September 27, 2024
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Mike Binder
FIRST SOME THOUGHTS
I’ll say right off, Ellen Degeneres and I aren’t close friends. She’s always been very nice to me over the years, we’ve know each a long, long, time. We shot our early HBO half hours together on the same night back to back in Chicago in 1989 at the Fillmore.
Over the years she’s left me messages when she’s liked one of my movies and said nice things about me to actors on her show, and when I’ve run into her at events she’s just been as nice as could be. Yet, as I said, we aren’t close friends.
I do have a ton of respect for her though. For her journey. For her work. For her work-ethic. For her attention to detail, and her unique performance ability. So when the head hunters went looking for another trophy in what I believe should be looked back as the post Obama, ‘Years of dissatisfaction’, a time when anyone that could be taken down for anything was knee-capped, solely to make the angry liberals who had to suffer under Trump, feel as if they still had some modicum of power.
After this group of justice warriors brought down people that deserved to be brought down, they came through the streets and the halls, banging pots and pans bringing down anyone they get-able, just to show themselves they could and they would, regardless if it was a good kill or not.
It wasn’t that much different than a couple years ago when they were pulling down statues. Yeah, Jefferson Davis. For sure. All of the Confederates. ‘Bring them down.’ The steam built. They finally trashed the Abraham Lincoln statues. ‘’Yeah, he was a racist. No doubt’
What they did to Ellen was tantamount to having gone to Henry Winkler’s hometown and yanked their Fonzie statue down.
SOMEONE HAD TO PAY
The more popular they were the better.
Ellen Degeneres? She’s mean? Where’d you hear that?
You saw a clip? She was mean to Cardi B?
Really? Wait? What?
You heard some of her producers are mean to the employees?
People!!! People!!! Turn around. We’re not going to Scott Baio’s again today. We’ll shit on his lawn again later, we’re gonna bring down Ellen. Follow us!!!
She did the damn show for nineteen years! Nineteen years. Everybody loved her. Everybody used her to shill their shit shows and movies and tours and toys. She played along. It’s not easy doing a show like that. Did some producers she have working for her maybe get a little too big for their britches some times? It happens.
I did those shows for years. They were the gatekeepers. Everybody jumped when they snapped their fingers. They got used to all of us doing what they wanted when they wanted. They set rules. They liked the power they had. I’m damn sure a lot of it she had zero idea of, and a lot of it is just the way that f**cked up business runs.
‘THE ‘THEY’RE NOT NICE PEOPLE’ STORY
I also know when the ‘they’re not nice people’ story came out, the hack reporters and editors that needed a knew angle jumped on it like an open ski lift, so screw them. It was already written. They could just cut and paste it and go. Lots of clicks. Lots of issues sold at the check stands. Was it ‘mean’ to trash Ellen, her employees, her family that way? Who cares? It was an angle. Was is ‘mean’ to talk to those hack reporters about your so called inside gossip?
So, mean is mean, when it’s someone else being mean but not when I’m being mean. Got it.
OKAY, MOVING ON.
The special is fantastic. ‘For Your Approval’ It deals with her being labeled ‘mean’ in an honest and forthright way, and it’s funny. She’s an excellent stand up comic. She’s a consummate pro is what she is. One of the best observational comics working. When we all started she and Jerry Seinfeld, and Rich Jeni, were taking on the baton from David Brenner, then Jay Leno, who had been passed it from, yes, Bill Cosby. That great brand of comedy where you slap your head and say, ‘oh my god, that is so true. I do that too. That is so true!!’ ( And then the person next to you shushes you.)
Ellen was, and is, truly one of the best ever at this vein of stand up. She struts her powers in this lane in For Your Approval perfectly, smacking around parallel parking, aging, cars, and so much of day to day life in a vaccu-formed, crowd pleasing version of the ‘Did-ja ever notice?’ routines that only she can deliver.
She’s so damn good at it, and now, at 66, which she talks about being, she’s so comfortable, so at ease up there, that she takes her time with all of these bits and routines, letting them breathe in a way that’s really a master class for any younger comic, or actually any comedian in general, on how own your time on that stage. Moment by moment.
She is seriously a master at what she does, and she knows it, which is fine, the audience needs a comedian to let them know that they’re in good hands. She may be upfront in her personal insecurities, and her weaknesses as a person, but as far as how she can come out on the stage and hold a mic and tell routines that are going to make you bust out laughing, she’s got no problem in you understanding she’s got this down and that you need to lean back and just take it in. You’re her bitch.
‘FOR YOUR APPROVAL’
There’s more to this though. There’s a reason I’m writing about her new special. If you follow this blog regularly, you know I write about specials that I really love, or very rarely, ones that I truly dislike. I’m full on in love again with the art form, yet, if this were just a good stand up special even about a good observation comics best of, or even final work, I wouldn’t do a piece on it.
These aren’t really specials anymore. They’re albums. They’re this year or twos new work for a certain shelf load of artists named comedians. They won’t all be specials. Bob Seger’s album’s are all good. Some are special. Some are ‘Stranger in Town’. Some are just albums. They’re ‘The Fire Inside’.
Some specials are change agents. Some are uniquely shot, some are a career best, and some take you somewhere new. On a blissful ride. A couple years ago, Jerod Carmichael put out a special called ‘Rothaniel’, that was a blessing. So real and true, shot like an early jazz album by Bo Burnham that I thought it was one of the best things I’d ever seen or heard. Yes, he had a great bass line and a hook in that he came out as a gay man in the course of the special, but that was just one of it’s gifts. It had an authority about it. An accuracy to every routine. It harkened back to the best of Lily Tomlin. It was a damn special. For sure.
Ellen’s new special has a different kind of authenticity. A truthfulness not only carrying great observations, but so much pain, and even anger. There’s a hurt she can’t hide so she doesn’t try. You see it in her eyes because she wants you to see it. She wants you to laugh, she wants you to have a good time, but she needs you to know she’s been hit and it cut her. She talks beautifully, masterfully, comedically, on how the loss of her show and the way she was branded has affected herself, her wife, her mother, the way she goes out into the world, and the way she feels about going forward. She is bravely in control of the whole ride. She’s not backing down.
She’s dressed perfectly yet she’s absolutely naked. Buck naked. You can see every crack and creak in her soul and her ego. She uses her bruises. That’s how good she is. Don’t let anyone kid you. Doing this hour, at this level. Being this honest. Keeping these laughs this consistent, keeping that audience having that good of a time is not on the same planet as easy. This is terrific. Clean. Concise. No swearing. No yelling. No button pushing, yet everything is said. It’s masterful.
I felt sorry for the few critics that I read that didn’t get it. They’re ignorant. They don’t know how hard it is to use these public struggles as a comedic through line and pull off a real hour of comedy. Richard Pryor more less invented it when he turned him lighting himself on fire into an epic set.
I was so lucky to be a young doorman at the time at The Comedy Store and watch him scrape, cut, dig and discover that hour, night after night, for a solid eight months. It wasn’t anything close to a simple task to making lighting yourself on fire funny. The final product makes it look like that but it just didn’t come out fully formed. Neither did the special Chris Rock did dealing with the Will Smith slap, or the one Marc Maron did dealing with the very public loss of the love of his life.
I only have one problem with the whole thing. Ellen says she’s done. That’s such a mistake. Such a profound gaffe. I’m sorry. You can’t come this far, get this good and then stop. You’re cheating yourself, cheating God, cheating us.
Take a break. Breathe, Ellen. Then get back up in the saddle and put another hour together. You’re one of the best there ever was, Lady. That’s a gift.
