Every decade has a black comedian who carries on a legacy of hilarious and taboo stand-up comedy for anybody lucky enough to unearth the time capsule to discover. The first real great black comic was Redd Foxx in the 1960s, who worked blue to massively hilarious effect until he was somehow tamed by "Sanford & Son," which was what many will remember him most for. When Foxx scampered in the mid-1970s, Richard Pryor was finally getting into his own obscure groove, and was on his way to becoming one of the greatest single stand-ups ever. His hilarious routines, steeped in the topics of racism, relationships, and poverty, made him an overnight success. But when he was making his last stand-up special, "Here and Now," in 1983, he had no idea how serious multiple sclerosis would cripple his remaining career doing live comedy shows. And it was at that time Eddie Murphy came into prominence, with a classic concert CD called "Comedian" in which he riffed broadly on celebrities, personalities, and...poverty, if at least in terms of the kids clamoring around the ice cream truck. He released his last stand-up performance in 1987 ("Eddie Murphy Raw"), and he eventually became a Hollywood superstar, leaving the 1990s to opening a wave of fresh new talent. There was Chris Tucker, Martin Lawrence, Bernie Mac and others. But the 1990s belonged to one man and one man only...
...his name is
Chris Rock.
In 1993, it was felt in some way thanks to his Cable Ace-winning debut special taped for HBO, a 30-minute program called "Big A-- Jokes." But in both 1996 and 1999, Rock doubled the running the time and doubled his talent and his the jokes with two more pay TV shows, "Bring the Pain" and "Bigger & Blacker." Even though the topics seem rooted in their time, from Marion Barry the crackhead mayor at the Million Man March to the swipes at the Trench Coat Mafia and the crazy white kids who shoot up schools, the deciphering and satirizing was unbelievably and undyingly hilarious. Chris would crack wise on convicts who made prison cell inmates "toss the salad," stick up for Bill Clinton's sexual habits, and end his shows with dissections on traditional relationships. And there was nothing like watching Rock do his thing onstage.
His movie career is a different story altogether, as are in some ways the respective works of peers like Pryor and Murphy, but Chris Rock should remain in many ways the victor of contemporary comedy. Comedy Central, who gave Pryor deserved recognition as the single greatest stand-up comic in history, placed Rock at #5, and the same sense of justice can be argued towards that. And until Dave Chappelle manages to score that one K.O. special that takes me aback, or until the near-40 Rock decides to settle for a life of making movies, Rock remains, even in 2004, our greatest modern stand-up comedian. And with his fourth HBO-produced program,
CHRIS ROCK: NEVER SCARED, already up for two Emmy Awards (the ceremony will be held Sept. 19) Chris has a very likely possibility of getting his second Emmy-winning special, after "Bring the Pain" won him two in 1996.
After years of silence and having to endure an unfortunately anaesthetized PG-13 version of his cunning political/racial satire in his
Head of State, Rock's "Black Ambition" tour returned him to Washington, D.C., and at the front of the famed Constitution Hall, in the spring of 2004 for a taped performance to be premiered in April on HBO. "This [is] the 'Kill Bill' one...we're gonna do it right!" says Rock at the start, launching then into what would be the centerpiece of a normal routine by talking about fatherhood. After acknowledging he has a baby girl in his family (shrugging off the applause by saying that "even roaches have kids"), he confesses that the main responsibility he has to his brood every moment he thinks of his relationship to her is "to keep her off the pole!" He uses this sort of semi-psychiatric observation on spurned daughters turned lap dancers in witty detail the birth of clear heels, his thoughts on the "stripper myth" (you've probably heard it before) and the addictions some people have to going to strip bars, including the ones who decide they must eat at the buffet. "Are you that hungry?!" he says. "At a damn strip club, titties and tater tots don't mix!"
Those expecting Rock to divulge his love for rap music won't be disappointed here, but even he acknowledges that the intellectual glory days of hip-hop are long gone, coming from the now-39 Rock ("'New Jack City's' a long time ago!"). Once upon a time, you could argue the credentials of N.W.A., Run-DMC, Whodini, and other successful rap artists of yore, but that Ludacris, Mystikal, and Lil' Jon (in particular that addictively naughty "Get Low") are much too simple-minded to defend. As for the universal attitude toward rap being a bogus genre, Rock points out that "Even the U.S. Government hates rap!" In an extended version of a routine shortened for TV, Rock provides dissertations on the failure of investigation into the shooting deaths of Jam Master Jay, B.I.G. and Tupac. Rock, in proper fashion, takes this subject and milks it for all the humor that can be wrought: "You mean to tell me they can find Saddam Hussein in a f-cking hole, but you can't tell me who shot Tupac!"
With so much celebrity news over the past year, Chris Rock has a lot of catching up to do. And catch up he does, singling out the three most dysfunctional (and malfunctional) members of the Jackson for individual barbs. On Michael Jackson coming into court 20 minutes late wearing a "Captain Crunch" suit: "Who's your lawyer...Frankenberry?!" On Janet Jackson revealing her breast during the Super Bowl: "You can't just whip out a 40-year-old titty! That is your man's titty!" And on Jermaine Jackson, whom Rock terms "the greasiest n-gga you ever seen": "Does he just spray Armor All on his face and sh-t?!" The DVD presents a much longer series of barbs aimed at the Kobe Bryant controversy (originally whittled down to a minute on TV, it's nearly quadruple its length) right next to shorter, admittedly sweeter lacerations of R. Kelly, Siegfried & Roy, and David Blaine.
Throughout the first half-hour, Rock does a fine job of setting you up with his outrageous pop culture barbs and cultural wisecracks that he finally presents a much deeper side of political humor that he has not really aimed at before. The last time, it was simply Rock just going into the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal, but the G.W. Bush regime has awakened the inner Independent inside of him. Whilst the anti-War material cowers next to what Michael Moore can do, despite the occasional interestingly funny aside (which in actuality didn't make it to the pay TV edit), Rock scores some of the greatest points imaginable for lacing into the conformist attitudes of governmental factions and the maddening patriotic machismo of White America. To both Conservative and Democratic parties suffer from an unfair "gang mentality" that prevents them from forming conflicting opinions, and even crowd chants of "U.S.A." in sports events have an unnatural tinge of German to them. "A lot of white people like to scream that they're American as if they had something to do with the country being the way it is," Rock attacks. "You think you're better than somebody in France because you came out of a p-ssy in Detroit?" The latter is the kind of incendiary matter that has been thankfully restored to this DVD presentation, which I finally proclaim is not only 15 minutes longer than the HBO version of the show, which runs a little over an hour, but also much more acidic in a way that would make Richard Pryor’s skin tighten up.
Like Pryor, Rock never turns into an on-stage preacher despite his charismatic and manic presence, and always underscores his views with solid laughs. His comments on starving countries, for instance, ends on a note of outrageous ironic humor: as he points out the fact that most third-world people are given nothing but grain, Rock wonders why we don't just simply offer them Whoppers, seeing as how they're only 99 cents each.
After a routine on abortion, Rock once again becomes a social commentator on TV-bred illnesses and the government-approved drugs used to sucker in late night tube watchers. It's just part of a gorily hilarious segment where he admits that if drugs were legal in America, you could easily pick up an 8-Ball at McDonald's, and that Krispy Kreme would not have to hide the secret ingredient they put in their donuts. Once again, Rock has greater ambitions other than simple stand-up routines. He then rises on the platform of the government's reluctance to legalize drugs in order to compare "rich" and "wealth" and explain why black people only fall into the former category. "The #1 rule when it comes to acquiring wealth is 'Only the white man can profit from pain,'" says Rock, pointing out the fact that minorities have to be careful what they do with their prosperity unless risk humongous comedowns. Caucasians have provided such items as alcohol, cigarettes, and guns to the public at large, but Rock admits (and I'm pretty sure you would too) that if the Phillip Morris family were blacks from Mississippi, cigarettes would be as forbidden as any crack.
Getting aside from segments where Rock talks about both the ties between god and money as well as another joke-addled history lesson on slavery where Rock explains why so many African-Americans dominate physical sports, Rock concludes his show talking about marriage in all its eccentricities, from the persecution of homosexuals to the boredom of enduring socializations with wed couples to the neediness of people to find the right spouse. But Rock once again shows that 7 years of marriage will spoil some of the more intimate fruits of relationships, such as oral sex from both genders ("If you like B.J.'s, marriage ain't for you!"). Rock usually ends these shows on matter of unsatisfactory relationships, from the tracking device blues of "Bring the Pain" to the hysteria of wives wanting to unload to their husbands the moment they open the door. But this is Rock's most side-splitting closing moments in a comedy special to date.
Perhaps the fact that Rock has remained such a vital force owes much to the fact that Rock remains true to his craft in times when most of his peers would’ve slipped. For instance, let's once again look back at the pantheon of black comedians. Richard Pryor was famous for his profane but introspective ghetto stories ("Wino vs. Junkie," anyone?), but by 1983, he had removed the word "n-gger" from his repertoire and had begun to rehash a few of his older routines. By "Here and Now," even without the troubles of disease plaguing him, you could feel Pryor was somewhat running out of steam. When Eddie Murphy made his last stand-up performance piece with "Raw," the result was mostly inconsistent, much too hostile, and was also cosmically blessed with mixed controversy over "misogynistic" details in some of his routines. And even Martin Lawrence's last movie, "Runteldat," felt much like the result of someone rehashing prior glories whilst telling all the haters to kiss his a--. And this was before "Bad Boys 2" came out, so the irony didn't come out until the summer of 2003.
But Rock has yet to flounder. Maybe his movie career isn't all that it's cracked up to be, but given just how consistently successful this particular special is, I'm sure Rock has it in him for at least a couple more specials if he decides to carry on this form of entertainment further down the millennium. Pryor himself didn't start to seem wobbly until he was 43 years old, which means that Rock still has time on his side. All in all,
CHRIS ROCK: NEVER SCARED is still living proof that Rock remains the greatest young stand-up comic working today (even at 39, Rock looks just like he did four years ago). However, don't let the fact that Rock's humor draws more from the real outside world of the government discourage you from enjoying this. This just means that Rock is expanding his base, but in a way that is much more appreciative than it would be if that "white C student" in the White House said it.
HBO Video has released the extended 92-minute version of
NEVER SCARED on DVD. The show is presented in typical 1.33:1 full-frame as befitting basically all comedy specials aired on premium cable channels. As is typical of some of the DVDs I've seen of Rock's performances, background settings get to shimmering at particular moments, particularly the blue backdrop behind Rock as we see him cover the stage. The professionally handled show does show consistently strong contrast, though, and images always seemed well-defined throughout. Aside from haloes that I really saw through widened and focused eyes, print flaws are ne'er in sight. Rock's raspberry Dunhill suit and chocolate-brown skin look glorious all throughout the presentation. It's rather superb given the expectations.
There are two optional sound mixes, although the Dolby Digital 5.0 mix really does nothing above the accompanying 2.0 track but reinforce the cackling and applauding crowd at large who came to see the Rock do his thing. In that respect, the surrounds are covered despite limitations throughout the feature. Music at the start and close (including one Red Hot Chili Peppers song) provides a small amount of bass, but other than that, the track is basically speech and response all throughout this one. So it says something that Rock's voice have been recorded rather faithfully on both tracks and that the feedback from the audience always lets you hear even the most jaded chuckler. Closed captioning is available for the hearing impaired, but no subtitle options accompany this.
The only extra besides the bonus footage in the main presentation is the inclusion of
Chris Rock: Big A-- Jokes. Recorded at Atlanta's Center Stage Theatre a decade before
NEVER SCARED, this was Chris Rock's debut HBO performance special, three years before he really got into his element. This was also from HBO past, when I believe Rock was too much of an up-and-comer to be warranted a full hour-long special, justifying the 27-minute length of this special (it was done for "HBO Comedy Half-Hour"). Those expecting to see Chris Rock do what he did as an older man in his thirties will have to settle for a younger, more imitative Rock. Just like Richard Pryor once adopted Bill Cosby mannerisms in 1968, Rock was in particular doing Eddie Murphy imitations in this piece, perhaps as a tribute to the man who discovered him all the way back in 1984. Rock mainly focuses at the start on how his breakthrough success should entitle him to bag a white girl seeing as how most black girls turn him down cold. He even ends with a slightly funny Michael Jackson joke, but nothing as wild as what you've heard in
NEVER SCARED. But in between these bookends you'll find plenty of f-words scattered throughout the funnier stuff in this program as related to money-grubbing friends, poor white people, and platonic friends, who don't get it as bad as they would get it three years later. This is a fun little retro piece for Rock fans.
Chris Rock once again defies the adults-only attitude of his speech to come up with some universal humor throughout
NEVER SCARED. The extended presentation of this is well-worth the purchase once you capture this one on HBO, and those who don’t get it should be advised to pick this up as well if you can get it for $13.99 or less. Audio and visual quality never detract from the roll of Rock, and the fact that Chris Rock's beginnings finally made it to DVD on this particular disc should already entice you. As sure as Nipsey Russell once made waffles, Chris Rock will always be the current king of stand-up.
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