“Occasionally, we are privileged to examine the craft of one of the acknowledged leaders of a generation. Tonight, as we begin the midway point of our 12th year, is such a night.”
So begins the brilliantly fawning James Lipton, host of Bravo’s “Inside the Actors Studio.”
His guest at 7 p.m. Sunday on Bravo, the guy he’s referring to, is comedian Dave Chappelle. The Chappelle who walked out on Season 3 of his Comedy Central series, “Chappelle’s Show,” last spring, telling practically no one where he was going (Africa) and leaving a $50 million deal in the lurch.
Lipton at the outset moves reverentially through the comedian’s body of screen work–“Robin Hood: Men in Tights,” “Getting In,” “Half-Baked,” “You’ve Got Mail,” “Con Air,” “The Nutty Professor” and “Blue Streak.” Chappelle has a concert movie due out next month, “Dave Chappelle’s Block Party.”
How this qualifies the comedian for entry into the “Actors Studio” is unclear.
After becoming a tabloid curiosity for fleeing his career last year, Chappelle has re-emerged as touring comedian and self-made Hollywood dissident. He’s someone who took other people’s money and then didn’t show up to work because he was “stressed out,” because he saw the fame and the power structure in Hollywood stealing his soul and eating at his art.
What is pure and interesting about Chappelle is the way he’s long seemed to stay one step ahead of big-time success. He’s flirted with TV and movie deals and then retreated into self-imposed exile. He maintains a farm in Yellow Springs, Ohio, where his late father taught at Antioch College.
“My father said, ‘Name your price at the beginning. If it ever gets more expensive than the price you named, get out of there.’ Thus Africa,” Chappelle tells Lipton on Sunday.
The collision of two worlds–Lipton’s sponge bath of a talk show juxtaposed against Chappelle’s miscreant loose cannon–makes for some “Saturday Night Live” moments.
“Tell us about that writing process,” Lipton asks at one point about Chappelle’s pot spoof “Half-Baked.” “How did you guys work?”
“I can’t remember. I was high, man,” Chappelle tells him.
Lipton’s severe poker face is still a kick, as is the way he frames questions.
It’s a performance, kind of. Chappelle, for his part, laughs at the idea of himself on this show, so close to one of his own sketches.
“Let me ask you this, what is happening in Hollywood that a guy that tough will be on the street waving a gun, screaming, ‘They are trying to kill me,’ ” Chappelle says, referring to the incident several years ago in which [Martin] Lawrence ran into traffic on Ventura Boulevard, shouting and waving a gun. “What’s going on? Why is Dave Chappelle going to Africa? Why does Mariah Carey make a $100 million deal and take her clothes off on ‘Total Request Live?’
“A weak person cannot get to sit here and talk to you. Ain’t no weak people talking to you. So what is happening in Hollywood? Nobody knows. The worst thing to call somebody is crazy. It’s dismissive. ‘I don’t understand this person, so they’re crazy.’ That’s bull. These people are not crazy, they’re strong people. Maybe the environment is a little sick.”
Actually, a few weeks ago on the show, Lawrence had given a simpler explanation: “I was high. I was smoking marijuana.”
