Todays Specials
All jokes aside, stand-up is getting artful onscreen.
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Comedy specials can have a frictionless blankness to them.
But so often, the look of them is deliberately unremarkable.
The potential upside is universality.
This could be happening in your town!
But universality is rarely the result of generality.
Live in Crenshaw, Lil Rel Howerys2019 HBO special directedbyJerrod Carmichael, is the opposite.
It is not comedy in a vacuum, on a random stage in a random city.
No school gym has ever looked more like a gym than the gym in this special.
Howery enters through a door on the side, which is propped open by a large trash bin.
In some shots you’re able to see large stacks of chairs lined up along the walls.
At the same time, no school gym has ever looked lovelier or more sacred.
Here, though, its a feature.
The sun sets, Howery sweats into his towel, the rhythm of his material ebbs and flows.
The crowd is even more crucial than that big arcing window.
Youth Step Team before Howery takes the stage.
But even more fundamentally,Live in Crenshaws stage and lighting design mean that the audience is constantly visible.
They surround Howery in folding chairs and are seated behind him on risers.
If theyre bored, they look bored; if theyre delighted, it is transparently clear.
The world is already there in this gym, filled with a Black audience.
Howery picks up a towel, one hes already been using to blot his sweat.
Now, suddenly, its a prop.
As the eulogy accelerates and the uncertain pastor finds his footing, the crowd responds.
The specials direction and storytelling converge.
