Word: rocke
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Rock wants to create a show of lasting quality. Asked about the furor du jour in TV-land, the dearth of minorities in prime time, he gives a surprising answer. He acknowledges that there's prejudice but says minorities need to work harder, improve their game. "I was raised to believe that you had to do things better than white people in order to succeed. The old black shows were better than the white shows. The Jeffersons was a lot better. Good Times was way funnier. Sanford and Son. Now, though, everyone thinks we're equal, so we submit...
...Rock knows about hard work and hard times. He was born in Georgetown, S.C., and grew up in a poor part of the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. His dad (who died in 1988) worked as a truck driver for the New York Daily News; his mom was a schoolteacher (she now runs a day-care center). Rock was bused from his black neighborhood in Bed-Stuy to a white high school in Bensonhurst. He says the students there were "worse than white trash--they were white toxic waste," and would beat him up regularly. Funny thing was, even though...
...Rock quit school and, after a stint as a busboy at Red Lobster, launched a comedy career. He was a clueless 17-year-old, playing small clubs around New York like the Comic Strip, trying to read the crowd, trying to milk laughs, usually failing. He wasn't making much--the Comic Strip paid $7 a set during the week, $40 on weekends--but he was trying to get his name out there, trying to build a rep. His big joke was this: "Woman comes up to me, says she'll do anything for me, anything. So I say, 'Bitch...
...used to always tell me he needed another joke like 'Bitch, paint my house!,'" says Mario Joyner, a comic and friend of Rock's. "He thought that was a big bit for him." Rock, frustrated that crowds wouldn't laugh, once poured a drink on a man's head. Clubs refused to give him much stage time, agitating him further...
...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...