"Dave Chappelle's Block Party"

Forget the red-state, blue-state divide. In Chappelle's world, there's only one America, and it's big enough to include everybody.

By Stephanie Zacharek

Read more: Stephanie Zacharek, Movies, Movie Reviews, Arts & Entertainment, Reviews

March 3, 2006 | "Dave Chappelle's Block Party" takes place in two parts of the country so different from each other, geographically and sociologically, that they could almost be two different Americas: One is Yellow Springs, Ohio, the small town near Dayton where Chappelle lives, a laid-back landscape of tree-lined streets and little stores where you can buy chewing gum or cigarettes or whatever you need. The other is Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, a large city neighborhood of brownstones (some magisterial, others languishing in disrepair) and mom-and-pop establishments of all types, many of them friendly-looking and inviting, others forebodingly seedy. Creeping gentrification notwithstanding, Bed-Stuy is a neighborhood that still has plenty of rough edges, the kind of place that most people in Middle America, or even elsewhere in New York, wouldn't go out of their way to visit.

Yellow Springs is populated largely (but not wholly) by white people; Bed-Stuy is mostly (but not wholly) black and Hispanic. And bridging these disparate countries-within-a-country is an extraordinarily gifted comedian who, one day, decided he wanted to host a New York block party featuring some of his favorite hip-hop artists. He'd invite a bunch of Ohians to come to Brooklyn, at his expense, to see the show; people from New York would hear about the party and simply show up.

While the rest of us are busy carving up the country -- red state, blue state; urban, suburban; sophisticated, rustic; them, us -- in "Dave Chappelle's Block Party," there's room for only one America, but it's one big enough to include everybody. "Block Party" -- directed by Michel Gondry, and shot on film, not video, by Gondry's frequent collaborator, cinematographer Ellen Kuras -- is partly a performance documentary, a record of an afternoon-into-evening concert that took place on Sept. 18, 2004, at the L-shaped intersection of two quiet Bed-Stuy streets: The artists featured on the program include Erykah Badu, Jill Scott, Kanye West, the Roots and Dead Prez, as well as, remarkably, the reunited Fugees. But "Block Party" is also a record of Chappelle just horsing around, both in New York and Ohio. And Chappelle's horsing around is often funnier, and more brilliant, than the routines other comedians spend months honing.

Chappelle will turn out to be, I think, one of the defining comedians of our era, partly because his jokes and routines -- as he has shown on his hit Comedy Central series "Chappelle's Show" and elsewhere -- are so sociologically sharp that they almost defy laughter. I'm still feeling rattled by a sketch I saw on the first-season DVD of "Chappelle's Show," in which Chappelle plays a black white supremacist. (Blind from birth, he has simply convinced himself that he's white, availing himself of all the power and standing that his imaginary skin color grants him.) I'm not wholly convinced I didn't dream this sketch. Chappelle's ideas are both outlandish and beautifully conceived, and although his riffs never seem forced or canned, you get the feeling they spring from thoughts that have been marinating for a long time. His gags have the rare distinction of feeling both spontaneous and considered.

In "Block Party," Chappelle observes at one point, "Old people fuckin' love me. You know you must be doing something right if old people love you." The remark is pure self-deprecation -- Chappelle is making fun only of himself. But even though he's just 32, there are ways in which he seems much older. There's nothing careless about Dave Chappelle. He shows a great lightness of spirit balanced with a sense of responsibility, something that has become even more evident in his recent appearances on "Inside the Actors Studio" and "The Oprah Winfrey Show." Explaining why he failed to show up to begin the third season of "Chappelle's Show," he told "Actors Studio" host James Lipton that the deal-making was what got to him, that there were too many people out to take a piece of him, and he wondered what he'd have left of himself in the end. "The higher up I go, for some reason, the less happy I am," he said.

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