Word: allenate
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Even Woody Allen says he's looking into appearing opposite Rock in a comedy about sportscasters that's in the early-development stage. "Ninety-nine percent of the business is really talk," says Allen, "but I'd love to work with...
Rock is like a hotel shower: his controls are hard to understand, and you never know whether what's going to come out of him is going to be soothing or scalding. "It's good, it's intelligent," says Allen about Rock's stand-up. "He sucks the audience in quickly and keeps them." And his unpredictability is part of what makes his comic take so fresh. "Somebody should always be offended," Rock says. "Somebody in your life should always be like, 'Why did you have to do that?' Always. That's just being a real artist. That...
Rock's office in midtown Manhattan has a crisp, professional cool to it, as if he were running a start-up Internet company instead of a comedy talk show. Still, his eclectic personal taste is revealed in the decor: there are several Woody Allen posters on the walls, including one for Take the Money and Run, a small table with a couple of Jean-Michel Basquiat art books on top, a CD rack with a few old Prince albums. The Chris Rock Show starts its fourth season next Friday, and rows of index cards on a board next to Rock...
...Rock, the high school dropout, began to study. He watched Richard Pryor's concert films, listened to records by Bill Cosby and Woody Allen, memorized jokes by Moms Mabley. He haunted comedy clubs, watching other comics. One summer night in 1986, Rock was hanging out in the Comic Strip when he saw Eddie Murphy. He got Lucien Hold, the club's talent coordinator, to introduce him. Murphy asked if Rock was on that night. He wasn't...but now he was. Rock decided to take the stage and, as they say in comedy, he killed. Murphy gave him a small...
...Rock, dressed in black, stalked the stage, barking jokes in a rough cadence somewhere between a Baptist preacher and RUN-D.M.C. Like a hip-hop deejay, Rock sampled the personas of the comic greats he admired--Gregory's political smarts, Richard Pryor's scatological eloquence, Allen's nebbishy charm--and mixed them into something new. "I'm a rap comedian the same way Bill Cosby is a jazz comedian," says Rock. "Cosby's laid back. I'm like, bang, bang bang, right into...