I also thought heavy drug use + potential mental illness behind the meltdown. But it may just be what control-z talked about. I actually saw him on his comedy tour, I think that must have been in 2004 at the University of Illinois and he seemed very put-off by a stadium full of kids shouting his signature lines. I mean, visibly annoyed and he started snarking. Maybe he just felt it had crossed over from outrageousness/ironic slant to unfairly mocking.
He actually berated an audience and walked off the stage in Sacramento because the audience just kept shouting requests for bits. “Do Rick James!” “Do the crack head!”
The quote from the article about it was something like “What you people don’t understand is I tell you jokes and you listen and when I give the punch line, you laugh. It’s not hard.”
I was in the same boat - should I be laughing at this? Well, it’s funny and I laughed, but I think, or at least hope, I was laughing for the right reason.
As for people yelling out “I’m Rick James, bitch!”, well, that’s part of the price for being popular. Sucks sometimes, but there you go.
If his employees were suggesting he was crazy and insist he take meds, then fire them. It’s his show and he calls the shots. If the employees can’t deal, then they should know where the door is.
But if he really is off his nut, his world will collapse on him, employee opinion or not.
He talks about being socially responsible and it makes me think about the “Chappelle Theory” a little. When Bill Cosby got ripped for his comments, it wasn’t what he said, but who he said it to. Apparently it’s taboo for blacks to discuss their race’s problems outside their race, I guess.
Either way, the comedy world will suffer just a bit without Chappelle. He’s a genuinely talented man with a lot to offer everybody who likes to laugh.
All of this sounds like great material for a new Chappelle’s show. He could do skits addressing all the rumors, never letting on which one was really true. The speculation on the part of the audience would keep the thing going. He could draw all kinds of parallels to the Beatles having fun with the “Paul is Dead” thing, Elvis going off the tracks, that old show The Prisoner, etc., etc. Chappelle always seemed willing to laugh at himself during the first two seasons. And it’s hard to imagine him just going back into random skits without addressing his leave of absence. I would think he’d hafta do something to address it, and frankly I don’t care to hear a tearful confession from another celeb. Shove it back in their faces by making fun of it!
I’m not a particular fan of Dave Chapelle, and have never seen the show but watched this show because I watch Oprah a few days a week.
I was more-or-less with him for a lot of it; could get on board with the whole stressed out thing, the my-people-were-telling-me-I’m-crazy-thing, and fully understand about the white-guy laughining thing.
But he lost me with the rant about having to wear a dress. I can see it mattered to him but the way he honed in on that particular issue was just strange. It seemed completely off-topic and random and he had that crazy-man energy telling about it.
Also you might notice he never really answered if he had been in a mental institution in Africa. He just dodged it with his crack about going from the US to Africa for medical care.
It used to be taboo. It’s been less so since the original Million Man March. It’s still scandalous for high-profile African-Americans to frankly and openly discuss intraracial black issues in public forums and especially to criticize African-American leadership and the masses. This is changing big-time, though – I’m tempted to say “rapidly changing.” Right now you see a few people (a few low-key “Chappelle’s Show” skits, Kelsey Grammar’s “Girlfriends,” Chris Rock’s “Everybody Hates Chris”, Aaron McGruder’s “Boondocks,” and almost back in the day, Ralph Farquar’s excellent “South Central”) do so in a humorous way. I expect the humor to open the way for more serious cultural debate and discussion.
I say African-American because it’s not precisely synonymous to say black. This is more of an American ethnic thing than a racial one. Nelson Mandela is not African American and I read about him being quite critical of post-apartheid blacks all the time with regard to the AIDS epidemic and policy. When was the last time you heard Jesse Jackson, Condoleeza Rice or Barack Obama openly talk about black gay men? Or black single parent households? Or AIDS? Or recidivism?