Comedian Rob Delaney Will Release Online Standup Special

August 21, 2012, 10:23 am

By DAVE ITZKOFF

Rob Delaney may not yet have the name recognition of comedians like Louis C. K., Aziz Ansari or Jim Gaffigan. But with the help of his large and loyal Internet following, he is hoping he can take a page from his accomplished industry colleagues, and start creating material for and selling it directly online.

On Sept. 4, Mr. Delaney will release an original standup comedy special, “Live at the Bowery Ballroom,” which will be available at his Web site, robdelaney.com, and sold as a $5 download.

It's an online experiment that's previously been tried by performers like Louis C. K., Mr. Ansari and Mr. Gaffigan after they had been prominent for several years and produced traditional standup specials th at were shown on TV and sold on home video.

For Mr. Delaney, who has been a standup comedian for roughly a decade but only recently built himself an army of 555,000 Twitter followers and counting, the project is “Phase 2 of the test,” he said in a recent telephone interview.

Phase 1, he said, was parlaying his online success into his current standup tour, which will take him to San Francisco, Austin, Dallas and San Diego prior to several sold-out dates in London.

Now, Mr. Delaney said, “I'm going to try to step up a level and see if that works out. All signs point towards this being a good decision, and we will soon find out if it is. There's no way to fail. What's bad? I have to go do more standup to make more money? Great. There's nothing I'd rather do.”

On Twitter, Mr. Delaney has built an audience on the basis of his absurdist observations (“There's usually about half a pound of ham under my fingernails on any given day,” reads one recent dispatch) as well as his humorous hectoring of celebrities and politicians who also have the misfortune of being on that social networking site.

In relation to his live comedy, Mr. Delaney said, “Standup is my main event; Twitter is the push-ups that I do at home.” But he recognized that many of his fans got to know his sensibility in 140-character bursts.

“People make fun of my voice,” he said. “If they just know me from Twitter, they're like, ‘I heard your voice, I thought you would be some barrel-chested brawler.' And I'm like, ‘No, I'm just a person.'”

Mr. Delaney described his standup as drawn from narratives about his own life, and said it does not shy away from difficult episodes. (In addition to his regular contributions to Vice magazine, he is also known for a widely circulated essay he wrote about his experiences with depression.)

“My favorite comedy has elements of alchemy, in turning pai nful life things into funny, relatable stories,” he said. “By telling the truth, even if you squeeze it into a funny mold, its essence is still stuff that you really care about.”

Mr. Delaney said that the idea for “Live at the Bowery Ballroom” occurred to him during a stretch of about 10 consecutive shows he performed in the spring. “At the end of it,” he said, “I thought, this is ready to be shown to a larger group of people.”

Compared to Louis C.K.'s “Live at the Beacon Theater,” a standup special that was sold online last year and grossed more than $1 million, Mr. Delaney said his “Live at the Bowery Ballroom” was produced “for many multiples less than that.” (Louis C.K. has said his special cost $250,000 to create; Mr. Delaney put his budget at under $50,000.)

If his online special is a success, Mr. Delaney said he hoped it would lead to “more comedy and more people feeling empowered, too.”

“Not that anybody has to do this exact same thing,” he said. “But if they see, at the very least, I can outline a goal and aim my elbow grease at it, then that'll be a-OK with me.”

Asked if he had a Phase 3 in his master plan, Mr. Delaney said he hadn't figured that out yet. But a reply tweet from Mitt Romney at some point might be nice.

“He hasn't blocked me yet,” Mr. Delaney said with a laugh. “But we'll see. I feel like it wouldn't behoove him to block me. That might make more noise.”