When a comedian like John Early—known as much for his astute appraisals of pop culture as he is for his endlessly quotable stage characters—begins a comedy special with a title card that reads, “THIS FILM SHOULD BE PLAYED LOUD, BITCH,” it reads less like a request and more like a command. Fumble for your remote, stuck somewhere beneath the couch cushions, lest you miss even one second of Early’s new special, John Early: Now More Than Ever, premiering June 17 on HBO. Anything less than loud would be a disservice to yourself (and your neighbors, hearing it blare through your walls).
Without that volume cranked, you might miss Early opening his set with a Trump joke, somewhat unexpected from a comic who tends to be more subtle with his offline political skewering. “If we look back at the Access Hollywood tapes,” Early begins, “...not so bad!” Of course, Early isn’t making light of the things said on those despicable tapes, where Trump uttered some of his most infamously repugnant lines while on a hot mic. Instead, he’s imbuing them with a little bit of levity, now that time—and the court of law—have made it easier to belittle the former president.
“He sounds less predatory, in retrospect, and maybe a little more like someone who’s terrified of sex,” Early continues. “I guess it sounded like ‘locker room talk,’ in that it sounded like me at age 12 in the locker room, trying to convince a group of straight guys that I ‘like Lizzy.’”
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The comedian then pulls out a few lines from the Access Hollywood tapes verbatim, affecting them with the inexperienced inflection of a closeted middle schooler. “You just… grab ’em by the pussy?” Early says, looking around for approval from invisible jocks. “I moved on her like a bitch!” gets a lilting, feminine tone, highlighting just how Trump’s words made absolutely zero sense. Early ends this segment with the fear of every middle schooler, shared around the world: “I better get some Tic Tacs in case I start kissing her.”
Like most of Early’s special, it’s difficult to synthesize the comedian’s mannerisms and delivery into the written word. But that’s what makes Now More Than Ever such a delightful romp through Early’s psyche: It’s unpredictable, and has to be seen to be fully appreciated.
Luckily, there’s plenty in store for both fans of Early and casual stand-up enthusiasts. Now More Than Ever is largely nonlinear, with periodic musical interludes in which Early performs songs from top to bottom, complete with a live band. Not too many, of course; this isn’t a musical, and Early knows that no one in the audience—at the special taping, or at home—is here for an Off-Broadway production. But the songs are ways for him to slip in and out of bits (like his flawless Britney Spears impression) seamlessly, without losing the audience’s attention. Early is a student of the legendary performer, skilled at harnessing the hypnotic energy of musicians to create a stage presence that’s as impossible to look away from as it is to not give in to.
In the back half of Now More Than Ever, against a soft, lilting piano, Early launches into a wildly clever section that tackles millennial malaise and the absurdity of mainstream gay culture. Early likens his Grindr grid to a depraved Brady Bunch intro, in which everyone in his longtime California neighborhood is looking up at each other with horny disgust and far too much familiarity. If any of this seems hyperbolic, Early’s well aware, and has a slew of wily gags about that too.
“I really do feel like we lean a lot on hyperbole as a generation,” Early says with genuine conviction. “Like, ‘Did you see TÁR? My jaw was on the floor, I had to hire a Task Rabbit to come pick it up!’” He also leans into the Instagramification of our day-to-day lives and speaking patterns. “‘Such an amazing human,’ ‘One of my favorite humans,’ Fuck off.” These musings on our current cultural state are so funny because they’re not punching down, but swinging at our level. Early doesn’t pretend that he’s above any of this, making his special feel more like riffing with a friend after a few drinks than watching a tone-deaf, ultra-rich comic poke fun at a culture that they’re not even steeped in.
Now More Than Ever is shot more like a variety show, and less like a conventional stand-up special, with multiple cameras zooming in and out to follow Early across the stage. That dynamic range highlights its subject’s physicality. There’s no one who can cover a whole stage quite like Early, and the film’s invigorating style captures the absolute post-verbal furor of Early’s movements as he wades through his exhaustion. And while the special may not feature any of Early’s beloved characters, like the denim-loving “Vicky with a V,” it’s impressive to see what Early is capable of entirely on his own, without falling back on easier laughs that outsized personas can dust up.
Early recently announced that would not be attending this week’s premiere screening of the special, and would be halting all further press for Now More Than Ever, in support of the WGA strike. Funnily enough, this decision is in line with a joke from the set about how Instagram infographics chide us for performative allyship, often making those infographics themselves feel performative.
But it’s clear that nothing is false about Early’s decision, nor his delightfully cutting special. If this is all we get from Early until the WGA brokers a fair deal, the note will hold spectacularly well.
For more, listen to John Early and Kate Berlant on The Last Laugh podcast.
