Thursday, November 13, 2008

Sepinwall on TV: Ricky Gervais special makes light of heavy topics

In today's column, I talk with Ricky Gervais about his hilarious new HBO stand-up special (the AIDS riff left me gasping for air both times I saw it), awards how hosting, his next project with Stephen Merchant, and more.

7 comments:

Hal Incandenza said...

Great article, Alan. I do loves me some Gervais. I'm intrigued by this new project.

Did Ghost Town come up? Was he happy with it? I heard a rumour he re-wrote the ending...

Also, re: "Out of England": this sounds very much like his "Fame" special from (I think) 2007. Do you know when this special was recorded? (I'm pretty sure the original one was done in London, but it sounds like it's the same material here.)

Alan Sepinwall said...

Some of the material is duplicated from previous specials, but not all.

He taped it sometime in the summer. I saw one of the earliest concerts in the "tour" (essentially, New York and LA) when I was out at the critics press tour in July, and then they actually taped one of the New York concerts a few weeks later.

Alan Sepinwall said...

Oh, and Ghost Town did not come up.

Hal Incandenza said...

Cool. Thanks, Alan. New material...very exciting! (Although I'd watch just to see him do the bit with the monkey again).

Anonymous said...

How much of the material changed from the live show you saw to the taped special, Alan? I saw Chris Rock's latest early in the tour, so several of the political jokes were changed by the time he taped, but most of the rest was the same material.

I'm definitely looking forward to Gervais' special!

Alan Sepinwall said...

Most of it seemed the same, Dez. I remembered the safe sex/AIDS bit as going on longer than it does in the special, but when I asked Gervais about it, he said he did it the same way both times.

Pamela Jaye said...

"awards how hosting"

i'm guessing the space needs to be moved. (it took me a minute)

I don't get HBO, so there' nothing else to see here (for me)