The Chappelle Theory

Dave Chappelle, I'm going to kill your family.

-Al Sharpton managing to sneak into ANYONE'S house (and the idea that he'd do it himself!)

-Malcolm, Biggie, Tupac, "YOU'RE NEXT!"

-Whoopie Goldberg

-Oprah Winfrey personally coming into his bedroom at night with armed men and telling him "You know (Farrakhan) killed Malcolm"

This is my favourite bit as well.

http://www.dead-frog.com/archives/2005/12/chappelle_theory_conspiracy_as.php

Who are the blogsters?

The site now has a disclaimer that attributes the whole thing to a site called http://www.anti-social.com -- but I have no idea whether Charlie Murphy is involved in that site.

http://www.chappelletheory.com/disclaimer.html

Like Thelonious Monk, the genius-eccentric jazz musician whose music Chappelle plinks out on a Block Party piano, Chappelle aims for notes many of us can barely hear.

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2010/06/wrap_it_up_box.html

Guy makes working "Wrap It Up" box

I am so sad that the original link is dead.

Dave Chappelle didn't meltdown.

Chappelle’s Connecticut audience, made up of largely young White males, demanded a shuck and jive. Men who seemed to have missed the fine satire of the Chappelle show demanded he do characters who, out of the context of the show look more like more racist tropes, than mockery of America’s belief in them.

Wait, people are saying Chappelle is to blame for what transpired? Damn, people are dumb.

"shut up and play the hits," amirite

The thing is, Chappelle's live act has never ever been a recital of his tv show, or any shit from his movie roles, so this audience was off base no matter what.

people r dum

damn people are terrible

don't read the comments! (not that anyone needs a reminder)

to be clear, I'm 100% on Team Chappelle with this shit, but it's hard to think of many stand-ups who'd even be in the situation to have popular sketch bits yelled at them - most aren't famous for sketches and bits! Robin Williams only plays Lincoln Center type shit iirc, so we don't even know for sure if he'd get a "Nanu Nanu!" or "Mrs. Doubtfire!" from college students. Chris Rock, Dane Cook, George Lopez and Louis CK have done movies and TV, but they're way better known for stand-up than any specific character. Only one that immediately comes to mind of late is Michael Richards, and well...

Seinfeld also only plays stages where he'd be treated as an eminence, I'm guessing

I love Chappelle, and I hate hecklers and people who do the "play the hits" routine, and I also don't know the full story of what transpired, because the only video I've seen seems to be from the later half of the set after he already went off script. But I still feel a little like "come on man, you're a professional stand-up comic, don't you have a better way of handling this by now?" And maybe he just doesn't want to be in that position anymore, and as a person, I totally respect him if he feels like he doesn't want that. But having people shout your famous lines at you IS part of standup, even if there are some racist contextual issues behind it all as well. You know, you want a different audience, write a book and do a book tour or something. That's the standup audience imo.

ha, xp

Hecklers should be ejected

from Earth

Actually didn't Andy Kaufman used to get people shouting at him about his Latke character all the time?

http://www.avclub.com/articles/last-night-dave-chappelles-show-was-overrun-by-hec,102309/

Most recently, Chappelle signed on to Funny Or Die’s Oddball Festival, a massive tour that would put Chappelle—who has struggled with crowd control even in smaller venues—in front of amphitheatres crammed with thousands of people, many of whom had been drinking all day. Yeah, so how’s that going?

i almost went to this...playing huge outdoor arenas is just asking 4 this bulshit. altho im also sure the crowd was indefensible. maybe the meadows can now be known for this and dmb riots, p good legacy

funny or die is a dire institution in general imo

i get that he would want to play venues that are more casual than theaters while he's working out new material, but this just seems inevitable if he's playing festivals and colleges, idk.

Funny or Die is basically Walmart. You know you have to go there for something, but you want to leave as quickly as possible.

Only one that immediately comes to mind of late is Michael Richards, and well...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kth0UOU5a_M

gets kinda funny once he starts reading the book but seems like he has no act & just thinks he can fill time like charlie sheen tried & failed to

You know, you want a different audience, write a book and do a book tour or something. That's the standup audience imo.

so yr response to this incident is just... "very important for chappelle to do him job"? hmmmmmm

um no

Toby in her office at Pendant.]

(Jerry pokes his head in the door.)

JERRY: Hey, nice shoes. What, you wear sandals to work? It's always nice to walk into a room and get the aroma of feet. That's real conducive to the work atmosphere. I'm sure your co-workers really appreciate it. 'Hey, let's go eat in Toby's office. Great idea! We can check on her bunions!'

TOBY: You know, I have work to do here! I'm very busy!

JERRY: Oh, is this disruptive? You find it hard to work with someone...interrupting?

hurting what is "the standup audience" that routinely heckles headlining comics because idek wtf you're referring to

actually on Robin Williams' first standup LP you can hear him telling the yellers "I ain't doin' the Mork."

I am curious as to whether Chappelle feels entitled to a level of comfort that most stand-ups wouldn't dream of.

I've worked with Robin (on god-awful films, tbf) and he is lethally capapble of shooting down dissent, mostly by keeping the crowd on his side.

Doesn't seem that way

I mean about Chapelle

seems to me if you can't handle hecklers you shouldn't be doing standup

which is I guess the same conclusion Dave came to

damn dave chappelle is really buff now

xp Right, and it was a conclusion I felt very sympathetic to at the time of his first quit. Like I think standup is something most sane people could not handle or would not want to handle doing. Anyway, I hope maybe this is just a onetime thing and maybe also a bad booking (i.e. the wrong kind of audience for him, drunken festival crowd etc.).

And that's not to say there isn't racism in the reduction of him to his "I'm Rick James, Bitch!" schtick by some of his audience. I just think there's more going on here than "white people just want him to shuck and jive."

he should just do HBO specials. or something.

A friend of mine, a big fan of his, sees him every time he's in town (surprisingly often) and she says he's kind of distant from the crowd, tends to be late, tends to be long winded. She still loves seeing him but she feels there's something off.

that 'kramer' clip is so great

can't speak for all performers but 1) this is not a "meltdown," it's a response to an environment where Chapelle set foot onstage and heard/felt the crowd and went "oh Christ...no amount of money is worth this" and it just went where he knew it was gonna go from there and 2) I'm fucking cheering for his set. performance isn't about winning over a shitty crowd, there's a certain level of effort you can choose to put in if you want when you have a too-drunk/too-clueless crowd (especially at a festival) but there's always that part of you that's thinking "wow, I could really probably make something cool happen here if you'd just ramp it down some" and what Chapelle did was basically what many performers who took festival gigs and found themselves running through paces instead of saying "wow, you guys make performing less fun" have actively wished they could do

you fuckin' go, Dave C

that 'kramer' clip is so great

otm

yeah I love the kramer clip. also think the joke he made about wanting to call Paula Deen and ask her to be his personal chef was good

from the Ebony clip doesn't seem like much of a "meltdown" to me. he just stopped giving a fuck onstage. can't say I blame him. I've certainly seen bands do the same thing.

yeah I wouldn't really call it a meltdown either. where did the "meltdown" thing originate?

Yeah, people/writers calling it a meltdown have no knowledge of Chappelle or comedy, basically.

xp BORAX-I

I only consider it a meltdown if someone is crying or having a screaming match with the audience or taking their clothes off in a drugged-out daze etc

I hjust tatooe'd that combination hair post onto my face

If anything, Chappelle was dealing with a situation like a calm and rational adult person.

Didn't Andy Kaufman ready The Great Gatsby once or smth

For most of Kaufman's career, his whole objective was seeing how much an audience would take, and then rocketing past that threshold.

I thought he did the Great Gatsby thing more than once, and really did do it until the last person in the room left.

Also, I've seen chappelle live, and his show really is _that_ loose. It'll go on for 3+ hours. He called out a guy in the front row who he thought was filming the show, saw that the guy just had a regular digital camera, and then proceeded to go thru the guy's stored photos on stage.

that sounds horrible, lol

wow love that kramer bit, chappelle is a good dude

Everything went fine in Pittsburgh last night.