Rory Scovel
Self
Overview
Comedian Rory Scovel storms the stage in Atlanta, where he shares unfocused thoughts about things that mystify him, relationships and the "Thong Song."
Cast
Reviews
4 min readThe Comedy of Not Knowing What You’re Doing
I’ve seen a lot of stand-up specials, and I’ve seen a lot of documentaries about stand-up. But I’ve never seen anything quite like Rory Scovel Tries Stand-Up for the First Time, a film that isn’t really either of those things. latestnetflix.com's take is that it’s something stranger: a comedy about the act of failing at comedy, performed by a man who’s already a professional comedian.
That paradox is the whole point. Scovel isn’t actually trying stand-up for the first time—he’s been doing it for years—but he’s pretending to, and the pretense is funnier than most actual stand-up I’ve seen.
The film opens with Scovel onstage in Atlanta, bathed in the kind of harsh, unflattering light that makes every nervous twitch visible. He’s wearing a rumpled button-down, his hair slightly damp with sweat, and he’s grinning like a man who’s just realized he’s in over his head. The audience is laughing, but not always at the jokes.
Sometimes they’re laughing at him. Sometimes they’re laughing with him. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference.
That ambiguity is the film’s secret weapon.
Scovel’s bit isn’t about punchlines. It’s about the gaps between them—the pauses where he seems to be searching for the next thought, the way his eyes dart around the room like he’s checking to see if anyone’s still with him. He riffs on relationships, on the absurdity of the "Thong Song," on the way his wife looks at him when he’s being particularly stupid.
But the real subject is the performance itself: the way stand-up is equal parts confession and con, the way a comedian has to sell their own uncertainty as part of the act. Scovel’s not just telling jokes; he’s performing the act of figuring out how to tell jokes.
Buzz & Rumors
Public reportsJack White asks what a bad first set would look like. Then the special cuts back to Atlanta.
Midway through Rory Scovel Tries Stand-Up for the First Time, the hour stops being a stand-up hour. Jack White sits with Ben Swank, his Third Man Records partner, and pitches a theme. "What about a guy who doesn't know what he's doing, is completely out of his element, unattractive, probably not that funny, what would that be like?" Scovel's beard is in the background, grinning. Billboard notes the friendship is older than Netflix. In 2013 White put out Rory Scovel Live at Third Man Records, a Blue Room set he had hand-picked, sleeves printed in braille. White is in the TMDB cast as Self. Scott Moran directed. Netflix dated it 20 June 2017, latestnetflix.com contends, 1 hour 6 minutes, Atlanta. 
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The title is a lie and everyone in the room knows it. Vulture logged the premiere off Scovel's own tweet. His 2015 hour, The Charleston Special, was already on Seeso. AV Club's Vinnie Mancuso heard him never mention the premise on stage, then watched him try to explain how a microphone works. "That's my best guess," he shouts. "I'm 36, and my best guess is something a child would just rattle off the top of their head." That is the closest thing to a thesis. ,
Decider's Sean L. McCarthy caught the open at Relapse Theatre. An emcee mangles the name after a rock-star tracking shot dies. Then Scovel asks the room a highly intimate question and turns it into a stern interrogation. He clocks the crowd. "'Wait, so is this the show?' This is the show. This is the show." He keeps going. "I have one joke, and I'm halfway through it. I do sort of a reverse Louis C.K. I write one new joke a year. And this is actually a three-year-old joke. So, should be a pretty good special."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uftuhKxMxhY
The Greenville native had Charleston's Dead 27s write the walk-on. Drummer Daniel Crider told the City Paper that guitarist Will Evans grew up with Rory. They wrote "Rory" for the opening scene. Third Man approved it. It plays the end credits too. IMDb notes the cue is based on Funkadelic's "I Got A Thing, You Got A Thing, Everybody's Got A Thing." 
Paste, writing the night before the drop, flagged that Moran taped before the 2016 election and still let Scovel go after Trump at length. AV Club found those stretches dated, except the Obama citizenship bit. "If you think it's so easy to fucking pull that off, you go to another country, and you get as far as president." Netflix's trailer sold the Thong Song and the unfocused thoughts. The first-time gag is the point. He had already tried stand-up. He just wanted the special to look like he hadn't. , , ,
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