DAVID BIANCULLI

Founder / Editor

ERIC GOULD

Associate Editor

LINDA DONOVAN

Assistant Editor

Contributors

ALEX STRACHAN

MIKE HUGHES

KIM AKASS

MONIQUE NAZARETH

ROGER CATLIN

GARY EDGERTON

TOM BRINKMOELLER

GERALD JORDAN

NOEL HOLSTON

 
 
 
 
 
TIG
July 17, 2015  | By David Bianculli

Netflix, 3:00 a.m. ET

 

This new Netflix offering is not at all what I expected. I expected this documentary special about comic Tig Notaro, the standup comic who performed an impromptu, now-legendary stage set in 2012 about receiving a cancer diagnosis days before, to be a standup comedy special, peppered with some behind-the-scenes footage. Instead, it’s a full-out biographical documentary – and it’s excellent, and pulls you in emotionally from the very first frames. Notaro is one of the executive producers, and the access she provides is remarkable: personal phone-message recordings about her mother’s sudden death, home-video footage of friends visiting right after Notaro’s double mastectomy, and so on. Tig builds to the moment three years ago when she took the stage at Largo, one of several comics doing sets at that Los Angeles comedy club, and started with, “Good evening. Hello. I have cancer. How are you?” During and after the set, other comics in the wings tweeted about the astonishingly honest set they were witnessing: Louis C.K., Bill Burr, Ed Helms. At one point, Notaro stopped and asked the crowd if they’d prefer she just shifted to telling unrelated jokes. There are cries of “No!,” and one male audience member yells, “This is f**king amazing!” Notaro, who addresses the camera directly, and often, in Tig, admits that she had to turn her back to the audience and collect herself, because that support was so overwhelming. And while the story of that set is riveting, the story, and this biography, do not stop there. Tig is available now on Netflix, and absolutely is worth finding.

 
 
 
 
 
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