Billy Bible Belt comedy tour at Track 29
Comedian/actor Bill Burr remembers trying to make it in comedy. The days when you did stand- up and maybe television OR film.
“If you did movies, you didn’t do TV. Now with 900 channels and the Internet and video games and podcasts and whatever, you gotta have a blitzkrieg and hit ’em hard.”
Burr, who recently co-starred in “The Heat” with Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy and “Black or White” with Kevin Costner and Octavia Spencer, also remembers when pitching an idea to the networks for a television show was excruciating.
“It was like the story about the man who caught the fish and by the time he got it to shore it was just a skeleton,” he says, referencing Hemingway’s “Old Man and the Sea.”
“It was, ‘ Oh, who will this offend and will this harm the ozone?’”
That’s all changed, of course, and he couldn’t be happier. He regularly posts a stream-of-consciousness, 50-minute podcast on his Website, billburr.com, made an appearance on Jerry Seinfeld’s online series “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee” (“I got to hang out with the king himself”) and will have his own animated six-episode series on Netflix beginning in December called “F Is for Family.”
Burr says he did stories about his politically incorrect youth in his stand-up routines — think drinking water from a hose and going to the park alone —
that drew groans from the younger, PC-minded audiences, but it caused more than a few of them to come up afterward and tell him the stories reminded them of their dad or uncle or brother.
“I was walking down the street thinking, how can I get this out? I was thinking five-minute vignettes. I had a meeting with Vince Vaughn’s Wild West Picture Show Productions and pitched it, and they loved it and suggested an animated series and taking it to Netflix.”
Netflix didn’t have the less-is-more or PC mindset, so in this case, the fish got bigger, Burr says.
“I loved it,” Burr says. “The writing room was so much fun. It was like doing my stand-up. I had an idea and just went with it. I really think people are going to like it.”
Burr says he is excited about coming to Chattanooga, a place he’s never been.
“I’ve done this 20 years, but when I came to Tennessee, I just went to Nashville, or if I did Georgia, I just did Atlanta. I’ve found out that there are other cities, and people will come, and they are so appreciative they didn’t have to drive to Nashville or Atlanta.
“I’m really hoping the people who come will tell us about some good momand-pop places to eat.”