"What ever decisions I make right now I'm going to have live with. Your soul is priceless." The first two seasons of his show "had a real spirit to them," he says. "I want to make sure whatever I do has spirit." Ya got to be a spirit, Chappelle! Not a GHOST!
thanks, good article there for some odd reason, this reminds me the tough times Eddie Griffin had when he was here with the Roxs, dunno why, but seems both had "inner demons" to be released. In Chappelle's case, it was just being tired and thinking about what he is creating. He is not there to dissappoint us at all, he just want to make a great show out of it and be proud of it. I still dont see why he was dissappointed with the white spectator laughing at a skit he was shooting. Either way, I just hope that when he comes back, he will be comfortable with what he has to offer to us. Seems like is going to be Halo 2 for me, dragging out for the longest time but will acceept the longevity of how long it took them to bring out the product and accept what was released. Get well Dave, we b****es cant wait to see your new stuff
Well, is Chapelle a "Muslim" then? If so, then he should pursue more spiritual fulfillment to help him better deal with those "demons". A lot of times people struggle because of this spiritual void they have in their lives, which means that they usually don't have anything to lean back on, emotionally speaking, if they find out that the people around them are 'fake', they start feeling volunerable, and that affects their emotional balance. Involvement in some spiritual activities would go a long way to help Dave with his struggles, it would prepare him more for the ups and downs we all go through in life.
Crap. First Ricky Williams and now Dave Chappelle. I wish the freakin hippies would keep they're hands off of my favorite entertainers for a while.
I'm probably going to miss it now, because they are showing a weather update instead since there is some nasty weather around me. Okay i see it now....soooooo.....is this before his "fall out"?
Hajj in South Africa? I didn't know Mecca was there I don't think Chapelle is a Muslim, at least not in practice. I think the article was referring to his buddy in S. Africa. Anyways, that is not really relevant, I just want his bit**-azz to come back and start shooting the damn show
On the 60 minutes segment the interviewer relayed a message to Chappelle which he had not heard before. Richard Pryor, through his wife, wanted to let Dave Chappelle know that he has passed the torch onto him. Dave was kind of taken aback and commented on the incredible amount of pressure that puts on anybody. The 60 minutes interview took place before his sabbatical to South Africa, which lends credibility to Chappelle trying to get away from the pressures put on him with his multimillion tv deal and higher expectations.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/05/27/60minutes/printable698261.shtml Chappelle's Trip To The Top May 29, 2005 The last time 60 Minutes met with comedian Dave Chappelle, he was on top of the world. He had a hit TV show, his stand-up comedy tour was selling out and he had just signed one of the biggest cable TV deals ever -- worth $50 million. But that was last year. Last month, just before his new season was supposed to premiere on Comedy Central, Chappelle disappeared. For several days, no one knew where he was. Then, he surfaced in South Africa, where he said he was on a spiritual retreat. He offered no explanation for his flight from the spotlight. But he did say that he wasn't crazy, and he's not on drugs. Correspondent Bob Simon spent a few days with him last October, right after he signed his huge contract with Comedy Central, which is owned by Viacom, which also owns CBS. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The very popular and very hip "Chappelle Show" is what has made Chappelle rich. The show has been on Comedy Central for the past two seasons and will run for at least another two more. There are times when Chappelle’s humor can be a little sophomoric. But often, his work is deeply cutting, even subversive. Take, for instance, his sketch about a white family in the '50s with an unfortunate "N" word last name. "It was just something that we thought was funny," says Chappelle. "A lot of people, both black and white, feel uncomfortable with what they call your overuse of the 'N' word," Simon tells Chappelle. "What do you say about that?" "To each his own," says Chappelle. "I look at it like that word, 'n-----', used to be a word of oppression. But that when I say it, it feels more like an act of freedom. For me to be able to say that unapologetically on television." But how would he react if a white comedian used the "N" word? "I'd be furious," says Chappelle. "That word, if you could sum up the story of America in a word, that might be the word that I'd pick. It has connotations in it that society has never dealt with." Chappelle enjoys challenging people and making them think. But lots of times, he plays it just for laughs. For instance, his sketch about the late funk musician Rick James has become a classic. Simon went to visit Chappelle on his 65-acre farm in the cornfields of Ohio, where he lives with his wife and two children. He grew up in Ohio, moved to Washington, D.C., with his mom when his parents divorced, and was only 14 when he started doing stand-up comedy. He was so good, so natural, that by the time he hit the comedy circuit in New York, the networks came calling, offering sitcoms. His mother, Dr. Yvonne Seon, is a minister and a college professor. She remembers how Chappelle first discovered comedy. "I think the moment he decided to be a comedian was the day that he had to decide whether or not to sign up for the second week of basketball camp," says Seon. "And he called home. And he said, 'Mom?' He said, 'There are guys here who are bigger than I am. Run faster, jump higher.'" "Everybody was better than me. But I had them all cracking up. So I figured, let me tweak my ambition," says Chappelle. What did Seon want her son to do? "I've never been one of these mothers that wanted her children to be anything in particular," she says. "I wanted them to find the path that worked for them." Chappelle thought that path led to developing sitcoms, but he was wrong. At Dino’s Café, in the small Ohio town of Yellow Springs, Simon joined him for coffee and listened to his sad adventures in network television. His first TV deal, at 18, was with the Walt Disney Company. All together, Chappelle developed 11 television pilots. Only one made air, an ABC show called "Buddies," about two friends in New York -- one black, one white. But it didn’t turn out the way Chappelle envisioned it. "It was a bad show. It was bad. I mean when we were doing it, I could tell this was not gonna work," says Chappelle. It didn’t. "Buddies" got canceled after 13 episodes. Luckily, Hollywood came to the rescue. Chappelle won supporting roles in a number of films, including "The Nutty Professor" and "You’ve Got Mail." While he was making movies, he was still creating and pitching TV sitcoms, starring himself, which is when the Fox Network called. "I flew out there for the meeting. And if you can imagine, I was the only black person in the room, and they basically told me that, we'll pick up the show but we want more white characters on it," recalls Chappelle. "For no other reason than they thought it would give the show a more universal appeal. And so I quit." He walked out of the room after the meeting, and he accused the network of racism. "It was racist. Look, I don't think these people sit around their house and call black people 'n-----s' and all this kind of thing," says Chappelle. "But the idea that, unless I have white people around me on my show, that it's unwatchable or doesn't have a universal appeal, is racist. You know? They don't make them put black people on 'Friends.' Or they don't make them put black people on 'Seinfeld.' But all of a sudden I get in the room, and it's like, 'Where's all the white people?'" His father died soon after that incident. "This was the beginning of a terrible decline," he says. It was around this time that Chappelle retreated to his sanctuary in Ohio. He left behind the network TV deals, the cliché movie roles, and the heavy partying. And he left it behind to spend more time with his friends and family and to take a good, hard look at himself. "I was looking at myself for the first time, and I didn't like everything that I saw. But you got to do that in your life," says Chappelle. "You know, be able to do something great in your life, you're gonna have to realize your failures. You're gonna have to embrace them and figure out how to overcome it." And figure it out, he did. Chappelle today is one of the hottest comics around, and while his first love will always be stand-up, it was his show on cable that finally allowed him to be creatively free and true to himself. At a screening room in Manhattan, 60 Minutes sat down with Chappelle and his writing partner, Neal Brennan. They met at a comedy club in Greenwich Village when they were both 17. On screen was one of their best-known sketches, about a white supremacist named Clayton Bigsby, who’s both blind and black. Clayton doesn’t know he’s black, because no one’s ever told him. All he knows is that he hates blacks. The climax comes when Clayton’s followers, who have never seen his face, urge him to take off his hood and reveal himself. About that sketch, Chappelle said: "I remember the night before we came on, man, we talked on the phone for a long time. And the sum of the conversation was, 'I’m completely at peace with this. It’s edgy, it’s scary, it’s wild. But I, in no stretch of my imagination, am I like embarrassed about this.' And I can’t say that for any of those sitcoms I tried." "I remember Comedy Central when we showed it, they didn't want it on the first episode, because they didn't think it was exemplary of what the show is," says Brennan. "And that was the most vicious fight we ever had with them, because we were like, 'This is exactly what the show is.'" The comedian Chappelle reminds most audiences of is Richard Pryor, whose work in the '70s was trailblazing and incendiary. Pryor suffers from multiple sclerosis and is incapacitated. He obviously couldn't talk on camera because he's too ill, but his wife spoke for him and told us that Pryor feels that he has passed the torch on to Chappelle. "That’s more pressure than $50 million. That’s a lot of pressure. He was the best, man," says Chappelle. "For him to say that is, you know, that’s something, I don’t even know if I’ll attempt to live up to that." Between Pryor’s praise and Comedy Central’s millions, there’s more pressure on Chappelle to succeed than ever before. But it’s a risk he’s willing to take, because even if he fails, as he has failed before, he’ll always have Ohio. "It's all paid for, baby," he says, laughing. "This is the kiss-my-a-- farm, show business. How about that?" And he believes it's a wonderful thing to have at the age of 31. "If you take these kind of chances, it’s absolutely necessary. I mean, you know, I got responsibilities," says Chappelle. "I got real important relationships in my life that are very empowering relationships. I got a lot of positive people around me. I'm cool with failing so long as I know that there are people around me that love me unconditionally. And I got that. So … what do I got to lose?"
Thought I'd update this one whether than start a new thread.... Here's comic legend Mike Epps chuggin' haterade at press for the upcoming blockbuster, the Honeymooners.... Mike Epps on Dave Chappelle Epps slams Chappelle for using white writers and not being a crackhead. June 08, 2005 - I suppose everyone has their theories about what happened to Dave Chapelle in the weeks leading up to the delay of the third season of Chappelle's Show and his now infamous trip to Africa. At a recent press day for The Honeymooners, comedian Mike Epps took it a step further, committing his opinion to record in front of a room full of journalists in which IGN FilmForce was present. The subject came up when Epps mentioned his worries about playing Richard Pryor in a potential upcoming project directed by Walter Hill. Someone asked whether his stress compared to Chappelle's and Epps laughed, snapping into a response. "You know, coming from where I come from, I'm already crazy. S**t. You ain't got to worry about me going. I'm crazy, straight up. I done seen the psychiatrist, I been on the little pills or whatever they got. You know what I'm saying? I'm for real. He just goin' through some new s**t. This is him going through his. I thank God I been through mine at an early age. Going through it and being on drugs. I went crazy after Next Friday because certain things overwhelm us, man. That's overwhelming… "I don't think he came from the background I came from. I don't think that. But my background. Everything around me is failure. You know what I mean? Trash in the alley. I got eight brothers and we all got damn near different daddies. I come from a real welfare family, you know mother struggling. My grandmother was the same way… So that alone, for you to come out in Hollywood and get in a movie will overwhelm the s**t out of you, if you from that. Now, you give me 50 million dollars, I ain't gonna go crazy. I'm gonna go to the mall and go and get some new cars, I'm about to go and put my momma in a new house, I'm about to give some of these kids in the community some money. That's all he should have did… Just give some of that money to the kids, and that will bring you right back… You'll realize that that's what that's for, is to share it, and you won't go crazy. "The thing about it is, the material he was doing wasn't him. He don't come from no crackheads on the streets and s**t. You can't talk about black people like that and you don't even represent that. You don't come into the community and kick it with black kids. You got white writers on your show. You got white boys writing, talking about black people on the show, you know what I'm saying? You got Oprah lashing out at him. Not only that, you got people comparing him to Richard Pryor, so once you got that on you right there, and you ain't even came from what Richard Pryor came from, it look like you done tricked a bunch of motherf******, that's what it look like, and now you can't follow yourself, because you got that material from some other people. Charlie Murphy and them did all that. I remember the show blowing up from, 'I'm rich, b****' and James Brown and Rick James and all that. "What I really think, true heart to heart, is that you only as good as your last s**t. That go for me, Cedric [the Entertainer], everybody in this business. You only as good as your last s**t. If you do good the last time I see you, I'm still good with you, but you gotta follow everything you do…" http://filmforce.ign.com/articles/623/623679p1.html
