Splitsider

I'm not really sure why Next Media Animation keeps restricting itself to coverage of news stories. In just this one video about Dave Chappelle's joining Twitter, there are enough premises for like 8 movies. A standup comic who performs naked, the fight for territory between a bear and a reclusive comedian, forced suicide after a wise man tells you you don't exist. All solid entertainment ideas.

Chris Rock said this week that he's "been trying to get Chappelle to go on tour," partly inspired by Kanye West and Jay-Z's recent collaboration. They could call it Watch the Mic, or something better than that. Names aside, this partnership would be apocalyptically good. Like, I would fear for the safety of the world if the comic power of these two people were released onto one stage. First the tides would start changing extra fast, and then the sun would inch closer to the Earth, and there would be snow in June and swarms of locusts in March. March would come after June. That's how fucked up [...]

Dave Chappelle sure doesn't like it when people try to videotape his standup appearances. He hates it so much, in fact, that he's willing to derail an entire show and stand on stage for 45 minutes doing little more than sighing and complaining about the offending taper. That's just what he did last week, telling a single joke in 45 minutes — at a charity event, no less! Look, Dave, I appreciate that you want to keep your new material under wraps until you release it widely in your own way. But you're the one who's built up all this demand by going off the grid and now [...]

Last night, Dave Chappelle did two surprise shows at Cobb's Comedy Club in San Francisco, both of which sold out in about an hour, naturally. Someone who was in the audience told me that he mentioned a comeback no less than five times during his set: Admittedly, Chappelle does not have an act, so he mostly riffed on current topics and interacted with the audience for about 90 minutes. Still, he was hilarious as always. Perhaps the most shocking thing, outside of the fact that Dave has bulked up considerably and could now be considered ripped, was how much he brought up a potential comeback. He even stated that [...]

The Dave Chappelle Comeback Tour has begun! First stop, Twitter. Next stop, total standup comedy domination.

Over at NPR, Andrew Lapin makes the argument that Dave Chapelle left show business, and stayed away, because his fans simply became too obnoxious. Lapin uses Chappelle's stand-up showdown in Florida, among other instances, to chide Chapelle's devotees into calming the hell down so he can be great again. Personally, I'm not buying it.

Now, clearly, I'm not saying Chappelle should enjoy it when people scream "Fuck your couch!" while he's buying light bulbs, but it seems pretty clear from his abrupt exit from the limelight that Dave's inner turmoil had more to do with the concept of creative control and the pressure of production and the [...]

As it turns out, rumors about Dave Chapelle's new show have been greatly exaggerated. "Absolutely untrue,” says Chappelle’s rep Carla Sims in regards to The Daily's report that the comedian might debut a new show via a paid subscription service. So, Dave's probably just holding out until he can get an HBO deal somewhere down the line, right? Yeah, that's it. He'll be back. Someday…someday he'll be back.

Chappelle's Show is unlike almost any sketch comedy show before it. It doesn't come from the same sketch comedy tradition that SNL and Monty Python created; it's first and foremost a vehicle for Dave Chappelle. He and his co-writer Neal Brennan wrote every single sketch and Chappelle stars in almost every one. Although there are regularly featured actors like Charlie Murphy and Donnell Rawlings, there really is no permanent cast to speak of. The show really has more in common with vanity driven sitcoms starring stand-up comedians than any other sketch show in terms of it's approach to humor. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, the show became [...]