The long-awaited Patrice O’Neal documentary to air February 19th on Comedy Central
February 8, 2021 Matt Features, Movies, Patrice O'Neal, Television
It’s something fans of the late, great Patrice O’Neal have long been waiting for. The documentary about the comedian who left this planet way too soon before the masses realized his comedic brilliance.
Today O’Neal’s longtime girlfriend Von Decarlo Brown took to social media to announce that the doc now titled, Killing Is Easy finally has a Comedy Central premiere date.
It’s been a long road getting the Patrice O’Neal documentary off the ground. A few years after the untimely death of O’Neal in 2011, Decarlo launched a crowdfunded campaign to produce a documentary (then titled Better Than You) about Patrice, the project was funded and production got underway.
However, things did not go smoothly and the documentary never came to be. Reddit threads and fan videos heavily speculated that the money raised was mismanaged and the project was shuttered without a finished film. Decarlo and her initial team parted ways and the rights were signed over to Comedy Central where the network would complete through its partnership with Bill Burr’s All Things Comedy. Which makes total sense given Burr’s relationship with O’Neal.
How much of that former footage/blueprint of Better Than You documentary made the cut to Killing Is Easy is unknown and many of the Comedy Central execs that shepherded the doc at the network were released as part of the great Comedy Central purge of 2020. Regardless, we have a completed documentary arriving in a few weeks!
Patrice O’Neal: Killing Is Easy will premiere on Comedy Central February 19th at 10pm followed by an airing of his 2011 Comedy Central stand-up special, Elephant In The Room. If that date sounds familiar it’s because February 19th is 10 years to the day Elephant In The Room first premiered on Comedy Central. Nine months before the comic suffered from a stroke and passed away.
Update: Comedy Central released a trailer.
.@DaneCook, @billburr, @marinayfranklin, @robertkelly, @RichVos and @bonniemcfarlane guess what Patrice O’Neal would have thought of 2020 and celebrate his unique perspective.
Patrice O’Neal: Killing is Easy premieres tomorrow at 10PM ET/PT on Comedy Central. pic.twitter.com/Y6dBLNBlaq
— Comedy Central Stand-Up (@standup) February 18, 2021