Original subtitles

Thank you very much, and when they say this show

features living color, you better believe it.

[ Laughter ]

Spear chucker.

White trash!

Jungle bunny!

Honkey!

Nigger.

Dead honkey.

I not allowed to say certain things.

I mean, I can make fun of Jewish people,

but I not allowed to make fun of other ethnic groups.

They don’t arrest anybody that kills rappers.

Shit, if you want to get away with murder,

all you got to do is shoot somebody in the head

and put a demo tape in they pocket.

Lopez: When you laugh, it’s a racial joke,

and when you don’t laugh, it’s a racist joke.

[ Chuckles ]

Just for the record, my Arab friends,

I don’t do any Arab jokes in my act.

It’s not that I don’t think you’re funny.

I just, you know, I don’t know.

I don’t want to ‐‐ I don’t want to die.

[ Laughter ]

♪

[ Cheers and applause ]

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.

Whoa, whoa. Oh, wow.

I did a festival in Telluride, Colorado, once.

It’s a ski town. Not a lot of minorities there.

And I was talking to this dude, and he was like,

"Yo, man, before you go, I got to ask you one thing.

Where are you from?"

And I went, "Well, I from South Carolina,

but my parents are from India."

And he went, "What?!

But you talk exactly like I do!"

And then I showed him a video of an Asian kid rapping,

and his head exploded.

Bell: The state of diversity in comedy

is the same as the diversity in this country.

They walk hand in hand, so, you know,

comedy’s more diverse now than it’s ever been,

but nowhere near as diverse as it should be.

Who’s more racist ‐‐ black people or white people?

Black people. You know why?

’Cause we hate black people, too.

Comedy is anger, fear, insecurity,

and self‐denigration.

It’s like the Civil War going on with black people,

and there’s two sides.

It’s black people and there’s niggas.

And niggas have got to go.

The Jewish kid asks his father for $50.

The father says, "$40? What do you need $30 for?"

I can tell that joke because I Jewish,

and even though I making a Jewish stereotype,

I denigrating myself.

I didn’t play violin.

[ Laughter, cheers, applause ]

I didn’t fuck Woody Allen.

[ Laughter ]

It’s just about, "Oh, we want to hear the real truth,"

and that’s what comedy is, is the real truth.

We can look at society in such a way

that we have to stand outside of it a little bit.

We’re racial referees. That’s the superpower.

Right before the U. S. went to war with Iraq, they warned Iraq.

"We are going to come to your country and kill you."

[ Laughter ]

"Oh, yeah? You kill me?

Fuck you!

[ Applause ]

I kill me."

[ Laughter ]

Asian men are the sexiest.

They got no body hair from the neck down.

[ Laughter ]

It’s like making love to a dolphin.

Wong: Because of my appearance and my race and gender,

it was really hard to welcome people into this idea

that a person who looked like me could be funny.

Barris: Comedy comes from pain.

When you look at oppressed groups,

there’s a lot of comedy that comes from those groups,

you know, and a lot of times,

that comedy takes its roots from how those groups

chose to deal with their oppression

or what their particular plight was.

‐I was raised Muslim. ‐Whoo!

Oh, really?

That has never happened before.

[ Laughter ]

"I was raised Muslim." "Whoo! All right!

We’re not all doing that?

Just me?

Whoo!"

Bell: Any time you’re upset, there’s a joke there.

And so the more frustrating something is,

the more rife it is for humor.

So therefore, racism is very frustrating,

therefore it’s rife for humor.

I got a jury duty notice, you know, and you have to, like,

fill it out and send it in, then they select you randomly.

And I filling out this form and everything,

and my friend is like,

"Well, why don’t you write something really, like,

inappropriate on the form like ’I hate chinks’?"

I wanted to do it, but then I like,

"I don’t want people to think I racist or something.

I just want to get out of jury duty."

So I just filled out the form and I wrote, "I love chinks."

[ Laughter ]

I was surprised. I was upset.

I ‐‐ I was ‐‐ felt very frustrated.

Brennan: When a racial joke goes bad,

people are hurt, people are angry.

It’s painful. It’s like you can feel the air.

Calling a Chinese person a chink is the same thing

as calling a black person nigger.

‐Absolutely. ‐This is the way we take it,

and we don’t think that racial slurs

should be used as kind of off‐the‐cuff kind of way

because it gives more permission for people

to use it in less appropriate situations.

And I believe that comedy reflects society,

and I feel that that joke is a joke

that points a finger at racism,

just like it’s your job to point your finger at racism.

I think you’re giving yourself too much credit.

I think that ‐‐ first of all, I understand satire.

She said this was satire, it was taken out of context.

I said there was no context.

Peters: The comedian’s intention isn’t to hurt your feelings.

His intention is to present you with something

that you’re gonna think about and laugh at the same time.

People get so hung up on words nowadays.

It’s not the words that are bad.

It’s the intent behind the words that are bad.

What you could’ve said ‐‐ what you could’ve said,

she could’ve said,

"I hate Chinese people, I love Chinese people."

Would’ve gone, "Okay, funny joke. Ha, ha."

And that would’ve been over with.

That’s not the point of the joke!

The point is you use a slur...

I learned really huge lessons,

which is I not gonna be for everybody,

but I certainly do not want to be seen as a racist

because it came from the opposite place, you know?

I could’ve said "dirty Jew,"

but it wouldn’t have been as funny

because I a Jew and it’s safe.

It’s too safe.

You know, when you’re playing with racial slurs,

you’re playing with fire,

and if you’re gonna be playing with fire,

expect to get burned.

[ Cheers and applause ]

‐You know what? ‐That is so jackass!

Johnson: Let me tell you.

[ Boat horn blows ]

Lopez: The one connective thing through all the ethnic groups

is if you think about immigration,

it’s the not having a lot of money

and doing the best you can with very little.

The not having is always a great place for humor.

Prinze: I a Hungarian and Puerto Rican,

which is strange in itself, right?

I a Hunga Rican.

Which I could never figure, ’cause, like,

I couldn’t figure out how my parents met.

A gypsy and a Puerto Rican. And I asked my mother.

She said they were on the subway

trying to pick each other’s pocket.

Talking about being Puerto Rican,

there’s prejudices,

and I think if you can take a prejudice

to its most ridiculous degree and make somebody laugh with it,

then it’s not prejudice anymore,

and eventually, you wipe it out.

Well, see, the beautiful thing about ethnic humor

is while you’re making those observations about us,

hey, we’re making observations of you.

We are. We’re looking in the rear‐view mirror going,

"Look at those Caucasians.

Lookit. What a waste of space.

Only two people in that big car."

When you are fighting a power that you cannot defeat,

you will tend to find other outlets

so that you can survive.

One of those natural outlets is humor.

Announcer: It is the huge resort hotel

which is the best bet for the city dweller

who is looking in the country

for the same amusements he has in town.

The Borscht Belt basically began after World War II.

You had a lot of middle‐class Jewish families

living in the city.

They were looking for a place to go.

There were these hotels,

and people would be able to go up there

and have a relatively economical vacation.

I have the system, how you beat the gambling in Las Vegas ‐‐

Soon as you get off the airplane,

you walk right into a propeller.

You people come here for the reading of the will,

or why’d you come here?

Come on, these are the jokes! This is it!

The root of a lot of Jewish humor

is it’s attacking back with our minds,

because Judaism is a religion that encourages study,

it encourages questioning,

it encourages embracing of nuance.

Words were for many years the way that Jews fought back.

"Where you was this past winter?"

[ Laughter ]

Said, "I was in Pelham Springs."

[ Laughter ]

Says, "You was where?" He says, "Pelham Springs."

"Not Pelham Springs. It’s Palm Springs."

Says, "You know, you’re right. I had a confusement.

Pelham Beach."

[ Laughter ]

Charles: Those guys were working at the hotels

and then doing stand‐up at the hotels

eventually became the big Jewish comics of the ’50s and ’60s.

Caesar: It was a tremendous training ground.

When you were up here in the social staff,

you stayed there for a whole 10 weeks.

You got used to the people, you got used to the audience,

and you honed your craft.

I don’t do jokes. I don’t do ‐‐ I do characterizations.

The fun comes form the character.

It comes from what he’s doing, what he’s thinking about,

what he’s thinking of doing.

So, that’s the way I do comedy.

I don’t go out and just tell a string of jokes.

Ladies and gentlemen, we’ll see you on January 26th

on Sunday night.

ABC! ABC! ABC! ABC! ABC! ABC!

Can you hear me?

Is the sound on, Mr. Hamstead?

Is the sound on? The sound is on.

The air is off. The air is off.

Would you put the air on for Mr. Hamstead?

A show is usually as good as its top banana and its writers.

We had writers that you couldn’t touch.

You had Jewish writers ‐‐ Neil Simon,

you had Carl Reiner, you had Mel Brooks,

you had Woody Allen.

Anything you laughed at in the second half of the 20th Century

was provided by them.

Do you recognize this voice, Al?

Man: Hello, Al. Remember me?

I used to encourage you.

I helped you in those desperate years

when you needed help so very much.

I ignited you, encouraged you,

and did so much to mold your character

and make you the person you are today.

Could I hear it again?

"Your Show of Shows" is now looked at by comedy mavens

as sort of, like, one of the great early comedy shows,

if not the great early comedy sketch show.

A precursor by many, many years of "Saturday Night Live"

and everything that followed.

Al. Al. I wonder if you’d tell our audience

exactly who this lady is.

I don’t know who she is, but she’s all right with me!

[ Laughter ]

One of the fastest rising of these comic commentators

is young Woody Allen!

[ Applause ]

The telephone company has a service

for emotionally disturbed types called Dial‐A‐Prayer.

Yeah. [ Laughter ]

They got a number that you dial if you’re an atheist.

You don’t hear anything on the other end of the phone.

[ Laughter ]

Zoglin: Stand‐up comedians before Woody Allen

were sharp‐talking guys in good suits

and fast talkers and pretty snazzy guys.

Here comes Woody Allen, this schlemiel.

This was something really new in stand‐up comedy.

Man: Where do you get your humor?

Allen: It’s like a genetic mutation.

I say it, and it comes as a great shock to me.

It’s like a pleasant surprise to hear myself say it.

It’s like I not even conscious of the thing happening.

He happened to be an incredible craftsman of jokes.

When you listen to a joke of his,

it’s almost like a little haiku.

He was very, very conscious of the writing of the joke,

and that also was inspirational.

Woody Allen is about as secular a Jew as they come.

He really never felt connected to Judaism as a religion.

Woody’s always been much more interested

in the big questions than the day to day.

He’s still asking about the nature of existence

and is there a god?

It’s a them that he works again and again in his movies.

Mom, come out!

Mickey’s mother: Of course there’s a God, you idiot.

You don’t believe in God?

But if there’s a God, then why ‐‐

why is there so much evil in the world?

What ‐‐ just on a simplistic level,

why ‐‐ why were there Nazis?

Tell him, Max.

Max: How the hell do I know why there were Nazis?

I don’t know how the can opener works.

Jewish history, filled as it is with persecutions

and oppressions and expulsions,

inclines Jews to be pessimists.

Judaism, on the other hand, is optimistic.

Hence we end up as optimists with worried looks on our faces.

Cavett: With "Annie Hall" widely accepted now,

can you in 30 seconds admit that you are in danger now

of total mass acceptance and universally?

I think two things ‐‐ I think one is

I making progress toward it,

but let’s not exaggerate the success of "Annie Hall."

I gonna try and make decisions to keep myself from acceptance

by the masses.

I gonna try and make all those decisions

counterproductive to my best interests.

♪

Telushkin: The areas in which Jewish

and African‐American humor meet

would be in dealing with issues of oppression

and issues of persecution.

Gregory: There was an unwritten law

that black folks couldn’t work white nightclubs.

You could sing, you could dance,

but you couldn’t stand flatfooted and talk.

[ Applause ]

Do you know how to make love?

All my natural life, that’s all I’ve ever done.

‐Oh, yeah? ‐Yes, sir.

‐You’re a heavy lover? ‐Very heavy lover.

The Chitlin Circuit, as it was called,

was a series of black venues

that featured black performers

for exclusively black audiences in various locations.

Did you all here the one about the guy that, uh...

Did I say something funny?

The entertainment and the venues on the Chitlin Circuit

was more realistic.

Black comedians were much freer to be themselves

in terms of the authenticity of their comedy

in a way that they had not felt before.

This is a country that was built on slavery, you know?

It was built on the backs of free labor,

and with that in mind,

that means that slavery is this country’s recessive gene.

African Americans are not allowed to represent themselves,

and so out of that comes a world of popular entertainment

where white people are allowed to represent black life,

where the slave is represented as happy, as foolish.

You had better have my dinner cooked

if you know what’s good for you!

If I do, you better not eat it,

if you know what’s good for you.

Any time a black entertainer goes on stage

and wants to make the audience laugh,

and especially if it’s a white audience,

you have that legacy of blackface minstrelsy

behind you, haunting you.

Weide: Up until the early ’60s, comedy,

and especially stand‐up comedy,

was a very segregated proposition.

And Dick Gregory changed all of that single handedly.

I hate to see any baseball player having trouble,

’cause that’s a great sport for my people.

That is the only sport in the world

where a Negro can shake a stick at a white man

and it won’t start no riot.

[ Laughter ]

I realized that if I made people laugh,

they would stop talking about me,

so that’s what I set out to do.

Bell: Dick Gregory was one of the first black comedians

who really crossed over to the mainstream

and did so in a way where he kept his integrity.

There was a not a sense that he became less culturally black

or less committed to his own race

because he played white rooms.

And you heard what Bobby Kennedy said about eight weeks ago?

He said 30 years from this year, a Negro can become President.

So treat me right, or I’ll get in there and raise taxes on you.

[ Laughter ]

I mean, now don’t get me wrong.

I wouldn’t mind paying my income tax

if I knew it was going to a friendly country.

[ Laughter ]

There’s something about giving somebody a fact

or a piece of information that may be a little confrontational,

that people maybe object to it,

but if you can turn it into a punch line,

they’re much more open to it,

and Gregory understood the power of comedy.

Gregory: Sunday, New York, the phone rang.

My wife said, "This is Jack Paar’s office."

I get on the phone.

"Hi, Dick. Would you come on the show tonight?"

And I said, "No, thank you," and I hung up.

’Cause a black person couldn’t sit on the couch, okay?

The phone rang again. It’s Paar.

"Dick, Mr. Paar. How come you don’t want to work my show?"

I said, "’Cause a black person never sits on the couch."

He said, "Come on." I said, "No, no."

Said, "Well, come on, then. I’ll let you sit on the couch."

That’s how it happened.

What kind of a car you got?

‐A Lincoln, naturally. ‐Oh, well, that’s ‐‐ yeah.

[ Laughter ]

Dr. Boyd: To have Dick Gregory on "Jack Paar" in the early ’60s

is an indication of things to come.

Television and comedy will be a space

where one will see a strong African‐American presence

going forward.

The movement came, and something came over me.

Civil rights. Oh, man!

Weide: Dick Gregory was actually getting arrested

time and time again for making the marches,

but then what he would do was he’d get bailed out

and then he’d do a show that night,

and what had happened that day

would all be fodder for his comedy.

You wear a tight shoe, you get a corn.

You keep your shoe on long enough,

you get a callous, then you get a bunion,

then the shoe is worn out.

The Negro in this country have a callous around his soul,

and if the shoe don’t back up, we in trouble.

I would never stoop to the level

to believe I could wipe out slavery and racism

with some fucking jokes.

I didn’t go down there to tell jokes and make people laugh.

I went there for liberation.

Weide: White audiences accepted him.

It just opened the door for every African‐American comedian

who came after that.

Football can be combined with history,

as I found out sitting in history class

thinking of football.

Bill Cosby speaks to the idea of there’s more than one style

of black comedy.

You know, Bill Cosby always said,

"I don’t want just black people to get my jokes.

I want everybody to get my jokes."

When he started, he did talk about race issues

and he saw how it divided the crowd,

and he didn’t want to divide the crowd,

so he decided to make a choice.

I play a lot of football.

I played when I was in the service.

We played different teams. We played a prison team.

And ‐‐ no, really, prison team’s a gas.

They got the greatest football players in the world.

Mostly because they have nothing to lose, you know?

Like, their starting 11 came off of death row, you know?

They didn’t care about nothing. Just kill ‐‐

Tackle you in the huddle, everywhere, you know.

Bill Cosby felt that it would work for him to come onstage

and be the exact opposite of the stereotype

of what an African‐American comedian was about.

He forced white audiences

to accept him as a human being.

Ever calm, suave,

and sophisticated, Mr. Richard Pryor.

[ Cheers and applause ]

♪

Earlier, Dad didn’t curse really yet.

It was just very clean

and he was physical in the way that he did it,

Charlie Chaplin‐esque.

There was a guy in my school.

His name was Terry Austin, and he was a real killer,

you know, ’cause he used to say things to you in school.

He’d say, like, "After school, I gonna bite off your foot."

[ Laughter ]

And you believed him ’cause he always walked around

with a shoe in his mouth.

Dr. Boyd: In the early ’60s, Richard Pryor was very much

trying to imitate the success of Bill Cosby,

but Richard Pryor, of course, is not Bill Cosby.

And so by the late ’60s,

he’s actually quite frustrated

because he’s not been able

to fully articulate his own voice.

There’s this famous story, a legend perhaps,

of Richard Pryor in Las Vegas deciding he’d had enough.

Dad had that moment.

It was, you know, being on stage and telling these jokes.

You look around and the audience is, like,

predominantly white, and you’re like,

"I have something, though, I really need to be saying."

And there was that moment of, "Screw this."

♪

Dr. Boyd: Richard Pryor leaves Las Vegas

and he moves to the Bay area.

He’s in the Bay area in the late ’60s,

which of course is this time when you have the emergence

of the Black Panther party, you have the student left.

Richard Pryor is right in the middle of this,

and his comedy starts to change

because he’s hanging around with black writers,

he’s hanging around with revolutionaries.

He’s learning to observe things

in a very different way.

My God.

When Richard Pryor walked out on that stage,

he transformed himself into something else.

Niggas never get burned up in buildings.

They know how to get out of a motherfucking situation.

♪

They do. White folks just panic,

run to the door, fall all over each other,

choke to death and shit.

Niggas get outside, then argue ‐‐

"I left my money in the motherfucker."

Barris: Once he said, you know,

"Fuck Bill Cosby" and became Richard Pryor,

it was that person finding

that they had been singing in a falsetto their whole career

and actually finding their voice.

White people. This is the fun part for me

when the white people come back after intermission

and find out niggas done stole they seats.

[ Laughter and applause ]

[ Stuffy voice ] "Uh, weren’t we sitting here, dear?

Weren’t we, um ‐‐ I believe we, uh,

we were sitting here, uh, weren’t we?"

[ High‐pitched ] "Yes, we were sitting right there."

[ Laughter ]

Well, you ain’t sitting here now, motherfucker.

[ Laughter ]

Dr. Boyd: Even after slavery,

it was not permissible for black people to openly make fun of,

mock, ridicule white people.

By the time you get to Richard Pryor,

Richard Pryor decides he’s not going to speak in code.

He’s going to talk to mainstream audiences

the way black people talk in private.

Police got a choke hold they use out here, though, man.

They choke niggas to death.

That mean you be dead when they through, right?

‐Did you know that? ‐Yeah!

Niggas going, "Yeah, we knew."

White folks, "No, I had no idea."

[ Laughter ]

Yeah, two grab your legs, one grab your head, go snap.

"Oh, shit, he broke."

What it does is that it gives people

who have never had a way to talk about their struggle

a way to talk about it ’cause you can quote

a Richard Pryor joke,

and then it gives people who never thought about

the black struggle a way to hear about it through humor.

Richard Pryor’s delivering it to you in a way that’s funny

so you go [ Laughs ]

"Huh? Oh, yeah, by the way, that’s true."

Key: All of a sudden, your imagination’s cracked open

a little bit because he’s explaining his experience.

He’s not just going, "White people are bad,

white people are bad, white people are bad."

He’s explaining the experience,

and that, to me, is the difference.

Oswalt: After you saw "Live in Concert"

or "Sunset Strip," you went back and thought,

"I need to change what I do."

We do all the work nobody else wants to do.

If an immigrant is taking your job,

then you got a fucked‐up job.

[ Laughter ]

I think that any comedian that has ever been influenced

by Richard Pryor, he made you do something you didn’t want to do,

which was talk about the pain

and the darkest times in your life.

You know, you just don’t want to drive through Tennessee

when you look like this.

[ Laughter ]

It’s fucking not fun. It’s not.

[ Laughter ]

I got to know the Ku Klux Klan way too well,

and I don’t mean to judge them, but they’re assholes.

You know, they really are assholes.

[ Cheers and applause ]

Richard Pryor really changed race

because he was unafraid to be black in a white world.

I wanted to challenge and provoke

in the same way that there was a way to do it even though

I wasn’t black and I wasn’t white.

Peters: One of the main components of being a comic

is feeling like an outsider.

Whether you actually are or you’re not,

the more of an outsider you are in this game,

the more perspective you gain.

Fly me straight to the kitchen,

pour me a cup of coffee,

and make it like I like my men ‐‐

hot, black, and strong.

Dr. Boyd: Race and popular culture come together

in really interesting ways in the ’70s.

There’s this decade of what I like to call first.

So, you start to see black situation comedies

like "Sanford and Son,"

"Good Times," and "The Jeffersons."

Are you sure you know what you’re doing, George?

Of course I know what I doing.

That’s what you said on our honeymoon.

Is he a brother?

No, but what difference does it make?

Well, it make a whole lot of difference to me.

Pop, haven’t you ever seen that bumper sticker

that says "Good neighbors come in all colors"?

And he’ll come in all colors, too,

if I put my bud nipper up his head.

[ To the tune of "Won’t You Be My Neighbor" ]

♪ It’s one hell of a day in my neighborhood ♪

♪ A hell of a day for a neighbor ♪

Once every 10,000 years, there’s a golden child.

[ Laughs ]

I think there’s some comedians

where it’s like an athlete ‐‐

They have all the tools,

they have all the talent,

and they have all the hard work.

I mean, Eddie Murphy and Michael Jordan

to me are the same thing.

The problem is

is when I move in, y’all move away.

Eddie Murphy, for me, was everything.

He did a sketch "White Like Me," where he became white,

and it was, to this day,

I feel like every joke that I say, that’s in its DNA.

[ Humming ]

[ Sighs ]

What are you doing?

[ Stuffy voice ] I buying this newspaper.

It’s all right, there’s nobody around.

Go ahead, take it.

Murphy: Slowly I began to realize

that when white people are alone,

they give things to each other for free.

Barris: To have a dude that became that big on television,

that big in movies and was that hot in the stand‐up clubs,

like, I don’t know if we’ll ever see that again.

It was as if Richard Pryor and Bill Cosby had a baby together,

and he had a leather suit.

[ Chuckling ] You know, that’s what it was for me.

Brothers act like they couldn’t have been slaves

back 200 years ago.

It ain’t like them motherfuckers liked that shit.

"I wish I was a slave. I would fuck somebody up."

The first dude that got off the boat said that shit.

"Bale that cotton." "Fuck you, motherfucker."

Wa‐pssht!

Other motherfuckers said, "We’ll bale the shit.

Just keep that ‐‐ just keep that fucking shit away from me."

Richard Pryor was very self‐deprecative at times.

He was very vulnerable and talked about his own lacks.

Eddie Murphy was never, ever deprecative.

What he brought to it that was different

was a more macho presence,

a more macho persona on stage,

and it was something that African Americans

longed for at that time.

Peters: Nobody brought it in the way Eddie brought it in.

It was like, "Look, these are my idols, too,

and they’re phenomenal.

But watch what I doing with what they did."

[ Cheers and applause ]

Certain rooms will let you have a little bit more of a pass.

A white room is a lot of times more quirky.

The jokes have to have sort of a wittiness to them.

I feel like a lot of times when I playing a black room,

you got to go for it. You got to go hard,

you got to make sure you are not backing down,

and you got to be right there in your face

or they will eat you up.

But when you can take your set

and you can go from room to room to room

and not really adjust it, you know that you’ve done it.

[ Cheers and applause ]

♪

What’s the big thing this year?

Election. Colin Powell.

He should run. He could win.

Colin could win. He should run.

He can’t win.

Colin Powell can’t win.

Colin Powell got a better chance

of winning the bronze in female gymnastics.

Key: Chris Rock, to me, is an intellectual power,

and he’s an amazing satirist,

but his talent and his gift lies in how he makes observations.

The white man thinks he’s losing the country.

You watch the news, like, "We’re losing everything.

We’re fucking losing!

Affirmative Action and illegal aliens,

and we’re fucking losing the country."

Losing? Shut the fuck up.

White people ain’t losing shit!

If y’all losing, who’s winning?!

It ain’t us.

[ Cheers and applause ]

Lopez: Chris was able to connect with black audiences

and white audiences with the same words.

Shit, there ain’t a white man in this room

that would change places with me.

None of you!

None of you would change places with me,

and I rich!

[ Laughter, cheers, applause ]

Chris is not even differential to white or black people,

and so the less fear you have in a comic,

the more powerful they are.

I not talking about rich. I talking about wealth.

A white man gets wealthy,

he builds Walmarts and makes other white people

have some motherfucking money.

A brother gets rich,

he buys some motherfucking jewelry, okay?

Watkins: Chris Rock is unveiling the idiocy of our society,

and the courage is amazing because, again,

he criticizes blacks

and he, in fact, fell out of favor with blacks

with some of the stuff that he was saying.

Bell: Chris doesn’t want to be predictable.

He thinks the worst thing that a comedian can be is predictable,

so if the audience knows your political perspective

all the time or knows your viewpoint all the time,

then they’re gonna stop laughing

’cause they’re gonna see the joke coming.

Rush: Dave Chappelle!

[ Cheers and applause ]

Dave is a definite genius.

The guy is jazz.

He is our Miles Davis.

Welcome to "Chappelle’s Show."

I still haven’t been cancelled yet.

But I working on it,

and I think this next piece might be the one to do it.

Excuse me. Not sure we’re in the right place.

We’re looking for Clayton Bigsby.

Well, look no further, fella. You found me.

Uh, Clayton Bigsby, uh, the author?

What, you don’t think I can write them books?

Just ’cause I blind don’t mean I dumb!

Wallace: How could this have happened?

A black white supremacist.

Key: One of the greatest sketches,

top‐five sketches of all time ‐‐

of all time, is that Klansman sketch.

The blind Klansman sketch is fantastic.

There’s just juxtaposition after juxtaposition

after juxtaposition in that sketch.

We don’t like your kind around here.

You better get out of here ’for something bad happens.

[ Laughs ]

That’s right! That’s right!

Tell that nigger! Beat it, you dirty nigger!

Come on, Clayton. We got to ‐‐ we got to go.

Oh, Jasper, there’s a nigger around here.

That dirty monkey was beatin’ my hood!

♪

White Power!

Dave grew up around white people,

as did I in my large white family.

So, we could observe black people

and white people with the same amount of acuity.

♪

Good evening, and welcome to the first

and maybe only racial draft here in New York City.

Folks, this is for all the marbles.

What happens here will state

the racial standing of these Americans once and for all.

Announcer #1: Seated behind me on the stage there

are the various representatives, and believe it or not,

the blacks have actually won the first pick.

We, the black delegation...

...choose Tiger Woods.

[ Cheers and applause ] Yeah! I good!

Announcer #2: No surprises there, fellas.

Many of those jokes are just frontal attacks on racism,

and what he’s really saying is that we know this is going on.

Stop kidding yourself.

It’s happening, you know it’s there.

You’re pretending it’s not there.

[ Laughter and applause ]

Well, it seems as though Tiger Woods

is happy to be black, and that’s a good thing,

because I just received word

that he lost all his endorsements.

Announcer #2: Ooh, that’s a tough one.

All of them ‐‐ Amex, TAG Heuer, Wheaties,

the whole shebang‐a‐bang.

Tough break, nigga. There’s always FUBU.

[ Laughter ]

Man: Entertainment Weekly is reporting

comedian Dave Chappelle checked himself

into a mental‐health facility in South Africa in April.

Comedian Dave Chappelle is speaking out

in an exclusive interview with Time Magazine.

The comedian who’s in South Africa

tells Time that he’s not in drug rehab

or a mental hospital, as some have reported.

One of the stories he tells is about a skit that he had done,

and he says as the skit’s being performed,

he notices an older white guy laughing,

and he realizes the guy is laughing at him

as opposed to laughing with him.

When Chappelle came to terms with this,

he recognized the power of his comedy,

but also the fact that no matter how funny he was,

some of the racial issues in American society don’t change

simply because he tells a good joke or performs in a good skit.

I out.

[ Cheers and applause ]

Peace!

Big bitch in the house!

[ Laughter ]

That’s right!

And I got some big‐ass feet.

That’s right. I got some big‐ass feet.

I wear a size 12.

When I walk in a Payless,

it get quiet than a motherfucker in there.

Dr. Boyd: Laughter is a way of dealing with some of the stress

you might otherwise encounter,

and I think black comedians, over time,

have always been individuals who have been able to say,

you know, "This situation is really fucked up."

♪

Key: The criteria was always what is funny,

and then we can massage it later.

Has to be funny first, then it can be racial.

If you start from a racial place,

you’re painting yourself in a corner.

[ Panting ]

Ugh!

[ Sirens wailing ]

[ Groans ]

Are you getting this? Yeah, what is up?

All right. Just go. Let’s go.

[ Zombies groaning ]

Ain’t that some shit.

These are some racist motherfucking zombies!

There should always be an element of problem solving

in racial comedy.

♪

[ Door opens ]

Come on, kids.

In "White Person Hoodie," it’s the problem solving

that’s the wonderful surprise.

Let’s use people’s racism against them

to make the comedy work.

Once again, the comic has become the truth teller.

The comedian has been the person who pulls back the curtain.

All right, Johnson clan.

Everybody fitting into their ski gear from last year

so we can tear it up on Saturday?

Zach’s gonna teach me to snowboard!

Thanks again, Mr. J, for inviting me on your trip. Mm‐hmm.

My family usually teaches literacy

at the local prison for MLK day.

How come we never do anything like that

for Martin Luther King day?

Uh, because we’re black all year long.

They’re white. They have to do extra credit.

Solid comeback. Thank you.

Barris: For this time period

with Obama being in office,

where things are going on in our country,

I wanted to do a family that was just a family,

but it was specifically a black family

and their relationship to being in a world

that wasn’t specifically black.

This is serious stuff, son.

Kids are dying in the street!

Hold up. Kids are dying?

We’re kids.

[ Sighs ]

Crowd: Hey, hey! Ho, ho!

Barris: My son, Beau, who at the time was 6,

we were watching the Ferguson indictment,

and he turned around and he said,

"Why are all those people so mad?"

For our show, we don’t try to rip things from the headlines,

but at the same time, we do try to do what this family

would actually be talking about.

Some of those stories sometime are a little scary to do

because some of them are not within the realm

of what a comedy would talk about,

and that’s why doing a family show helps

because families will find comedy in anything.

[ Cheers and applause ]

I think you can make anything sound racist or hateful.

With the right tone in your voice, the right inflection,

you can make anything sound hateful.

Let me see if I can create a racial slur right now.

Like, uh, sir, you sitting right there,

uh, what is your ethnicity? Where are you from?

Shut up, KIT KAT!

[ Laughter ]

Quit laughing, KIT KAT!

Bell: Everybody wants to tell their own story,

and I think one of the reasons that comedians of color

focus on race is because most of our stories

were told through the lens of white people.

So, like, Russell Peters or Ali Wong

or Aziz or Margaret Cho,

they just want to tell their own story,

and so part of that means I’ve got to take the things

that you’ve said and turn them on their ear

so you know that those things are wrong.

The power is when people can’t find a way to express

how they’re feeling about something,

and a joke of a comic’s,

which is so well crafted and insightful,

will speak for however they’re feeling.

I never saw Asian people on television or in movies,

so my dreams were somewhat limited.

I would dream,

"Maybe someday...

I could be an extra on MASH."

[ Laughter ]

It’s hard, man, ’cause security at the airport,

customs, immigration,

they really need to learn the difference

between a terrorist and an Indian.

We’re not the same!

[ Laughter, cheers, applause ]

We’re not!

America is very focused when they say racial comedy.

They just picture black and white.

That’s the problem, and I check the box of other.

And you got to understand, after black and white,

there’s far more many others.

I speaking to the unspoken to.

Silverman: Most racism comes from the fear of the unknown.

When things are out in the open,

that’s when they become not scary anymore.

For all you white people that just got pissed at me

and went, "Fuck you,"

I just wanted you to feel what it’s like to be told

that you’re not an American when people like me

have spent an entire lifetime becoming one,

jumping a fence, crossing a border,

swimming here like Elián González’s mother.

We sacrificed.

Not only that, we betrayed a country to be Americans.

Key: Some people can be moved by a wonderful piece of rhetoric.

Some people can be moved by a stirring speech.

But everybody can be moved by something that makes them laugh.

Everybody.

And it’s a great, great force

that can be used to mold a mind.

Bell: It’s a funny thing.

I never thought about, how do I find humor here?

It’s like, how could I not find humor here?

I feel like humor is a way to diffuse things.

Humor’s a way to take the air out of something.

It doesn’t have to be Tuesday for me to eat tacos.

I don’t need somebody to tell me that today I can have tacos.

White people will ask me,

"How are you friends with so many black people?"

And I said, "I don’t know, it’s weird.

I just treat them like human beings."

I’ve had people go, "Do the Indian accent."

You can’t just do the Indian accent.

You have to physically become the Indian accent.

So, like, I talking to you like this,

but if I had to change,

suddenly my body has changed.

My hands, eyes,

everything is different.

We have to morph,

and that’s really what it’s about, you know?