DAVE CHAPPELLE
"Life is short, break the rules," Mark Twain
Last fall, Dave Chappelle became the 22nd comedian to receive the Mark Twain Award for American Humor, the country’s highest honor in comedy. The filmed ceremony is currently streaming on Netflix, and for those in need of a laugh, we at PROVOKR can’t recommend it enough.
The 2019 event includes tributes both moving and hilarious from Tiffany Haddish, Jon Stewart, Bradley Cooper, Q-Tip, Aziz Ansari, Michael Che and Sarah Silverman, among others, with musical performances by Common, Erykah Badu, John Legend and Yasiin Bey. Of the many highlights, some standouts include the speech from “Chappelle’s Show” co-creator and writer Neal Brennan detailing what it’s really like to work with Chappelle; a hilarious story from Ansari about how Chappelle (recently) convinced him to eat psychedelic mushrooms, and Che, addressing Chappelle directly, “ …it’s weird for me to even talk to you about comedy because you can tell everyone in this room everything they need to know about comedy, but there’s one thing that you’ll never know about comedy and that’s doing comedy with a Dave Chappelle to look up to.”
What mainly makes this ceremony rewarding is how it relays, through anecdotes and footage, the story of Chappelle’s life and career, from the early years leading up to the groundbreaking Chappelle’s Show through his infamous walk-away from a $50 million-dollar offer from Comedy Central. It then covers his subsequent 12-year absence from show business, of which Chappelle confesses, “It was hell. I watched the world go on without me. I mourned the loss of it. And after a while, I didn’t care,” and then continues up through his heralded (and Grammy-winning) return to stand-up, and the free benefit concert he hosted to honor the victims of the 2019 mass shooting in Dayton, Ohio (his current home-state).
Toward the end of his speech, former Daily Show host Stewart described the essence of Dave Chappelle perfectly, saying, “I don’t know of anybody who cares more deeply and anyone who gives less of a fuck.”
If you are like us, you’ll stay up the rest of the night tracking down your favorite moments from “Chappelle’s Show,” so watch it early.
The Mark Twain Award’s first recipient was Richard Pryor, and recent honorees include Julia Louis-Dreyfus, David Letterman, Eddie Murphy, Bill Murray, Ellen DeGeneres and Tina Fey. Since 1998 the Twain award is awarded annually by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
