Modified On August 8, 2012
From an entertainment website, comes this line, from a synopsis/review of Mike Birbiglia‘s movie, that is featured at this year’s Sundance Film Festival:
He’s one of the few alternative comedians that can tell a good story without delivering a lot of laughs. But when those laughs hit, they are full of impact. You can just tell that the stories he’s telling on stage are personal, which makes laughing with him twice as enjoyable.
Turn that over in your mind… let the idiocy sink in… savor the utter backwardness of it. (Hmmm… if he’s getting, let’s say, half as many laughs as “conventional” comics… and it’s twice as enjoyable, then… isn’t it a tie?)
We have nothing against Birbiglia. It is the crippled thought process, employed by the author, that pains us so. (And the depressing notion that so many people swallow such nonsense unquestioningly.)
We’re not so sure that standup can be saved.