GREAT NEWS: Comedy Central And Bill Burr Are Making A Full-Length Documentary On The Life And Career Patrice O'Neal
(Photo from the 2nd Annual New York Comedy Festival on November 4, 2005 in New York City.)
Source - Beloved stand-up comedian Patrice O’Neal, who died in 2011 at age 41, is the subject of a new documentary in the works at Comedy Central.
The network announced today that it’s teamed up with Bill Burr and Al Madrigal’s company All Things Comedy to produce an in-depth documentary about the comedian’s life and career, which will begin filming this fall. In addition to Burr and Madrigal, the project also has the involvement of O’Neal’s fiancée Von Decarlo, director Michael Bonfiglio (Gary Gulman’s The Great Depresh), and All Things Comedy’s Michael Bertolina.
The documentary will attempt to put O’Neal’s work “into the context of the time as well as today” and feature never-before-seen personal materials as well as interviews with the comedian’s family, friends, and fellow comedians.
If any of our younger readers don’t know who Patrice O’Neal is, either look him up right now or stop reading this site. We don’t need you. We don’t want you. We don’t care about you. Patrice O’Neal was hands down one of the greatest comics to ever live and should be remembered as such. Which is why I’m so excited for this documentary. I remember watching Elephant In The Room when it came out in 2011 and being genuinely confused as to how someone could be so funny. It didn’t take him time to ramp up or get in a groove. He killed from the second he got on stage until the second he stepped off it. Here’s the set in its entirety:
The fact that Bill Burr is producing it is going to make it that much better too. Who knows what Patrice would’ve been able to accomplish if was still around. Nothing I can write will do justice to how funny he was, so instead I’m just going to post a few clips of him doing his thing.
Here he is roasting Charlie Sheen:
Here he is on Tough Crowd With Colin Quinn:
Here he is on Chappelle’s Show:
There are tons of other clips online of him doing interviews and roasting people to their face that you can look up if you want to. Just type his name in on YouTube.
Lorne Michaels said something at the beginning of the Chris Farley documentary that always stuck with me. He said, “There are a certain category of people that I work with that are infuriating talented…Chris was one of those people.” Well, Patrice was one of those people too. I don’t know when the documentary is coming out, but it’s going to be a must watch. Rest In Peace, Patrice.