For my final project I will be speaking upon David Chappelle. He has had a big impact in American film comedy and was one of the biggest stars with his own successful show until he decided to abruptly disappeared and quit his very successful show known as the Chappelle Show. Robinson, S states: “It was a clumsy dismount," says Dave Chappelle. For the past couple of weeks, everybody has been looking for Chappelle. Turns out, all this time Chappelle has been looking for himself too. He is without a doubt the hottest, edgiest and most talked-about comedian today. But on April 28, he walked away from his highly rated sketch-comedy series, Chappelle's Show, and vanished into speculation, rumor and the whispers of unnamed sources. His agent, his publicist, even his writing partner didn't know where he had gone. Comedy Central had to put on hold a show that was scheduled to begin its third season at the end of this month, a show that ranks as its most buzzed-about offering, a show that had been put together in a deal worth $50 million. Chappelle, however, who had fled to Durban, South Africa, on what he describes as a "spiritual retreat," was eager to portray the sanity of his decision when he spoke to TIME exclusively last week. "I'm not crazy," Chappelle said. "I'm not smoking crack. I'm definitely stressed out." But although as of now he has not been in the comedic light he is still considered one of the best and I will speak about one of the comedic masterminds.
David Khari Webber Chappelle better known as Dave was born on August 24, 1973, in Washington, D.C. Chappelle's parents were both professors: His father, William, taught at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, and his mother, Yvonne, worked as a professor at Howard University and then the University of Maryland. Due to this he was always moving back and forth from Ohio to Washington D.C especially when his parents divorced. Dave stated that he was inspired by comedian Bill Cosby after watching his sitcom the Cosby show. Due to that Dave decided he, too, wanted to have a career as a comedian. As a high school student at the Duke Ellington School of the Arts in Washington, D.C., Chappelle began a stand-up career. Because he was underage, his mother often had to accompany him to clubs as a legal guardian. Even at an early age, Chappelle's brand of humor was controversial, leading to frequent heckling, he was even booed offstage during amateur night at New York's famous Apollo Theatre one of the most famous joints there is in terms of comedy. That did not stop him he was truly dedicated to his craft.
Through the years Dave has been in many different movie roles but he was never truly the lead role of a film. Films such as Half Baked, Undercover Brother, Blue Streak, Robin Hood: Men in Tights, and the Nutty Professor to name a few. In these films he was always usually playing a small role but his big break came when he got his own primetime show which is what he is truly known for and gave us some of the funniest content in American film.
Chappelle's Show is an American sketch comedy television series created by comedians Dave Chappelle and Neal Brennan, with Chappelle hosting the show as well as starring in the majority of its sketches. Chappelle, Brennan and Michele Armour were the show's executive producers. The series premiered on January 22, 2003, on the American cable television network Comedy Central. The show ran for two complete seasons and a third, shorten season which was ended up being called The Lost Episodes which was called this due to him leaving before it was even finished.
There has been many skits that has been produced from this show that are memorable to this day and this show grew his name into the household name that he was. Robinson, S states: Chappelle, 31, has emerged as the most revered comedian among the youth of America, with a fresh, satiric take on race, sex and pop culture that's often profane, sometimes profound, always provocative--and incredibly popular. The DVD of Chappelle's Show: Season One is the best-selling television-series DVD of all time; Chappelle's Show: Season Two is due in stores May 24 and has already generated almost 2 million preorders. Says trailblazing comic Dick Gregory, who challenged social and racial taboos in the '60s: "When you mention his name among young folks, it's like mentioning Jesus in a Christian church." That goes to show how many peopled loved what he was bringing into comedy.
In the show he cover a variety of topics such as prostitution, the entertainment industry, gun violence, numerous drug references, music, and also some biopics which were my personal favorites. There has always been debates of what is the best skit that he has done. The writing staff at cracked explained the skit phenomena and which was the best one to a tee and I agree with them. They stated: Chances are, if you have any friends that are white males between the ages 12-35 with cable television, you're familiar with the line, "I'm Rick James, bitch!" Even months after the episode aired, kids were still dropping that line at every possible opportunity. But people often overlook the other groin-grabbingly amazing parts of this skit, like" the highlights of the skit include Chappelle, as Rick James, spitefully calling Charlie Murphy "Darkness" and, after receiving a karate kick to the torso, saying "Now that you mention it, I think I'm bleeding in my chest." This to me was the one of the funniest skits that I have ever seen period. But he managed to top himself not too far after with the Prince true Hollywood story. Cracked states: “Arriving just one week after the instant classic Rick James episode, we were certain that Chappelle was looking a gift horse in the mouth and asking for more. Another Charlie Murphy' True Hollywood Story already? It' too much too soon! There' no way this one lives up to Rick James. But then things started happening: Chappelle' Prince keeps making creepy eye contact with the camera, he humps the ball in the middle of a particularly foggy game of pickup basketball and to wrap it all up, he serves Charlie Murphy pancakes. By the end of the skit, we didn't know what had just happened. We just knew it was genius. CATCHPHRASE OVERUSED: Not too many overused phrases from this one which, in addition to its much shorter running time, gave it the edge over the Rick James sketch. Every once in a while when you're playing pickup hoops, the guy bringing the ball up the court will call out "computer blue," pass you the ball and yell "shoot the J, shoot it." But we're pretty sure that' never going to get old.” With these two excerpts one could see how much of an impact these skits had on the culture in general. To this day I still hear the lines being poked fun at which is always funny and pleasant to hear.
In the end it was truly sad to see Dave Chappelle but in an interview with Time International he finally states why it was that he left and we see opinions from some of his colleagues on this matter. “My personal feeling is I didn't like the direction of the show. I was trying to explain it to people, and no one was feeling me. There's a lot of resistance to my opinions, so I decided, let me remove myself from this situation. You hear so many voices jockeying for position in your mind that you want to make sure that you hear your own voice. So I figured, Let me just cut myself off from everybody, take a minute and pull a Flintstone--stop a speeding car by using my bare feet as the brakes. Herzog confirms he gave the comic a firm deadline to deliver the season's shows--but says Chappelle never called him before going AWOL. He notes that this was the second delay Chappelle had asked for. The show had been postponed in December. During that break, Chappelle, who developed an interest in Islam in high school and became a practicing Muslim in about 1998, tried to perform the hajj--the pilgrimage to Mecca. (He got only as far as Turkey, he says, because he couldn't get a visa for Saudi Arabia.) As for the direction of the series, says Herzog, it was ultimately up to the show's namesake: "He absolutely has complete creative freedom. There's no one from the network sitting on his head. Dave is in charge of his own world." Chappelle's writing partner, Neal Brennan, agrees. He tells TIME that Chappelle had "literally absolute, complete, creative freedom" and plenty of time to work. To some extent, his colleagues profess bafflement about Chappelle's reaction to what seemed to be garden-variety creative differences. "There were 1,000 ways to deal with this," says Brennan. "By the numbers, this was the worst way to have done it. He couldn't think straight. It was fight or flight--and he chose flight." Although I agree he could have handled the situation differently, but It is truly sad to see a talent like this go through these issues makes you wonder if this did not happen where would his status in American comedy be because certainly off of this show he would have been headlining many different movies by now but I guess this is something that we will truly never find out.
Works Cited
Farley, C. J., & Robinson, S. (2005). DAVE SPEAKS. Time International (Canada Edition), 165(21), 46.
(2006, July 19). In The 11 Best Chappelle"s Show Skits of All-Time. Retrieved May 4, 2016, from http://www.cracked.com/article_15289_the-11-best-3Ci3Echappelles-show3Ci3E-skits-all-time_p4.html
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