Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

Dane Cook back in spotlight with new material

PREVIEW What: Just For Laughs Comedy Tour ‘16 featuring Dane Cook, Vinny Fasline and John Campanelli Where: Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre (1925 Blanshard St.) When: Wednesday, 7:30 p.m. (doors at 6:30) Tickets: $35.50, $45.50, and $55.
C5-Dane Cook.jpg
After taking a break from the spotlilght, comedian Dane Cook is back at it, with new material.

PREVIEW

What: Just For Laughs Comedy Tour ‘16 featuring Dane Cook, Vinny Fasline and John Campanelli

Where: Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre (1925 Blanshard St.)

When: Wednesday, 7:30 p.m. (doors at 6:30)

Tickets: $35.50, $45.50, and $55.50 at the Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre box office, by phone at 250-220-7777, or online at selectyourtickets.com

 

Few comics enjoy a lifelong run atop the pecking order. The biggest are the best for a limited window of time, which is why Dane Cook — who has reached heights few standup comics of his generation will ever enjoy — is focused on keeping things in perspective.

Cook is one of the few funnymen in recent memory to sell millions of records. His first two albums sold nearly three million copies combined, totals that only Steve Martin’s output in the late 1970s could match.

Cook shot to stardom with an appeal that saw him play arenas early and often. A sold-out show at Madison Square Garden? Cook checked that off his bucket list long ago.

He also made a successful transition into movies, with impressive box-office returns.

Despite all this, Cook stepped back from the spotlight a few years ago, in part to process some long-gestating personal tragedies (his parents both died from cancer, nine months apart, nearly a decade ago).

He was also getting sick of himself, to put it bluntly.

Was he all style and no substance? Critics, who were not always kind to Cook, certainly suggested as much, and began to prophesy that his appeal would never grow beyond college dorms.

Cook — whose off-stage manner is much less twitchy than his on-stage persona — started to think they may be right, but he took every punch on the chin and vowed to learn from his mistakes.

The comic decided to continue anew a few years ago, and is currently working on what he believes is some of the best material he’s ever written. “Nothing is consistently the same forever,” Cook, 44, said recently from his home in Los Angeles. “Love, appreciation, relevancy — everything has to shed its old skin and go through a metamorphosis. That’s what we do in life.”

The Massachusetts native will make his second Victoria appearance next week as part of the Just For Laughs Comedy Tour, which also includes comics Vinny Fasline and John Campanelli. The tour is booked into the Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre, where Cook performed to 7,881 fans in 2010 — an attendance record at the time. Remarkably, that was one of the smaller venues on his tour that year.

The Blanshard Street arena now feels like a comfortable fit for Cook, even though his immense popularity (3.46 million followers on Twitter and 4.5 million followers on Facebook) has not ebbed.

He’s still a powerful presence on the comedy circuit, and has another Comedy Central special (which he will also direct) on his list of upcoming projects.

But Cook is purposely skewing smaller these days, which allows him to focus on his craft more than ever. “It doesn’t matter to me the size of the venue as long as it’s in a place that people are going to walk away from it and say: ‘Man, was that worth it. I’m so glad I was a part of that.’ ”

Cook, who was raised in Boston but now lives in Los Angeles, completed filming last week on American Exit, an indie comedy. And he will play a key character in next year’s American Gods, a TV adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s acclaimed fantasy novel.

When asked where standup comedy fits into his life a quarter-century after he got his start, Cook said he’s committed to touring and writing, no matter the returns. “It’s like the gym — if you want to stay at your peak strength, you have to work out. That means getting into comedy clubs on any given night, to keep fresh and stay brave. When you do that long enough, it’s muscle memory.”

His previous Victoria performance rode the line between good comedy and bad taste, including a raw, uncomfortable bit about Cook having intercourse with a porn star. He suggested that his upcoming dates will showcase a new strain of comedy.

“I loved people, whether it was Steve Martin or the Rolling Stones, who were event performers. I always wanted to be an event performer. And it’s all an event at a certain point, once you have the reputation and a certain pedigree. If you’re giving them 100 per cent every time, you don’t need to impress them with the largest venue anymore. You just need to make the show as memorable as possible.”

Cook’s critics will continue to pull out their poison pens, no doubt. He knows this, but hopes to keep his anxiety in check.

“It’s real easy to go down that rabbit hole,” Cook said. “I’ve done it, and I know people who do it. You can always find something that you’re lacking, but nobody wants to spend their life beating themselves up.”

mdevlin@timescolonist.com