Chris Rock: The Rolling Stone Interview
As Chris Rock would be the first to tell you, stand-up comedy brilliance doesn’t necessarily translate to movie stardom. Onstage, Rock is a virtuoso whose biggest challenge is living up to his own legend; onscreen, he’s third banana to Adam Sandler or, at best, a well-liked cartoon zebra. “Richard Pryor has two good movies out of 30 or 40,” Rock says. “Rodney Dangerfield had one. So it’s easy to look at history and go, ‘Maybe I’m not going to get one.’ ” He pauses. “But I guess you’ve got to make your own history.”
Rock, who always idolized Woody Allen, is taking one last shot at the writer-director-star thing with December 12th’s Top Five, a loose, flashback-laden, oft-uproarious chronicle of a day in the life of a very famous, very bummed-out comedian who’s not quite Chris Rock. He directed two previous movies, 2003’s Head of State (its improbable premise: a community organizer becomes the first black president), and 2007’s unjustly reviled I Think I Love My Wife, but, Rock says, watching Louie and Curb Your Enthusiasm helped inspire him to make a film closer to his life. “This movie is the closest I’ve gotten to capturing the tone of my stand-up,” he says. Rock made Top Five independently, with the support of producer Scott Rudin, and a studio bidding war broke out after an ecstatically received screening at the Toronto Film Festival in September.
Rock arrives alone – no assistant, no publicist – for lunch one early–November afternoon in Manhattan’s meatpacking district, pulling out earbuds that had been blasting LCD Soundsystem; he still uses an actual iPod. “Music takes away some of your phone battery,” he says. “God forbid someone’s trying to kill me and I can’t call for help because I was listening to Ja Rule.” Rock struggles with normal human interaction a lot less than some of his comedic peers: In conversation, he’s instantly warm and engaging, as funny as you’d hope him to be without being manically “on.” Still, as he riffs on life, work, politics and the love for hip-hop that suffuses Top Five, he occasionally slips into the faux-aggrieved preacher-man shout of his onstage persona – a sound familiar and loud enough to turn heads at every nearby table.
People seemed freaked by your Saturday Night Live jokes about the Freedom Tower and the Boston Marathon attacks.
I work my jokes out the same way they do polls for the president. I go into clubs randomly – nothing to advertise that I’m going to be there – and try out the jokes. If they work, they stay in the act, and if they don’t, they don’t stay. And those jokes seemed fine. Anyway, it wasn’t any edgier than when Sam Kinison did the jokes about Jesus’ last words – and I was with him that night, his guest at Saturday Night Live. I was at Catch a Rising Star, joking about crack at this white club on the Upper East Side, with no one laughing except one guy in the back row, who turned out to be Sam. He’s like, “Hey, what are you doing tomorrow? I’m hosting Saturday Night Live. You want to come?” I saw him do Jesus’ last words – like, he was doing the hammer thing, banging on the stage. I watched him snort coke right before he went on! I was Pat Boone compared to that night.
I hate when guys talks about “I’m edgy.” It’s not edgy if you’re talking about it! Tupac didn’t talk about it. He just lived it.
But it’s kind of good that you can still freak people out, isn’t it?
I’m just thinking about making people laugh. I hate when guys talk about “I’m edgy.” The worst comics think that way. It’s not edgy if you’re talking about it! You just live it. Tupac didn’t talk about it. He just lived it. It sneaks into your work. Richard Pryor wasn’t edgy. Richard Pryor was just Richard Pryor. I’m not Marilyn Manson. I’m not trying to shock people.
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