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Originally Posted by txdome
Haven't watched it yet, but you're wrong about the standup part. Saw him live twice and he crushed it with a lot of stuff that was riffing on Austin specifically. All of the Letterman and Conan interviews are basically standup too.
Saying it wasn't his primary strength isn't saying that he was bad at it. He was good at it for sure. I just don't think he's a legend if the standup is all we got.
Re: the Letterman/Conan interviews, yes, sort of, but there's a reason that the reformatting of it to an interview set brought his humor to a whole other level. Part of it was that it just worked better with someone to interact and help set up, and part of it was that - to the extent that he said anything that wasn't pre-written - he had maybe the quickest wit of any comedian ever, and his little moments of inspiration came through better in these interviews than they would in any impromptu moment in a standup set.
For me, this special unfortunately having no audience just made it quite difficult to enjoy in the same way the same material might have if circumstances were different.