National Ledger - Apache Junction, AZ, USA -
Dane Cook is confident his marathon stand-up comedy record is going to, well, stand up. That's in spite of the fact that
Dave Chappelle broke Cook's three-hour, 50-minute record at L.A.'s Laugh Factory in April last year. Then, after reportedly hearing rumors of Cook's intention to grab the record back, Chappelle added a six-hour, 12-minute run in December, only to have Cook best him with his seven-hour endurance joke-telling spree Jan. 1.
And yet, asked about Chappelle coming back again, Cook says, "It isn't something we went into competitively. If anybody could get up there and entertain people for more than seven hours, it would be Dave," he adds. "But I think the seven hours will probably stand for some time."
The audience was in a marathon, too. "At the five-hour mark, five or 10 people stood up and said, 'Dane, I have to go to work tomorrow.' But almost everybody stayed. It felt like an event, like something special was happening in the room. At about 4 o'clock in the morning, I gave a guy in the front row a few hundred bucks to go get everybody hamburgers," recalls Cook, who has "Dan in Real Life" with
Steve Carell and
Juliette Binoche newly out on DVD this week.
He's very fond of the charming romantic comedy. "I'd made a couple of more adult, R-rated films, so to be able to go and do something more family-oriented was great. My nieces and nephews could see Uncle Dane, and I could share the experience with them," he notes. "And I was in heaven working with Juliette and Steve,
Dianne Wiest, John Mahoney, Emily Blunt -- a fantastic group."
