Skip to content
Brick Wall Comedy
Brick Wall Comedy

Live!

Patrice O'Neal

Showtime · 2002 · 28 min

A 2002 half-hour set about relationship stress and physical decline.

Patrice O’Neal opens this half-hour with a thesis on human honesty. He argues that children laugh at inappropriate things because they have not yet learned to be polite, insisting that a person’s initial, unedited reaction is their actual feeling. That philosophy drives the rest of his time on stage. He uses a slow, conversational delivery to explain the mechanics of watching adult films with a partner, the anxiety induced by white women, and the specific ways couples generate stress.

Released as part of Showtime’s stand-up series, the 2002 set captures the comedian a few years before his radio dominance on Opie and Anthony. He spends a heavy portion of the run time addressing his weight and diabetes with total pragmatism. O’Neal details the indignity of a doctor warning him he could die from eating a pack of cookies, and admits to wasting his prayers on asking for the strength to avoid snacks instead of praying for starving nations. He then outlines a strict rule for his own body, noting that if his stomach ever expands enough to form an “ass in the front,” he will simply give up. He refuses to do the cardiovascular work required to remove a second bottom.

The set list

3 bits

  1. Runaway thoughts about punching a man on public transit

    Explores sudden, unprompted violent urges while riding public transportation

  2. Weight loss and health issues

    Jokes that needing to lose weight simply to stay alive is not enough motivation, riffing on the prospect of losing his foot or growing an ass in the front

  3. Desire to get someone pregnant

    Frantically yelling about looking for the egg because he wants to impregnate someone

How it plays

Tone
Sharp, candid, irreverent, and fearless
On stage
Effortlessly funny, incisive, and uninhibited with fearless observations
Pace
Exuberant yet slightly slower in delivery compared to his later work
About
sex, race, human nature and interpersonal feelings, health and weight loss, violent intrusive thoughts

What the critics said

Considered an early, truncated showcase of O'Neal's genius and incisive comedic perspective, though noted as having a slower delivery and containing a few elements that aged roughly

Summed up from reviews, articles and listings. Sources: allmovie.com, letterboxd.com, ontvtonight.com, flixi.com, en.wikipedia.org, tview.co.uk, gowatching.com, chortle.co.uk, vulture.com, thecomicscomic.com.

Backstory

Recorded for Showtime in 2002 after O'Neal accepted an offer to return to the U.S. to film a half-hour comedy special

Details

Released
Runtime
28 min
Where
Showtime
Director
Keith Truesdell
Topics
After
Comedy Central Presents (2003)

More from Patrice O'Neal

If you liked this