Chris Rock: C/D

http://media.houstonfoodie.com/2008/11/carrot-top.jpg

That's Carrot-Top today? WTF happened to him? He's still v., v. unfunny, I'm sure of that.

rock is totally classic, and those VMA quotes upthread are golden

White rapper Kid Rock: "Take off your thinking cap and lower your standards, it's Kid Rock! ... Kid Rock looks like a substitute pimp ... like the NutraSweet black man."

and I was thinking damn it sucks he hasn't done anything w/ the last decade...until I realized that, duh, he did 'everybody hates chris' which was greattttt.

this guy has so much charisma it's ridiculous.

Both typical and atypical Bamastan rhetoric:

"I'm trying to figure out the right analogy. Everybody wanted Michael Jordan, right? We got Shaq. That's not a disappointment. You know what I mean? We got Charles Barkley. It's still a Hall of Fame career. The president should be graded on jobs and peace, and the other stuff is debatable. Do more people have jobs, and is there more peace? I guess there's a little more peace. Not as much peace as we'd like, but I mean, that's kind of the gig. I don't recall anybody leaving on an up. It's just that kind of job. I mean, the liberals that are against him feel let down because he's not Bush. And the thing about George Bush is that the kid revolutionized the presidency. How? He was the first president who only served the people who voted for him. He literally operated like a cable network. You know what I mean?"

http://www.vulture.com/2014/11/chris-rock-frank-rich-in-conversation.html

He was the first president who only served the people who voted for him.

uh

gtfo w calling Maher a leftist

Seriously, that makes no sense. Dude's still doing "Asian drivers! Amirite?" jokes, ffs.

gtfo w calling Maher a leftist

I'd say he has a career comedian's view of the politcial spectrum.

also the attitude he ascribes to Alan King was more Shecky Greene's.

I kinda can't believe Paramount signed off on such an awful poster for this movie.

Rock indicating that "updating your references" is a key to being a with-it comic sorta indicates to me that while he's very funny at his best, i've always found him a bit hollow compared to the great standups.

That' a great interview. My favourite of the year.

Top Five wasn't as good as the recent Rock interviews/essays, but definitely enjoyable. When Rock refers to it as a "black Annie Hall" I didn't know it really was going to be that: a combo of story/skits/sequences strung together with long sidewalk convos in between.

Seeing this tonight

I was distressed by his acknowledged debt in interviews to the "Before" movies

This was pretty solid.

Yeah I thought it was v good, barring a couple minor false notes. Funny, well constructed and written. Lots of great walk on bits.

some controversy over gay hot-peppers bit

eh didn't bother me. I liked how p much every character you would otherwise expect to be a one-dimensional caricature (the fiancee, the bf on the down low, the "bodyguard") were all given a little extra shading. the phone call w the fiancee was really good, for ex.

what did kind of bug me was that even though Rosario Dawson did a good job w her character, it felt like the script piled a few too many pat, sympathetic characteristics onto her: a a former teen mom from the hood that's been through recovery/AA and is also the lead movie critic for the NYT, with a successful side-gig as a photographer with gallery shows in LA... ok

Wow, stacking the deck there.

what did kind of bug me was that even though Rosario Dawson did a good job w her character, it felt like the script piled a few too many pat, sympathetic characteristics onto her: a a former teen mom from the hood that's been through recovery/AA and is also the lead movie critic for the NYT, with a successful side-gig as a photographer with gallery shows in LA... ok

― Οὖτις, Monday, December 15, 2014 1:36 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, now that you mrention it, there was a lot happening with this character.

Missed this, which is pretty blazing: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/top-five-filmmaker-chris-rock-753223

I will say, as an aside, my best friend is an Ivy League educated black man who has worked with Chris Rock, and he detected a real air of resentment and competition from Rock, who is not traditionally educated but who is really smart and was apparently really insecure when he was around more than one person of color with a top notch college degree.

I'd say that's a familiar trait among comedians.

Probably. But I think what he was pointing out to me was that even Chris Rock limits his hiring of people of color to like one token black guy.

even Chris Rock limits his hiring of people of color to like one token black guy

what are you basing this on

Obviously not in his latest movie.

Also re insecurity, Chris felt comfortable doing this--

http://www.blackcollegewire.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4968

Chris supported a short-lived Howard University based comedy magazine

I thought you'd be discussing his filing for divorce

"Marriage is so tough, Nelson Mandela got divorced -- he got out of jail after 27 years of torture, spent six months with his wife and said, ‘I can’t take this shit no more.'"

what are you basing this on

Per the rest of what you partially quoted, only my friend's based on experience opinion. To be fair, this was maybe 10 years ago.

xpost He mentions the Harvard comedy magazine in that essay I linked. He basically sums its failure up to the students not being independently wealthy enough to doof around. As Rock quips in the essay, at places like Harvard even the broke kids come from money.

top 5 was trash damn

The only thing I remember is Rock looking over all of Dawson's hobbies and making a crack about not wanting to get too good at any one thing. Kinda stung.

Anyone else think his Oscar speech was kind of brilliant? I mean he kept setting up the audience like he was on their side and then socking them again.

wonder what he has against the Smiths, given that Jada Pinkett joke

(i'd have voted her supporting actress for Magic Mike XXL)

I thought he was kind of half-jokingly calling them out for conflating ego with racial justice, maybe?

He was pretty great. He had the platform and he did pretty much what I hoped he'd do with it. Countdown to butthurt conservative backlash in 3...2...

Shaun King wasn't a fan....

is there a link anywhere? this hotel seems to be only getting Cartoon network

Yeah I just read this:
http://www.msn.com/en-us/movies/oscars/king-chris-rocks-oscar-opener-lynching-jokes-went-too-far/ar-BBq8bZs?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=iehp

But I think he's being a little bit literal in his reading. I mean I get his take, but I don't really think Chris Rock was implying that there are no longer "real things to protest about," just that in the 1950s/60s things were SO bad for black people in this country that the Oscars weren't on the radar in the same way. I mean only a minute or two later he had the line about a montage of black people who were shot by the police on the way to the Oscars, so I don't think Rock is being oblivious.

I also get the cringe at a laugh line about grandmothers swinging from trees, but it also struck me as an effective kind of horror/shock moment in a time when jokes about racism (including some famous routines of Chris Rock's) can tend to kind of soothe white audiences and help them forget.

he took a similarly scorching approach in a monologue he did last year (for HBO's Real Sports) on the whitecentric marketing of "nostalgia" by Major League Baseball: "The days of Joe D! The Mick! Emmett Till!"

That baseball piece was amazing.

I know comments sections are usually a cesspool but WOW at the comments on that MSN article.

the comments freak me out more when I think to myself "y'know, someone probably calls this poster 'daddy'."

i try not to think about *that* part of their lives, it's none of my business

Oh my christ you couldn't pay me to read any comments section regarding Chris Rock's Oscars performance. It's almost as if his hosting job was focus tested to maximally stoke the ire of human garbage.

related: the NY Times had a section yesterday where Hollywood pros of color and/or women related Shit They've Heard in the Business, and it's impossible to pick just one... (maybe re Shakespeare "They didn't have black people then," or a producer asking "Do you people kiss your children a lot?")

Here's the piece/quote:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/02/24/arts/hollywood-diversity-inclusion.html?ref=arts

WENDELL PIERCE
I was working on “The Gregory Hines Show” that depicted three generations of black men. It was on CBS in 1997. [After] the read-through, the studio and network give notes. Gregory kissed everybody, and so in the show he would kiss his son, Matty. This particular day someone from CBS said: “I notice every time you come in, you kiss Matty. So I wanted to ask, do black people kiss their kids?” That was the most offensive thing I think I’ve ever [heard]. Gregory stood up and said [to the executive]: “Everybody get out. You, come with me.”

did chris rock coin "friend zone" in 'bring the pain' or did that term exist before that bit? i can't find the answer online.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zywIR_ZFLts

ok it was coined on 'friends' a couple of years earlier which is way funnier
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pnMWvbFpS8

tambourine is pretty good!