John Mulaney’s Intervention Celebration
John Mulaney enters the new-for-him, old-for-us canon of personal response comedy.
John Mulaney wastes no time opening his new Netflix comedy special John Mulaney: Baby J.
The past couple years, I’ve done a lot of work on myself. And I’ve realized that I’ll be fine as long as I get constant attention.
Mulaney, now two years out of a publicly acknowledged rehab, is back on the grind of comedy touring and Netflix special recording. This is his fourth major comedy special, the first three being major hits, reputedly – I don’t think we’ve seen, nor will ever see, viewership data to collaborate with this idea. I think stand-up comedy has gone much the way of boxing: a former American cultural centerpiece, now dated and overshadowed by volume and variety of entertainment options. That’s not to say it hasn’t hung around and captured the short attention spans of our country, which it has done several times. Mulaney is a repeat offender, his vintage style and stylings, and his approachable, if not strung out, blank canvas of a physical presentation all offering something old in something new, and it has worked, the resulting fame and financial success helping to fuel his lifelong affliction with drugs and alcohol.
The pandemic was, obviously, a hard time for all of us, and a reflection period for many of us. Mulaney is no exception, as his friends took an opportunity to trick him into a dinner-party-turned-intervention, where he walked out of the door of that apartment straight into a car to go to rehab.
He’s back on the stage now, with “a thing to address”, a remarkably common format for stand-up comedy these days. The modern standards of being a decent human – which have been too unspoken and unseen in the successful, public creatives of the past forever years – have been applied to our comedians, and just as every other public group, many have fallen prey to being seen for what they are. Louis C.K., whose work I have not visited after revelations of sexual misconduct, has returned to work; Aziz Ansari was accused of the same, and touched on the allegations in his 2018 special Aziz Ansari: Right Now, which ended with a quiet and serious and very intentional statement about being grateful for having a chance to continue working; Marc Maron, a former drug addict himself, who is also talking through basically his entire life on his podcast WTF? with Marc Maron, recently released a show after the abrupt death of his partner Lynn Shelton, a wonderful filmmaker; Chris Rock, in a first-of-it’s-kind live-broadcast via Netflix, released a comedy special touching on “The Slap”; Dave Chapelle continues to do whatever the fuck he’s doing with his life in the continual insulting and dehumanizing of transgender people.
Comedians have always been opportunistic and quick with their commentary on all walks of life, and a ton of material turns to dust and gross generalizations with any amount of time and societal growth. But currently, when only the biggest comedians get these huge, world-reaching stages, much of the commentary has been reacting to personal dramas, personal slights, personal hells. This isn’t necessarily new, but it’s more pronounced, and more common.
Mulaney now joins the ranks of “recent personal events” comedians. We find him four years after his last special, with a little more weight on him, and a couple more bags under his eyes, but with the same goofy postures and voices, and a similar vibrancy and showmanship. He opens the show with a classically shaped Mulaney bit about being a kid in school, and getting treated special when your grandparent died, and how maybe that is something he hoped for. The crowd’s laughing, he’s screaming fake voices, and then he broaches the topics he knows you know about: rehab, divorce, Bo Burnham taking your spotlight, etc.
“I used to come out and stage and be like BAH BAH BAH, BAH BAH BAH BAH BAH! And I wonder what caused that? But those days are over.”
And then, we are greeted by the opening credits, scored by a bubbly and sad little David Byrne original jingle.
What follows is a comedy special with all the typical makings, patterns, and performances of the Mulaney you know, and he hits on the truths of his problems the entire way. There are snippets of somber and sad, but mostly, it’s a laugh. He’s not kind to himself, but he’s not necessarily unkind. I don’t want to give away the jokes, obviously, so I’ll just say that if you’ve enjoyed his matrial in the past, I think you’ll really enjoy this.
It was a bit challenging, though, for me to sit down and watch something I had many presumptions and assumptions about. The publicity of Mulaney’s personal problems wasn’t necessairly kind to him when the news was breaking, and reading about him from that remove was a shallow way to learn and think about someone. And now he’s telling a version of the story.
Taking our biggest faults, failures, and afflictions to the big stage is brash and risky and sometimes genuinely awful. A ton of light is shone on addiction and rehabilitation, and the ego that fame brings into those spaces. But, as with Mulaney’s work in the past, the material feels earnest, though never completely honest (as all comedy inflates and smudges details), and it was genuinely fun.
The complicity I felt after learning of his struggles is still sticking to my ribs. Nakedly enjoying and supporting someone who is putting on a face for my entertainment while actively destroying themselves saddens and scares me. I didn’t know these things at the time they were happening, but it also seems incredibly obvious in retrospect, in part because it’s Mulaney himself now participating in the looking back. I’m thankful that Mulaney has brought something different to the stage that comes in the same packaging we’re familiar with.
Mulaney ends the show with a simple performance, reading a personally printed interview between himself and GQ shortly before he received treatment. It’s rambling and nonsensical, and silly and fun. He openly, nakedly laughs at the state he used to be in, the person he used to be, inviting us to do the same.
Happy “David Byrne Thursday” to all my readers. I watched this comedy special this morning, and I get to see his 1986 feature film TRUE STORIES later tonight at a local independant cinema. Sometimes, things just work out.
I hope they’re working out for you, and I hope you’re also stumbling into opportunites to watch something, to see something, to listen to something. As always, reach out with the new (to you) things you’re vibing on.
TTFN,
B