Chris Rock's Tamborine extended remix essentially erases Bo Burnham's direction — and his credit

The New York Times

Innovative comic Bo Burnham received a lot of attention for directing the February 2018 Chris Rock comedy special Tamborine with style. "His auteur vision didn’t just showcase Rock in concert. It engaged and interpreted his work, sharpened its focus, while applying distinctive aesthetic flourishes," says Jason Zinoman. But Burnham's name is missing from Rock's Total Blackout: The Tamborine Extended Cut, which Netflix released today. Total Blackout "will be fascinating for comedy nerds, not just because it adds new jokes, with almost 40 minutes of extra material from arguably the greatest living comic," says Zinoman. "It also represents a key turning point in the balance of power between comic and director, with Rock reclaiming control. He effectively erases the stamp of the director, even replacing Burnham in the credits with his own name, and produces a new special with most of the same shots, whose differences are subtle but significant. Extended Cut has more jokes, longer setups and more mess. Rock, who has himself directed features, even introduces a part where he misspeaks in setting up a joke, saying 'bullies rule the world' when he means 'nerds.' Burnham’s slick cinematic flourishes are taken out. Gone is the triple repetition, along with quick-cutting camera angles, of the first three words of the opening joke. ('You would think that cops would occasionally shoot a white kid, just to make it look good.') But the most important contrast is in the comic’s discussion of his own infidelity. Until Tamborine, Rock was known as a social commentator who mostly kept his private life at a distance. But addressing his divorce and his responsibility for the failure of his marriage, Rock made the most vulnerable, introspective comedy of his career. Burnham was clearly drawn to this aspect of the set and focused on it. This material, including jokes about marriage, divorce and sex, takes up about half of the special, as opposed to around a third of the extended version."