Robert Klein: The HBO Specials 1975-2005
by Robert Klein
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DVD details
Actor: Robert KleinDirector: Robert Klein
Brand: KULTUR
DVD: Region Code 0
Audio: English (Original Language)
Format: Box set, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 500 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-09-25
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: STANDING ROOM ONLY
DVD Reviews of Robert Klein: The HBO Specials 1975-2005
DVD Review: Aussie Buyer
Summary: 3 Stars
I got the pack and the top corner was all crumpled, then when I opened it, 2 of the 3 plastic things that held the DVD's in place were broken.
While I am a collector of comedy DVD's, I decided that the month turn around in getting a new one wasn't worth it - the DVD collection itself is great. I am powering through the specials.
If you haven't seen "I Can't Stop My Leg" it is genius and I love that he calls back to it. You can see why Klein is so highly regarded among the current top shelf of comics - Seinfeld and that crew.
While the jokes themselves aren't always strong, it is his delivery and his theatricality and intelligence as a performer that make him a stand-out stand-up for all to admire.
DVD Review: Stand-up at a master level
Summary: 5 Stars
If you know Robert Klein, and you want to get some fabulous performances, this is what you're looking for. It's almost all here, as funny and crisp as Day 1, and spanning years of his work. You get a great overview of him and his evolution as a comic. If time permitted, I'd go out, get some easy-sleazy food, and just hunker down and watch the whole production start to finish- a great project, or lost weekend!
If you're not as familiar with Klein, this is a chance to see a master at work. His incisive observations about human behavior, corporate entities, and a slew of other stuff is top notch. He's great at spotting and giving voice to things everyone knows but no one talks about. It's cool too that he comes at you working on the assumption that you are a thinking individual. I'm no prude (love Kinison), and have no issues with blue language, but it's a bonus that Klein's creativity permits him to work without it. There's nothing gratuitous here, no running down of other people, no perjoratives or cusses, yet he's no goody-goody with a delightfully evil and nimble mind. Watching him, you'll see the basis for many of today's stand-ups. You go away thinking you'd love to have him over some time or as a friend.
My only regret is that Robert Klein and George Carlin couldn't have a child together. That'd be an amazing kid, but who'd be able to raise it?
DVD Review: Legendary Comedian
Summary: 5 Stars
This is what every Robert Klein fan would want.
All of his great stuff in one package.
Totally funny and original.
DVD Review: Robert Klein is Ling
Summary: 5 Stars
Robert Klein is the King. I have been waiting for this set just for the colonoscopy song, but in the end it was but a morsel of a delicious comedy cake. Robert Klein does not do dated material, he doesn't need to use F*** and cognates, he doesn't need N***** and cognates. This is pure comedy born of life and agelessDVD Review: Great compilation
Summary: 5 Stars
Wow, I'm sure glad this set was released. I've always loved Robert Klein, and bought his "Child of the 50's" CD about fifteen years ago. I'd only seen two of his HBO specials from the 80's (we couldn't afford HBO in the 70's and early 80's), but I'd always remembered them well. For some reason Robert Klein hasn't remained in the public consciousness the way George Carlin has, but I think of them as similar (and both very funny). This collection is really a smokin' deal, considering that it's over 8 hours of material and most of it was never released before, even on VHS.
This collection would be even better if it included his comedy CD's, some of which are out of print. But that's a minor complaint. For the money, this collection is a steal.
Description of Robert Klein: The HBO Specials 1975-2005
Without Robert Klein, modern stand-up comedy might not exist.Klein was part of the holy trinity of the stand-up pantheon - along with George Carlin and Richard Pryor - of the post-Beatles era. That rock n roll consciousness proved crucial to the changes the three comedians wrought on what had become a tired, Borscht Belt-and-vaudeville-derived art form.
Klein, Carlin and Pryor were all figurative offspring of the late, pioneering Lenny Bruce, who blasted boundaries with his free-associative comedy, winding up as a free-speech martyr and improv god. Robert Klein hit the main seam, taking observational comedy to new heights by finding the humor in everyday things, whether it was a trip to the dentist or life in high school in the nuclear age. Robert Klein was talking to us: the baby-boom generation that had screamed for the Beatles, postured with the Rolling Stones, grooved to The Mod Squad.
It's hard to overestimate how fresh and unexpected Klein's comedy seemed when he first appeared on television. His observational humor - brash, intelligent, edgy without being confrontational - provided a role model for a generation of comedians that followed: Richard Belzer, Billy Crystal, Richard Lewis, Jerry Seinfeld. His first album, Child of the 50s, became a kind of Bible for the comedically-inclined who were following in his footsteps.
Klein came from theater: Yale Drama School, to be exact. A Bronx native who graduated high school at 16 and college at 20, he quit Yale because he thought he could make it as an actor in theater in New York. Not quite; but then he auditioned for Second City and spent 14 crucial months learning and performing in Chicago, before returning to New York and Mike Nichol's musical, The Apple Tree.
After the curtain fell on Broadway each night, Klein would rush to the Improvisation, the pioneering comedy club on West 44th Street, where he'd absorb the master class in comedy being conducted by Rodney Dangerfield. Dangerfield saw potential in the good-looking, gangly Klein and took the eager would-be comic under his wing, helping to find him management and to launch his career with a Tonight Show appearance in 1968.
By 1975, when the first of the HBO concerts in this set aired, Klein was king, established as a comic wonder on variety and talk shows and working as an actor, while recording comedy albums. His first HBO appearance was also a first for HBO: its first live comedy concert, a show that set new benchmarks for audacity and language, demonstrating that the sparks that are struck during live performance can be felt through the medium of cable television.
It's hard to think of a comic who has had the staying power and longevity that Klein has. As this boxed-set shows, he has always been a clear-eyed observer of the world around him, willing to yell Bullshit! in a crowded theater as much out of a sense of personal outrage as to get a laugh.
More than 30 years after that first HBO special, Klein still knows how to cock a knowing eyebrow at the foibles and follies of his time. Older now, he is the parent of an adult son, but has resisted turning into his own parents. Still irreverent, still bitingly intelligent, his comedy remains fresh and telling. He was a child of the 50s - and then a child in his 50s - and now he is a citizen of the 21st Century. And still a damned funny one.
Marshall Fine
An Evening with Robert Klein
Robert Klein Revisited
Robert Klein at Yale
Robert Klein: Child of the 50 s, Man of the 80 s
Robert Klein on Broadway
Robert Klein: It All Started Here
Robert Klein: Child in his 50 s
Robert Klein: The Amorous Busboy of Decatur Avenue
BONUS EXTRA:
A Conversation with Robert Klein
interviewed by Alan Colmes (2007)
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