Black Comedy

3:59 pm EST January 8th, 2007 | Politics | 8 Comments

Interesting take.

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8 Responses to “Black Comedy”

  1. Dr. Anatole Gavage-Huskanoy says:
    January 8, 2007 at 4:25 pm

    One of the things Chris Rock said he was doing with his Chris Rock show was to try to put together a network of black comedy writers. I guess that fell apart when the show did. Chappelle had similar aspirations, but that obviously went south. Whereas in the white comedy world a writer can go from standup to MadTV to the Simpsons to a sitcom fairly seamlessly.

    I would say that there might be a potential advantage in this, though, which is that since black comedy writers are relatively untapped (and there’s obviously a market that’s also untapped) it might be somewhat easier to assemble a top-notch team of black writers that might otherwise be diluted if there were a bunch of competing shows. To use an analogy: there are lots of great black dramatic actors that were go relatively untapped. Then came The Wire, which has not just a very large cast but a majority black cast, and all the sudden you have the best-acted ensemble show on TV. Once you get a big name like Chappelle or Jamie Foxx behind a comedy project, they could have any writer they wanted. There’s no enduring network for black comedy writers yet, but if they can’t break into Colbert or SNL, maybe they’ll just have to do it for themselves. Or maybe this will be a wake-up call for Stewart and Colbert.

  2. Dr. Anatole Gavage-Huskanoy says:
    January 8, 2007 at 4:30 pm

    Good god. I most certainly did not click post 4 times. I don’t think I even clicked it twice.

  3. Quaker in a Basement says:
    January 8, 2007 at 4:41 pm

    I hope that op-ed gets him a few good gigs. That was good.

  4. Dr. Anatole Gavage-Huskanoy says:
    January 8, 2007 at 4:51 pm

    Also, I would say that the astonishingly awesome run at the Chappelle show indicates that the writing talent is just waiting to be tapped. Although my understanding is that the majority of those sketches were written by Chappelle and Neal Brennan alone. At least the audience is there.

  5. August J. Pollak says:
    January 8, 2007 at 4:52 pm

    Wow. I had no idea Carlos was an actor; I thought he was one of the show’s writers or at the very least an actual staff member.

  6. August J. Pollak says:
    January 8, 2007 at 4:56 pm

    Wow. I had no idea Carlos was an actor; I thought he was one of the show’s writers or at the very least an actual staff member.

  7. fd10801 says:
    January 8, 2007 at 5:21 pm

    Saw some of his standup at MySpace — he is FUNNY!

    http://tinyurl.com/y69ewm

  8. Dr. Anatole Gavage-Huskanoy says:
    January 8, 2007 at 5:41 pm

    The guy who writes Wonder Showzen, my personal favorite comedy show right now, is black. Although it just got cancelled.