Nate Bargatze Is Now the Biggest Band in the World
The latest Pollstar numbers are out. Nate Bargatze is currently the number one touring act in the world.
Not the biggest comedian. The biggest act.
He is moving more tickets than Coldplay, Madonna, or U2.
He brought the Big Dumb Eyes World Tour to the Smoothie King Center in New Orleans this week, adding another arena to a run that has already broken twenty venue records. The industry is still struggling to categorize what is happening here. Comedy tours have scaled up before, usually on the back of a massive movie career or a decade of television. Bargatze is doing it with slow, methodical stories about being confused by the modern world.
It turns out the void left by the death of the mid-tier arena rock band has been filled by a guy from Tennessee who refuses to curse.
Removing all demographic friction from a live event makes the math terrifying. A family of five cannot agree on a music genre. They cannot afford five tickets to a legacy pop star. But they can all sit in a basketball arena and listen to a forty-four-year-old man describe a disappointing trip to a hardware store.
It is a completely different business model.
It just happens to look like standup comedy.
Wanda Sykes Hired a Real Director
Netflix announced on Monday that Wanda Sykes will release her third special for the platform in May. It is called Legacy.
She filmed it at Hampton University, which is her alma mater.
This is a standard late-career prestige move. A comic goes back to where they started, lets the crowd treat them like a conquering hero, and films the standing ovation. It is a reliable formula.
What makes this project notable is behind the camera. The special is directed by Julie Dash.
Dash directed Daughters of the Dust. She is a pioneering independent filmmaker. Handing her the reins to a standup special is a strange and beautiful flex. Most comedy hours are directed by a small handful of multi-camera television veterans who know exactly how to capture a wide shot on a punchline and a tight shot for a pause. It is a factory process. That is why eighty percent of the specials on streaming platforms look identical.
Bringing in a cinematic director suggests a different ambition.
It treats the hour not as a content drop, but as a documentary artifact. Time will tell if Dash actually changes the visual grammar of the special, or if she was simply forced to shoot the same three angles from the front row.
The hire alone shows a refusal to coast.
Julio Torres Tests the Limits of the HBO Budget
HBO Max released Julio Torres‘s new special, Color Theories, on Friday.
Calling it a standup special feels like a categorical failure. It is closer to an art installation with a laugh track.
Torres has spent the last five years convincing television executives to fund his obsessions with shapes, literalism, and inanimate objects. There is a rhythm to traditional comedy that relies on tension and release. Torres operates entirely without tension.
He simply presents a visual premise and over-explains it until the pedantry becomes the joke.
He builds little worlds where the rules are absolute. The humor comes from his strict adherence to those rules. If he decides a particular shade of blue is inherently deceitful, the next five minutes will operate as if this is an established scientific fact.
The fact that Warner Bros. Discovery is paying for this under the same budget line they use for guys talking about their divorces is a quiet triumph.
It proves that the label of a comedy special is completely elastic.
It is just a trojan horse for an artist to hold a room captive for an hour.
This Week’s New Releases
- Sarah Millican: Sarah Millican: Late Bloomer — Apr 01, Netflix
- Aaron Chen: Aaron Chen: Funny Garden — Mar 31, Netflix
- Joe Dombrowski: Dad on Arrival — Mar 30, 800 Pound Gorilla
- Julio Torres: Color Theories — Mar 28, HBO Max
- Jimmy O. Yang: Finally Home — Mar 27, Theaters