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Brick Wall Comedy
Brick Wall Comedy

The Beginning

Ellen DeGeneres

HBO · 2000 · 66 min

A return to observational stand-up following a massive cultural flashpoint.

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Ellen DeGeneres steps onto the stage to open her set with an interpretive dance announcing she is gay, getting the media circus of the previous three years out of the way. The Beginning is exactly what the title promises. It is a return to the stand-up roots that built her career before her sitcom became a cultural flashpoint. The standout bit tackles the slippery slope argument against same-sex marriage, where she carefully maps out the logistical nightmare of dating and eventually marrying a goat.

Filmed at New York City’s Beacon Theatre in July 2000 and broadcast on HBO, this was her first tour since the cancellation of her television show in 1998. While she touches on the isolation that followed her public coming out, the bulk of the hour is straightforward observational comedy. She details the mundanity of shampoo bottle instructions, two flies meeting on a bathroom mirror, and the mechanics of filming sex scenes. It is a tightly constructed set from a professional reminding the room why they bought a ticket in the first place, long before she transitioned into daytime television.

The set list

5 bits

  1. Inner monologue while waiting to go to sleep

    A nuanced recreation of the mental chatter and restlessness experienced when trying to fall asleep.

  2. Ant behavior and single-file lines

    Observes how ants walk in single-file lines without lanes painted for them, imagining a dead ant used to cheat the carpool lane and an angry ant in the back filled with road rage.

  3. 1-800 shampoo customer service hotline

    Ridiculing instructions on shampoo bottles, acting out the absurdity of having to call an 800 number to find out how much shampoo to use and how many times to repeat.

  4. Wordless musical reenactment of coming out

    Performs an interpretive dance reenactment reflecting on the pivotal moment of coming out publicly.

  5. Brain capacity and cordless phones

    Jokes about the claim that humans only use 10% of their brains and questions why people do complex tasks on cordless phones without using their brain.

How it plays

Tone
Irreverent, observational, and emotionally charged.
On stage
Smart, sassy, quirky, and whimsical, combining daytime TV-host warmth with a cynic's eye to highlight human contradictions.
Pace
Exquisite timing and nuanced physical and vocal delivery.
About
daily life, human contradictions, animals and nature, coming out, clothing, the need for approval

What the critics said

Praised as a triumphant return to standup featuring exquisite comedic timing, nuance, and insightful observations on mundane absurdities and personal experience.

In the room: Overwhelmingly emotional and affectionate; DeGeneres is moved to tears by the opening reception, and the show features an emotional audience member crying while expressing gratitude for how DeGeneres changed her life.

Summed up from reviews, articles and listings. Sources: rottentomatoes.com, allmovie.com, tvguide.com, primevideo.com, theguardian.com, letterboxd.com, critifan.com, imdb.com, thetvdb.com.

Backstory

Filmed in the wake of the public fallout and criticism following the 1997 coming-out episode of her sitcom Ellen, marking her post-coming-out performance as America's most famous lesbian.

Details

Released
Taped
Beacon Theater, New York City
Runtime
66 min
Where
HBO
Director
Joel Gallen
Topics
Before
One Night Stand — Ellen DeGeneres: Command Performance (1992)
After
Here and Now (2003)

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