SNEAK PEAK: HBO’s Ricky Gervais: Out of England – The Stand-up Special

Friday, November 7th, 2008 | Pop Culture Notions, Under The Patina of Knowledge

Last night I had the pleasure of attending the World Premiere of HBO’s Ricky Gervais: Out of England – The Stand-up Special at The Paley Center For Media in NYC. The evening was part of the Paley Center’s fall programming series Paley After Dark. After the 1 hour screening, Ricky sat down with Time.com’s editor Josh Tyrangiel for a quick Q&A.

The HBO special is a riot and if you aren’t an HBO subscriber yet, get the DVD when it is released. Apparently Ricky honed the act over the course of several weeks by performing it in front of audiences at small clubs who bought tickets that were quietly released over the internet. The final filmed performance took place this summer in New York City.

I laughed my arse off at Ricky’s astute flights of fancy that nimbly dissect such contentious subjects as illness/mortality in cancer stricken children, the sexual behavior of gay men in a era of AIDS awareness, and the oft overlooked morals hidden inside nursery rhymes.

I won’t make the mistake of paraphrasing comedy, but during one particularly poignant bit, Ricky reflects upon the nursery rhyme Humpty Dumpty and is appalled that society would teach its children a moral that says “Don’t sit a wall if you are an egg.” Flabergasted, Ricky progresses to assert “certainly don’t send horses to fix an egg, maybe a surgeon or a faberge expert but not a horse! I couldn’t think of a more perfect implement to crush an egg than a hoof.”

I laughed hard at Ricky’s 1-hour HBO special but not to the point of nearly dislodging my esophagus as I’ve done with some of his more spacious projects like the Ricky Gervais Podcast (Guinness World Record Holder for “Most Internet Downloads”) The reason is that we love to be in on the joke, we love to see the process. And most importantly we love to hear Ricky’s ear splitting cackle once a gag had come to fruition.

Even though past Gervais and Stephen Merchant projects like EXTRAS or The Office are edited to a sheen, we know from viewing the outtakes that each scene is just one Gervais snort away from an all-cast crack up. It looks like so much fun and we get giddy to be part of it. So while Gervais looks to be having a hoot during his stand-up act, he doesn’t appear to be getting the jokes for the first time. There is inherently more artifice involved with a filmed stand up bit and so Gervais’s freshness and impromptu nature are marginally muted. I wonder how Gervais plans to maintain his edge, process, and style as forthcoming movies and projects increase in budget and scope and thus in refinement.

During the Q&A after the screening, I was delighted to see that Ricky has stayed human during all his deserved success. Even as he fielded questions from the most awkwardly earnest of audience members he maintained the utmost respect and forthrightness with his answers.

-Tonky

ps: Has anyone found a leaked version of the HBO special? info [at] tonkydesigns.com

[UPDATE]

Thanks to Perry Garvin | perrygarvin.net for the heads up on the leaked video torrent. Apparently it is from an LA performance, the HBO special was filmed in NYC. Same routine, different night

http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4298903/Ricky_Gervais_-_Out_of_England_LA-VBR-2008-88