Last Laughs 2004: Comedian Mort Sahl

DATE December 30, 2004 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Mort Sahl discusses the role of the political satirist
and his career as a comedian
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

We're ending the year with our series Last Laughs featuring some of our most
entertaining interviews of this past year. One year ago I spoke to Mort Sahl
on the 50th anniversary of his first performance at the San Francisco
nightclub The Hungry I. That night a new kind of comedy was born, topical and
conversational. As the critic Francis Davis wrote, quote, "Sahl was the most
innovative comedian to gain access to a mass audience in the comedy-happy
'50s. Lenny Bruce was still doing shtick when Sahl began walking on stage
with a newspaper, extemporaneously riffing on the headlines. A cool jazz
buff, Sahl derived from musicians not only his timing but also their habit of
traveling light. Schnooky dialects and comic personas like the ones Bruce was
still hiding behind would have been excess baggage for Sahl, who spoke to
audiences in his natural voice," unquote.

Sahl was the first comic to make a live recording, the first to do college
concerts, to speak at the National Press Club or to be on the cover of Time
magazine. Most of today's political and topical comics owe something to Mort
Sahl. He's still performing. Before we hear from him, let's listen to an
excerpt of his album "A Way of Life," recorded in 1960, the same year he was
on the cover of Time.

(Soundbite of "A Way of Life")

Mr. MORT SAHL (Comedian): I want to read you part of the San Francisco
Chronicle, which I have here. And there's a couple of interesting things that
happened you might be interested in having to do with Billy Graham, who called
me an atheist. Do you know about this?

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. SAHL: Yeah, he called me an atheist, which is not true. And as I've
pointed out in the past, very few people are really atheists, you know, and
Billy Graham--it's just that I'm of another faith than Billy Graham, and
almost everybody is, I find upon inspection.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. SAHL: So--Zen Buddhism.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. SAHL: So the club is supposed to be empty. The owners were worried
because of this high holiday.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. SAHL: So--Did I tell you about that?

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. SAHL: That's what they kept saying. So it has to do with ethnic groups,
which I want to discuss after a while. Right?

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. SAHL: So anyway--I'll get back to that. So this gets better. So then he
said I'm an atheist, and I pointed out I'm not. And most people past college
age are not really atheists because it's too hard to be in society, for one
thing.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. SAHL: Yeah. Because you don't get any days off. That's been my
biggest...

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. SAHL: And if you're an agnostic, you don't know whether you get them off
or not. That's...

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. SAHL: Monday. This is really weird. So then he attacked me. And Billy
Graham is in Melbourne, Australia, saving Melbourne. That's his big thing
now, he saves cities.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. SAHL: And I don't doubt that. There's sincerity involved. It's just,
you know, if he really wanted a challenge, he could go to Vegas. Wouldn't
that be great?

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. SAHL: Saving while he--thank you. So now to get back...

GROSS: Mort Sahl told me that 50 years ago he started to click with his
audience when he took an anti-authority position.

Mr. SAHL: The blacklist was on then, not that it isn't on now, and it was
that the Russians were provoking us, you know, at every turn in Berlin and
all. And I pointed out to the audience that every time the Russians threw an
American in jail, we would throw an American in jail to show them they can't
get away with it.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. SAHL: And I found the oppressed majority, as Adlai Stevenson pointed out,
which were the Democrats, who were all around and thought that it was the
conformist '50s and they weren't welcome. But a lot of this sounds innocuous
now, you know, like General Motors might become resentful and cut the
government off without a cent.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. SAHL: See, there wasn't a Ralph Nader then. There weren't any kids, you
know. And everybody remembers what they wanted to. People remembered the
political stuff. Woody Allen, whom I saw Sunday, said to me he remembered all
the stuff about men and women. I used to get up and, you know, quote Shaw,
who said, "A woman who demands her equality renounces her superiority," and a
lot of Freud. So it was, don't be ashamed to be intellectually curious.
That's what it was about.

GROSS: So before you performed at The Hungry I, had you performed anyplace
else before?

Mr. SAHL: Yeah, in Los Angeles. I was trying to get started for about two
years, very unsuccessfully.

GROSS: What were you doing before and when you were in LA?

Mr. SAHL: Oh, imitations of movie stars and anti-authoritarian stuff about
people and policemen, mostly about being a misfit in society, which of course
makes you everybody. So there was no success here. The city was unconscious;
may still be as far as I know.

GROSS: Were you doing James Cagney impressions like every other comic?

Mr. SAHL: No, no, no. It was way-out stuff, you know, the cadence of
political people and the president, and also the sense of what they said more
than an impression. I mean, in the sense--well, let me give you an example.
Here was Johnson--later I did this--expanding the war, and the way he would do
it as he established a draft in a democracy, he said, `You know, it would be
wonderful if the world was at peace. It would be wonderful if other countries
wanted peace as much as we do. Unfortunately they don't. Therefore I'm
sending a truck to pick up your brother in the morning.'

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. SAHL: That was basically what it--you know? So it was kind of looking in
and saying, `Where are we and does anybody else feel this way?' which is what
a real performer ought to do. Does anybody else feel this way? I had the
misfortune of seeing Al Franken in New York, which was presented to me as
political satire. And instead of taking a swing at the mighty, he's basically
lifting his leg on them. And that shows you how the franchise has
degenerated. I kicked the door down hoping somebody would follow me, and
we're living in a day and age where Michael Moore and Madonna are endorsing
General Clark. How would you approach that as a joke? It would mean
basically--and I doubt the comedians can do this today--that they see it.

You know, the opportunity with this administration is so rich as an example,
and where are the comedians? I mean, it's so rich. Diane Sawyer is sitting
there the other night, saying to Bush, `What papers do you read?' And the
president says, `I don't read papers. I've got people working for me that
know everything.' He doesn't read papers. I mean, you know, it's like my
conversation with him, when he said, `You've got to fight the war on terror.
Are you ready to make the sacrifices?' And I said, `I don't know. I'm pretty
exhausted from fighting communism with your father.' And he said to me, `Well,
I don't like it. It's a dirty job, but that's what you elected me to do.' And
of course, I was tempted to say, `We didn't elect you that much,' but I knew
him when he was a governor.

GROSS: Well, you know, while we're on the subject, what about, say, Bill
Maher, who does a lot of political comedy on television?

Mr. SAHL: Well, a lot of it is profane, which is not to my taste, but you
can't have an elite feeling toward the people.

GROSS: Do you think he does?

Mr. SAHL: Yeah, I think he does. I think the skepticism toward authority,
you know--this is all said from a salon at Arianna Huffington's house. And I
don't have a feeling that that's a real rebellion. I'm being very candid with
you. I, you know...

GROSS: Yeah, but you were connected to power, too. I mean, you worked for
the Kennedy campaign, writing for him.

Mr. SAHL: Yes, I did.

GROSS: You knew, and still know, a lot of very powerful people.

Mr. SAHL: I also sat head to head with Kennedy and argued about Fidel Castro
and the revolution. But what I'm saying to you is what Stanley Sheinbaum
said: These people have no politics. They're basically skeptical about
America. They think Southerners are ignorant. They think power necessarily
corrupts. They're very elite. I mean, I've listened to Maher by the hour.
When I met him, he was an announcer for Steve Allen, but I don't find any--I'm
being very candid with you. I don't find any generosity of the human spirit,
and I don't find a lot of talent there. We might as well be straight up.
That's not Will Rogers.

GROSS: Anybody you do like who's working now?

Mr. SAHL: Yeah, but I'll tell you. Most of the people with great humor are
professional men in other fields who, as a byproduct of their viewpoint, have
a sense of urban irony. Example: Alexander Haig is conducting business in
Russia.

GROSS: Wait a minute. You think Alexander Haig's funnier than Al Franken and
Bill Maher?

Mr. SAHL: I'll tell you. I can give you examples.

GROSS: OK.

Mr. SAHL: And you'd be hard put to give me any examples of those two guys.
Not that that's your chore. But a great example, I mean, Haig said he was in
Russia, conducting business, and how capitalism has caught on. And he said,
`I went to the Inter-Continental Hotel in Moscow, and every car that pulled up
was a Mercedes 600, driven by a Russian baby boomer with a platinum blonde 20
years old on his arm and a Rolex, and they all went in and drank apple
martinis. I might as well have been in Beverly Hills, except there were no
communists.' That's a wonderful observation. Yeah. You remember when I said
to him--he smokes Cuban cigars. I said, `How can you smoke Fidel Castro's
cigars?' He said, `Well, in my place, I prefer to think of it as burning his
crops to the ground.'

GROSS: Wait. Now let me ask you. I don't know if you politically agree with
Al Haig and with the Republican administrations that he worked with. Do you
have to agree politically...

Mr. SAHL: Of course not.

GROSS: So it's funny to you whether you agree with the person or not
politically?

Mr. SAHL: Yeah, because he's a man with a sense of irony. You know, I can
give you an example on the other side. Gene McCarthy has the best Democratic
sense of humor, the great, great humorist, poet and thinker. And those are
the people that I honor and I aspire to know. But this other stuff of, you
know, rebellion by the pound, I mean, what is it? Dennis Miller is telling
you how wonderful Bush is. That's not political satire.

GROSS: Now I'm going to stand up for Bill Maher and Al Franken, who I think
really are funny.

Mr. SAHL: Well, until you hear the real thing, you will stand up for them,
but eventually...

GROSS: OK.

Mr. SAHL: ...you know, you won't. They're not serving--you know, I haven't
said this publicly before, but I'm glad you gave me the opportunity. They're
not serving the people. A political satirist's job is to draw blood. I think
what we're talking about here, even when we talk straight and in the role of
comedy is that I'm not a liberal. I'm a radical. The liberals, they made
liberalism into a weigh station for people that want to cooperate with a
right-wing administration and not lose their source of income and still be
self-righteous. You know, have a dinner party at Barbra Streisand's, but
spend an equal amount of time with the guests and out in the kitchen talking
to the Nicaraguans. That's really what's going on here.

GROSS: What are some of the things that you said that over the years that you
think drew the most blood?

Mr. SAHL: Oh my God. You know, when Kennedy was nominated I introduced them
and I sent a wire to his father saying, `You haven't lost a son, you've gained
a country.' You know, that kind of--but something that reflects the truth, not
only the truth you find but the truth of our fathers and something that shows
a sense of history. You know when Jack Kennedy went to Vienna and he
met--he'd only been in office two months and he met Khrushchev and he looked
at this medal on his chest I think, he said, `What is that?' He said, `I won
the Lenon Peace Prize.' And Kennedy said, `Let's hope you get to keep it.'

(Soundbite of laughing)

Mr. SAHL: We aspired to be like that. I mean, you know, and that doesn't
mean I worship them. I had plenty of arguments with them but those guys
could give you 15 rounds.

GROSS: My guest is comedian Mort Sahl. We'll talk more after a break. This
is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: My guest is Mort Sahl. In the 50s he created this new kind of comedy,
riffing up the headlines instead of telling one-liners.

Joseph Kennedy, JFK's father, asked...

Mr. SAHL: Yeah.

GROSS: ...you to write for John Kennedy's presidential campaign.

Mr. SAHL: That's right.

GROSS: And you agreed to do it.

Mr. SAHL: Uh-huh.

GROSS: What did you write for him that he used?

Mr. SAHL: Oh, I can give you some examples.

GROSS: Good.

Mr. SAHL: It was a lot of trouble about being a Catholic then. You're not
old enough to remember that, but that was a bad word to run for high office.
So I gave them--they come in and they say, `Are you gonna take your orders
from the pope?' And he says, `It's not the hereafter that's bothering me but
November 4th is driving me out of my mind.' And when he went out there at the
press conference and May Craig from the Portland, Maine, paper said, `What are
you doing for women?' and he said, `Not enough, I'm sure.' Which is--he had
the quality to do it, though. You know, he had the moral authority. And it
was, you know--and he and I used to argue all the time because I was a friend
of Adlai Stevenson.

GROSS: Are there things you wrote for Kennedy that he didn't use that you
remember and wish he had used?

Mr. SAHL: Yeah, I did a lot of stuff about Eisenhower for him playing golf.
I said Eisenhower had hired Stevenson to write a foreign policy speech, which
was true, but he couldn't use it because of the language barrier--it was in
English--and he said, `I can't say that about him,' and William O.
Douglas--Remember Justice Douglas?

GROSS: Uh-huh.

Mr. SAHL: Douglas was there. He said to Kennedy, `Listen, if you're gonna be
Stan Kenton, be Stan Kenton. Don't try to be Lawrence Welk. He's better at
it.' That's all true, you know. Who could come up with that. There was
great stuff. Yeah, I was--you know, and you can tell a lot about the guys
about which humor they'll use and which that they get. The really heavyweight
guys are never offended. For instance...

GROSS: Yeah, you're actually--you're--go ahead. Go ahead.

Mr. SAHL: Yeah, I was gonna say Richard Nixon said to me, `You got a chance
to be Will Rogers, but you have to remember to keep a blowtorch under my
behind as well as Jack Kennedy's.' Even-handed.

GROSS: Wait, wait, you already had the blowtorch under his behind.

Mr. SAHL: Well, he was drinking at that time...

GROSS: Oh.

Mr. SAHL: ...so--but he was the smartest guy I ever met in the office, by the
way.

GROSS: Oh yeah?

Mr. SAHL: Yeah, brilliant.

GROSS: Did you write for him, too? Would you...

Mr. SAHL: No, no. I did not.

GROSS: You didn't.

Mr. SAHL: But I worked for Reagan, who was a personal friend of mine, and...

GROSS: So whether you agree with somebody's politics or not, if you like them
personally, you'll write for them?

Mr. SAHL: Yeah. You do some jokes. At least Reagan had a sense of humor.
This guy has no sense of humor unless what he's doing now...

GROSS: Which guy?

Mr. SAHL: ...is an example.

GROSS: President Bush?

Mr. SAHL: Yeah. He has no sense of humor. I think he knows it, too. I gave
him a gag. He asked me when he was governor of Texas if he should allow
prayer by the student body at the football games, and I said, `It depends how
far behind you are.' And he wasn't sure. His father has a great...

GROSS: Oh, I see. I see.

Mr. SAHL: Yeah, yeah.

GROSS: I get it.

Mr. SAHL: His father has a great sense of humor, by the way. The old man
said to me at the White House, he said to me--he asked me when I got my
invitation to come to a dinner there, and I told him it had taken four weeks
for the letter to get to California, and he said, `That's absurd.' And I said,
`How are you gonna get these guys in line? Are you gonna fire everybody in
the post office?' He said, `No, I'm gonna keep them on, but I'm gonna mail
them their checks.' He's very intellectual, but he doesn't want that out, you
know. So was Estes Kefauver.

GROSS: Are you writing for candidates now?

Mr. SAHL: No, not currently. I worked for Bill Bradley. I wrote some stuff
for him. I found him pretty cautious.

GROSS: In terms of what kind of humor he'd use?

Mr. SAHL: He's aloof. Well, he's aloof in general, you know. But the most
memorable things Gore has said is since he left office.

GROSS: What strikes you as most memorable?

Mr. SAHL: You know, the speech about the Patriot Act, what it's costing
America. But if I were writing for somebody now, as an example, you know,
you'd say--you're writing for a Democrat now you'd say, `John Ashcroft's first
act in his office was to come in and cover up the bare breasts of justice out
in the hall, and that's the last time justice exposed herself in the Bush
administration.' That's what I would say. And then you're off, you know, to
the races.

It's not a good sign that they don't have any humor, and on the other hand,
the other night at this--I was at a dinner in New York and Lieberman was there
and he quoted an old gag of mine, which is reworked Mark Twain, you know, that
if you're drowning 20 feet from shore, Kissinger will throw you a 15-foot rope
and Nixon will point out that they met you more than half way. That's
the--you know, you can trot out a lot of the old stuff. You know, you
remember when Twain argues with his wife and she says, `You'll never amount to
anything,' he said, `Well, I can always be a bad example to others.' That's
great American humor. That's not mean-spirited. That's not a comedian
getting up and saying that the president is mindless.

I mean, look at an example here. You're talking to me about Al Franken and
Bill Maher and all the--what have they ever said about Cheney? I mean,
wouldn't it be possible, without being intellectual, to say that Cheney is the
only one covered by Bush's health plan? Or that when he dated Lynne Cheney,
who he dated, you know, in 1952 at the University of Wyoming, that he
haltingly and shyly says to her, `If you're free Friday, would you like to
meet me at a secret, underground, undisclosed location?'

But you've got to have a point of view to do it, otherwise you're stealing the
money. You've either got wit or you can identify with the human heart or
you're Jackie Gleason, that you can do something. I mean, look, you know, you
don't have to be an intellectual. You look back--of course you've seen "The
Honeymooners," Terry.

GROSS: Sure, yes.

Mr. SAHL: Well, look at that. That's built as well as Shakespeare. He's
always got a scheme. Nobody believes in it. His wife is the first to tell
him he's crazy. When he falls on his face, who comes in there and picks him
up, dusts him off and kisses him? His wife. Why do we like it? It's about
something. And when somebody says to you, `That's too intellectual for me,'
it means they don't want to work through the fact that they're stealing the
money, they're not up to it.

GROSS: Mart Sahl, thank you so much for talking with us.

Mr. SAHL: Terry, I'll see you in Philadelphia.

GROSS: Hope so.

Mr. SAHL: So long.

GROSS: Mort Sahl recorded one year ago. In January he'll perform in three
places in Florida, Sarasota, Naples and West Palm Beach. Our end of the year
Last Laugh continues in the second half of the show.

I'm Terry Gross and this is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

(Credits)

GROSS: Coming up, Dave Chappelle talks about his Comedy Central show and what
it was like when he started his career playing clubs that catered to largely
white audiences.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Interview: Dave Chappelle discusses his life as a stand-up comic
and his Comedy Central series "Chappelle's Show"
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

We're ending the year with our series Last Laughs, featuring some of our most
entertaining interviews of the past year. Our next guest, Dave Chappelle, has
a very popular and very funny series on Comedy Central called "Chappelle's
Show" which features stand-up, sketches and music. In Rolling Stone magazine,
Chappelle's humor was described as `the edgiest, most racially charged comedy
in America.' The DVD of the first season became the third-best-selling
television DVD of all time. I spoke with Chappelle in September.

What was the original concept? When you first sat down to conceive of your
weekly program, "Chappelle's Show," what did you envision it being?

Mr. DAVE CHAPPELLE (Comedian): The idea was that I wanted to do a variety
show that was very personal, almost as if--you know, like a comedian has a
joke book where he'll write his ideas down--almost as if you could bring
somebody's joke book to life. And I think we were fairly successful at it in
the sense that we do things on the show that are almost nightclub, that are--I
don't know--things that I'm not even used to seeing on television. It becomes
whatever it needs to be.

GROSS: Well, it's funny...

Mr. CHAPPELLE: One week it was a game show. One week it's a puppet show.
One week it's half documentary. It can be--you can do anything. And...

GROSS: Well, you know, what you're talking about, about it being, like, a
comic's notebook--in some of your shows, you actually set up the sketch with
the story behind it, what you were thinking about before coming up with this
sketch.

Mr. CHAPPELLE: Right.

GROSS: And that's what you did before a sketch called "Racial Draft." And
you explained that, you know, your wife is Asian, you're African-American, and
so you've had these, like, arguments about whether Tiger Woods is black or
Asian.

Mr. CHAPPELLE: Right. Right.

GROSS: And so you came up with this show called "Racial Draft." And let's
hear the opening of that sketch.

(Soundbite of "Chappelle's Show"; music)

"ROB": Good evening, and welcome to the first and maybe only racial draft
here in New York City. Folks, this is for all the marbles. What happens
here, we'll state the racial standing of these Americans once and for all.

"BILLY": That's right. And the crowd is here to support their races. Well,
Rob, some of the biggest names in sports and in entertainment are on the line
tonight, and I'm excited to see who's going to be drafted by which race.
Seated behind me on the stage there are the various representatives. And
believe it or not, the blacks have actually won the first pick.

"ROB": Wow, this is the first lottery a black person's won in a long time,
Billy.

"BILLY": Yes, and they'll probably still complain.

"ROB": Man, (censored) you. Well, the black representative is heading to the
microphone now. Why don't we take a listen.

MOS DEF: I'm being the black delegation. Shoot, Tiger Woods.

(Soundbite of cheering and applause)

"BILLY": No surprises there, Rob. The richest and most dominant athlete in
the world. His father, black; his mother, Thai.

"ROB": Well, it doesn't matter anymore because now he is officially black.
Jay, the Asians have got to be upset.

"JAY": There is no question about that, Robert. But you gotta think about
it. He's been discriminated against in his time. He's had death threats.
And he dates a white woman.

"ROB": Oh.

"JAY": Sounds like a black guy to me.

"BILLY": Tiger's taking the stage now. And if you ask me...

"ROB": Wow.

"BILLY": ...he's looking blacker already.

"Mr. TIGER WOODS": I'd like to say a tremendous opportunity for me to
finally be part of a race, have a home. I've been so confused buying
(unintelligible) and so many things. So long, fried rice; hello, fried
chicken. I love you, Dad!

GROSS: So that's an excerpt of Dave Chappelle's show.

Dave, can you talk about, like, what actually happened behind the scenes in
writing this sketch and maybe talk a little first about what happens further
into the sketch?

Mr. CHAPPELLE: The idea actually was--a guy named Brian Tucker submitted the
idea of having a racial draft. Finally, races can stop arguing about who was
who and definitively label these people once and for all, which was like, you
know--that's the heavy lifting. That was a brilliant idea. So Neal and
I--Neal's my partner I write the show with--we sat down, and it was like a
wealth of jokes that you could do, because it's the kind of thing--this is a
very race-obsessed culture. You know what I mean? Like, when a guy like Vin
Diesel becomes famous, every--half of the things you hear about him is, `Well,
what race is he?' And he just doesn't say, which I kind of think is classy.
Shooting it was a blast 'cause, you know, we had the Wu Tang Clan, we had Mos
Def playing the black delegate. And that was one of the first sketches we had
shot last season, which was kind of like one of those things--`Well, man, this
is going to be a good season.' Kind of set--it set a good tone for the season
that we can kind of go into it.

GROSS: Now you're really funny at doing white people, and I think, like, when
you're white, you don't think of there being, like, a white accent. Do you
know what I mean?

Mr. CHAPPELLE: Yeah, absolutely.

GROSS: But when I hear you do it, I realized, OK, there's definitely, like, a
white accent. So what do you do when you do white?

Mr. CHAPPELLE: Oh, I take the rhythm out of my voice. I try to keep it
monotone and even. But again--all right, see, I do these things, but I'm not
really--it's almost like a--sometimes I'll watch old movies and how they
portray black people, you know, like Stepin Fetchit and all these things. I
remember watching them, and something in the movie made me laugh, and they
were like, `Why are you laughing at this?' And it's not that I'm laughing at
black people as much as I'm laughing at the way black people were perceived,
like this is what they actually thought about black people. It just seems
ridiculous to me. So I think, you know, when I do this, I think--again, it's
not malicious, and it's not necessarily like what I'm thinking like; it's just
a funny caricature of what, you know, the world looks like through my eyes.

GROSS: Is there a particular person you conjure up when you do a white man?

Mr. CHAPPELLE: Not a particular; it's a composite. This is a composite
character.

GROSS: Of who?

Mr. CHAPPELLE: It's funny, man. All right. You know, when I was growing up
in DC in particular, this is what--now this isn't true for me personally, but
there's a lot of black people that I know who really have never had any
personal experience with white people, which is weird to think about in this
day and time, but DC is a predominantly black city and, because of the
economic situation or whatever, they just didn't have any contact with white
people outside of being authority figures: Officer, Your Honor, you know,
it's a teacher or principal, but always some kind of authority figure. So
there's this whole--you know, their experience across the color line normally
happened via television or, you know, something where you're dealing with an
authority figure.

So--I, on the other hand--you know, my parents had split up; my mom was living
in DC; my dad was living in Ohio. I traveled to both places, so I was in the
nation's capital on one hand and I was in the heartland of America on another.
So, you know, I just--culturally I kind of absorbed a lot. I don't know, man;
I got a pretty good understanding about the culture. I think that all these
differences are just cultural things.

GROSS: My guest is Dave Chappelle. We'll talk more after a break. This is
FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: My guest is Dave Chappelle. His Comedy Central series "Chappelle's
Show" features stand-up, sketches and music.

You said in one episode of your show that after someone complained that your
show was offensive to black people--and that person, by the way, was
white--you came up with this idea for a game show called "I Know Black
People."

(Soundbite of "Chappelle's Show")

Audience: (In unison) "I Know Black People."

Mr. CHAPPELLE: Welcome to the show "I Know Black People," where we take
contestants who claim they know black people and put their knowledge of
African-American culture to the test. The contestant who answers the most
questions, of course, wins our grand prize. Let's bring them out one at a
time now. Our first contestant is a professor of African-American studies and
history at Fordham University, the New York City police officer who's a writer
for such black television shows as "The Chris Rock Show" and "Chappelle's
Show." OK. Our next contestant works in a Korean grocery store; he's a DJ
and claims to have many black...

How can black people rise up and overcome?

Unidentified Woman #1: Um, how can they rise up and overcome? Well, can they
over--no.

(Soundbite of bell)

Mr. CHAPPELLE: That is correct.

(Soundbite of applause)

Unidentified Man #2: Reparations.

Mr. CHAPPELLE: That is acceptable.

Unidentified Man #3: This is a rap lyric?

Mr. CHAPPELLE: No, this--I'm sorry.

Unidentified Man #3: Oh, this is a general question.

Mr. CHAPPELLE: This is the actual question.

Unidentified Man #3: All right. That's a--it was a complex answer there.

(Soundbite of bell)

Mr. CHAPPELLE: That is correct.

Unidentified Man #4: Staying alive.

(Soundbite of bell)

Mr. CHAPPELLE: That is correct. That is correct.

Unidentified Man #5: By stopping cutting each other's throats.

(Soundbite of bell)

Mr. CHAPPELLE: That also is correct.

How can black people rise up and overcome?

Unidentified Woman #2: Get out and vote?

(Soundbite of buzzer)

Mr. CHAPPELLE: That is an incorrect answer. I'm sorry.

(Soundbite of applause)

Mr. CHAPPELLE: Well, folks, our...

GROSS: Dave Chappelle, that's such a funny idea for a show. Can you talk a
little bit about what happened in the writing of this sketch, like, what it
was like to put this sketch together?

Mr. CHAPPELLE: Originally we were going to do--we were going to write the
material; we were going to write it like an actual sketch. And when we sat
down and started to write it, it was one of these things where it's like,
`This would be better if we got actual people and just quizzed them.' And we
just came up with questions. We just had them...

GROSS: So you actually got real people. You got, like, a white cop...

Mr. CHAPPELLE: All those people were real. We had them get us a police
officer, get us a Korean grocer, get us a black dude. Yeah, everybody--it was
completely authentic. And then all the hosting elements were just like--it
was, like, off the cuff, you know. But the answers were incredible, man, the
things that these people were saying. One of the things--they're going to see
me, so they kind of go for being funny. But all of them were really nervous,
and they were all kind of afraid that I was making fun of them. And then once
we got to shooting, I think everyone just kind of relaxed and kind of unwound
and--I don't know. That's one of my favorite sketches we've done.

GROSS: Now you grew up in different neighborhoods because--I guess this was
because of your parents' divorce. If I understand correctly, you grew up in
Silver Springs, Maryland; Yellow Springs, Ohio, because your father was
teaching at Antioch College, which is located there; and Washington, DC. So
you went to schools in these different places, too?

Mr. CHAPPELLE: Yeah, the elementary school was Silver Springs, middle school
in Ohio and high school in Washington.

GROSS: Were you almost part of, like, different cultures in those different
places? Were there different ways of, like, dressing and different music that
your friends listened to, depending on which place it was and whether it was
the suburbs or the city or Ohio or Washington?

Mr. CHAPPELLE: I think elementary school was more integrated, 'cause, you
know, people were younger; they mixed freely with black kids, white kids;
everybody was--you know, there was no real racial hang-ups in elementary
school. And people weren't really clothes-conscious, 'cause we were young.
And then by the time I got to the middle school in Ohio, that's when you start
seeing alligators on people's sweater and people started getting into, like,
status symbols and stuff. And that was the first time where I really started
thinking, `Hey, man, I'm poor,' and I was like, `We don't have any money, do
we?'

And then when I got to high school--so then I started getting into clothes,
then I go to high school and, you know, I was gone during middle school; crack
came out while I was gone. So I saw, like, the before and after picture. I
had to piece the crack epidemic together. Like I remember my first day of
high school and they were like, `All right, look, if you have a pager on in
school, then that is immediate grounds for suspension, because we all know
what that means.' I was in the back like, `I don't know what that means.'
And then, of course, I figured out that--and then I was also trying to figure
out how everyone had all this, like, gold and expensive stuff, and then I was
like, `Oh, OK, everybody's selling drugs.' I remember so many people in the
beginning like my freshman year of high school, they were selling drugs; I
can't even imagine how many people were using them. You know, the crack
epidemic was crazy, man.

And I think a lot of the stuff that the--I did my act just coming from Ohio
and from--and then going straight back to DC during the crack epidemic; I
think that all the inequities were just underlined.

GROSS: So how did you change as you changed environments?

Mr. CHAPPELLE: It's funny, man. When I was in Ohio, I was at first, like, a
real confident period in my life. Like, I started gaining confidence, 'cause
for these kids I was this outsider and I had to make friends. And that was
when I got, like, this huge reputation; everyone was like, `This guy's really
funny.' I remember in middle school, everyone was just like, `This guy Dave
is so hilarious.' Then when I got to high school and the crack epidemic was
out, you know, what it took to be popular there and then, I just wasn't
willing to do, you know.

GROSS: Which was what?

Mr. CHAPPELLE: Sell drugs.

GROSS: Right.

Mr. CHAPPELLE: If you didn't have money, you couldn't get the girl you
wanted. You know, it was a crack epidemic. Selling drugs was like a
legitimate job in the high school that I was going to. And all around DC, it
was like, girls liked drug dealers 'cause they had money. I wasn't willing to
be there. But it was kind of like that context kind of isolated me initially,
and then when I started doing stand-up, it was like I thrived all over again.

GROSS: So when you started doing stand-up and you were still in high
school...

Mr. CHAPPELLE: Fourteen.

GROSS: ...14--OK--in Washington, what were the jokes about? What was the
humor about?

Mr. CHAPPELLE: Like--man, the first act--Jesse Jackson was running for
president, so I used to do jokes about that.

GROSS: Like what?

Mr. CHAPPELLE: Used to talk about stuff I saw on TV like "Alf" and--but they
all had race in them in one way or another. Obviously Jesse Jackson jokes
gonna have some racialism. "Alf," my whole thing was like the alien comes
three billion miles from space and gets a home with a white family was the
paradox in that joke, which all sounds corny now, but remember I was 14, so it
was like, `Wow,' you know.

What else was I talking about? All kinds of stuff. Like in the very
beginning, I didn't know that comedians had material. Like I thought they
just went up there and would just talk spontaneously. So I used to do the
same thing, which is probably better that I started that way, 'cause that in
and of itself was a skill that, you know--a lot of comedians are afraid to
abandon their act once they get a good amount of time; they just want to stick
to it.

GROSS: So who were your audiences then?

Mr. CHAPPELLE: All right. In those days in Washington--again, remember, this
is a majority black city--there was no black comedy clubs. And I remember
club owners saying things like, `We only put one--we'll never put more than
one black person on a show because it offends the audience.' I've heard all
these things...

GROSS: Oh, gee.

Mr. CHAPPELLE: ...and in Washington, DC. You know, it was pretty exclusive.
There was one point where they actually had a rule that there--`No more
cursing on our stage.' It was like--this is in '88. And one of the comics
who was black--this was pretty funny--he was like--he's like, `Look, man,' he
said, `I curse.' He said, `Black people use profanity because we live a
profane lifestyle.' And then he says something that I can't say on the radio.
But he's basically like, if you see a roach crawling up the wall, you're not
going to be like, `Oh, gee, look at the roach.' He's going to be, `Look at
this mother(censored) roach.' You know, he's just going to go for it--I know
you're going to cut that out. But it was really funny, though. But just the
fact--thinking back on it, the fact that there was all these limitations and
all these weird issues that the club owners had, in one way, maybe prepared me
for television.

GROSS: My guest is Dave Chappelle. We'll talk more after a break. This is
FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: My guest is Dave Chappelle. His sketch comedy series "Chappelle's
Show" is on Comedy Central. When we left off, he was saying that the
limitations club owners wanted to put on his act helped prepare him for
producers' expectations in broadcast TV.

Mr. CHAPPELLE: You know, before I had this show, I'd done 11 television
pilots, which was very grueling, you know. It's hard to develop TV, man,
especially if you're the youngest guy in the room. And at first I would defer
to these people just because they were older than me and they all had suits
on, and I guess they'd know what they're talking about: `First, Dave, let me
tell you something about TV. People want blah-blah-blah, blah-blah-blah and
blah-blah-blah, and our research shows blah-blah-blah, blah, blah, blah-blah,
blah blah.'

Done that 11 times. You know, and each time it got progressively more
frustrating. You know, I used to have arguments and all kinds of stuff, and
the last straw, I was developing a show for FOX, and they wanted me to change
one of the characters arbitrarily to make the character white, 'cause they
felt like it would make the show--the word they used was, have a more
universal appeal. It's like, `Oh, OK. You're the universe now?' But, it was
like, will give it a more universal appeal. So I quit, because at that point,
I was like, `This is impossible. This is an impossible thing to negotiate.
There's no way to'--I mean, I don't know. You just can't make TV that way.
Like, then how do explain "The Cosby Show" working? Or how do you explain
Will Smith's show working? You know, there were so many examples of
successful shows, and these were considered flukes. Like, they were
successful shows with all-black casts, and it was considered a total fluke
because of some pie chart this guy was holding. And that's when I was, like,
`OK, there's no way I can do this.'

GROSS: My guest is Dave Chappelle, and he has a weekly show on Comedy Central
and now a Showtime special coming up on Saturday, Labor Day weekend at 9:00.

I want to ask you another question about having grown up in three different
places, suburban Maryland, suburban Ohio and Washington, DC.

Mr. CHAPPELLE: Rural Ohio.

GROSS: Rural Ohio.

Mr. CHAPPELLE: Suburban Maryland, rural Ohio and Washington.

GROSS: OK. So that exposes you to different people, different cultures,
different kind of geographic landscapes, different ways of living, and I'm
wondering if that helped give you the ability to kind of stand back and look
at people and see what was kind of funny and ridiculous and absurd about all
of us. Do you know what I mean? 'Cause I feel like you have that gift, of
just, like, looking back and...

Mr. CHAPPELLE: Yeah, absolutely.

GROSS: ...standing outside and looking at everyone and seeing some pretty
funny things about us all.

Mr. CHAPPELLE: Yeah, because most of the people that are stereotyped, I know
the people that the stereotypes are based on, like personally. I've met
people like that, you know. You know, I mean, I can remember friends of mine
growing up. Like, we used to all play football after school, and, like, four
of us was black, two of us was Vietnamese; there was a Jewish guy from the
Deep South. It was an eclectic group, you know, but we all got along. We
all, you know, were friends. In the household I grew up in, my parents were
somewhat--I don't know how to explain it, but over our mantel place, there was
pictures of Malcolm X, you know. I listened to Dick Gregory records growing
up. I listened to The Last Poets. I mean, you know, there were books all
over the house and we were always reading stuff. So, like, you know, like
people like Frederick Douglass, you know, these guys' pictures were on my
walls when I was growing up.

GROSS: You described your family growing up as the broke Huxtables.

Mr. CHAPPELLE: Yeah, we were like broke Huxtables.

GROSS: Your mother was--or is a Unitarian minister?

Mr. CHAPPELLE: She was, yeah. Yeah. I believe she was the first black
woman ordained in the Unitarian Church.

GROSS: And your father was a music professor.

Mr. CHAPPELLE: Yeah.

GROSS: What kind of music?

Mr. CHAPPELLE: Voice. He used to sing opera and stuff.

GROSS: So your family was really very educated and probably instilled those
values in you. Was there pressure on you to do well in school when what you
really wanted was to be a comic?

Mr. CHAPPELLE: I mean, first of all, I was a horrible student. My
parents--you know, my dad was very philosophical about these kinds of things.
As a matter of fact, when--I'm the first person in my family not to go to
college, like, since slavery. And my grandmother, my mother's mother didn't
like that at all. She at first, because--I mean, I was 17. I'm, like, `I'm
not going to college. I'm going to move to New York and try to make it in
stand-up.' And she kind of flipped out. She was like, `It's a dream of
mine.' This is the heavy guilt trip. She'd go, `It's a dream of mine to see
all of my grandbabies graduate from college before I die.' So why you gotta
bring dying up, man? That's a lot of pressure. But then my dad's whole take
on it was, `Unless you want to do something that requires you go to college,
then college could very well be a waste of your time.'

GROSS: And he was a college professor. So coming from him, that must have
really registered on you.

Mr. CHAPPELLE: Yeah. He was an educator. He was an educated man, and I
think my parents ultimately wanted me to be happy. You know, I mean, my
argument was, you know, `Dad, if you're making a teacher's salary, that's--if
I can make a teacher's salary doing stand-up, to me, I'd rather do that than
teach.' It's like--and he understood where I was coming from. Like, you
know, it's like I didn't necessarily have to be rich and famous. Obviously I
wanted to, but that wasn't necessarily my aim. I was just really, really,
really--to this day, I really like doing stand-up.

GROSS: Since you started when you were so young, your mother had to--did she
have to, or did she just want to come to the clubs with you? Was that
required as, like, an official chaperone because you were underage?

Mr. CHAPPELLE: Originally she had to. Once everyone started knowing me,
this was kind of like our routine: We'd meet down at the club. I'd be coming
from school, she'd be coming from work. It was cool, man. It was like a good
way to spend time together. And then at a certain age, like maybe a year into
it, you know, she'd get tired at night. We'd both burn the candle at both
ends, but I'd always want to go, so she'd just let me go. And you know, not
until I'm an adult does she tell me how scary that was for her, you know.

GROSS: In what way?

Mr. CHAPPELLE: Man, she'd tell stories like she'd hear gunshots in the
middle of the night, you know. She'd go, `Oh, my God. Is my baby all right?'
I mean, remember, this is DC during the crack epidemic. But I guess in her
mind, it's like of all of the bad things that my child could be doing, he just
wants to tell jokes at these clubs. And it was a controlled environment for
me. It's not like the bartender is going to give me drinks. I'm 14. You
know, everyone kind of looked out for me. It wasn't like--I mean, I saw stuff
going on, but not really. It was more of a--it was really goal-oriented time
I was spending there.

GROSS: Well, Dave Chappelle, thank you so much for talking with us. I really
appreciate it.

Mr. CHAPPELLE: All right. No problem. It was good to meet you.

GROSS: Dave Chappelle, recorded last September. Tonight, Comedy Central will
run six episodes of "Chappelle's Show" back to back. Our end-of-the-year
series Last Laughs concludes tomorrow.

(Credits)

GROSS: I'm Terry Gross.
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.