Posted on: Friday, March 19, 2004

Dave Chappelle is emerging as the comedic voice of a generation

By Mike Snider
USA Today

Dave Chappelle made racial jokes even as a kid.

A stand-up prodigy working Washington, D.C., comedy clubs at age 14 — chaperoned by his mother — he noted that on TV, Alf the alien could live in a white neighborhood.

"But if someone left a black baby on the doorstep ..." he says and laughs.

Chappelle's raw and edgy comedy has lots of people laughing. Since its release Feb. 24, the "Chappelle's Show" Season One DVD has sold 200,000 copies.

"Chappelle's Show" is Comedy Central's top-ranked show, averaging 2.5 million viewers, up 25 percent from last year. That should be further boosted as new episodes of his Wednesday lead-in, "South Park," debuted.

This week, Entertainment Weekly named the 30-year-old comedian the fifth-funniest person in show biz.

"His monologues and sketches are brilliant," says Bob Greenblatt, president of entertainment for Showtime, which will air a Chappelle stand-up special this year. "He's just one of those people who sort of sneak up on you, like Chris Rock did."

Chappelle has played small parts in movies ("Robin Hood: Men in Tights," "Con Air") and starred in the short-lived 1996 TV series "Buddies." He met Neal Brennan, a doorman at the Boston Comedy Club in Greenwich Village, and the two wrote 1998's stoner classic movie "Half Baked," which starred Chappelle.

After Chappelle's 2000 HBO comedy special and a part in "Undercover Brother," Comedy Central asked him to do a show.

"He is saying something different about racism in America than others have, and he was afraid we would defang him," Comedy Central general manager Bill Hilary says.

That hasn't happened, though the network and comedian have had talks about drug and sex references.

Like Rock and Richard Pryor before him, Chappelle is emerging as the comic voice of a generation. His characters include a blind white supremacist who doesn't know he's black and a crack addict who ends up promoting drugs in a school anti-drug speech.

"My generation is under-entertained," Chappelle says. "We have seen drug epidemics. We were ... latchkey kids. Television doesn't reflect what we are experiencing. If it did, Janet Jackson's ... (breast) wouldn't shock everybody."

Kathy Van Gelder, 33, of Kingsland, Ga., says, "Dave is not afraid to talk about race and how we relate to one another in a very funny way."

Director Tom Shadyac ("Bruce Almighty") plans to work with Chappelle on "King of the Park," a movie about street comedian Charley Barnett.

Chappelle "has got this gift of likability," Shadyac says. "You can't work on it; it's given to you."