Depending on your feelings about the man and his work, Dane Cook doing seven-and-a-half straight hours of standup comedy might be way too much or not nearly enough. He really has been on a stage for that long, too. It happened on Jan. 1, 2008, when Cook set the endurance record at the Laugh Factory in Los Angeles.
"It was not planned," Cook said in a recent phone chat. "I actually got coaxed onstage. I'd just stopped in to say hello to the owner, and he asked me to go on. 'Nah,' I said, 'I'm tired, taking a few weeks off.' 'Oh, c'mon, just five mintues.' 'Well...I do have this funny idea. What the hell, I'll get up there.'"
Cook got on a roll, and that five minutes stretched to three hours. That was when he says he tried to break it off -- but the crowd said no. Then someone in the audience mentioned Dave Chappelle, who held the Laugh Factory's endurance record of a bit more than six hours.
"It became this fun little challenge," Cook said. "I never left the stage or sat down, I wanted to stand the whole time. And I sent a guy out to buy food for everybody. By the next morning, I'd told every joke I ever knew and talked to everybody in the crowd. I knew them all and found the humor in everybody's lives. Seven-and-a-half hours later, I felt like a vampire walking out into sunlight."
For lots more talk from Cook, and details about his Sunday performance in Raleigh, see the interview in Friday's paper.
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