Quote:Since his last tour, some comedians such as Jerry Seinfeld and Chris Rock made waves by saying that they don't play colleges anymore because of the politically correct culture that has permeated comedy, but Burr says he doesn't (believe) the keepers of PC... (should hold) any sway over what he or any other comedian chooses to say.

"The perception is that it's a million people, but the reality is that it's like 40, But for some reason, 40 people kicking up dust on Twitter is like a million people," Burr says. "The bottom line is, all you need to do is look at a census and realize there's over 400 million people in this country and so like even if 1,000 people complain, you're still talking about .001 percent of 1 percent. ..It's the epitome of making a mountain out of a molehill. It's not even a molehill. It's making a mountain out of a grain of sand."

...“People are offended in a strategic way — who they get offended by and when they get offended," he says. "The good time to get offended by a comedian is when they get a big show coming out or a big movie coming out. That's when they dig through your Twitter and say, 'Hey, you said this back in 2006,’ and it’s like, 'Oh yeah, and you waited nine years to get offended by it.' It’s all bullshit. It’s a bunch of bullshit. Meanwhile, you’ve got the guy from Nestle who wants to own water.”

(09-25-2015, 07:21 AM)mercfan3 Wrote: I actually kind of disagree with that. If you have to punch down in order to get laughs, you aren't a very good comedian.

That being said, Bill Burr is hilarious and is actually very good at making jokes about sensitive topics without cracking jokes at already oppressed groups of people. With the strange exception of women. (I don't think he's sexist, and I don't think that's his intention. I just think he's uneducated in feminist issues and it comes off as ignorant and not very funny. But those are pretty rare moments in his shows.)

On another note, he has his wife on his radio show sometimes. And she comes off as a very intelligent, funny, and assertive woman. So another kudos to Bill there.

Quote:Like Chris Rock and Larry the Cable Guy, Jerry Seinfeld avoids doing shows on college campuses. And while talking with ESPN’s Colin Cowherd on Thursday, the comedian revealed why: College kids today are too politically correct....

Seinfeld says teens and college-aged kids don’t understand what it means to throw around certain politically-correct terms. “They just want to use these words: ‘That’s racist;’ ‘That’s sexist;’ ‘That’s prejudice,’” he said. “They don’t know what the hell they’re talking about.”...

Quote:The Coddling of the American Mind
In the name of emotional well-being, college students are increasingly demanding protection from words and ideas they don’t like. Here’s why that’s disastrous for education—and mental health.

Something strange is happening at America’s colleges and universities. A movement is arising, undirected and driven largely by students, to scrub campuses clean of words, ideas, and subjects that might cause discomfort or give offense. Last December, Jeannie Suk wrote in an online article for The New Yorker about law students asking her fellow professors at Harvard not to teach rape law—or, in one case, even use the word violate (as in “that violates the law”) lest it cause students distress. In February, Laura Kipnis, a professor at Northwestern University, wrote an essay in The Chronicle of Higher Education describing a new campus politics of sexual paranoia—and was then subjected to a long investigation after students who were offended by the article and by a tweet she’d sent filed Title IX complaints against her. In June, a professor protecting himself with a pseudonym wrote an essay for Vox describing how gingerly he now has to teach. “I’m a Liberal Professor, and My Liberal Students Terrify Me,” the headline said. A number of popular comedians, including Chris Rock, have stopped performing on college campuses (see Caitlin Flanagan’s article in this month’s issue). Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Maher have publicly condemned the oversensitivity of college students, saying too many of them can’t take a joke.
...

Quote:You’ve kind of assembled a dream team for the show with Justin Long (“Accepted”) and Laura Dern (“Enlightened”) acting and Michael Price (“The Simpsons”) as your co-creator.

It was a four-year process. It was crazy. It went by fast, lots of stuff happened. I think we wrote a really good script and fortunately the people like the guys you just mentioned, plus others like Sam Rockwell, Gary Cole and Dave Koechner. It just kind of snowballed. I can’t believe the cast we got, it’s unreal.

Quote:Sam Rockwell is an American actor known for his leading roles in Lawn Dogs (1997), Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002), Matchstick Men (2003), The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005), Choke (2008), Moon (2009) and Seven Psychopaths (2012), as well as for his supporting roles in The Green Mile (1999), Galaxy Quest (1999), The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007), Frost/Nixon (2008), Conviction (2010), Iron Man 2 (2010), Cowboys & Aliens (2011) and The Way, Way Back (2013).

Quote:Gary Michael Cole is an American actor and voice artist. Cole began his professional acting career on stage at the Steppenwolf Theatre Company in 1985. On television, He had starring roles in the series Midnight Caller, American Gothic and Crusade. On film, Cole had supporting roles in The Brady Bunch Movie, One Hour Photo, Office Space, Dodgeball and Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. Cole is also known for voicing the title character of Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law.

He currently plays Kent Davidson on the HBO comedy series, Veep for which he received his first Primetime Emmy Award nomination.

Quote:David Michael Koechner is an American character actor and comedian best known for playing roles such as Champ Kind in the Anchorman films and Todd Packer on NBC's The Office.

...In 2015, Koechner began co-starring as Commodore Bellacourt in the Comedy Central series Another Period. He also currently recurs as Bill Lewis on The Goldbergs.

Quote:I heard the first time you got on stage was while you were attending Emerson College back in the ’90s, is that true?

Yeah, I made a New Year’s resolution in 1992. I gave myself a year to do it. I was going to get the nerve up to try out stand-up comedy. The second I made that promise to myself the whole universe worked out for me. Not to get all corny and spiritual here, but within a week or two I was reading the school newspaper, the Emersonian, there was an ad in there for Nick’s Comedy Stop. They had a contest: Find Boston’s Funniest College Student. It was a ploy to get all of these college kids in there, buy drinks and watch their friends bomb while the club made a bunch of money. I wish I had saved that ad. But I tore out the ad and I went home and immediately called before I lost the nerve. I still cannot believe that who I was back then actually had the nerve to try it because I was a very walled off person at that time in my life. I let a lot of opportunity go by in a bunch of other areas in my life. There was something about stand-up where it was my last life line — without it I don’t know where I would have ended up

Quote:In an interview awhile back you said in your early stand-up days you’d pace frantically on the stage. Now you have a natural, conversational vibe. When were you finally able to relax?

I went from pacing back and forth like a lunatic, sweating profusely, to just leaning on the mic stand. That started clicking for me somewhere around the time I did Why Do I Do This? It was taped around 2007. So, it took me about 15 years to just stop moving around. Some people get there quicker. Some people have it right out of the gate, I didn’t. Part of the whole thing about performing and creating is just learning how your brain works.

Quote:Have you ever had to cut a funny bit because you were worried it would offend a crowd?

Oh yeah, sure. But if I’m in a situation like that, like “I know this is funny, I know in my heart there is no hate in this, but I’m worried about how people are going to take this — am I going to be adding to ignorant thought when I do this?” What I then do is try it out in front of whatever group of people that I think I might offend. I just try to see if they’re laughing and it’s the right kind of laugh. I came up with something recently — a black/white thing — all you do is go down to one of the comedy nights when it’s an all-black crowd and try it out. If it’s an all-black crowd, and you’re the white guy, they know that you know that they’re there. Not to say that things can’t fall flat and go off the rails and then become uncomfortable.

Quote:One of my favorite Burr bits is the one where you go off about stay-at-home moms — and how they spend all day putting in DVDs and playing hide-and-go seek. Did that offend anyone at your shows?

Some people got offended. The biggest kick I got out of that joke was when women would come up to me and tell me they thought it was hilarious. They’d say, “That was totally me.” Obviously, I don’t think it’s an easy job. It’s just a joke. There’s nothing better than a person who comes up to me and tells me they enjoyed a joke about them. I love meeting people like that, they’re always cool and have a sense of humor about themselves. And, conversely, the worst people to me are the ones who sat there and listened to me for an hour and a half blow through 70 subjects, 69 of which they thought were funny — all except the one that pertained to their life and they then decided to take it seriously.

Quote:How do you prepare for a comedy special? How do you know when you’re ready?

I have a loose time frame, like every two or two-and-a-half years I’ll do one. You know when it’s ready, you’re like, “All right, I’m feeling the itch.” I’m thinking, “I need to put this out, because in six months, if I don’t document this, I’m going to be sick of doing these jokes.” You’re like, “I’ve done this, this is what I feel now but I feel myself starting to change.” That means a new hour. There are also a bunch of extra tricks you have to use when you do a special, which is to basically pretend the cameras are not there, slow down, relax and remember to have fun.

Quote:Burr’s latest project is an upcoming Netflix animated series titled “F is for Family.” Set in 1973, it recalls a simpler time, when kids would “go outside, meet up, roam the neighborhood, pick up more kids, and, with their kid brains, figure out what to do – throw crabapples at cars, smoke cigarettes, look at dirty magazines.”

It’s an acknowledgment on Burr’s part of a generational shift, in which a large part of his audience doesn’t share those same cultural touchpoints.

“We don’t make fun of the ’70s. I mean, wide collars, AMC Pacers … We hated that stuff then, too. And things like Vietnam, the gas crisis, they’re there, but they’re not the story. I remember hearing from my mom why the president (Nixon) sounded so upset, and she told me he did something very wrong. For me, it was there for a minute and then I was back off roaming the neighborhood.”

http://www.columbusalive.com/content/stories/2015/10/15/comic-bill-burr-stops-at-the-palace-theatre.html

(10-16-2015, 09:11 PM)Miguel Wrote:

Quote:Burr’s latest project is an upcoming Netflix animated series titled “F is for Family.” Set in 1973, it recalls a simpler time, when kids would “go outside, meet up, roam the neighborhood, pick up more kids, and, with their kid brains, figure out what to do – throw crabapples at cars, smoke cigarettes, look at dirty magazines.”