Truly Dreadful Film

Thanks for the memories!

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Blistering performances.

I feel sorry for the people that don't. I saw this routine when she came to Australia a few years ago. I laughed so hard my eyes closed and I stopped seeing what was going on and I couldn't stop laughing to open them again. While some new material would have been welcome, this was still pretty great. Hilarious, unpredictable, and occasionally poignant.

I first learned of Sarah Silverman when I saw ads for "The Sarah Silverman Program" in 2007 or 2008.* I then saw some of her skits and laughed out loud. Her HBO special "Sarah Silverman: We Are Miracles" features her in the Largo telling all manner of edgy stories. I particularly liked Silverman's memory of being in the shower with her mom. It just goes to show that humor really does work best when the person is allowed to say whatever s/he wants. Above all, Silverman is among the best that there is in comedy, always letting everyone have it equally.*I later learned that she co-starred in "Bulworth", "There's Something About Mary" and "Evolution", all of which I had seen years earlier.

Sarah Silverman is a comedian that's always been around, but an artist I never directly got into by chance. I watched a few episodes of The Sarah Silverman Program, which was too obscure for my taste. But I always enjoyed her cameo in Judd Apatow's Funny People, Louie and thought she gave an effective supporting performance in Sarah Polley's Take This Waltz. I enjoyed clips of her standup online, but have not seen her perform a complete comedy hour till now.The decision to shoot the special at the Largo Comedy Club in front of 39 people is a great one. Silverman never looks far off into the distance or above to a balcony booth. There's no big giant TV screen of her in the background for the cheap seats. The intimacy of the Largo lends itself for Silverman's raunchy off-the-wall random tangent comedy, giving her much more freedom to roam from topic to topic without transitions. "I don't need segue ways." Silverman quips, "The brain doesn't work that way."Some of the joke highlights were a childhood story of how her older sister used to scare her, sin atonement in Christianity and a bit about the Make A Wish foundation. It's nice how much politically incorrect jokes she gets away with, showing an affable innocent girly persona can really go a long way to make hard topics durable.The whole experience is more akin to a live show, as Silverman is able to milk laughs from silences and even counter critique audience reactions when they aren't up to par. It's always awkward when comedians do audience interaction in big theater shows and this completely fixes that. The reactions from the 39 people create a more potent, immersive connection to Silverman's perspective. And making 39 people laugh, after all, is much harder than making 200 people laugh.

I had the misfortune of watching Sarah's HBO Special 'We Are Miracles' with a religious conservative. Someone that completely understands the material but yells, "That Bitch" when the rape jokes come. On the plus side Sarah was able to breach the stone heart of that Jesus lover and get her to laugh with me. Amazing how that happens.Sarah is a great comedian. Definitely my favorite comedian, but I found that she was telling previous jokes I'd already heard on talk shows or read from her Twitter profile ... And as well from older pieces of her memoir 'The Bedwetter: Stories of Courage, Redemption, and Pee'.Yes, the show was funny overall ... don't get me wrong, but I'm not one to spare the feelings of anybody - even if I do love the smell of their poo.A special on HBO should have been built on all new material and I felt cheated of that. Maybe in the same way I feel cheated after watching every Kathy Griffin show on Bravo. When someone keeps talking about the same things over & over again. It loses my attention, because it's stale & predictable. I demand more of Sarah, because she genuinely enjoys making us laugh. Much more than she desires to fill every seat in a theater.There was also the problem of watching Bill Cosby on Comedy Central first. I found Sarah following an act that had set the tone for me. Cosby isn't trying to be "edgy" "controversial" or whatever terminology comedians use today ... Bill was just trying to make me laugh ... and he's a pro at that. He engages the audience and can just talk to his fans completely unrehearsed.I find Sarah does very little of that (unless a heckler attacks her) she pretty much ignores her audience and sticks to the routine. That's one step away from reading your jokes off of cards to me. During a LIVE I'd go stupid if she acknowledged me during a LIVE performance. There at The Largo she had an audience of maybe 40 people she just talked at. I see so many people begging for just the smallest nugget from her that they "heckle" just to get that attention.I guess my final word here would be that Sarah continues to play to the same selection of fans and give people what they expect from her. It's going to hurt her in the end and I don't want that to happen to our Sarah.