‘Bumping Mics With Jeff Ross & Dave Attell’ On Netflix: Funny Friends Are Even Funnier Together

Late at night at The Comedy Cellar in New York City’s Greenwich Village, the basement comedy club often plays host to stand-ups and joke-tellers who can deal with the late hours and the crowds that come with them. Here, Dave Attell remains king.

Attell, long revered as a comic’s comic (from whence my own website takes its name) for his skill and his originality, headlines clubs and theaters across the country (which you can enjoy in a past special available on Netflix, Road Work). At the Cellar, though, you’ll only see Attell in the late-night showcases; and in recent years, he began inviting other stand-ups onstage with him to riff and enjoy playful banter. The stage became his living room. And his most frequent collaborator? Jeff Ross.

Now they’ve captured this magical energy in a new three-episode documentary-style series for Netflix: Bumping Mics with Jeff Ross & Dave Attell.

“It’s hard to get anybody to sit still to watch anything,” Attell says on a park bench with Ross in the opening scene. As the camera follows Attell on the subway to the Cellar’s Village Underground room, he’s looking over his many handwritten pages of notes. In voiceover, he tells us about his process: “It’s not a joke until a crowd laughs at it.”

Bumping Mics is chock full o’ jokes, then.

The series makes the best use of their talents. Ross, the Roastmaster General, works the crowd and trades barbs with Attell. Attell uses Ross as his foil, his straight-man, so his quick wit can unleash even more wickedly funny thoughts per minute. They physically bump microphones after particularly good ones gotten at the expense of the other.

Between them, they have amassed quite the fandom among their peers, both in comedy and in show business, and they turned out in force for this showcase.

Bruce Willis, Amy Schumer, Gilbert Gottfried, Bob Saget, Michelle Wolf, Hasan Minhaj, Nikki Glaser, Rachel Feinstein, Wil Sylvince, Joe Machi, Ken Jeong, Michael Che and a drunk Paul Rudd all get in on the act. As do some of Ross’s extended family and friends, and even a few willing audience members.

While he and Ross are the butt of so many jokes throughout (Schumer jokes, “It’s so good to finally see two middle-aged white guys getting an opportunity,” whereas Gottfried introduces them as “the greatest comedy team since Ike and Tina Turner”), it’s Attell who truly shines as the brightest comedy star. Jeong takes a minute to outright praise Attell onstage as his comedy idol.

Attell, for his part, says in an offstage scene: “Stand-up comedy, the way it should be, should almost be like this one-of-a-kind disposable experience.”

Saget’s onstage review of the show during the show says it all. “This is what it’s supposed to be. It’s like having fun with your friends in front of people, and you get to say ‘fuck.’ I can’t say that on Netflix’s Fuller House.”

Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy beat for his own digital newspaper, The Comic’s Comic; before that, for actual newspapers. Based in NYC but will travel anywhere for the scoop: Ice cream or news. He also tweets @thecomicscomic and podcasts half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories: The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First.

Watch Bumping Mics with Jeff Ross & Dave Attell on Netflix