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Making America Great Again!

David Cross

Netflix · 2016 · 74 min

A shaggy, defiant hour of confrontational political comedy.

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David Cross’s first stand-up special in six years is at its most compelling when he is actively testing the limits of his crowd’s patience. Midway through the set, filmed at the Paramount Theatre in Austin, Texas, he launches into a brutally drawn-out hypothetical scenario involving an NRA-backed politician, a home invader, and “take your daughter to work day.” It’s a harrowing bit of dark satire that genuinely pushes the room to a point of audible discomfort, and the special even cuts to a shot of an audience member standing up and walking out. This is the sweet spot of the hour—less a series of tidy punchlines and more a dare to see who will stick around.

Between these heavy, uncomfortable blocks of material, the hour has a shaggy, uneven pace. Sporting a thick, unkempt beard, Cross cycles through a mix of silly wordplay, anecdotes about his family, and broad swipes at religion and American exceptionalism. It was filmed in mid-2016, just as the presidential election cycle was reaching a fever pitch, and much of the political material targeting Donald Trump has the distinct, frozen-in-time quality of that era. Critics and audiences were divided on the tone; while long-time fans of his confrontational style welcomed the cynicism, others found the set to be more preachy than funny, particularly when his rants trail off without strong punchlines.

The set list

5 bits

  1. Why an omnipotent God allows innocent American children to be shot to death

    Satirically suggests God lets children get shot so they can enter heaven to serve ISIS suicide bombers as part of their 72 virgins.

  2. How many mass shooting deaths it will take for politicians to enact gun control

    Calculates that exactly 1,776 people must die in a single incident, making a Swift-style proposal to target the Kentucky Derby.

  3. An NRA gold-star congressman witnessing his child being shot

    Enacts a gruesome scenario of a politician watching his daughter die by gunfire and muttering that 'freedom isn't free.'

  4. Icons of American culture giving him erections ('Patrio-jism')

    A running motif where symbols of American culture and senseless mass shootings arouse him.

  5. Reading a philosophical pamphlet quoting Einstein about changing our thinking

    Performs an encore reading that begins as an intellectual manifesto before revealing itself to be a pretentious Restoration Hardware catalog introduction for a tableware collection.

How it plays

Tone
Irreverent, biting, dark, provocative, and cynical.
On stage
An avowed atheist and brutally unvarnished, pathologically real-talking comic who adopts clueless personas to satirize conservative and Tea Party logic.
Pace
Deliberate slow-burn delivery with unhurried momentum and sudden brutal shifts into dark subject matter.
About
Donald Trump and political discourse, Gun control and mass shootings, Religious taboos and atheism, American swagger and consumer culture

What the critics said

Praised by some critics for cleverly subverting Trumpian shock tactics to argue for liberal humanist values, while others found the political routines patchy, cynical, and straining to shock.

In the room: Tense and polarized; prompted audience walkouts during extreme routines while also earning cheers and standing ovations.

Summed up from reviews, articles and listings. Sources: allmovie.com, imdb.com, stag.vogue.com, nytimes.com, theguardian.com, chortle.co.uk, vogue.com, en.wikipedia.org, wbur.org.

Backstory

Filmed during the 2016 US presidential campaign amidst the rise of Donald Trump, heightened political polarization, and recurring debates over gun control and mass shootings.

Details

Released
Taped
Paramount Theatre, Austin
Runtime
74 min
Where
Netflix
Director
Alex Coletti
Honors
Companion audio album '...America... Great...' nominated for Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album (2016)
Topics
Before
It's Not Funny (2004)
After
...America... Great... (2016)

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