If you follow the stand-up comedy scene, maybe you already know the answer to the question posed in the headline above. If that’s not the case, perhaps you only remember Dane Cook as an energetic comedian whose abilities to scream, flail his arms, and run across a stage charmed the pants dane cook of America throughout the 2000s. During that period, Cook appeared destined for film and television superstardom, yet he all but vanished from mass media right around 2010 or thereabouts.
Millennials might wonder why the zany jokester isn’t a household name anymore, but if you’re Gen Z or below, you probably have no idea who Dane Cook is, ’cause when he was super famous, you were much too young to listen to his often bawdy, profanity-laced routines. Truth be told, Cook’s stumble from cultural ubiquity is a well-worn topic. There are already plenty of articles that begin by posing some variation of the question, “What’s the deal with formerly famous guy Dane Cook? Looper has been wondering about this since at least 2017.
Whether they like Dane Cook, hate Dane Cook, or liked Cook during the ’00s and now pretend they hated him all along, folks are still wondering exactly how he fizzled out of the entertainment scene. Let’s retrace some steps and figure out where Cook went wrong. It’s one thing for an actor to score a couple of choice movie roles and drift back into obscurity, or for a musician to record a hit single and never repeat the achievement. Those sorts of things happen all the time. But at its height, Dane Cook’s popularity was totally unprecedented — or at least it felt that way at the time. Cook sold out Madison Square Garden in 2006.
The list of comics who have done the same is very short, and includes George Carlin and Eddie Murphy. Billboard notes that before 2005’s “Retaliation” climbed to the No. Liking Dane Cook became as uncool as liking Nickelback. Needless to say, he hasn’t been invited back to MSG recently. To his credit, Cook sounds like he has a pragmatic attitude about his downfall.