Dave Chappelle appeared on Oprah today to explain why he walked away from the Chappelle Show. I heard about the appearance days ago, but like a schmuck, I remembered about an hour after it was over. Thank god for the Internet and YouTube, which makes life bearable for forgetful motherfuckers like myself.
In a nutshell, it sounds like Chappelle got fed up with the stress and the pressure of carrying the show. It also sounds like he started questioning how his racial humor was being interpreted. Something else is going on there too. I'm not sure what, but the level of paranoia he seems to exhibits sort of raises some yellow flags for me.
More Dave stuff on the flip...
For those of you who missed Dave on the Oprah show today,
Sohh, a hiphop blog, live-blogged it. Here are some excerpts:
4:05 The show is on and it looks like Chappelle is pensive and Oprah has to pull answers out of him. He's putting most of the blame on Comedy Central for trying to grab creative control from him in the third season. Dave says they were wrong about the direction of the show 100% of the time.
I didn't realize that he had gone to Africa without telling his wife. The dude has kids. That's fucked up to say the least:
4:26 Dave doesn't like the phrase "go crazy" but Oprah points out that leaving the country without telling your wife is prettyy crazy. Oprah asks if it was the fame and Dave says: "It's not the fame, but the way people around you position themselves to get in your mind and your pockets. It's infuriating." It's not the fame, he loves the fame, he says. He loves being on TV.
Wow--this part is sad. Chappelle and Brennen have been buddies for a while:
4:31 Dave speaks on Neil Brennan, his long time friend and co-writer "If he was that concerned about me, then I didn't get the call." He is angry that Brennan told the press Dave is not well.
I don't see the show ever happening again. This isn't just Chappelle's decision and at least right now he doesn't seem to have his act together enough to pull it off:
4:44 What circumstance will bring Dave back to his show. If he can make the proper work environment, but more importantly give his half of the DVD money to a charity. "I'm trying to unload this money back to the people who supported me."
Here are some short YouTube video clips from the show, which my favorite hip-hop blog, NahRight, compiled:
You know Oprah wishes she could have taken him under wing and taught him a couple of things about dealing with multi-million-dollar contracts and pressure: Clip No. 1
Hmmm, Dave sounds/looks a little nutso in this one...definitely suffering from paranoia. I can relate and I'm not rich OR famous: Clip No. 2
The Chappelle Show sketch that caused the breaking point:Clip No. 3
Here also is Wikipedia's guide to the show. I put what I thought were his best episodes in a poll below.
I guess this kills The Chappelle Conspiracy, of which Oprah was said to be one of the "Dark Crusaders." (For all those that bought this, I think Whoopie's membership as well as the tee-shirt pitch at the end was a pretty good tip-off that the whole thing was a hoax.)
Anyway, I figured we all could use a diary in which we could talk about one of the funniest, if not the funniest comedien alive today. What is your fave Chappelle memory and do you ever see him getting a series again?