CHEERING Thank you very much and when they say this show features living colour, you'd better believe it. Spear chucker. White trash. Jungle bunny. Honky! Dead honky. I'm not allowed to say certain things. I mean, I can make fun of Jewish people, but I'm not allowed to make fun of other ethnic groups. And they don't arrest anybody that kills rappers. Shit, if you wanna get away with murder, all you gotta do is shoot somebody in the head and put a demo tape in their pocket. When you laugh, it's a racial joke. And when you don't laugh, it's a racist joke. 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 wanna, I don't know... I don't wanna die. EXCITING MUSIC Subtitles by Red Bee Media. www.able.co.nz Captions were made with the support of NZ On Air. Able 2018 APPLAUSE, CHEERING 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 is like, 'Yo man, before you go, I gotta ask you one thing. 'Where are you from?' LAUGHTER And I went, 'Well, I'm from South Carolina, 'but my parents are from India.' And he went, 'What?! LAUGHTER 'But you talk exactly like I do!' And then I showed him a video of an Asian kid rapping and his head exploded. The state of diversity in comedy is the same as the diversity in this country. They walk hand in hand, so, you know, comedy is 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? Cos we hate black people too. LAUGHTER Comedy is anger, fear, insecurity... and self-denigration. I didn't play violin... LAUGHTER, CHEERING I didn't fuck Woody Allen. INCREDULOUS LAUGHTER It's just about, 'Oh, we wanna 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 super power. Right before the US went to war with Iraq, they warned Iraq. 'We are gonna come to your country and kill you.' 'Oh, yeah? You kill me? 'Fuck you! LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE 'I kill me.' Asian men are the sexiest. They've got no body hair from the neck down. LAUGHTER It's like making love to a dolphin. LAUGHTER 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. 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 and what their particular plight was. I was raised Muslim. PERSON WHOOPS Oh...really? LAUGHTER That has never happened before. LAUGHTER, CLAPPING I was raised, listen... '(WHOOPS) 'Alright, we're not all doing that? 'Just me? '(WHOOPS HESITANTLY)' Any time you're upset, there's a joke there and so the more frustrating something is, the more rife it is for humour. So therefore racism is very frustrating, therefore it's right for humour. A got a jury duty notice, you know. And you have to, like, fill it out and send it in and they select you randomly. And I've been filling out this form and everything and my... my friend is like, 'Oh, why don't you write something really, like, 'inappropriate on the form, like - 'I hate Chinks'?' I wanted to do it, but then I'm, like, I don't want people to think I'm racist or something. I just wanna 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 was... I felt very frustrated. When a racial joke goes bad, people are hurt, people are angry. It's painful. It's like it's... You can feel the air. Calling a Chinese person a Chink is the same thing as calling a black person a nigger. Absolutely. This is the way we take it and we don't think that racial slurs should be used in this kind of off-the-cuff kind of... kind of way because it gives more permission for people to use it in less appropriate situations. Correct, correct. 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. A 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 she could have said... What she could have said... She could have said, 'I hate Chinese people, I love Chinese people.' We'd have gone, 'OK, funny joke, ha-ha.' And that would have been over with. That's not the point of the joke. The point is, you used a slur... I learned really huge lessons, which is - I'm not gonna be for everybody, but I certainly do not wanna be seen as a racist because it... it came from the opposite place, you know? I could have said, 'Dirty Jew,' but it wouldn't have been as funny because I'm 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 burnt. SCATTERED CHEERS, APPLAUSE You know what, that is so jackass! Let me tell you... INTRIGUING MUSIC 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 humour. I'm Hungarian and Puerto Rican, which is strange in itself, right? I'm a Hungarican. CHUCKLING Which I could never figure cos 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. But in 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 a prejudice any more and eventually you wipe it out. You see, the beautiful thing about ethnic humour is - while you're making those observations about us, hey, we're making observations of you. LAUGHTER, CLAPPING We are. We're looking in the rear-view mirror going, 'Look at 'those Caucasians. Look at them, what a waste of space. 'Only two people in that big car.' LAUGHTER 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 humour. 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. LAUGHTER Do you people come here for the reading of the will or what over here? Come on, these are the jokes, this is it. The root of a lot of Jewish humour 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?' CHUCKLING Says, 'I was in Pollem Springs.' LAUGHTER He says, 'You was where?' He says, 'Pollem Springs.' 'It's not Pollem Springs; it's Palm Springs.' Says, 'You know, you're right. 'I had it confused with Pollem Beach.' LAUGHTER Those guys working at the hotels and then doing stand-up at the hotels - eventually became the big Jewish comics of the '50s and '60s. It was a tremendous training round. When you were up here in the social staff, you stayed there for the whole ten weeks. You got used to the people, you got used to the audience and you...you honed your craft. I don't do jokes. I don't do... I do characterisations. The fun comes from the character. It comes from what he's doing, what he's thinking about. What he's... What he is 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 gentleman, we'll see you on January 26th on Sunday night. ABC! ABC! ABC! Can you hear me? Is the sound, on Mr Hempstead? Is the sound on... The sound is on. The air is off. The air is off! Give a hand to Mr Hempstead. LAUGHTER 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 recognise this voice, Al? Hello, Al. Remember me? I used to encourage you. I helped you in those desperate years when you needed help so very much. LAUGHTER I guided you and encouraged you and did so much to mould your character and make you the person you are today. Could I hear it again? LAUGHTER 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'll 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. The telephone company has this service for emotionally disturbed types call Dial-a-Prayer. LAUGHTER They have a number that you dial if you're an atheist. You don't hear anything on the other end of the phone. LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE Stand-up comedians before Woody Allen were sharp-talking guys in good suits and fast talkers and really snazzy guys. Here comes Woody Allen, this schlemiel, this was something really new in stand-up comedy. Where do you get your humour? 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'm 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 is inspirational. Woody Allen is about as secular a Jew as they come. He really never felt connected to Judaism as a religion. Woody has 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 theme that he works again and again in his movies. Mom, come out. Of course there's a God, you idiot. You don't believe in God? But if there is a God then why... Why is there so much evil in the world? Well, just on a simplistic level, why were there Nazis? Tell him, 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. With Annie Hall widely accepted now, can you in 30 seconds admit that you are in danger now of total mass acceptance universally? I think two things. I think one, is I'm making progress towards it, but let's not exaggerate the success of Annie Hall. I'm gonna try and make decisions to keep myself from acceptance by the masses. I'm gonna try and make all those decisions counter-productive to my best interests. The areas in which Jewish and African American humour meet would be in dealing with issues of oppression and issues of persecution. There was an unwritten law that black folks couldn't work white nightclubs. You could sing, you could dance, but you couldn't stand flat-footed 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 y'all hear the one about the guy that... LAUGHTER Did I say something funny? The entertainment in the venues on the Chitlin' Circuit was more realistic - black comedians who are much freer to be themselves in terms of the authenticity of their comedy, in a way that they had not felt before. BLUES MUSIC This is a country that was built on slavery. You know, it was built on the backs of free labour 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. Well, if I did, 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 black-faced minstrelsy behind you, haunting you. Up until the early '60s, comedy and especially stand-up comedy was a very segregated proposition and Dick Gregory changed all of that singlehandedly. I hate to see any baseball player havin' trouble, cos 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 won't start no riot. LAUGHTER I realised that if I made people laugh, they would stop talking about me. So that's what I set out to do. 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 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 had 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. Sunday in New York, the phone rang, my wife said, 'It's 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. Cos a black person couldn't sit on the couch, OK? The phone rang again, it's Parr. 'Dick, Mr Paar, how come you don't wanna work on my show?' I said, 'Cos a black person never sit on the couch.' He said, 'Come on.' I said, 'No, no.' He said, 'Well, come on in, I'll let you sit on the couch.' That's how it happened. What kind of car have you got? A Lincoln, naturally. Oh, well that's... LAUGHTER To have Dick Gregory on Jack Paar in the early '60s was 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. 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, it 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 callus, then you get a bunion and then the shoe is worn out. The negro in this country has a callus around his soul. And if the shoe don't back up, we're 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. 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. LAUGHTER Bill Cosby speaks 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 played a lot of football, I played when I was in the service. We played different teams. We played a prison team and... LAUGHTER No, really, a prison team's a gas. They got the greatest football players in the world mostly because they have nothing to lose, you know? LAUGHTER And, like, their starting 11 came off of death row, you know? They didn't care about nothing, just killed ` tackle you in the huddle, everywhere, you know? Bill Cosby felt that it would work for him to come on stage 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. APPLAUSE, LIVELY JAZZ MUSIC PLAYS Earlier, Dad didn't curse really yet. It was just very clean and he was physical in the way that he did it - Charlie Chaplain-esque. There was a guy in my school, his name was Terry Austin, he was a real killer. You know, cos he used to say things to you, in school, he'd say like, (DEEP VOICE) 'After school, I'm gonna bite off your foot.' LAUGHTER And you believed him cos he always walked around with a shoe in his mouth. In the early '60s, Richard Pryor is 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 predominantly white and you're like, 'I have something, though, I really need to be saying.' And there was that moment of - 'screw this.' 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. By God, when Richard Pryor walk out on that stage... he transformed himself into something else. Niggas never get burned up in buildings. They know how get out of a motherfucking situation. LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE They do. White folks just panic, run to the door, fall over each other. Choke to death and shit. Niggas get outside, then argue. 'I left my money in the motherfucker!' LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE Once he said, you know, 'Fuck Bill Cosby,' and became Richard Pryor, it was that person finding that they had been singing in 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 niggers done stole their seats. LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE 'Weren't we sitting here, dear? 'Weren't we...? I believe... 'We were sitting here, weren't we?' (NASALLY) 'Yes, we were sitting right there.' LAUGHTER 'Well, you ain't sitting here now, motherfucker.' LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE 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 gonna talk to mainstream audiences the way black people talk in private. Police got a choke hold they use out here, though, man. They choke niggers to death. LAUGHTER That mean you be dead when they through. But you... did you know that? The nigger's going, 'Yeah.' The white guy - 'No, I had no idea.' LAUGHTER Yes, two grab your legs, one grab your head, snap... 'Oh, shit, he broke.' LAUGHTER What it does is that it gives people who've never had a way to talk about their struggle a way to talk about it cos 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 humour. Richard Pryor's delivering it to you in a way that's funny, so you'd go, 'Ha, ha, ha. Huh? 'Oh, yeah, wait, that's true.' 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. 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. CHEERING 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 wanna do, which was talk about the pain and the darkest times in your life. You know, you just don't wanna drive through Tennessee when you look like this. LAUGHTER, CLAPPING It's fucking not fun. It's not. LAUGHTER SHE CHUCKLES 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. APPLAUSE, CHEERING 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. 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 how I like my men ` hot, black and strong. 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'm doing. That's what you said on our honeymoon. LAUGHTER 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 neighbours come in all colours? And you'll come in all colours too if I put in my... LAUGHTER DROWNS OUT SPEECH It's one hell of a day in the neighbourhood, a hell of a day for a neighbour. Once ever 10,000 years, there's a golden child. HE 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. What are you doing? I'm buying this newspaper. It's all right, there's nobody around. Go ahead, take it. Slowly I began to realise that when white people are alone, they give things to each other for free. To have a dude that became that big on television, that big in movies and was that hot in a stand-up club, is 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, you know, but... HE LAUGHS And that's the way it was for me. Brothers acting like they couldn't have been slaves back 200 years ago. And they're like the motherfuckers that like that shit. 'I wish I was a slave, I would fuck somebody up.' LAUGHTER The first dude to get out the boat said that shit. 'Bale that cotton.' 'Fuck you, motherfucker!' HE IMITATES WHIP CRACKING, LAUGHTER Other motherfucker say, 'We'll bale this shit, just keep moving, 'just keep that fucking shit away from me.' LAUGHTER 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. 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'm doing with what they did.' CHEERING 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 felt like a lot of times with the play in the black room, you gotta for it. You gotta go hard, you gotta make sure you are not backing down. You gotta be right there in their 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. CHEERING HIP-HOP MUSIC What's the big thing this year? Election. Colin Powell. He should run, he could win. LAUGHTER 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. LAUGHTER, CLAPPING Chris Rock to me is an intellectual power. And he is 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, (GOOFILY) '"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? LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE, CHEERING It ain't us! Chris was able to connect with black audiences and white audiences with the same words. Shit, there ain't no white man in this room that would change places with me. None here. None here would change places with me and I'm rich. APPLAUSE, CHEERING Chris is not even deferential to white or black people and so the less fear you have in a comic, the more powerful they are. I'm not talking about rich, I'm talking about wealth. A white man gets wealthy, he builds Wal-Marts and makes other white people have some motherfucking money. A brother gets rich, he buys some motherfucking jewellery, OK? Chris Rock is unveiling the idiocy of our society and the courage is amazing because again he criticises blacks and in fact fell out of favour with blacks with some of the stuff that he was saying. Chris doesn't wanna 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 cos they're gonna see the joke coming. Dave Chappelle! CHEERING 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. CHUCKLING But I'm 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 a Clayton Bigsby? Well, look no further, fella, you've found me. Er...Clayton Bigsby, the author? What, you don't think I can write them books? Just cos I'm blind, don't mean I'm dumb. How could this have happened? A black white supremacist. One of the greatest sketches, top five sketches of all time. Of all time - is that Klansman sketch. The blind Klansman sketch is fantastic. This is juxtaposition after juxtaposition after juxtaposition in that sketch. We don't like your kind around here. You better get out of here before something bad happens. MAN CHUCKLES NASTILY That's right. That's right! Tell that nigger! Beat it, dirty...! Come on, Clayton. We gotta go. CLAYTON SHOUTS Oh, James, there's a nigga around here. That dirty monkey was beating my hood! LAUGHTER White power! Dave grew up around white people and... As did I, in my large white family. So we could observe black people and white people with the same amount of acuity. LAUGHTER 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. Seated behind me on this stage there, are the various representatives and believe it or not, the blacks have actually won the first pick. We are the black delegation. Choose Tiger Woods. SCREAMING, CHEERING 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.' 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. Ooh, that's a tough one. Oh, Amex, TAG Heuer, Wheaties, the whole shebangabang. Tough break, nigga. LAUGHTER DROWNS OUT SPEECH 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 is 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 realises the guy is laughing at him as opposed to laughing with him. When Chappelle came to terms with this, he recognised 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'm out. CHEERING Thick bitch in the house! CHUCKLING, CLAPPING That's right and I got some big-ass feet, that's right. I got some big-ass feet, I wear a size 12. LAUGHTER When I walk in a Payless, it get quiet, then a motherfucker in there. 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've been able to say, you know, this situation is really fucked up. OMINOUS MUSIC 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 SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC Are you getting this? Yeah, what is up? Alright, let's go. DRAMATIC NOTE Ain't that some shit. These are some racist motherfucking zombies! There should always be an element of problem-solving in a racial comedy. OMINOUS MUSIC Come on, kids. In White Person Hoodie, it's the problem-solving that's the wonderful surprise. TENSE, PERCUSSIVE MUSIC MUSIC BUILDS GRADUALLY 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. Alright, 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. 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? Ah, because we're black all year long. They're white, they have to do extra credit. Solid comeback. For this time period with Obama being in office, with things that 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. Like, this is serious stuff, son. Kids are dying in the street. Hold up, kids are dying? We're kids! HE SIGHS ALL CHANT My son, Bo, who at the time was six, 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 will talk about. And that's why doing a family show helps, because families will find comedy in anything. CHEERING I think you can make anything sound racist or hateful. With the right tone in your voice, with the right inflection, you can make anything sound hateful. Now let me see if I can create a racial slur right now. Like, sir, you sitting right there. What is your ethnicity? Where are you from? Shut up, Kit Kat! LAUGHTER Quit laughing, Kit Kat! LAUGHTER Everybody wants to tell their own story and I think one of the reasons that comedians of colour 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 gotta 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 the 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 - (BREATHLESSLY) 'maybe some day... TITTERING '...I could be an extra on Mash.' LAUGHTER It's hard, man, cos security at the airport, customs, immigration, they really need to learn the difference between a terrorist and an Indian. LAUGHTER We're not the same! APPLAUSE, CHEERING We're not! America's 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 gotta understand, after black and white, there's far more many others. I'm speaking to the unspoken to. Most racism comes from the fear of the unknown. When things are out in the open, that's when they become not scary any more. For all you white people that just got pissed at me and went 'Fuck you!' LAUGHTER I just wanted you to feel what it's like to be told that you're not an American when people like me have to spend an entire lifetime becoming one. Jumping a fence, crossing a border, swimming here like Elian Gonzalez's mother. LAUGHTER We sacrifice. Not only that, we betrayed a country - to be Americans. 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 mould the mind. LAUGHTER It's a funny thing, I never thought about - how do I find humour here? It's like - how can I not find humour here? I feel like humour's a way to diffuse things. Humour'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 say, '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'm like, I'm talking to you like this, (EXAGGERATED ACCENT) 'But if I had to change, 'suddenly my body has changed. 'My hands, eyes, everything is different.'