With 17 years of experience, stand-up comic Dane Cook has now made the transition to film, appearing in movies like Mr. Brooks and Employee of the Month. His latest project, Good Luck Chuck, pairs him with Jessica Alba as the cursed guy women date immediately before they find their true love.
In Good Luck Chuck, your character seems to have a a lot of women flocking towards him. Do you have any stories of crazy fans that may have gotten a little too close?
Oh sure. I have some crazy-ass Looney Tune fans. I have to go under aliases now at the hotels because, last year, I had a girl show up nude at my door at like two in the morning yelling my Kool-Aid bit in the hall. She was kicking my door naked. She was like, "Oh yeah. I want to bag you Dane Cook." And I opened the door slightly, and she was latterly naked, screaming, "Oh yeah," in the hallway. I have crazy, crazy fans. But, hey, it keeps life entertaining, right?
Your character also has a good luck charm for every woman that he sleeps with. What would you say is your good luck charm, if you have one?
What I'm really good is getting dumped. I have the power to be dumped by any woman. If you date me, you will dump me. I mean, hopefully, I'm embellishing about myself, and that's a bit of a joke. But playing a guy that may have this blessing-curse, depending on what your stance is, was certainly far, far out of the world I live in.
Believe it now, and it's always something I have to fight to defend, I'm pretty shy. And I'm not a guy that, like Chuck, can even really go full-tilt-boogie and just get any girl that he wants. I'm a little bit more of a romantic type and I guess I believe in serendipity and things of that nature. I got to play a guy who was kind of like a bad-ass in that aspect.
And obviously, the turn being when he figures this may be legitimate, to have Jessica Alba's character come at me and say, "I love you. I want to be with you," and then I have to repel this woman. That's the whole second act of this movie is me repelling Jessica Alba, and just all the comedy that comes from having to do that. Could I do that in my real life? No. I'd probably let a train run over me to have a girl like Jessica Alba come and want to spend a little bit of her R&R time.
Did the physical aspect of the comedy come naturally to you as a stand up comedian or not?
Physical comedy is my forte, and I love words and I love jargon. I love vernacular and I try to have a nice mix, a nice dance of both. When I was a kid I'd watch Buster Keeton or old Charlie Chaplin stuff and I also come from a family [where] my mother was very physical and just very silly. So I grew up just adoring physical comedy.
And the great thing about Good Luck Chuck is when you see a transformation. It's almost like in the first act you're seeing elements of how I am in my regular life, which is very reserved and renal. And then by the second act, you're seeing a lot of physicality and you're seeing elements of what I bring to my stand up. So it's an acting piece, and yet I have the luxury of throwing in 17 years of knowledge of how my body works and how I know how to communicate feelings through physicality. It's all up there.
When you were young, did you realize your comedic talent or was that something that developed later on?
Well, I realized that I came from a funny family. I had five sisters and a brother. And I was more of an observer. I was not the the school cut-up or anything like that. But with my family specifically, we were always watching HBO specials and listening to old hard albums and comedy and Carlin. But really I just started to realize very early on that some of the toughest parts of our life, the dark stuff, we were always cracking up together.
Meeting up in our kitchen at 2:30 in the morning and eating cold Chinese food and just throwing out whatever we could to keep each other light, to keep each other positive through some pretty sh-y stuff that happened in my family. And right there, early on, I had that again epiphany, where I said, "I don't want to do comedy because I want it to be about me, me, me... It's narcissistic." And I want to make families and other people feel like my family does at two in the morning, quoting Bill Cosby himself.
I want to make other people feel like how I feel when my brother's first girl broke with him, and he came home, and we all sit and reenacted breaking up with [him], pretending we were the girl, instead of just sitting and there and being glum. It set a ripple effect off in my life and it definitely inspired me to want to make people feel good creatively.
What do you look for in a woman?
I love a girl that is independent. I have my stories that I bring to the table and I like somebody who also brings a lot of life experience to the table. I don't like a needy girl. I don't like a girl that sits around and says, "I'll be here for you. I'll wait here." Let's see. I don't like cleft lips. I don't care for that. Yeah, I don't like peg legs. Let me just go through all the things I don't like. I don't like the pirate look. I don't like one-legged. In humor, if you don't get my humor, you're in a for long, boring ride.
Is there a quote or part of your routine that people quote to you so much that you're now sick of it? And if so, what is it?
Never sick of it. I get emails all day, every day [where] people sign off with their favorite quote. I don't think that I can take off my shoes without somebody saying, "F- shoes" to me. It's like I hear "F- shoes" every day. Listen, let me tell you, man. The goal of any comedian, whether they will tell you this truthfully or not, is you want somebody somewhere sitting with their friends going, "He said, quote, blah, blah, blah".
That is the most flattering thing that you could possibly ever want as a live performer. That makes me feel awesome. That makes me feel like I've really contributed to some of the fabric of somebody's life for a minute. And I sound like a goon, because I get so excited talking about it, but it's like, that's the sh- right there. If I ever get sick of it and I tell you I'm sick of it, punch me in the balls. I don't deserve to be quoted then.
Did your sisters really bedazzle your clothes when you were younger?
Yes. They bedazzled me. They slapped on lipstick. I would wear jellies and wigs. I mean, just you name it. I had strawberry shortcake sneakers and a pink huffy. I'm not even kidding you. [Having] five sisters was brutal. I hung around with them so much, I finally started getting a period.
What are your opinions on censorship?
Censorship. F- it. I don't like [it], especially in the world of live performance. It scares me having somebody tell me what is or is not funny. When the advertising people get too close, and they start having that say, and those are the corporations, the line gets blurry to me. And yes, I'm in it. I know I'm a part of it. I'm a part of the machine. I'm a product too, in some respect. But what you try to do is to the best of your ability, give back to your community and to people in ways that you've benefited from those appearances or those movies or whatever and try to do as little as possible that you feel like is just for the financial gain. My dad used to always say, "Dane, the money will be there if your heart's in it."
And I try to stick to that to the best I can. I'm not going to be a hypocrite. It's Hollywood. It's all a big ad for white teeth. But we still tell stories, and it's still glamorous. When you see a movie, you still go there to get moved in a dark room. So, as much as I can play the game and as much as I can keep my fans and new fans safe from all that stuff, we all do the dance-but we're laughing.
What's the funniest thing to you in the entire world personally?
A baby making a really serious face. It gets me every time. A baby that has a face that looks like it wants to talk about, like, home equities.
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