Colin Quinn: Long Story Short Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		4.0

Colin Quinn: Long Story Short Blu-ray Movie Review

Colin Quinn's History of the World, Part I

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman December 14, 2011

It’s very instructive to look back at what some call the Golden Age of Stand-Up, an era which might roughly be termed a decade or so from the mid-fifties to the mid-sixties. While there were certainly buffoons and tricksters who regularly delighted huge audiences, what might strike a lot of people, especially those used to the often foul mouthed, raunchy comedians who regularly work the circuit nowadays, is just how smart some of the great funny guys (and gals) of that era really were. When you look back on icons like Shelley Berman or Bob Newhart, or even Sid Caesar and Carl Reiner, you’re immediately struck by how articulate and well thought out their routines are, and how brilliantly these people used absurd turns of phrase and language to make their comedic points. Not an f-bomb to be heard here, no shock value, nothing that provokes titters of squirm-worthy humor rather than outright laughter culled from smart observation. While the trend toward dumbing down comedy isn’t completely endemic, as even a cursory parsing of current comedians will prove, it’s still often depressing to hear stand-ups on networks like Comedy Central whose only punchlines are four letter words, and who seem barely able to utter a coherent sentence, let alone a well structured joke. It’s a wonderfully bracing experience, therefore, to hear Colin Quinn riff on the entire history of the world throughout Long Story Short, his Jerry Seinfeld directed theatrical effort which sees Quinn recounting several millennia filled with human absurdities. Reiner and Mel Brooks took on some ancient history of their own with their patently silly (but still often very smart) “2000 Year Old Man” routines, but Quinn operates more as a commentator than as a character, though throughout this piece’s advertised 75 minute running time (though truth be told this performance runs just a tad longer) he does occasionally briefly drop into various characters to set up various jokes.

Quinn has had a somewhat difficult time gaining a toehold in the public consciousness, despite having hosted an MTV game show and having had the plum post-Daily Show time slot on Comedy Central with another outing. Even Quinn himself has disparaged what is probably his best known tour of pop culture duty, his several year stint both writing for and appearing on Saturday Night Live. Quinn is a really interesting performer, one who mixes an apparently low key, blasé style with just the slightest undercurrent of seething anger and even rage. He’s like that calm, appealing gentleman who delivers your mail every day that you later read about having “gone postal”, taking out several co- workers in the process. Quinn is largely in “still waters” territory here, despite chewing through an incredible panoply of human idiocy dating back to Neolithic times.

Long Story Short was directed by Jerry Seinfeld, and while it might be described as being about Something (with a capital S), as opposed to Seinfeld’s vaunted “nothing,” despite that central difference, Seinfeld’s stamp is all over the approach and delivery here. This is almost casual, anecdotal comedy, but it’s humor that springs from deep observational truth. Quinn can turn something into humankind’s weird obsession with “personal space” into a great riff on defining territory, whether that be in the grocery line, where those little plastic dividers you put on the conveyor belt marks off your little corner of grocery heaven, or in an elevator, where someone else deigning to enter and press another floor’s button can lead to incipient rage.

While Long Story Short is by its very nature anecdotal, and is actually broken down into separate quasi-scenes (meaning historical eras), with attendant breaks and interstitial dimouts, there is something of a stream of consciousness through line that Quinn utilizes in an attempt to span vast historical eons. That includes the nice running gag of history being filled with an eternal conflict of sorts between smart guys and rough and tumble guys, which Quinn uses to investigate everything from the Greeks versus the Romans to women being unable to choose between a worker for Google and a motorcycle riding tough guy with tons of tattoos. A lot of this humor uses little throwaway lines which actually don’t instantly land with the audience, but which build over the course of a few seconds to finally erupt into raucous laughter and, in a few cases anyway, applause. One of these comes at the end of Quinn’s longish Greek segment, after he’s gone on a long routine about the Athenian great thinkers. Suddenly Rome is on the scene, conquers Greece in a trice, and, in Quinn’s words, asks the Greeks, “What do you think about that?”

Seinfeld stages Long Story Short with minimal fuss and bother. There’s something akin to the steps of an amphitheater slightly encircling the stage, and occasionally Quinn will go up and sit on them (including in a great little bit where he talks about Greek theater). But for the most part Quinn is literally a stand-up comedian, performing in front of the set and a huge screen which occasionally features projections that augment his material (as in another great bit where Quinn riffs on the idea of Plato’s Cave and how economic forecasts are always so rosy because economists invariably meet in gorgeous locales like Switzerland). It’s interesting to pay attention to the audience reaction to Quinn. This material is so cerebral at times that only one or two people initially laugh, and then over the course of the next several seconds, more and more people get the punchline, until suddenly the entire audience is laughing. Smart humor may take a little time to properly land, but the journey is so much more enjoyable than the in your face, slam-bam-thank-you-ma’am style that is so prevalent nowadays. History took its own sweet time getting us to this point, so why shouldn’t a joke as well?

Colin Quinn: Long Story Short Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Colin Quinn Long Story Short is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Video Service Corporation with an AVC encoded 1080i transfer in 1.78:1. While there's not a whole lot to this stage presentation other than Quinn himself moving around a rather minimalist stage, the video presentation here pops rather nicely almost all of the time, with Quinn's bright purple shirt nicely saturated and fine detail especially well defined on Quinn's somewhat haggard looking face. Projections generally look decent, if they do suffer from some softness due to the very fact that they're being projected. There's surprisingly strong shadow detail, even when Quinn enters and exits the stage in half (or dimmer) lighting. Black levels are generally consistent and contrast is quite strong throughout this presentation.

Colin Quinn: Long Story Short Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Colin Quinn Long Story Short's lossless LPCM 2.0 track gets the job done in a non-showy manner, providing crisp and clean reproduction of Quinn's voice, across what is obviously a very narrow soundstage. Audience sounds are very well mixed and are never overpowering, and perhaps quite surprisingly, the nice little snippets of music used to underscore several segues sound really great on this track. Fidelity is top notch, though dynamic range is fairly flat, as almost all of this enterprise is simply Quinn talking. There may not be anything overwhelmingly impressive about the track, but in a comedy routine like this, expectations should be set accordingly.

Colin Quinn: Long Story Short Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Commentary by Colin Quinn and Jerry Seinfeld. This is fun and rather Seinfeld-ian, with lots of on the fly commentary about a lot of "little" things like the balcony outside of the Helen Hayes Theater (where this performance was filmed) to Hitler having low self-esteem (who knew?).
• Behind the Scenes Footage (1080i; 17:29) includes some great shots of Seinfeld directing Quinn. Seinfeld is perhaps surprisingly a hands-on, very detailed director. There are also some requisite interview segments.
• Press Event Footage (720p; 3:33) is a fun interview hosted by Anderson Cooper and featuring Quinn and Seinfeld.

Colin Quinn: Long Story Short Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Colin Quinn Long Story Short proves quite admirably that smart humor needn't be boring. Quinn quietly commands the stage for an hour and a half, more or less, and his keen observational style coupled with Seinfeld's sure directorial hand, keep this outing spry and consistently very funny. Long Story Short rarely features raucous hilarity, but that's one of its most charming elements. This is humor that actually requires the audience to think, and you can almost imagine the cogs turning in various people's heads as laughter spreads throughout the Helen Hayes theater when one of Quinn's cerebral musings reaches its denouement. If you need a bunch of four letter words and nonstop raunch to make you laugh, Long Story Short most definitely won't be your cup of tea. If you admire humor based in truth and with a modicum of wit attached, this nice looking and sounding release comes Highly recommended.