Dane Cook should be hamburger meat by now.
The gears that have aligned against the megawatt comedian would have ground down a lesser soul long ago.
Criticized for his material, his ego and his general approach to stand-up, Cook has become a favored punching bag for critics and comedians. His rise to superstardom over the past few years has seemed bewildering to those who don’t share a love of his work or his confident, occasionally spastic personality.
So what’s a comedian to do?
Turn it into jokes, of course.
“Over the last couple years I was dealing with becoming successful and becoming a household name, and what that means,” Cook said. “And also the backlash, negativity and haters. On a personal level, I was also dealing with losing my mother and father to cancer within nine months of each other.”
The results of Cook’s soul-searching are on display in his “intimate” new CD and TV special, “ISolated INcident.” It premieres on Comedy Central on Sunday — the same night Cook stops by the Pepsi Center to entertain up to 20,000 of his closest friends.
“I felt it was my responsibility as an entertainer and a human being to talk about it, to figure out how I could bring all of these things to the stage and make them relatable and, firstly, funny — not to be maudlin and preach about them.”
That process found Cook dropping in unexpectedly at comedy clubs like the Laugh Factory, working out his material to surprised audiences of 20 to 30 people. Now that the material’s honed, he’s going predictably big and playing venues normally reserved for rock stars and professional sports teams.
When you sell out Madison Square Garden two nights in a row — as Cook did in 2006 — there’s really nowhere else to go.
Savior or evil genius?
Cook has been hailed as the savior of stand-up comedy by some and an evil genius by others, a marketing wunderkind on par with a Bond villain.
Indeed, he has more in common with a corporation than most performing artists. He’s an expert at branding and selling himself, connecting to his audience and maintaining their loyalty.
But it’s not just packaging: Cook fans delight in his crisp, muscular material, which veers from absurd Kool-Aid commercials and the dangers of Googling one’s self to frat boy-style sex talk that would make even hardened stand-up fans cringe. It’s a punchy, aggressive style rich in verbal detail, and one that seems even more visceral when Cook renders it breathlessly onstage.
The connection persists offstage too. In addition to his CDs and DVDs, he meticulously updates his website with personal video messages of his travels and free downloads of new routines. He Twitters constantly (with no help from his assistants, he swears) on everything from his talk-show appearances to porn and sports. He developed his own hand sign (the Su-Fi, or Super Finger, which grew out of a joke and has become something of a secret handshake) and even has his own iPhone app.
It all amounts to making Cook one of a handful of touring comedians — Chris Rock, George Lopez, Larry the Cable Guy, Carlos Mencia — who can sell out arenas and amphitheaters.
Of course, when Cook appeared on “Oprah” on Wednesday with Monique and George Lopez as part of Oprah’s “Comedy Hour,” it was the equivalent of having Coldplay open for a couple of local bands.
Cook’s draw dwarfs them all. He’s the highest-charting comedian in nearly three decades, with multiplatinum album sales and No. 1 spots on Billboard. He has 2.4 million MySpace fans — more than any other comedian.
“You need to be a business- person,” Cook said. “It’s like the way a great band has an identity and a brand, a connection away from the stage. It’s not just the funny jokes that aired on ‘The Tonight Show’ that blew you up. Comics need to spend more of their other 23 hours of the day not just writing the comedy and waiting for the spot at the club. We have to find our people to pull them in.”
Different perspective
Cook’s perspective on the comedy world is distinctly different from the ’70s heydays of George Carlin, Richard Pryor and Steve Martin — the last time comedians held sway over pop culture. These days, only a handful of stand-ups enjoy such visible profiles.
“That’s why myself and some of these other (contemporary) guys have had that level of success,” Cook said. “We’re not afraid to say, ‘I’m an entertainer.’ I find my fans and say, ‘Your obligation will be to come and support me when I come to your town.’ ”
For all his credibility-destroying credentials (including panned film roles in “Good Luck Chuck” and “My Best Friend’s Girl”), Cook possesses a hat trick of virtues: a comedy nerd’s love of the genre, years of honing his craft on the mean stages of Boston and New York, and a business acumen on par with Bill Gates.
It’s that sober view of the entertainment landscape that will likely sustain him for years to come.
“Two years from now, my new special’s not going to be on Comedy Central,” Cook said. “It’s going to be directly on your phone in crystal-clear quality.”
Cook wishes comedy fans had that kind of access to their idols in the past.
“Just imagine how cool it would be if Steve Wright had a Twitter account when I was growing up. I get to capture and see something he’s experiencing but may never take to the stage. Or Steve Martin has a little flip cam and can tell a story about meeting his hero that he wanted to tell his fans. I would have eaten that up.”
John Wenzel: 303-954-1642 or jwenzel@denverpost.com
Dane Cook
Comedy. Pepsi Center, 1000 Chopper Circle. Sunday. 8 p.m. $30-$100. 800-745-3000 or
