From Comedian to Punchline

The recent poor reviews of Joe Rogan’s Netflix special has me thinking about how quickly comedians can go from being funny to a living joke. Thinking about Rogan specifically, I remember learning of him around the time he famously (or infamously?) jumped on the stage while Carlos Mencia was performing and called him out for stealing jokes from other comedians. I didn’t even remember that he had earlier had a role on News Radio which I occasionally watched in the 1990s — though I didn’t particularly enjoy the show. I have never liked Rogan’s style of comedy but I wouldn’t have gone so far as to say he wasn’t funny.

If you’re familiar with Owen Benjamin, you can hardly be surprised with the public ridicule Rogan is receiving as it has been a long time coming. The success Joe Rogan found in podcasting allowed him to act as something of a gatekeeper to aspiring comedians and Benjamin himself was a victim of this though he appeared on the podcast on more than one occasion and they did have a good relationship. After Benjamin had the temerity to publicly share that he thought it was wrong to dress a little boy as a girl and give him drugs that will prevent him going through puberty, all previously wide-open avenues to his Hollywood success were closed forever. Now plenty of people are saying exactly what he said (I think even including Rogan), but it was still bad when he did it. And he ate a pot brownie and went crazy forever or something like that.

In any case, this is not about Owen Benjamin as his is very much a special (though also righteous), case. Here I want to go over some examples of comedians that Rogan is now looking to follow. That is people who were very successful for how funny they were until they suddenly weren’t.

This won’t be chronological because I want to start with the comedian I first remember this happening to. This was Pauly Shore, who in the first half of the 1990s, was very successful. He first came to my (and probably most people’s) attention through the film Encino Man which also starred both Sean Astin and Brandon Fraser. Sean Astin was already a somewhat successful young actor and is really best known today for playing Samwise Gamgee in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Brendan Fraser went on to have the most success of the three in the latter part of the 1990s and mostly recently has had a career comeback winning an Academy Award for Best Actor. This was all to happen later though as the film’s box office success did a lot more to boost the career of Pauly Shore than the other two leads. 

Following this film he starred in Son in Law, In the Army Now, Jury Duty and Bio-Dome. The first two of these seem to have had similar success to Encino Man at the box office but this dropped with the last two. I believe Bio-Dome has since become something of a cult classic but it was also effectively the end of Shore’s career as a lead actor. Somehow the guy who everyone thought was funny — was not funny anymore and maybe never was. I believe I saw all of these films at some stage and while they weren’t all great films, I don’t remember it being Shore’s fault. I thought he was funny at the time though I can’t speak for how well his comedy style would hold up today. I don’t think I’ve seen any of these films since renting VHS tapes was still something people did. 

Pauly Shore has continued to work as a comedian and appears on television, film and I believe still does some stand-up too. But he is still popularly remembered more as a joke than a guy who makes them. He is perhaps even more interesting because he made a mockumentary film called Pauly Shore Is Dead that consciously referenced his quick rise and fall as a comedy star.

In contrast to Shore we also have Adam Sandler. Sandler’s rise to fame began with Saturday Night Live and he was one of quite a number to successfully transition into film through some early comedy vehicles including Airheads with Brendan Fraser. His star really began to rise as Shore’s began to fall with the films Billy Madison in 1995 and then Happy Gilmore in 1996. The latter is still one of my favourite comedy films of the period. He had continued success with films like The Wedding Singer and The Waterboy and then… he continued to be successful and still is. 

He was certainly criticised and subject to the same detractions as Shore. A common criticism was that most of his films are formulaic — which they certainly are. The major difference is that his films continued to be successful with audiences and so he has been able to keep making them. And not only this, but also continue to support and produce films for a number of his friends and fellow comedic actors like David Spade and Rob Schneider.

One could argue here that people simply got sick of Pauly Shore in a way that they didn’t with Adam Sandler and there is some truth to this. Sandler is still subject to pretty savage criticism to this day and many really, really don’t like him. The two comedians above have similarities and differences but the main reason I am including them first is because I grew up watching their films.

Dane Cook was a stand-up comedian that became very popular in the early 2000s. I distinctly remember him being very popular on college campuses in the in United States back in 2006. This followed a similar trajectory to the two comedians above. He had his own specials and moved into film initially co-starring and then being the lead in a few films around the time I became aware of him. Although he did appeal to my demographic at the time, I never really found any of the comedy I saw of him particularly funny but he does fit in as an example similar to Pauly Shore.

The last examples are from the 1980s and these two comedians are Andrew Dice Clay and Bobcat Goldthwait who were popular in the 1980s and then disappeared from screens both small and silver in the early 1990s. Goldthwait is best known for his appearances in the Police Academy movies and these movies could provide a separate post of their own on something that went from being loved to derided in a very short time. Both these comedians were very popular and then along the way it was decided they actually weren’t very funny and it should be personally embarrassing to think they ever were. I still find some of Dice Clay’s stand-up funny (though certainly crass), and remember thinking his The Adventures of Ford Fairlane film entertaining as well. As with many films mentioned above, I can’t say I would still feel the same way today.

I think I have enough examples to speak to my point about how fads and fashions can make or break careers and how quickly one can go from being loved to hated by audiences and critics. I am not trying to claim that any of these comedians (including Rogan), are actually great. I also don’t recommend most of these comedians because of how full of profanity and vulgarity their otherwise differing brands of comedy are. The examples shown in the video above on just Rogan are more than illustrative with this. 

If I must end by sharing a comedian I enjoy, I will simply leave you with the British comedian Simon Evans who can get great belly laughs out of me without any profanity or vulgarity. Though he is not completely above using either. 

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