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Brick Wall Comedy
Brick Wall Comedy

All Over the Place

Frank Caliendo

TBS · 2007 · 60 min

An hour of celebrity impressions and sports broadcaster parodies.

Frank Caliendo treats a stand-up stage like a soundboard, cycling through a rotation of presidents, actors, and sports broadcasters. He commits fully to the gimmick, spending the vast majority of the hour jumping between George W. Bush, Al Pacino, and his signature John Madden. Rather than telling linear jokes, he engineers scenarios where his characters interact, staging debates between Bill Clinton and Brett Favre or recreating the classic Superfriends announcer voice.

Filmed at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas during the 2007 Comedy Festival, the performance aired on TBS the following night to launch his sketch series, Frank TV. Caliendo was at the peak of his mid-2000s ubiquity as the resident comic on Fox NFL Sunday. The special leans heavily into that football connection, featuring pre-taped cameos from Terry Bradshaw, Howie Long, and Jimmy Johnson to break up the stage work.

The set list

5 bits

  1. Apologizing to baseball viewers for the incessant TBS promo ads for 'Frank TV'.

    Self-deprecatingly acknowledges viewer annoyance with TBS's heavy ad rotation during Major League Baseball games right at the top of the show.

  2. The closer (spoiler). Show it

    Fox NFL Sunday dressing room sketches with Terry Bradshaw, Howie Long, and Jimmy Johnson. closer

    Taped sketches framing the show where the Fox NFL pregame crew complain in Frank's dressing room that he is not actually funny offstage.

  3. Rapid-fire multi-character exchanges between John Madden, George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton.

    Weaves punchlines through consecutive impressions, using John Madden explaining tangents leading into Bush misunderstanding them as tangerines and Clinton talking about melons.

  4. John Madden's obsession with Brett Favre.

    Exaggerates Madden's adulation for Favre, suggesting replacing the numeral four throughout the entire mathematical system with the name 'Favre'.

  5. Jim Rome sports talk radio parody.

    Mocks sports host Jim Rome while acknowledging to the audience that only a small niche of viewers will get the reference.

How it plays

Tone
Playful, lighthearted, manic, and satirical.
On stage
High-energy, frenetic mimic who bounces continuously between celebrity impressions, observational material, and self-deprecating banter.
Pace
Rapid-fire and dizzying, seamlessly shifting from one celebrity cadence to another without taking a breath.
About
Celebrity impersonations, Sports broadcasting, Politics, Frank TV promotional overload, Pop culture

What the critics said

Praised for Caliendo's uncanny vocal mimicry, frantic pacing, and clever joke construction, though some critics and viewers noted that much of the material was expanded or recycled from his earlier 'Comedy Central Presents' set.

In the room: Energetic room laughter built on recognition of familiar sports and political personalities.

Summed up from reviews, articles and listings. Sources: themoviedb.org, allmusic.com, tv.apple.com, justwatch.com, thecomicscomic.com, eu.sj-r.com, critifan.com, imdb.com, en.wikipedia.org.

Backstory

Filmed live in Las Vegas on November 15, 2007, and broadcast on TBS the very next day on November 16, 2007, serving as a high-profile promotional precursor to the launch of 'Frank TV'.

Details

Released
Taped
Caesars Palace, Las Vegas
Runtime
60 min
Where
TBS
Director
Chuck Vinson
Topics
Before
Comedy Central Presents (2004)

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