Word: comics
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...might expect a guy named Rock to be a little tougher. But Rock, 34, is a comic, not a fighter.He can't throw an uppercut, but he knows how to get a laugh. And right now, he's the funniest man in America. Dick Gregory calls Rock "a genius." Saturday Night Live executive producer Lorne Michaels says, "There's always one comic a whole generation imitates. Chris dominates now. There's no one as good." Then again, Jerry Seinfeld, a pal of Rock's, says this about Rock's hip-hopping in-your-face style: "It's the yelling that...
...could have stuck to the Eddie Murphy/Martin Lawrence path to fame and fortune: 1) sign up for a buddy-cop film; 2) ad-lib your way through the criminally formulaic script; 3) get paid; 4) repeat. But Rock is playing it smart and working with Hollywood's edgiest comic directors. He has a co-starring role in Dogma, a film by Kevin Smith (Chasing Amy); a lead opposite Morgan Freeman in Nurse Betty, a film by Neil LaBute (In the Company of Men); and a star turn in I Was Made to Love Her for the Weitz brothers (American...
...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's the difference between Scorsese and Disney...
...toxic waste," and would beat him up regularly. Funny thing was, even though he was a misfit in Bensonhurst, after a while he didn't fit in back in Bed-Stuy either. And nobody in either place took him seriously. It was then Rock first realized he was a comic, not a fighter. "I just remember that whenever I got really mad or passionate, like in an argument, people would laugh, and I'd be dead serious," he says. "It would happen a lot. So it was like, 'Gee, I've got something here...
...edge. What he needs is a muse, who turns out to be a bubble-headed material girl (well played by Sharon Stone) who requires gifts from Tiffany in exchange for dopily delphic advice. The conceit is mildly amusing, but what Brooks actually seems to have lost is his comic rhythm. There's something distant and depressed about the film, which never develops the momentum it needs to link its occasional bright satiric moments into a convincing whole...