Dane Cook breaks from stand-up comedy to get serious about acting

By Dylan P. Gadino | December 1, 2011 at 9:07 am | One comment | feature slider, News | Tags: Answers To Nothing, dane cook

Divisive Dane Cook is starring in the drama Answers to Nothing, which hits theaters tomorrow. But it’s not just another movie gig for Cook. Having been away from the stand-up stage since February, this project marks a very conscious decision to start taking his career as an actor seriously.

“I don’t want to say I’ve retired, but this is an important time to shift my energy into something new,” Cook tells Amy Kaufman of the Los Angeles Times. “If I’m going to gonna do stand-up again — I respect the art form so much, it’s glamorous to me — and if I partake in it again, I want to feel like I’m lending something to it.”

Later in the Times profile, in reference to the NBC deal he recently landed that would find the comedian starring in a half-hour comedy in the Fall, Cook explains further. “I’m at that point where it’s like, I’ve done so much with stand-up comedy, and I’ve taken it everywhere I’ve wanted to take it. I’d like to be in people’s homes. I’d like to reach all of those fans in a way where I don’t have to do a two-year tour to get to everybody.”

Head on over to the LA Times to read the entire profile. It’s the best I’ve seen on Cook in quite some time. You can check out the trailer to Answers to Nothing below.

About the Author

Dylan P. Gadino

Dylan is the founder and editor in chief of Laughspin. He launched Punchline Magazine in 2005 (which became Laughspin in the summer of 2011) with childhood friend Bill Bergmann. Dylan lives in northern New Jersey with his wife and two sons. He hopes the Shire is real.

Buster Brown

Reading the LAT piece I was astounded to find that, in an article wherein he confesses to such hubris when he was younger, he nonetheless demonstrates that clueless hubris remains integral to his decision-making process. I mean, his “big idea” for learning more about the acting process was to work with his manager to find big-name actors who were his fans so he could take them to lunch and hit them up for advice and help? Alas, that STILL hasn’t aided him in tracking down his quarry, Ben Affleck. Dang, guess he wasn’t “one of my fans.”

The author lists some personal tragedies with Cook losing family members in 2006 and 2007, but boldly declares that now (ahem, five years later) he’s fighting his way past those burdens (after completing a 2 year tour) and making the changes called for by those losses. Huh? The calendar doesn’t quite match the myth the author (or Cook?) has created.

And NOW Cook tells us he only did those earlier, crappy movies for the money. After all, he reasoned, Michael Caine could get away with it. Forehead slap here.