Comedian and filmmaker Chris Rock’s new movie, Top Five, is about a stand-up comedian wanting to be taken seriously. He talks with Jason Di Rosso about the similarities with and differences from his own life as one of America’s most popular comics.

Jason Di Rosso: Top Five is a film of light and shade, and there’s a real vulnerability to these characters. What inspired you to explore such vulnerability?

Chris Rock: You get older and you get to a certain place in your career, and it’s like, it’s gotta be better. I looked at my other things, other movies I’d done, and I was like, okay, I gotta go deeper. Not just deeper as a writer, but deeper as an actor. I just wanted to make a movie where the characters were not just setups for jokes, but real people. I think everybody in the movie plays an actual person. You know, there are no wasted parts in the movie.

JDR: Was it harder as a director to make it funny, or to get those tender moments just right?

I’m very fortunate to have been able to do comedy in the time I do it—in the age of cable television. Unlike a guy like [Richard] Pryor or Lenny Bruce, who had to really work around censorship. Chris Rock, actor/director

CR: It’s always gonna be harder to make something funny. Funny is hard. Not that tender moments are easy. They need to be earned. You need to have actors that are not just great actors, but smart people that understand what they’re doing and the story you’re trying to tell. Everything’s hard, everything good is hard. But there’s nothing harder than trying to get a big laugh out of people.

JDR: It’s a film very much interested in integrity and wanting to be taken seriously, and you play a stand-up comic who is trying to make a go of it as a more serious performer and he’s got this film that is about a great Haitian slave rebellion...

CR: I wish I could do that movie in real life.

JDR: In reality you haven’t had those problems of integrity, you’ve always managed to put politics into your work, to be outspoken. How hard has that been? Have you faced pressure to tone it down or not be as confronting?

CR: No, I’m very fortunate to have been able to do comedy in the time I do it—in the age of cable television. Unlike a guy like [Richard] Pryor or Lenny Bruce, who had to really work around censorship, I’ve worked on HBO pretty much my whole career. I’ve pretty much gotten to say anything I wanted to.

The only time there’s been any censorship was basically an audience telling me that something I was saying wasn’t funny. I have never ever, ever, ever had a situation where I had to tone it down.

The only time I ever had to tone it down is in movies.

JDR: What does that say about movies?

CR: [With] movies you’re going for this rating a lot of times: PG-13 or even an R. People don’t there’s two cuts of Eddie Murphy Raw. There’s Eddie’s cut, and then the cut that came out. Eddie’s cut is actually rated X. You can get an X rating, or an NC-17, for language in America.

As far as television is concerned I’ve never had to tone anything down. But when you’re talking about movies, there is a weird thing about what’s allowed in the theatre.

JDR: The film opens with this great conversation between your character and Rosario Dawson, and she’s talking about how Obama’s in the White House and America’s moved. Your character is a little bit more sceptical about that. Where are we in America now, post-Ferguson, with race relations?

CR: Where are we? We’re where we’ve always been. There’s always progress. I like to say there’s no such thing as race relations, it’s just basically where white people are right now, because a relationship would mean that both people have equal say.

There’s no race relations in America, there’s just: ‘How are white people right now?’ They’re pretty good, for the most part. There’s little pockets here and there, where people are misbehaving. You know, as far as, like, Obama’s concerned, I think he’s doing a good job

I don’t look at that as amazing progress. You’ve gotta realise that black people that are excellent, have always succeeded in America. Louis Armstrong was the biggest star in America 50 years ago. Samuel Davis Jr., Michael Jackson; you know what I mean? There’s like a long list of great black people that have done well.

JDR: I know you identify yourself as being part of a generation of comedians that came up with hip hop as the soundtrack. How does hip hop as a musical form—its swagger, its style—inform your comedy and inform this film?

CR: Hip hop is a style, a swagger. People that listen to hip hop want to be heard. I use the word ‘listen’, but most rap music isn’t really to be listened to. It’s really to be heard. You listen to Steely Dan, but you hear Public Enemy.

Rap music is the first art form created by free black people. That’s it. So when you hear rap at its best, you’re hearing freedom. Jazz and rock ‘n’ roll and all these other things that black people created, were created by either slaves or people living in a slave-like existence at the time.

Rap, for the most part is made by free people. Free black people. That’s what scares people so much about it. That’s what pisses people off so much about it, it’s like, “Oh my God, it’s fucking black freedom. Turn it down.”’

Chris Rock, Ghostbusters reboots, Deconstructing 'Lynchian' Friday 13 March 2015 Listen to the full episode of The Final Cut to hear all of Jason Di Rosso's conversation with comedian Chris Rock and more. More This [series episode segment] has image,

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