘Employee of the Month,’ and I had other TV shows, that I just felt weren’t authentic, or didn’t pump my ‘nads. I don’t push. I guess that’s kind of my thing. I just don’t push. I always have stand-up. I always have a way to make a few scheckles. I’m not in need. So, I just wait for stuff that makes me go, ‘Shit, that’s kinda creepy. That’s kinda weird. That’s scary.’ And, I think, on a personal level, who knew with stand-up comedy that I would be able to do that.
I hope that this vehicle would lead me to everything. But, that’s up to the movie Gods and for the audience to go, ‘Yeah, we’d like to see you do that.’ When I started getting the nod from my fans, and then, some scripts that were actually appealing came in, I was like, ‘I’m not going to push. I’m going to go with the flow. If this is what I’m meant to do now, I’m going to do it for the rest of my life. If not, I’ll create something somewhere behind the scenes. Wherever I’m meant to be, I’m going to just eat it up.’ And I enjoy the hell out of it. I’m not going to lie to you. I love my job and I love the art of comedy, but I also love doing these movies. I really hope that I get to do a lot more.
Wild About Movies: Talk about the presence of William Hurt and having to shut him out entirely when you were in scenes with him?
Dane Cook: You can’t ignore William Hurt. He’s William fucking Hurt. I’ve pretty much done this, even around comedians, but I like to keep it light on a set and I like to have a good time. I’m not a method person, even though I like to research. Eddie Murphy once said, about ‘Beverly Hills Cop,’ it all has to be on the script first, and then, I can improvise and go from the spine here. I didn’t know how to approach William Hurt. I didn’t know what his take was, so I just waited. We did that first scene in the boardroom together, where he’s sitting at the end of the table, and I was feeling him, but I couldn’t. I was trying to get myself into that zone, and I finally figured it out. I was like, ‘Oh, okay, this is what I need to do.’ Once I got into this rhythm, I lost William Hurt. I think Pacino once said about Chris O’Donnell in ‘Scent of a Woman,’ ‘I never saw you, but I felt that you were great.’
I started doing this thing where I didn’t feel William Hurt, and then he walked up to me, on the second day of shooting, just off-screen. It was kind of weird because I was so used to not having him in my life, or my periphery. And I just remember that he said something very encouraging. He said something like, ‘I shouldn’t say this to you right now because we’re doing this, but you’re doing really great.’ I just went home and called my whole family and said, ‘William Hurt just told me I’m doing really great, and he really meant it.’ There was that scene in the car, where he leans in between Kevin and I, and I didn’t expect him to do that, and I just had to do my thing, but I could feel him. He’s got the Force. I feel like he could flick me out of a scene, if he wanted to. He could just omit you from a scene. And Kevin’s got that same way. And, even Demi. These are the elite. I’m a confident guy and I knew why they were bringing me in and I knew I could hang, but I also knew that I was going to experience things with them, since I’m new to that level, that I was just going to have to shut the fuck up and really listen and learn, and I did that every day. It was the best course on acting that you could ever, ever ask for.
Wild About Movies: Is there a certain type of person you’d like to scope out for a victim, if you were looking for someone to kill, like maybe hecklers at your stand-up shows, or someone else who was really asking for it?
Dane Cook: I love hecklers because hecklers remind you that you’re a comedian. I’ve always said that, even though they throw off the whole tempo and the rhythm, and sometimes cut right into the middle of a bit. Being an anti-cynical type person, in the back of my brain I’m like, ‘This guy’s yelling out because I’m a fucking stand-up comic. This is what I do, and it’s the coolest thing ever.’ So, no, I wouldn’t go after hecklers. I’d go after some club owners that treated me like a douche bag. I’d definitely take on some of those guys, if I could be Mr. Baffard, aka Mr. Smith, for a day.
Wild About Movies: Do you have a stand-by line for hecklers, like a lot of comedians do?
Dane Cook: Yeah, ‘Shut the fuck up!’ It just depends on the day. It depends on the heckle. It depends on the energy in the room. But, I just try to take it on a case by case study.
Wild About Movies: What are you working on now?
Dane Cook: Getting ready to do another film with Lionsgate. It’s kind of a dark comedy, called ‘Bachelor #2.’ We’re going to start filming that in July, so we’re casting it now. It’s appealing because it’s like a ‘Bad Santa.’ It’s a comedy, but I’m playing a real prick who seems to have no emotional attachment to anything, so it’s just a different side of my comedy. Whereas ‘Good Luck Chuck’ has a lot of physicality and charisma, this is a guy whose name is Tank and he’s got to roll over everybody. There’s no filter. It’s almost like how you would treat a heckler, on any given night. Anybody who he experiences in his life, he’s just going to go for the weak point. If you’ve got a cleft lip, he’s going to be like, ‘You’ve got some shit on your lip.’ You’re in trouble with this guy. So I look forward to getting into the challenge of playing somebody unlike me.
Wild About Movies: Will you go back to stand-up?
Dane Cook: Always. I’ll do stand-up tonight, if I can. Stand-up comedy is my baby.
