Shane Gillis Netflix Sitcom ‘Tires’ Is a Self-Funded Showcase That Spins Its Wheels: TV Review
variety.comAlison Herman TV Critic At this month’s Cannes Film Festival, Francis Ford Coppola and Kevin Costner each unveiled passion projects they opted to finance themselves after institutional backers initially passed.
This week, three auteurs make a trend — except instead of putting his own funds toward a deeply personal, sweeping epic, comedian Shane Gillis has made a lewd, bro-y workplace comedy set at a Pennsylvania tire shop.
Since getting fired from “Saturday Night Live” — before he’d even started — for offensive jokes on his podcast, Gillis has become the poster child for a decentralized, grassroots attention economy that allows some entertainers to build thriving careers without gatekeepers’ blessings.
His 2021 special “Live in Austin” blew up on YouTube; the same podcast that cost him “SNL,” co-hosted with fellow comic Matt McCusker, continues apace; Gillis even self-produced his own sketch comedy series, “Gilly and Keeves,” which culminated with a feature-length special last year. (You can stream it for $9.99.) Gillis has made a point of accomplishing all this without capitalizing on grievance over so-called cancel culture, a profitable — and predictable — lane for other aspiring provocateurs.
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