My Next Guest Needs No Introduction with David Letterman (2018) s03e03 Episode Script
Dave Chappelle
[birds chirping]
[cow mowing]
[indistinct chatter]
[Chappelle]
I'mma "Happy Gilmore" this one.
Badass practicing.
Think I'm gonna kill a guy or something.
[David] That's about 300 yards.
[Chappelle]
I need a stunt double for this.
Nice, Dave.
There it is.
You really can do it left-handed.
[David] Yeah. Oh, yeah.
[Chappelle] That's amazing.
Are you, like, ambidextrous?
I'm Presbyterian.
[chuckles]
[theme music playing]
[indistinct chatter]
[David] I'm so happy to be here.
Uh, I've been working
on this man for a long, long time.
And the more I know about him,
the more I want to be this guy.
I want to bring out here someone you know.
And if you know him, you love him.
The true master of his craft,
David Chappelle, ladies and gentlemen.
[clapping, cheering]
Hi! Ohh!
How are you, bro?
-Great to see you.
-I'm great. Good to see you. Thank you.
Thank you very much for coming out here.
Oh, I stacked the deck tonight.
That's all right.
Listen, um, this is a big thrill for me
because I have educated myself
a great deal about you and your life.
And it's nothing but respect
that I have generated for you.
And I'm thrilled to be here tonight.
And, do you know what else?
-I'll let you talk in a minute.
-That's all right.
Twenty-seven years ago,
almost 27 years ago,
we met for the first time.
-On your show.
-On my show.
Yes, and ironically,
the first time
I was supposed to do your show,
I didn't have a suit.
I wore jeans and a t-shirt.
So, I got bumped.
Really? There was a dress code?
Yeah,
but that's why I got a suit on tonight.
I said, I'll never sit
in front of David Letterman again.
[David laughs]
-You ain't get bumped from this--
-Yeah, I ain't getting--
[audience clapping]
What was your life 27 years ago?
I must have been around 19.
I had been out of high school
for a year and a half.
I was living in New York City.
Being on your show,
at that time, was the pinnacle
for a comedian.
If you had a Letterman set,
there was nothing bigger.
Hm.
And I got one.
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome
to the program, Dave Chappelle. Dave!
[audience cheering, clapping]
[upbeat music playing]
Do you remember
how your set went that night?
Good enough.
[chuckles]
I pay close attention
to all this little racial history.
There's stuff in New York
you guys should see.
Like, in Washington Square Park,
this is interesting.
They have two big trees where they used
to hang criminals back in the old days,
but they would actually hang white people
and Black people
on different trees.
[audience laughing]
Like that's going to hurt our feelings,
you know?
Television's a different animal.
I still consider myself, like,
a real nightclub comedian.
Now, I'm a nightclub comic
that does the trick
on television but the atmosphere,
that thing that I developed myself in,
was a lot more forgiving
than what television was and is.
I'm, like, 100 years old.
So, when I started out doing comedy,
it was-- You had to have a hunk,
five minutes to get on The Tonight Show.
And now,
it's completely different.
Everybody has a deal for hour specials.
First of all, the idea
of assembling that kind of material,
I find crushing.
But you are so prolific.
How many hours do you have now
on platforms on this planet?
I know when I quit my show,
Chappelle's Show,
I went to San Francisco a lot.
The Bay Area.
And I recorded all of my sets.
Audio recorded them.
Literally, probably,
hundreds of hours of tapes.
Some of that stuff made its way
into the work that I'm doing now, but…
somehow, I had the foresight
to know that was a special time
in my artistic development,
and I have a record of it.
Mm-hm.
At that time,
I had thought that I ruined my career.
When you left the TV show?
Yeah, I had never seen it work out
before like that.
Because you get out of the line,
it may be,
"Too bad.
We've got other people ahead of you."
-That's the end of it.
-Yeah.
And I think when the specter
of making it left the room,
and I was just doing it,
literally, just for my livelihood,
and 'cause I loved doing it,
it made me a better comedian.
It made me a more courageous comedian.
And, uh, the worst thing
that can happen to you in your mind,
when you're working at it,
is that you lose it all or blow it,
but once you face that,
it's not everything.
You know, I'm so excited
about several ideas here tonight.
One of which is you leaving the show.
[chuckles] You know this
because there is a historical video
and print documentary
of you going from outlet to outlet
to outlet to outlet,
answering the question,
"What's the matter with you?
You left a huge-- What is the deal?"
They would fill in the blanks for you
because they were so desperate.
And the longer I ruminated on this,
the better this thing sounded
to me because,
what bigger, cool,
badass thing to do than just say,
"Goodnight, everybody!"
And then, adios.
I mean, how cool is that?
Well, initially, it was terrible.
Yeah.
[laughing]
Were you scared?
You must've been scared crazy.
Of course. I was terrified.
And there were legal issues
around departing a show like that.
And clearly, I didn't have the money
that I thought I might need
to get through a decision like that.
So, in the beginning,
it was like anything.
You've got to face a lot of your fears.
Some I faced better than others,
but I was determined,
you know what I mean?
I didn't want
to make a choice like that and then…
and then just be a parable
of what not to do.
[David] Sure.
So, I just had to figure out--
But, from this perspective,
don't you look back on it and think,
"Kinda cool"?
Oh my God, yeah.
Now, David Letterman is in Ohio and…
you know, shit worked out.
[laughing]
But before it worked out,
it was-- It was really scary, man.
I don't know what you think happens
when you quit a successful show.
I'll tell you what doesn't happen.
They don't go,
"Good luck with your future endeavors."
[audience laughing]
That's not what happens.
It was cold out there.
I kept reading over and over again,
when you left your show,
there was an episode described,
and it was never elucidated,
that somebody on the crew, uh, laughed
at a sketch you did.
And you thought the laughter was
on the wrong side of the humor.
Do you recall what that was?
Oh, yeah, I remember.
It just raised
an interesting question to me,
which I was already wrestling with
in the first place.
You know, Dave,
I-- I like to go hard in the paint.
At that time, especially in my career,
I always felt
it could end at any minute,
so I err on the side of excess.
There's instances where you go too far.
You're playing with powerful shit,
doing jokes about racism,
and this -ism and that -ism.
To me, I looked at it
as an occupational hazard,
but I also realized, like,
that I was bigger
than I was comfortable with.
I didn't trust the circumstances of the--
being that big or whatever.
Do you remember
what the person was laughing at
that you felt-- You diagnosed as being,
"Oh, this is wrong."
Yeah, but more vividly, I just remember…
the feeling. The way it made me feel.
Is there something about the episode
you don't wanna talk about?
It was so bad. I fucking quit the show.
It wasn't the only reason I quit,
but it-- it--
It definitely helped make the case.
-Like, I don't need this.
-Mm-hm.
-I just don't need to worry about this.
-Yeah.
I was-- I was--
And I'll leave it alone after this.
No, you're fine.
I was just curious as to what
the material-- that material had been.
Uh… [sighs]
The sketch wasn't that bad.
It's actually funny.
It was-- It was a pixie.
It was me dressed in blackface
who'd pop up
anytime a person felt the pains of racism.
Which is a tough trick to pull off.
See? It's not a bad sketch,
but hearing the wrong laugh
while you're dressed that way,
it makes you feel shame.
-And that's why.
-Fair enough. Yeah.
By the way,
I have very big balls to talk about this.
[laughing, clapping]
Well, what about me?
-I asked the question.
-[laughing]
[cheering, clapping]
[both chuckling]
The best part about quitting the show
was coming back here.
This is when I started to fully realize
the value of being part of a community.
People come from the media
or other places looking for me
or this, that, or the other.
People here were very protective of me.
They didn't look at me
as a celebrity that took a spill.
I was more like the guy up the street.
And having that will help you survive--
You said, "Took a spill,"
but you didn't really take a spill.
If the show had been canceled,
that's a spill.
If Evel Knievel tried to jump 12 cars
but didn't make it, that's a spill.
I feel like the attempts at these jokes,
that's like Evel Knievel tricks.
I hope to land them, but…
[David] Yeah, but let me just say,
you could line up every sketch show
in production today.
And, you know, they're fine.
But to watch you,
as a person sharing your thoughts
and your writing, far more compelling.
Oh, wow.
Whatever that played into the decision,
and I know it did play into the decision,
you're so much better off,
which is not to say,
"Go do a sketch show if you want."
-I'm very happy that I did what I did.
-Yeah.
You know, in hindsight.
It was the biggest thing
that's happened in your life so far,
other than the birth of your kids.
It was a very, very, very formative event
or a sequence of events.
There wasn't any one part of it.
But if I had finished the show
feeling the way that I felt,
I would never have been the same.
Tell me, where are we, by the way?
-Oh, here? Right now?
-Yeah. [chuckles]
[laughing]
We are on the outskirts
of lovely Yellow Springs, Ohio.
There you go.
[clapping, cheering]
[upbeat hip-hop music playing]
[David] Yellow Springs.
-This is the best!
-Very nice.
This place hasn't changed in 100 years.
[David] This has gotta be different
than when you were here as a kid, right?
-Aesthetically, almost identical.
-You're kidding me.
I remember going here, getting groceries,
walking here with my dad.
That place was a diner
by a different name.
That place was a bank by a different name.
And right across this Christmas tree field
is a lovely establishment
called Young's Dairy.
Yeah, we saw that coming in.
We also saw Antioch College.
Antioch College. Antioch College
was a cultural juggernaut here,
especially during the '60s.
It's the alma mater of people
like Coretta Scott King.
John Lithgow's father
was a professor there.
John Lithgow,
the famous actor, grew up here.
Your family has connections to Antioch?
My father used to be a teacher there,
and I think he was an administrator there.
You grew up here?
In part. My parents were divorced.
[David] You were born in DC.
I lived in DC many years,
but my father lived here.
So, since '76, Christmas vacations.
I went to middle school here.
So what has been the constant
that keeps this place constant?
Well, I think the charm
of small-town life is…
your days are more predictable.
The faces are more familiar.
People know my name. I know their names.
When you're famous, everyone knows you.
You don't know anybody.
-But here, everyone's famous.
-This isn't typical small-town.
-[Chappelle] We're about that life.
-[David] It's not just brand-new stuff.
This goes way back with the town.
-[Chappelle] Oh my gosh, yeah.
-[David] This awareness. This activism.
In reading a little bit
about Yellow Springs,
there is a unique association
with this community
and slavery.
The relationship was not straightforward,
but yet, it was there.
And it seemed to be viable
in helping men and women leave slavery.
Do you know a little bit about
that in the history of this city?
Sure. Ohio was an abolitionist state.
So, slavery was never legal here
in the state of Ohio.
However, we didn't have suffrage either.
So, freedom was illegal,
and slavery was illegal for Black people.
The Ohio River was the line.
Over in Kentucky, they were slaving away.
You know, a lot of people here
were Quakers and Mennonites
and stuff like that,
but they were opposed to slavery.
And this town became an abolitionist town.
Some of the older houses, they say,
have passages in them
where slaves used to hide.
So, it's a big part of our local history.
This year, because of COVID,
it didn't happen,
but traditionally, on the Fourth of July,
we go to a place
to watch the fireworks called Gaunt Park.
Gaunt Park was donated to this town
by an African-American
named Wheeling Gaunt,
who was a slave,
whose "master" would allow him
to hire his own time out.
So, when he was done
working in the fields,
he would go work for another plantation,
and they'd pay him.
Eventually,
he was able to buy his freedom.
Well, his entire family's freedom.
I think some five people.
He became a landowner here.
He was very instrumental in the historical
Black university, Wilberforce.
It's up the street.
And when he died, he donated the park
to the Village of Yellow Springs.
It's one of my favorite parts of the town.
On the Fourth of July,
all these white folks come from everywhere
because we have
the best fireworks in the region.
And they sit on a plot of land
that was donated by a Black man,
that was forced to buy his own freedom,
and celebrate the promise
of what the country can be.
This is one
of the beautiful ironies of this town.
In fact, I think every month,
or definitely every year,
all the widows in town,
because of his trust,
get a pound of sugar and a pound of flour.
To this day, my father's widow gets it.
That's remarkable.
My dad and some
of his friends started a thing here
called an African-American Culture Week.
Just something that would celebrate
Black Culture in small-town Ohio.
I had performed at the first one.
I bombed.
You bombed.
I bombed, you know.
It was like doing a gig for my dad.
But it was just a week
of speakers and performers.
Does that continue today?
Some version of that?
Yeah. The things
that I do are kind of in that tradition.
Yeah.
We do a party here at my neighbor's barn
called The Juke Joint.
Mm-hm.
Big artists from over the world will fly
here and perform in this little barn.
How great is that?
It's really wonderful.
And my dad raised me that way.
All politics are local,
community is everything,
these kinds of things.
You can't change the world,
but you can make a corner of it nice.
-[David] Yeah.
-These types of ethics, and I live by it.
I see a rainbow flag here.
Oh, yeah. Gays are welcome.
All the letters of the alphabet
are welcome in Yellow Springs.
We want to make
everyone feel safe and comfortable.
There's a banner when you pull into town.
It says, "Kindness,"
which is kind of the local motto.
I always liked this place.
One of the things I liked about it,
historically, it has always been,
like, radically liberal.
For lack of a better term,
this is the Bernie Sanders island
in the Trump sea.
[audience laughing]
And the thing
that I like most about this place,
was just that longing for community.
I recognize everyone's faces.
They know my kids.
And fame evaporates with regularity.
Once they get used to you--
You think people are here to see me.
They know me.
They're here to see you.
[audience laughing]
[chuckles]
It's a warm place to live,
you know what I mean?
-Did you find that when you were a kid?
-Oh, very much so.
In fact, I took it for granted
how safe I was allowed to feel here.
But there were people
in the community that taught me things
and looked after me in ways I didn't know
to appreciate until I was much older.
How old are your kids now?
[Chappelle]
My oldest is 19. He'll be 20 in October.
[David] How's that going?
Man, that kid's the shit. He's the best.
He's the best, man. I love him.
[clapping, cheering]
The new models are better
than the old models, you know?
The way they, uh, think is inspiring.
He's much more courageous
than I ever was at his age,
which you think is ironic,
but it's true socially.
Just the way he can already decide
real critical things about who he is
or who he wants to be.
The type of honesty
and discernment these kids have
'cause they're bombarded with information.
It's hard to bullshit a kid nowadays.
[chuckles]
Tell me about the others.
His brother, Ibrahim,
he's my star athlete.
He's a funny kid.
As a matter of fact, of all my kids,
he's the only that's ever tried stand-up.
Tried it once
at The Comedy Cellar and nailed it.
-It was really funny.
-Really good.
Yeah. It was so brave.
Has that opened a door for him,
or is that enough?
He never bothered me about it again.
I think it was just shit
he wanted to get off his chest.
-Yeah.
-[audience laughing]
But I just love that he… looked at it,
thought it was beautiful
and touched it and did well.
-And then, there's a third.
-My daughter. My twin.
[audience laughing]
She's the adorable little girl
that I could have been.
[audience chuckling]
[laughs]
-That's very sweet.
-[chuckles] Yeah.
My wife, when my kids were small,
did the heavy lifting.
I was writing the show. I was working.
How does the phrase go? Uh…
Mother is the word for God
in the hearts and lips of children.
She was everything for them.
All I did, and it's not nothing…
[laughing]
is I just kept reinforcing
in my children's mind,
"I'm the coolest motherfucker
you will ever meet."
[laughing]
[clapping]
-[chuckles] Well…
-No, it was a long game because--
"Kids, Daddy has something
he'd like to tell you." [chuckles]
I used to tell them all kinds
of crazy shit about how cool I am.
And also, that they can trust me. I didn't
look at myself as an authority figure.
I looked at myself like a reference book.
If you ask the right questions,
I got all kinds of shit I can tell you.
Yeah, was this in line with
the relationship you had with your father?
Absolutely.
My father's main thing--
He would never tell me what to do,
which you've gotta think
is a strange way to grow up.
His thing was,
you have to be able to make decisions,
which is a real counterintuitive way.
I used to think it was to my detriment.
But the older I get,
I understand why he raised me that way.
He might help me sort through the pieces,
but he wouldn't put the puzzle together.
Did he tell you he loved you?
-All the time.
-All the time.
In fact, yeah.
That's a thing in our family.
I don't think I ever leave my children
without letting them know I love them
'cause I never know
what's gonna happen anyway.
Mm-hm.
So, it's the most important thing,
I think, for stability. It's--
You never see a kid who was abused
with that kind of confidence,
or a kid who was neglected
with that kind of confidence.
Sometimes knowing that somebody cares
inspires you
and empowers you to be courageous.
Do they know the comparison
of their life versus the majority of kids,
and the lives they lead?
What I did for a living,
I don't think, factored into their lives
in a way that people think
'cause we don't live in Hollywood.
There's no paparazzi trying
to get their picture.
You know, the community
protects them in that sense.
The other thing was,
for most of the time I've been here,
my career was going terrible.
So, who cared?
-You know what I mean?
-[laughing]
I really just got this money.
[audience laugh]
We're all just getting used
to it together as a community.
[laughing]
[clapping, laughing]
I was the baby. I was 14 when I started.
When I got to New York,
people looked out for me and made sure
that I didn't go too far the wrong way.
And I'll always appreciate it,
but I remember, maybe a year ago,
comedian in New York,
William Stevenson, passed away.
I went to his memorial service
because I wanted his family to know
that he was an important person
on our scene.
I'm looking around the room,
seeing these comedians I've known,
young ones, old ones,
from throughout the years,
and I realized these people are
as influential on me
as any community I lived in.
It's a weird club, the real comedians.
Yeah, it's interesting. I have friends
that I've known since grade school.
And then I have friends that I have known
since I went to California
and started the comedy club.
And that's the group,
as much as I love my old friends,
it's that group…
We're all speaking the same language.
I understand why cops hang out
with just each other and criminals.
It's just one of those things.
-You're a Muslim?
-I am.
-When did you become Muslim?
-When I was 17.
-What were the circumstances?
-I don't know. Believing in God and stuff.
[laughing]
[chuckles]
I'm not like, you know--
I should preface this by saying,
"It's not like I'm good at it."
[chuckles]
When I was 17, I was living in Washington.
And there was a pizza shop
across from my house.
And there were these Muslim dudes
that worked there.
I used to go in there and crack jokes.
And I was also a naturally curious guy.
And I would ask him questions
about his religion.
And the guy was so passionate
about it. It was very compelling.
I liked the perspective of it.
And I think
these things informed my decision
that I wanted to have a meaningful life.
A spiritual life.
Not just what my hands can hold,
but I've always had this notion that
it should mean something.
Even now,
we're sitting in this field
in the middle of nowhere,
but for the last however many months,
we've done 26 shows here.
It's expensive and hard,
and there's a lot of people working hard,
but everyone who works on these shows are
from Ohio or connected to our community.
Many of them were furloughed.
They weren't able to work.
And just me doing stand-up,
we're all able to get back up on our feet.
And to me, that's very meaningful.
I do a million shows,
but the last 26 meant so much to me
because it's my community's offering
to the world.
[engine revving]
-Something's wrong with his engine.
-No, no, he's fine.
-I've got a pizza coming.
-[laughing]
[laughing, cheering]
[David] This is now an ecologic institute,
but tell me about it when it was a camp.
We do sixth-grade camp as part
of the school year. My kids did it.
And we'd take long nature hikes.
And they'd show us
all the different birds.
And at the time,
I was living in DC with my mom.
I had been here for maybe a year.
So, I really got into the idea of nature.
You didn't resist it at all. The change.
You welcomed it, actually.
I loved it. One of the things I loved.
[chuckles]
My dad had cable television.
And it changed my life.
MTV and all that shit I watched.
-It was the golden years of culture.
-Yeah.
I used to stay up all night
watching television on the weekends.
So, you had the natural beauty
of the surroundings and cable TV.
-It was the greatest.
-[chuckles]
-What else does a kid need?
-[Chappelle laughs]
And we're headed toward the body of water
for which the town is named, correct?
That's right. The Yellow Springs.
People used to think it had all kinds,
uh, of magical healing properties.
And the local legend is,
if you drink from the spring,
you will always come back to this place.
Did you ever drink out of the spring?
Clearly, I drank a lot.
-Yeah, I guess.
-I haven't even left.
If you believe the legend,
that makes perfect sense.
So, I'm reading about you being Muslim,
and they referenced something
that I was fascinated by.
The Well of Zamzam.
There's a well called Zamzam
in Saudi Arabia.
And the myth goes
that a family walking
through this desert dying of thirst.
And this endless well presents itself.
-You and I can go see it.
-I could go see it.
You'd probably have
to make some phone calls.
-[David] Have you been there?
-[Chappelle] I have.
It's only welcome to Muslims.
It's not a tourist location.
No. Nor should it be.
The man is the prophet Abraham
and his wife.
The word "Zamzam"-- You guys speak Arabic.
It literally means "stop, stop"
because when it was commanded
that this well would appear,
the water gushed forth so much
that the wife screamed, "Stop, stop"
because it was so overwhelming.
And they say
that it's an inexhaustible well.
The thing that comforts me about it
is the idea that all
of this is from a singular source.
That this source is ultimately kind.
And even though we may not understand
the intentions of this source,
we're all connected and bounded by it.
It's not as it's been presented
in the public space.
It's such a narrow
and dismissive view of a religious belief.
It's-- It's a beautiful religion.
A beautiful religion.
And the ideas
in that religion are reflected
in all the major Abrahamic faiths.
You'll see these ideas
in Christianity or Judaism, you know.
But the idea is
that this place does mean something.
It's a place where you come to learn,
where you come to know.
You get here knowing nothing.
You get a head full of shit,
and then you go on.
[David] Whoa, what is this?
This is the spring.
[David] Dave, you in on this?
-[Chappelle] I'm in.
-[David] I'll take a sip when you do.
-Irony.
-I'm fine.
[chuckling]
That was cool.
It's the greatest.
Get a little more of this. I'm sorry.
You're definitely coming back here.
Not only coming back here,
I'm buying property.
[chuckling]
When the current president says,
"We're going to look
into keeping Muslims out of this country,"
how does that make you feel?
You don't expect necessarily
that much empathy or compassion
or cultural astuteness
from a guy like that.
What you're sad about is that the chair
doesn't have more humanity in it.
But has that chair ever been that humane?
When Biden called Trump
the first racist president ever,
well, clearly that's not true.
So, how do I feel when I hear
a white person say some stupid shit?
[laughing]
[clapping, cheering]
I know the rich white people
call poor white people trash.
And the only reason I know that is
because I made so much money last year,
the rich whites told me
they say it at a cocktail party.
[laughing]
[clapping, cheering]
And I'm not with that shit.
I stood with them in line,
like all of us Americans are required
to do in a democracy.
Nobody skips the line to vote.
And I listened to them.
I listened to them say naive,
poor, white people things.
[laughing]
"Man, Donald Trump is gonna
go to Washington.
And he's going to fight for us."
[audience laughing]
I'm standing there, thinking in my mind,
"You dumb motherfucker."
[audience laughing, clapping, cheering]
"You are poor.
He's fighting for me."
[laughing, clapping, cheering]
In any relationship,
especially citizen to its country,
trust is everything.
And I think we do have a crisis of a lack
of trust in our country, with good reason.
And what's scary is,
it seems as though
people don't trust each other.
It does not speak well
for our national character
that people hoarded
toilet paper and bullets
in the beginning of the pandemic.
Some scary shit.
But here, I knew people
who walked past a roll of toilet paper
'cause they knew they had a roll at home.
So, it was on our shelves longer
than it was in other places.
So, I'm trying to tell you,
community is everything.
Fostering trust
amongst each other is everything.
Whatever you guys argue
about the specifics,
we've got to trust that there will be
a livable level of decency.
[chuckles] A livable level of decency,
that's nirvana right there.
But I worry about, just,
what's the world going to be?
Is it going to be tanks in the street,
for God sakes?
Is-- Is it civil war again?
You know?
Or am I thinking too much about this?
'Cause you think…
that there will be
a livable level of decency.
Well, I believe that God is in control,
no matter what I worry about.
That only my efforts are my own,
and the results
have nothing to do with me,
but I do what I think is best.
But I just don't know what's best
'cause I'm just a guy,
but I trust
that this creation has a purpose.
It proves that something perfect exists.
We have to believe in something,
otherwise why would you continue?
But largely, the awareness
that these things are out
of my control,
do you find that comforting?
I do find it comforting.
I can only do what I intend to do,
you know,
if I even am that thoughtful
about what I'm doing.
[David] I keep using the word "cool"
with regard to you,
but the fact that, you know,
you don't live in New York.
You spent a lot of time in New York.
You don't live in Los Angeles.
Spent a lot of time there.
How many movies did you make
in Los Angeles? Is it like 18, 19?
Yeah.
That's crazy. You started making movies
when you were like 20?
[Chappelle] Nineteen.
The most recent one was
A Star is Born, right?
[Chappelle] Yeah, I met
with Bradley Cooper here in Ohio.
He came to a party I threw. [chuckles]
And he asked me to be in the movie.
I was watching, um, Half Baked.
[Chappelle chuckles] Yeah.
[audience clapping]
[chuckles]
And, um, you're in, I think,
a janitor one-piece,
dark green jumpsuit kind of deal.
[Chappelle] Yeah,
that one was electric blue.
And now I see you
on shows and various places
in the jumpsuit.
-It has your name on it.
-[Chappelle] Yeah.
So, nobody really
looks good in a jumpsuit.
But you, I thought,
"The guy looks okay in a jumpsuit."
So now, I see it in the movie
and I think, "Well, there you go."
"He got to keep the wardrobe."
[chuckles]
[David chuckling]
With a special, it's funny
'cause you never know what to wear.
You watch Richard Pryor: Live in Concert,
they go, "The one where he had
the red suit or the sequin shoes."
Even getting dressed tonight
was a nightmare.
I know that feeling because,
as long as I had a show,
what I didn't have
to worry about was clothes.
And now, this is all I can come up with.
I'm sorry.
[laughing]
All right, when you were doing Letterman,
what kind of role
did fame play in your life?
Or were you so sequestered by the work
that you never got to experience it?
It was the latter.
I mean, I know it sounds silly,
but that's exactly what it is.
Because when we started out,
uh, myself and my staff and my crew,
we expected to be canceled
because I had been canceled.
I had done a morning show
at NBC that was on
for literally six weeks.
So, "Wait a minute,
where do I go Monday?"
"It's not our problem."
So, you focus.
And I have a feeling you understand this.
Your focus gets tighter
and tighter and tighter
because you feel the pressure
to make it better and better and better.
It's a terrible thing to say in public,
but I'm gonna say it.
I-- I love being famous.
Good for you.
No I mean, I really like…
I love it. I don't like being a celebrity,
but I like being famous.
Does that make sense?
Well, differentiate this for us.
Celebrity is a role.
Celebrity is you walk down a red carpet,
and they ask you what you're wearing.
If you're a lady, you stick your toe out
when they take your picture.
-But you don't do that.
-No, I don't do any of that stuff.
I don't even do interviews.
If it wasn't you,
I wouldn't even want to say anything
to anybody about what I'm doing
'cause it's so gut-wrenching to me.
Any job that makes you depend
on the approval of others
for your livelihood is a crazy job.
Most people don't have to worry
about whether they're liked or not.
And for us, this is a consideration.
The more you invest
into yourself as a celebrity,
the less of yourself you get to own.
All the stand-up comics in the room,
just want to remind you.
I promise you, and I've always said it,
we have the best genre.
We don't have
to know anything but what we know.
And everything we know is valuable
because of what we do with it.
Stay true to yourself.
Fuck the game.
The money will come.
Most of you won't make it.
[laughing, clapping]
I was talking last night to a comedian
about you, and he said,
"The great thing about Dave Chappelle is
that he has saved stand-up comedy
because he does material,
does jokes on the edge,
over the line, too much,
uh, offending people,
just doesn't care,
but believes in his right
to say, to write
and deliver this material."
And he said,
"He is saving stand-up comedy."
I-- I definitely don't necessarily
aim to offend anybody.
Maybe the thought
of hurting someone's feelings,
that is a painful thought, you know?
But it'll happen in the course of the job.
This is possible.
So much of the work
of art is on the viewer
to interpret.
And this time,
we cut people's meat for them so much…
Mm-hm.
…that we do too much
of the audience's work.
And this audience
with this Internet now,
it's like a baby running
around with a loaded gun.
Somebody got to get that gun away
from that baby or, at least not--
[chuckles]
Not be afraid
that the baby has a gun, but…
the sermon is on them.
More than ever,
they gotta do their own work.
-Well, I watched Sticks & Stones.
-[Chappelle] Yeah.
It's hard to articulate
what I observed when I watched you.
It's otherworldly.
I mean, as a communicator,
I'd never seen anything like it.
Entertaining,
I'd never seen anything like it.
That's very-- That's humbling.
No, you hear that all the time.
And, if you were a man
or a woman who was doing it,
where the material was all…
[whoosh noise]
Uh, what fun is that?
I want to see if you can guess
who it is I'm doing an impression of.
Let me get into character.
You gotta guess who it is though.
[clears throat] Okay, here it goes.
Uh, duh, hey, dur.
If you do anything wrong in your life,
duh, and I find out about it,
I'm gonna try to take everything away
from you. I don't care when I find out.
It could be today, tomorrow,
15-20 years from now.
If I find out,
you're fucking, duh, finished.
Who-- Who's that?
[man] Trump!
That's you!
[laughing]
That special was my second favorite.
The thing that I really liked about it was
that it was very difficult at the time
to say any of those things.
You come out there. You're cool. You don't
give a fuck, but it's gut-wrenching
'cause you are subject
to the interpretation of so many people.
And I understand why people
take objection to this material
and all that, but it's, uh…
It's worth exploring.
It's a well-intentioned piece.
Well, maybe this is a loftier
than I'm smart enough to put together,
but without disagreement,
do you learn anything?
In that particular special?
No, no, generally speaking,
if we all agreed--
Everybody here all agreed on everything,
what's to learn?
That's exactly right.
I think that we're unpacking so much
that they've got
to leave some kind of room…
for redemption.
The more room for redemption,
the more room there is
for people to be honest.
If you want to get
to the bottom of any of these things,
any of these issues
that keep getting raised,
it's going to require some honesty
and definitely some forgiveness.
Nobody
in this whole goddamn prison did anything,
as the old saying goes,
but everybody did something.
And if we make it contextual,
we can actually honestly address
what we've done.
We can even figure out what is happening,
why these things are being perpetuated,
et cetera.
Then we'll come
to a more comprehensive understanding,
but this tightrope walk
just makes everybody not want
to get caught.
Let me ask you-- And again,
this is a question I thought up myself,
so get ready.
Um…
Bob Dylan, when he was a kid,
twenty, twenty-one, just about like
when you were on my show.
And it coincided with the peace movement,
and free sex,
and freedom of speech,
and anti-government.
And I think these people,
they were able
to end the Vietnam War.
And everyone assumed
that he was the spokesperson
for that.
And he just flat-out explained,
"I'm not. I'm just singing protest songs."
After George Floyd,
I kept waiting.
When are we going to hear from David?
And I thought, in my mind,
he is a leader here.
Uh, uh, how far off am I?
Or am I right on the money?
Or should I go back to Indiana?
[Chappelle] No. No, look.
I'm far from a leader.
-Do you want to be?
-Far--
[chuckles] No! No.
[audience laughing]
I'm having way more fun being
whatever the fuck I am
than being somebody
that people would look to
for, like, moral or intellectual guidance
in the climate
of living a completely different way.
There's no pension plan for leaders.
Martin Luther King died penniless.
Malcolm X died penniless.
Uh, I don't want to do that.
[audience laughing]
But that's-- That's your view.
I'm waiting for you to say something.
What does that make me? A follower.
Okay. Well, I said it behind
what many others were already doing.
And the commentary
after it was very heady and intellectual.
And I was shocked
that nobody ever talked about
what it feels like
to watch a man get murdered that way
by a man in a police uniform.
I was thinking about this
with regard to George Floyd.
Fifty-five years ago, April 1965,
John Lewis and his friends, colleagues,
are walking across
the Edmund Pettus Bridge
in Selma, Alabama.
And a cop, uh, with a nightstick,
like batting practice, tees up
and hits him in the side of the head,
cracks his skull and nearly kills him.
Nearly kills him.
He survives and devotes his life
to this struggle.
And toward the end of his life,
almost simultaneously, George Floyd,
who, I don't know if he was ever
an activist in any sense,
is killed,
murdered, lynched
by an officer of the law.
Uh, the comparison is just right there.
They will both now be part
of the culture going forward
to repair what needs to be repaired.
What a tragic footnote
to a tragic culture.
[indistinct chatter]
This is a lot to unpack.
You know, nights like this are,
I think, important.
Just-- Just talking about it.
Uh, we're countrymen.
All of us. We live in America.
We all got our problems, our strifes.
It's weird now because,
uh, this game of who's suffered more
that everyone keeps getting the ball.
And they act like
everyone's suffering is mutually exclusive
from everyone else's.
And you and I both know
that's far from the case.
There's a lot of angles
that you could approach this
and look at this from
and learn from each other from.
But it's a thing,
and I'm troubled about the volume of it.
It doesn't sound like something settling
or hurtling towards an easy resolution.
People say
that what's going on is different now.
Therefore, we predict real change.
-Do you have that feeling?
-I'm not making any predictions.
Of course, I am very hopeful, yes,
that there will be real change.
And, just traditionally,
from my experience,
uh, change is never
a comfortable proposition.
It's uncomfortable
before it's comfortable again.
It'll be quite the negotiation.
If you think of it as a negotiation,
how the fuck do you negotiate
with Derek Chauvin?
What are we talking about?
This guy-- This guy--
I couldn't even imagine.
It's interesting. People say that, uh,
if we didn't have body cams
and cell phones,
uh, we wouldn't know
that all of this was going on.
And it will be a huge deterrent.
Well, in this case,
it wasn't a deterrent at all.
You get the feeling--
And he had trained the officers
with him at the scene of the arrest--
-That's exactly right.
-To me, he's showing off for the cameras.
"Here, let me show you how this is done.
No, no, I got this.
Here. I can kill a guy with my knee."
And that piece I did about--
About, uh, George Floyd,
and I talked about the police
in Staten Island
watching his fellow officers
kill a man and not reprimanding him
because they knew they were being filmed.
It's not like I'm against cameras,
but I don't want retroactive justice.
I don't want you
to get them after I'm dead.
I want you to stop it.
In the two cases
that we are discussing here,
what do you say
about these people who stood there?
I don't want to make any value judgment.
I can't imagine seeing something
like that. All of this is unimaginable.
It's a situation
I've never personally been in.
I don't wanna judge him,
but I wish someone had stopped it.
Of course, like anybody.
John Crawford,
a black man that was murdered here
in a local Walmart.
He wasn't doing anything wrong.
Got murdered
by a cop in Beavercreek, Ohio.
In that municipality,
there's only been
two fatal police killings
in the history of that municipality.
The same guy did both of them.
The first guy he shot was white.
Had they stopped him then,
it wouldn't even be a racial issue.
It's just about overaggressive,
overzealous policing.
It's about whatever type
of training he was given.
For whatever reason, this guy killed
two people in the line of duty.
And I don't think the community at large
was satisfied with the repercussions.
There were little, if any.
The phrase Black Lives Matter
is important, but it is deceptive.
This-- This problem is not exclusively
an African-American problem.
It's disproportionately one,
but not exclusively ours.
And the other thing is,
if Russia is, in fact,
exploiting our racist tendencies
to dissolve our union,
then you'd have
to look at something like racism
as a matter of national security.
You've got to shore all the holes up,
then plug them up
and make sure
we're functioning as a cohesive nation.
If the people that execute your laws
are kneeling on people's necks, that's--
You have no country.
You have to stop that shit.
That's why
these people are storming the streets
because they want to save their country.
It makes perfect sense.
[audience clapping]
-Whose streets?
-Our streets!
-Whose streets?
-Our streets!
-Whose streets?
-Our streets!
[David] Have you, in this community,
ever had police trouble?
-Of course, we have police trouble here.
-But you, personally?
Nobody fucks with me.
[laughing]
-You've never been stopped by a cop?
-Of course, but it never went too far.
I keep my hands at ten and two.
I speak respectfully. They keep it
respectfully, but it's different here.
It's small-town.
I see them tomorrow, and they go,
"Do you have your license
and registration?"
"It's me, Dave!"
[laughing]
It's not the typical traffic stop.
Have I been stopped here before
when I was in someone else's car,
and they didn't know it was me?
Uh, yeah, it's happened,
but, normally, nobody bothers me.
They know. Everyone knows.
It's small-town.
If I was doing something crazy,
they'd stop me.
But normally, I don't think they will.
What about if you lived in a bigger town?
Of course.
I got choked out by a police officer
in New Orleans before,
when I was working on a movie set.
Really?
Yeah. I remember running
from one comedy club
to another in Greenwich Village
and was stopped by the police for running,
which is not illegal. I was late.
[chuckles]
The police officer stuck his hand
in my pocket.
We comedians get paid
in cash from running those spots.
So, I had, you know, a lot of cash.
The cop assumed I was selling drugs
and started to put my money
in his pocket.
Oh, yeah. These types
of things happen all the fucking time.
It's not like people are just suddenly,
irrationally getting upset.
There are causes to the sentiment
that the police are not good.
And the police eroded the trust
in the institution.
They can't act like the institution
didn't have anything to do with it.
And do you look
at that episode and think to yourself,
"This could have gone sideways,
and I'd been gone."
-You ever think about that?
-Yeah, of course.
When I was in high school,
it was during the crack epidemic.
And in DC public schools,
we took Street Law classes.
They would teach us
how to engage the police
because the crack epidemic
was so dangerous for kids of color.
It's a thing.
It is incumbent upon us
to save our country.
[clapping]
And you know what we have to do.
This is a fucking election year.
We gotta be serious.
Every able-bodied African American
must register
for a legal firearm.
[laughing]
[cheering, clapping]
That's the only way
they will change the law.
[audience laughing]
Are you writing a lot now?
-Go head, light one.
-Oh man. You are the best.
[sighs]
[chuckling]
You smoke weed, Dave? Just kidding.
-I don't have any.
-[chuckles] Yes, I'm high as a kite now.
I wish.
[chuckles]
How often are you smoking weed?
Not as much as people think. I'm 46 now.
-Does it help you write?
-No. No.
Does it help you perform?
No. I have enormous amounts of anxiety.
Just doing what I do.
And it quelled it, for the most part.
Nobody's going
to live an anxiety-free life,
but it's manageable.
Any of my business, what the source
of the anxiety is? Just life?
I think, you know, with this job,
people take for granted
the emotional wear and tear of doing this.
And I think you have
to preserve your openness.
When you look at a finished product,
one of your specials.
Oh.
-Are you involved in the editing of those?
-Very much.
What about the video
that was released, uh…
after George Floyd's death?
I put it out with a caveat.
I know-- I know that it's unrefined,
but if I refine it,
then it will become, uh, less genuine.
What was the reaction?
That I got?
Most people felt relieved
'cause it touched something
that people were feeling
that wasn't being reflected
in the larger conversation.
Right. That goes back
to my perspective on that which was,
"Oh, here it is."
I knew-- I knew it had to come.
It did come, and there it was.
So, from that standpoint, it was great.
Oh man, I appreciate it.
I don't know how to say this
without it being redundant,
but when I have seen your work,
uh, I've never seen anybody better.
I've just never seen anybody better.
But, I look at you--
-No, stop. No, no…
-No, I do. This is important. I do.
Remember the last time I did your show?
When I was leaving-- I watched it today,
just to remember what it felt like.
And when I was sitting with you,
I thought--
I was paranoid. I was like,
"Maybe this guy doesn't like me."
Then, I watched it afterward. I'm like,
"This guy actually likes me very much."
The questions were real thoughtful.
In a way, it was intimidating to be
on your show, this highly-watched show,
but it felt like an actual conversation.
And, the fact
that someone of your stature--
And remember,
the last time I did your show,
we all already knew you were leaving.
It was this feeling of,
"I might not be able to sit down
and talk to this guy
in this context again."
"I don't know when I'd ever see
David Letterman again."
It was important I told you,
"I'm happy to see you on television.
I'm happy to see you off television.
I'm just happy to know you exist."
I think about the show
you did in the '80s.
I used to live here
when you were on Late Night on NBC.
And I started watching your show,
and I was enamored by it.
The fact that you're here right now,
it's amazing to me.
I think of all the great interviews
with Eddie Murphy and Andy Kaufman,
and all these people I admire,
and the platform that you gave this genre
that I love so much.
So, it's easy for me to do things
if I've seen them before.
And because of your show,
many of the things I've learned to do,
I-- I saw them somewhere.
Well, you're very kind. No, it's--
[audience clapping]
-It's true.
-Thank you.
Uh, we've been doing this show,
and I don't know how many we've done.
And the schedule has been intermittent
and interrupted,
like everybody's schedule.
And each time,
I'm gratified
because the person in that chair,
uh, is so much smarter than I am.
And I would have to say
that the stature you have achieved
in your chosen craft is so well deserved,
my friend.
[Chappelle] Oh my gosh.
Thank you, man. Sincerely.
[clapping]
David Chappelle.
David Letterman.
[cheering]
I'm honored, man.
No, I'm honored.
Good Lord, I am honored.
Okay, all of this stuff is yours.
Come up and get it.
[laughing]
[theme music playing]
[cow mowing]
[indistinct chatter]
[Chappelle]
I'mma "Happy Gilmore" this one.
Badass practicing.
Think I'm gonna kill a guy or something.
[David] That's about 300 yards.
[Chappelle]
I need a stunt double for this.
Nice, Dave.
There it is.
You really can do it left-handed.
[David] Yeah. Oh, yeah.
[Chappelle] That's amazing.
Are you, like, ambidextrous?
I'm Presbyterian.
[chuckles]
[theme music playing]
[indistinct chatter]
[David] I'm so happy to be here.
Uh, I've been working
on this man for a long, long time.
And the more I know about him,
the more I want to be this guy.
I want to bring out here someone you know.
And if you know him, you love him.
The true master of his craft,
David Chappelle, ladies and gentlemen.
[clapping, cheering]
Hi! Ohh!
How are you, bro?
-Great to see you.
-I'm great. Good to see you. Thank you.
Thank you very much for coming out here.
Oh, I stacked the deck tonight.
That's all right.
Listen, um, this is a big thrill for me
because I have educated myself
a great deal about you and your life.
And it's nothing but respect
that I have generated for you.
And I'm thrilled to be here tonight.
And, do you know what else?
-I'll let you talk in a minute.
-That's all right.
Twenty-seven years ago,
almost 27 years ago,
we met for the first time.
-On your show.
-On my show.
Yes, and ironically,
the first time
I was supposed to do your show,
I didn't have a suit.
I wore jeans and a t-shirt.
So, I got bumped.
Really? There was a dress code?
Yeah,
but that's why I got a suit on tonight.
I said, I'll never sit
in front of David Letterman again.
[David laughs]
-You ain't get bumped from this--
-Yeah, I ain't getting--
[audience clapping]
What was your life 27 years ago?
I must have been around 19.
I had been out of high school
for a year and a half.
I was living in New York City.
Being on your show,
at that time, was the pinnacle
for a comedian.
If you had a Letterman set,
there was nothing bigger.
Hm.
And I got one.
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome
to the program, Dave Chappelle. Dave!
[audience cheering, clapping]
[upbeat music playing]
Do you remember
how your set went that night?
Good enough.
[chuckles]
I pay close attention
to all this little racial history.
There's stuff in New York
you guys should see.
Like, in Washington Square Park,
this is interesting.
They have two big trees where they used
to hang criminals back in the old days,
but they would actually hang white people
and Black people
on different trees.
[audience laughing]
Like that's going to hurt our feelings,
you know?
Television's a different animal.
I still consider myself, like,
a real nightclub comedian.
Now, I'm a nightclub comic
that does the trick
on television but the atmosphere,
that thing that I developed myself in,
was a lot more forgiving
than what television was and is.
I'm, like, 100 years old.
So, when I started out doing comedy,
it was-- You had to have a hunk,
five minutes to get on The Tonight Show.
And now,
it's completely different.
Everybody has a deal for hour specials.
First of all, the idea
of assembling that kind of material,
I find crushing.
But you are so prolific.
How many hours do you have now
on platforms on this planet?
I know when I quit my show,
Chappelle's Show,
I went to San Francisco a lot.
The Bay Area.
And I recorded all of my sets.
Audio recorded them.
Literally, probably,
hundreds of hours of tapes.
Some of that stuff made its way
into the work that I'm doing now, but…
somehow, I had the foresight
to know that was a special time
in my artistic development,
and I have a record of it.
Mm-hm.
At that time,
I had thought that I ruined my career.
When you left the TV show?
Yeah, I had never seen it work out
before like that.
Because you get out of the line,
it may be,
"Too bad.
We've got other people ahead of you."
-That's the end of it.
-Yeah.
And I think when the specter
of making it left the room,
and I was just doing it,
literally, just for my livelihood,
and 'cause I loved doing it,
it made me a better comedian.
It made me a more courageous comedian.
And, uh, the worst thing
that can happen to you in your mind,
when you're working at it,
is that you lose it all or blow it,
but once you face that,
it's not everything.
You know, I'm so excited
about several ideas here tonight.
One of which is you leaving the show.
[chuckles] You know this
because there is a historical video
and print documentary
of you going from outlet to outlet
to outlet to outlet,
answering the question,
"What's the matter with you?
You left a huge-- What is the deal?"
They would fill in the blanks for you
because they were so desperate.
And the longer I ruminated on this,
the better this thing sounded
to me because,
what bigger, cool,
badass thing to do than just say,
"Goodnight, everybody!"
And then, adios.
I mean, how cool is that?
Well, initially, it was terrible.
Yeah.
[laughing]
Were you scared?
You must've been scared crazy.
Of course. I was terrified.
And there were legal issues
around departing a show like that.
And clearly, I didn't have the money
that I thought I might need
to get through a decision like that.
So, in the beginning,
it was like anything.
You've got to face a lot of your fears.
Some I faced better than others,
but I was determined,
you know what I mean?
I didn't want
to make a choice like that and then…
and then just be a parable
of what not to do.
[David] Sure.
So, I just had to figure out--
But, from this perspective,
don't you look back on it and think,
"Kinda cool"?
Oh my God, yeah.
Now, David Letterman is in Ohio and…
you know, shit worked out.
[laughing]
But before it worked out,
it was-- It was really scary, man.
I don't know what you think happens
when you quit a successful show.
I'll tell you what doesn't happen.
They don't go,
"Good luck with your future endeavors."
[audience laughing]
That's not what happens.
It was cold out there.
I kept reading over and over again,
when you left your show,
there was an episode described,
and it was never elucidated,
that somebody on the crew, uh, laughed
at a sketch you did.
And you thought the laughter was
on the wrong side of the humor.
Do you recall what that was?
Oh, yeah, I remember.
It just raised
an interesting question to me,
which I was already wrestling with
in the first place.
You know, Dave,
I-- I like to go hard in the paint.
At that time, especially in my career,
I always felt
it could end at any minute,
so I err on the side of excess.
There's instances where you go too far.
You're playing with powerful shit,
doing jokes about racism,
and this -ism and that -ism.
To me, I looked at it
as an occupational hazard,
but I also realized, like,
that I was bigger
than I was comfortable with.
I didn't trust the circumstances of the--
being that big or whatever.
Do you remember
what the person was laughing at
that you felt-- You diagnosed as being,
"Oh, this is wrong."
Yeah, but more vividly, I just remember…
the feeling. The way it made me feel.
Is there something about the episode
you don't wanna talk about?
It was so bad. I fucking quit the show.
It wasn't the only reason I quit,
but it-- it--
It definitely helped make the case.
-Like, I don't need this.
-Mm-hm.
-I just don't need to worry about this.
-Yeah.
I was-- I was--
And I'll leave it alone after this.
No, you're fine.
I was just curious as to what
the material-- that material had been.
Uh… [sighs]
The sketch wasn't that bad.
It's actually funny.
It was-- It was a pixie.
It was me dressed in blackface
who'd pop up
anytime a person felt the pains of racism.
Which is a tough trick to pull off.
See? It's not a bad sketch,
but hearing the wrong laugh
while you're dressed that way,
it makes you feel shame.
-And that's why.
-Fair enough. Yeah.
By the way,
I have very big balls to talk about this.
[laughing, clapping]
Well, what about me?
-I asked the question.
-[laughing]
[cheering, clapping]
[both chuckling]
The best part about quitting the show
was coming back here.
This is when I started to fully realize
the value of being part of a community.
People come from the media
or other places looking for me
or this, that, or the other.
People here were very protective of me.
They didn't look at me
as a celebrity that took a spill.
I was more like the guy up the street.
And having that will help you survive--
You said, "Took a spill,"
but you didn't really take a spill.
If the show had been canceled,
that's a spill.
If Evel Knievel tried to jump 12 cars
but didn't make it, that's a spill.
I feel like the attempts at these jokes,
that's like Evel Knievel tricks.
I hope to land them, but…
[David] Yeah, but let me just say,
you could line up every sketch show
in production today.
And, you know, they're fine.
But to watch you,
as a person sharing your thoughts
and your writing, far more compelling.
Oh, wow.
Whatever that played into the decision,
and I know it did play into the decision,
you're so much better off,
which is not to say,
"Go do a sketch show if you want."
-I'm very happy that I did what I did.
-Yeah.
You know, in hindsight.
It was the biggest thing
that's happened in your life so far,
other than the birth of your kids.
It was a very, very, very formative event
or a sequence of events.
There wasn't any one part of it.
But if I had finished the show
feeling the way that I felt,
I would never have been the same.
Tell me, where are we, by the way?
-Oh, here? Right now?
-Yeah. [chuckles]
[laughing]
We are on the outskirts
of lovely Yellow Springs, Ohio.
There you go.
[clapping, cheering]
[upbeat hip-hop music playing]
[David] Yellow Springs.
-This is the best!
-Very nice.
This place hasn't changed in 100 years.
[David] This has gotta be different
than when you were here as a kid, right?
-Aesthetically, almost identical.
-You're kidding me.
I remember going here, getting groceries,
walking here with my dad.
That place was a diner
by a different name.
That place was a bank by a different name.
And right across this Christmas tree field
is a lovely establishment
called Young's Dairy.
Yeah, we saw that coming in.
We also saw Antioch College.
Antioch College. Antioch College
was a cultural juggernaut here,
especially during the '60s.
It's the alma mater of people
like Coretta Scott King.
John Lithgow's father
was a professor there.
John Lithgow,
the famous actor, grew up here.
Your family has connections to Antioch?
My father used to be a teacher there,
and I think he was an administrator there.
You grew up here?
In part. My parents were divorced.
[David] You were born in DC.
I lived in DC many years,
but my father lived here.
So, since '76, Christmas vacations.
I went to middle school here.
So what has been the constant
that keeps this place constant?
Well, I think the charm
of small-town life is…
your days are more predictable.
The faces are more familiar.
People know my name. I know their names.
When you're famous, everyone knows you.
You don't know anybody.
-But here, everyone's famous.
-This isn't typical small-town.
-[Chappelle] We're about that life.
-[David] It's not just brand-new stuff.
This goes way back with the town.
-[Chappelle] Oh my gosh, yeah.
-[David] This awareness. This activism.
In reading a little bit
about Yellow Springs,
there is a unique association
with this community
and slavery.
The relationship was not straightforward,
but yet, it was there.
And it seemed to be viable
in helping men and women leave slavery.
Do you know a little bit about
that in the history of this city?
Sure. Ohio was an abolitionist state.
So, slavery was never legal here
in the state of Ohio.
However, we didn't have suffrage either.
So, freedom was illegal,
and slavery was illegal for Black people.
The Ohio River was the line.
Over in Kentucky, they were slaving away.
You know, a lot of people here
were Quakers and Mennonites
and stuff like that,
but they were opposed to slavery.
And this town became an abolitionist town.
Some of the older houses, they say,
have passages in them
where slaves used to hide.
So, it's a big part of our local history.
This year, because of COVID,
it didn't happen,
but traditionally, on the Fourth of July,
we go to a place
to watch the fireworks called Gaunt Park.
Gaunt Park was donated to this town
by an African-American
named Wheeling Gaunt,
who was a slave,
whose "master" would allow him
to hire his own time out.
So, when he was done
working in the fields,
he would go work for another plantation,
and they'd pay him.
Eventually,
he was able to buy his freedom.
Well, his entire family's freedom.
I think some five people.
He became a landowner here.
He was very instrumental in the historical
Black university, Wilberforce.
It's up the street.
And when he died, he donated the park
to the Village of Yellow Springs.
It's one of my favorite parts of the town.
On the Fourth of July,
all these white folks come from everywhere
because we have
the best fireworks in the region.
And they sit on a plot of land
that was donated by a Black man,
that was forced to buy his own freedom,
and celebrate the promise
of what the country can be.
This is one
of the beautiful ironies of this town.
In fact, I think every month,
or definitely every year,
all the widows in town,
because of his trust,
get a pound of sugar and a pound of flour.
To this day, my father's widow gets it.
That's remarkable.
My dad and some
of his friends started a thing here
called an African-American Culture Week.
Just something that would celebrate
Black Culture in small-town Ohio.
I had performed at the first one.
I bombed.
You bombed.
I bombed, you know.
It was like doing a gig for my dad.
But it was just a week
of speakers and performers.
Does that continue today?
Some version of that?
Yeah. The things
that I do are kind of in that tradition.
Yeah.
We do a party here at my neighbor's barn
called The Juke Joint.
Mm-hm.
Big artists from over the world will fly
here and perform in this little barn.
How great is that?
It's really wonderful.
And my dad raised me that way.
All politics are local,
community is everything,
these kinds of things.
You can't change the world,
but you can make a corner of it nice.
-[David] Yeah.
-These types of ethics, and I live by it.
I see a rainbow flag here.
Oh, yeah. Gays are welcome.
All the letters of the alphabet
are welcome in Yellow Springs.
We want to make
everyone feel safe and comfortable.
There's a banner when you pull into town.
It says, "Kindness,"
which is kind of the local motto.
I always liked this place.
One of the things I liked about it,
historically, it has always been,
like, radically liberal.
For lack of a better term,
this is the Bernie Sanders island
in the Trump sea.
[audience laughing]
And the thing
that I like most about this place,
was just that longing for community.
I recognize everyone's faces.
They know my kids.
And fame evaporates with regularity.
Once they get used to you--
You think people are here to see me.
They know me.
They're here to see you.
[audience laughing]
[chuckles]
It's a warm place to live,
you know what I mean?
-Did you find that when you were a kid?
-Oh, very much so.
In fact, I took it for granted
how safe I was allowed to feel here.
But there were people
in the community that taught me things
and looked after me in ways I didn't know
to appreciate until I was much older.
How old are your kids now?
[Chappelle]
My oldest is 19. He'll be 20 in October.
[David] How's that going?
Man, that kid's the shit. He's the best.
He's the best, man. I love him.
[clapping, cheering]
The new models are better
than the old models, you know?
The way they, uh, think is inspiring.
He's much more courageous
than I ever was at his age,
which you think is ironic,
but it's true socially.
Just the way he can already decide
real critical things about who he is
or who he wants to be.
The type of honesty
and discernment these kids have
'cause they're bombarded with information.
It's hard to bullshit a kid nowadays.
[chuckles]
Tell me about the others.
His brother, Ibrahim,
he's my star athlete.
He's a funny kid.
As a matter of fact, of all my kids,
he's the only that's ever tried stand-up.
Tried it once
at The Comedy Cellar and nailed it.
-It was really funny.
-Really good.
Yeah. It was so brave.
Has that opened a door for him,
or is that enough?
He never bothered me about it again.
I think it was just shit
he wanted to get off his chest.
-Yeah.
-[audience laughing]
But I just love that he… looked at it,
thought it was beautiful
and touched it and did well.
-And then, there's a third.
-My daughter. My twin.
[audience laughing]
She's the adorable little girl
that I could have been.
[audience chuckling]
[laughs]
-That's very sweet.
-[chuckles] Yeah.
My wife, when my kids were small,
did the heavy lifting.
I was writing the show. I was working.
How does the phrase go? Uh…
Mother is the word for God
in the hearts and lips of children.
She was everything for them.
All I did, and it's not nothing…
[laughing]
is I just kept reinforcing
in my children's mind,
"I'm the coolest motherfucker
you will ever meet."
[laughing]
[clapping]
-[chuckles] Well…
-No, it was a long game because--
"Kids, Daddy has something
he'd like to tell you." [chuckles]
I used to tell them all kinds
of crazy shit about how cool I am.
And also, that they can trust me. I didn't
look at myself as an authority figure.
I looked at myself like a reference book.
If you ask the right questions,
I got all kinds of shit I can tell you.
Yeah, was this in line with
the relationship you had with your father?
Absolutely.
My father's main thing--
He would never tell me what to do,
which you've gotta think
is a strange way to grow up.
His thing was,
you have to be able to make decisions,
which is a real counterintuitive way.
I used to think it was to my detriment.
But the older I get,
I understand why he raised me that way.
He might help me sort through the pieces,
but he wouldn't put the puzzle together.
Did he tell you he loved you?
-All the time.
-All the time.
In fact, yeah.
That's a thing in our family.
I don't think I ever leave my children
without letting them know I love them
'cause I never know
what's gonna happen anyway.
Mm-hm.
So, it's the most important thing,
I think, for stability. It's--
You never see a kid who was abused
with that kind of confidence,
or a kid who was neglected
with that kind of confidence.
Sometimes knowing that somebody cares
inspires you
and empowers you to be courageous.
Do they know the comparison
of their life versus the majority of kids,
and the lives they lead?
What I did for a living,
I don't think, factored into their lives
in a way that people think
'cause we don't live in Hollywood.
There's no paparazzi trying
to get their picture.
You know, the community
protects them in that sense.
The other thing was,
for most of the time I've been here,
my career was going terrible.
So, who cared?
-You know what I mean?
-[laughing]
I really just got this money.
[audience laugh]
We're all just getting used
to it together as a community.
[laughing]
[clapping, laughing]
I was the baby. I was 14 when I started.
When I got to New York,
people looked out for me and made sure
that I didn't go too far the wrong way.
And I'll always appreciate it,
but I remember, maybe a year ago,
comedian in New York,
William Stevenson, passed away.
I went to his memorial service
because I wanted his family to know
that he was an important person
on our scene.
I'm looking around the room,
seeing these comedians I've known,
young ones, old ones,
from throughout the years,
and I realized these people are
as influential on me
as any community I lived in.
It's a weird club, the real comedians.
Yeah, it's interesting. I have friends
that I've known since grade school.
And then I have friends that I have known
since I went to California
and started the comedy club.
And that's the group,
as much as I love my old friends,
it's that group…
We're all speaking the same language.
I understand why cops hang out
with just each other and criminals.
It's just one of those things.
-You're a Muslim?
-I am.
-When did you become Muslim?
-When I was 17.
-What were the circumstances?
-I don't know. Believing in God and stuff.
[laughing]
[chuckles]
I'm not like, you know--
I should preface this by saying,
"It's not like I'm good at it."
[chuckles]
When I was 17, I was living in Washington.
And there was a pizza shop
across from my house.
And there were these Muslim dudes
that worked there.
I used to go in there and crack jokes.
And I was also a naturally curious guy.
And I would ask him questions
about his religion.
And the guy was so passionate
about it. It was very compelling.
I liked the perspective of it.
And I think
these things informed my decision
that I wanted to have a meaningful life.
A spiritual life.
Not just what my hands can hold,
but I've always had this notion that
it should mean something.
Even now,
we're sitting in this field
in the middle of nowhere,
but for the last however many months,
we've done 26 shows here.
It's expensive and hard,
and there's a lot of people working hard,
but everyone who works on these shows are
from Ohio or connected to our community.
Many of them were furloughed.
They weren't able to work.
And just me doing stand-up,
we're all able to get back up on our feet.
And to me, that's very meaningful.
I do a million shows,
but the last 26 meant so much to me
because it's my community's offering
to the world.
[engine revving]
-Something's wrong with his engine.
-No, no, he's fine.
-I've got a pizza coming.
-[laughing]
[laughing, cheering]
[David] This is now an ecologic institute,
but tell me about it when it was a camp.
We do sixth-grade camp as part
of the school year. My kids did it.
And we'd take long nature hikes.
And they'd show us
all the different birds.
And at the time,
I was living in DC with my mom.
I had been here for maybe a year.
So, I really got into the idea of nature.
You didn't resist it at all. The change.
You welcomed it, actually.
I loved it. One of the things I loved.
[chuckles]
My dad had cable television.
And it changed my life.
MTV and all that shit I watched.
-It was the golden years of culture.
-Yeah.
I used to stay up all night
watching television on the weekends.
So, you had the natural beauty
of the surroundings and cable TV.
-It was the greatest.
-[chuckles]
-What else does a kid need?
-[Chappelle laughs]
And we're headed toward the body of water
for which the town is named, correct?
That's right. The Yellow Springs.
People used to think it had all kinds,
uh, of magical healing properties.
And the local legend is,
if you drink from the spring,
you will always come back to this place.
Did you ever drink out of the spring?
Clearly, I drank a lot.
-Yeah, I guess.
-I haven't even left.
If you believe the legend,
that makes perfect sense.
So, I'm reading about you being Muslim,
and they referenced something
that I was fascinated by.
The Well of Zamzam.
There's a well called Zamzam
in Saudi Arabia.
And the myth goes
that a family walking
through this desert dying of thirst.
And this endless well presents itself.
-You and I can go see it.
-I could go see it.
You'd probably have
to make some phone calls.
-[David] Have you been there?
-[Chappelle] I have.
It's only welcome to Muslims.
It's not a tourist location.
No. Nor should it be.
The man is the prophet Abraham
and his wife.
The word "Zamzam"-- You guys speak Arabic.
It literally means "stop, stop"
because when it was commanded
that this well would appear,
the water gushed forth so much
that the wife screamed, "Stop, stop"
because it was so overwhelming.
And they say
that it's an inexhaustible well.
The thing that comforts me about it
is the idea that all
of this is from a singular source.
That this source is ultimately kind.
And even though we may not understand
the intentions of this source,
we're all connected and bounded by it.
It's not as it's been presented
in the public space.
It's such a narrow
and dismissive view of a religious belief.
It's-- It's a beautiful religion.
A beautiful religion.
And the ideas
in that religion are reflected
in all the major Abrahamic faiths.
You'll see these ideas
in Christianity or Judaism, you know.
But the idea is
that this place does mean something.
It's a place where you come to learn,
where you come to know.
You get here knowing nothing.
You get a head full of shit,
and then you go on.
[David] Whoa, what is this?
This is the spring.
[David] Dave, you in on this?
-[Chappelle] I'm in.
-[David] I'll take a sip when you do.
-Irony.
-I'm fine.
[chuckling]
That was cool.
It's the greatest.
Get a little more of this. I'm sorry.
You're definitely coming back here.
Not only coming back here,
I'm buying property.
[chuckling]
When the current president says,
"We're going to look
into keeping Muslims out of this country,"
how does that make you feel?
You don't expect necessarily
that much empathy or compassion
or cultural astuteness
from a guy like that.
What you're sad about is that the chair
doesn't have more humanity in it.
But has that chair ever been that humane?
When Biden called Trump
the first racist president ever,
well, clearly that's not true.
So, how do I feel when I hear
a white person say some stupid shit?
[laughing]
[clapping, cheering]
I know the rich white people
call poor white people trash.
And the only reason I know that is
because I made so much money last year,
the rich whites told me
they say it at a cocktail party.
[laughing]
[clapping, cheering]
And I'm not with that shit.
I stood with them in line,
like all of us Americans are required
to do in a democracy.
Nobody skips the line to vote.
And I listened to them.
I listened to them say naive,
poor, white people things.
[laughing]
"Man, Donald Trump is gonna
go to Washington.
And he's going to fight for us."
[audience laughing]
I'm standing there, thinking in my mind,
"You dumb motherfucker."
[audience laughing, clapping, cheering]
"You are poor.
He's fighting for me."
[laughing, clapping, cheering]
In any relationship,
especially citizen to its country,
trust is everything.
And I think we do have a crisis of a lack
of trust in our country, with good reason.
And what's scary is,
it seems as though
people don't trust each other.
It does not speak well
for our national character
that people hoarded
toilet paper and bullets
in the beginning of the pandemic.
Some scary shit.
But here, I knew people
who walked past a roll of toilet paper
'cause they knew they had a roll at home.
So, it was on our shelves longer
than it was in other places.
So, I'm trying to tell you,
community is everything.
Fostering trust
amongst each other is everything.
Whatever you guys argue
about the specifics,
we've got to trust that there will be
a livable level of decency.
[chuckles] A livable level of decency,
that's nirvana right there.
But I worry about, just,
what's the world going to be?
Is it going to be tanks in the street,
for God sakes?
Is-- Is it civil war again?
You know?
Or am I thinking too much about this?
'Cause you think…
that there will be
a livable level of decency.
Well, I believe that God is in control,
no matter what I worry about.
That only my efforts are my own,
and the results
have nothing to do with me,
but I do what I think is best.
But I just don't know what's best
'cause I'm just a guy,
but I trust
that this creation has a purpose.
It proves that something perfect exists.
We have to believe in something,
otherwise why would you continue?
But largely, the awareness
that these things are out
of my control,
do you find that comforting?
I do find it comforting.
I can only do what I intend to do,
you know,
if I even am that thoughtful
about what I'm doing.
[David] I keep using the word "cool"
with regard to you,
but the fact that, you know,
you don't live in New York.
You spent a lot of time in New York.
You don't live in Los Angeles.
Spent a lot of time there.
How many movies did you make
in Los Angeles? Is it like 18, 19?
Yeah.
That's crazy. You started making movies
when you were like 20?
[Chappelle] Nineteen.
The most recent one was
A Star is Born, right?
[Chappelle] Yeah, I met
with Bradley Cooper here in Ohio.
He came to a party I threw. [chuckles]
And he asked me to be in the movie.
I was watching, um, Half Baked.
[Chappelle chuckles] Yeah.
[audience clapping]
[chuckles]
And, um, you're in, I think,
a janitor one-piece,
dark green jumpsuit kind of deal.
[Chappelle] Yeah,
that one was electric blue.
And now I see you
on shows and various places
in the jumpsuit.
-It has your name on it.
-[Chappelle] Yeah.
So, nobody really
looks good in a jumpsuit.
But you, I thought,
"The guy looks okay in a jumpsuit."
So now, I see it in the movie
and I think, "Well, there you go."
"He got to keep the wardrobe."
[chuckles]
[David chuckling]
With a special, it's funny
'cause you never know what to wear.
You watch Richard Pryor: Live in Concert,
they go, "The one where he had
the red suit or the sequin shoes."
Even getting dressed tonight
was a nightmare.
I know that feeling because,
as long as I had a show,
what I didn't have
to worry about was clothes.
And now, this is all I can come up with.
I'm sorry.
[laughing]
All right, when you were doing Letterman,
what kind of role
did fame play in your life?
Or were you so sequestered by the work
that you never got to experience it?
It was the latter.
I mean, I know it sounds silly,
but that's exactly what it is.
Because when we started out,
uh, myself and my staff and my crew,
we expected to be canceled
because I had been canceled.
I had done a morning show
at NBC that was on
for literally six weeks.
So, "Wait a minute,
where do I go Monday?"
"It's not our problem."
So, you focus.
And I have a feeling you understand this.
Your focus gets tighter
and tighter and tighter
because you feel the pressure
to make it better and better and better.
It's a terrible thing to say in public,
but I'm gonna say it.
I-- I love being famous.
Good for you.
No I mean, I really like…
I love it. I don't like being a celebrity,
but I like being famous.
Does that make sense?
Well, differentiate this for us.
Celebrity is a role.
Celebrity is you walk down a red carpet,
and they ask you what you're wearing.
If you're a lady, you stick your toe out
when they take your picture.
-But you don't do that.
-No, I don't do any of that stuff.
I don't even do interviews.
If it wasn't you,
I wouldn't even want to say anything
to anybody about what I'm doing
'cause it's so gut-wrenching to me.
Any job that makes you depend
on the approval of others
for your livelihood is a crazy job.
Most people don't have to worry
about whether they're liked or not.
And for us, this is a consideration.
The more you invest
into yourself as a celebrity,
the less of yourself you get to own.
All the stand-up comics in the room,
just want to remind you.
I promise you, and I've always said it,
we have the best genre.
We don't have
to know anything but what we know.
And everything we know is valuable
because of what we do with it.
Stay true to yourself.
Fuck the game.
The money will come.
Most of you won't make it.
[laughing, clapping]
I was talking last night to a comedian
about you, and he said,
"The great thing about Dave Chappelle is
that he has saved stand-up comedy
because he does material,
does jokes on the edge,
over the line, too much,
uh, offending people,
just doesn't care,
but believes in his right
to say, to write
and deliver this material."
And he said,
"He is saving stand-up comedy."
I-- I definitely don't necessarily
aim to offend anybody.
Maybe the thought
of hurting someone's feelings,
that is a painful thought, you know?
But it'll happen in the course of the job.
This is possible.
So much of the work
of art is on the viewer
to interpret.
And this time,
we cut people's meat for them so much…
Mm-hm.
…that we do too much
of the audience's work.
And this audience
with this Internet now,
it's like a baby running
around with a loaded gun.
Somebody got to get that gun away
from that baby or, at least not--
[chuckles]
Not be afraid
that the baby has a gun, but…
the sermon is on them.
More than ever,
they gotta do their own work.
-Well, I watched Sticks & Stones.
-[Chappelle] Yeah.
It's hard to articulate
what I observed when I watched you.
It's otherworldly.
I mean, as a communicator,
I'd never seen anything like it.
Entertaining,
I'd never seen anything like it.
That's very-- That's humbling.
No, you hear that all the time.
And, if you were a man
or a woman who was doing it,
where the material was all…
[whoosh noise]
Uh, what fun is that?
I want to see if you can guess
who it is I'm doing an impression of.
Let me get into character.
You gotta guess who it is though.
[clears throat] Okay, here it goes.
Uh, duh, hey, dur.
If you do anything wrong in your life,
duh, and I find out about it,
I'm gonna try to take everything away
from you. I don't care when I find out.
It could be today, tomorrow,
15-20 years from now.
If I find out,
you're fucking, duh, finished.
Who-- Who's that?
[man] Trump!
That's you!
[laughing]
That special was my second favorite.
The thing that I really liked about it was
that it was very difficult at the time
to say any of those things.
You come out there. You're cool. You don't
give a fuck, but it's gut-wrenching
'cause you are subject
to the interpretation of so many people.
And I understand why people
take objection to this material
and all that, but it's, uh…
It's worth exploring.
It's a well-intentioned piece.
Well, maybe this is a loftier
than I'm smart enough to put together,
but without disagreement,
do you learn anything?
In that particular special?
No, no, generally speaking,
if we all agreed--
Everybody here all agreed on everything,
what's to learn?
That's exactly right.
I think that we're unpacking so much
that they've got
to leave some kind of room…
for redemption.
The more room for redemption,
the more room there is
for people to be honest.
If you want to get
to the bottom of any of these things,
any of these issues
that keep getting raised,
it's going to require some honesty
and definitely some forgiveness.
Nobody
in this whole goddamn prison did anything,
as the old saying goes,
but everybody did something.
And if we make it contextual,
we can actually honestly address
what we've done.
We can even figure out what is happening,
why these things are being perpetuated,
et cetera.
Then we'll come
to a more comprehensive understanding,
but this tightrope walk
just makes everybody not want
to get caught.
Let me ask you-- And again,
this is a question I thought up myself,
so get ready.
Um…
Bob Dylan, when he was a kid,
twenty, twenty-one, just about like
when you were on my show.
And it coincided with the peace movement,
and free sex,
and freedom of speech,
and anti-government.
And I think these people,
they were able
to end the Vietnam War.
And everyone assumed
that he was the spokesperson
for that.
And he just flat-out explained,
"I'm not. I'm just singing protest songs."
After George Floyd,
I kept waiting.
When are we going to hear from David?
And I thought, in my mind,
he is a leader here.
Uh, uh, how far off am I?
Or am I right on the money?
Or should I go back to Indiana?
[Chappelle] No. No, look.
I'm far from a leader.
-Do you want to be?
-Far--
[chuckles] No! No.
[audience laughing]
I'm having way more fun being
whatever the fuck I am
than being somebody
that people would look to
for, like, moral or intellectual guidance
in the climate
of living a completely different way.
There's no pension plan for leaders.
Martin Luther King died penniless.
Malcolm X died penniless.
Uh, I don't want to do that.
[audience laughing]
But that's-- That's your view.
I'm waiting for you to say something.
What does that make me? A follower.
Okay. Well, I said it behind
what many others were already doing.
And the commentary
after it was very heady and intellectual.
And I was shocked
that nobody ever talked about
what it feels like
to watch a man get murdered that way
by a man in a police uniform.
I was thinking about this
with regard to George Floyd.
Fifty-five years ago, April 1965,
John Lewis and his friends, colleagues,
are walking across
the Edmund Pettus Bridge
in Selma, Alabama.
And a cop, uh, with a nightstick,
like batting practice, tees up
and hits him in the side of the head,
cracks his skull and nearly kills him.
Nearly kills him.
He survives and devotes his life
to this struggle.
And toward the end of his life,
almost simultaneously, George Floyd,
who, I don't know if he was ever
an activist in any sense,
is killed,
murdered, lynched
by an officer of the law.
Uh, the comparison is just right there.
They will both now be part
of the culture going forward
to repair what needs to be repaired.
What a tragic footnote
to a tragic culture.
[indistinct chatter]
This is a lot to unpack.
You know, nights like this are,
I think, important.
Just-- Just talking about it.
Uh, we're countrymen.
All of us. We live in America.
We all got our problems, our strifes.
It's weird now because,
uh, this game of who's suffered more
that everyone keeps getting the ball.
And they act like
everyone's suffering is mutually exclusive
from everyone else's.
And you and I both know
that's far from the case.
There's a lot of angles
that you could approach this
and look at this from
and learn from each other from.
But it's a thing,
and I'm troubled about the volume of it.
It doesn't sound like something settling
or hurtling towards an easy resolution.
People say
that what's going on is different now.
Therefore, we predict real change.
-Do you have that feeling?
-I'm not making any predictions.
Of course, I am very hopeful, yes,
that there will be real change.
And, just traditionally,
from my experience,
uh, change is never
a comfortable proposition.
It's uncomfortable
before it's comfortable again.
It'll be quite the negotiation.
If you think of it as a negotiation,
how the fuck do you negotiate
with Derek Chauvin?
What are we talking about?
This guy-- This guy--
I couldn't even imagine.
It's interesting. People say that, uh,
if we didn't have body cams
and cell phones,
uh, we wouldn't know
that all of this was going on.
And it will be a huge deterrent.
Well, in this case,
it wasn't a deterrent at all.
You get the feeling--
And he had trained the officers
with him at the scene of the arrest--
-That's exactly right.
-To me, he's showing off for the cameras.
"Here, let me show you how this is done.
No, no, I got this.
Here. I can kill a guy with my knee."
And that piece I did about--
About, uh, George Floyd,
and I talked about the police
in Staten Island
watching his fellow officers
kill a man and not reprimanding him
because they knew they were being filmed.
It's not like I'm against cameras,
but I don't want retroactive justice.
I don't want you
to get them after I'm dead.
I want you to stop it.
In the two cases
that we are discussing here,
what do you say
about these people who stood there?
I don't want to make any value judgment.
I can't imagine seeing something
like that. All of this is unimaginable.
It's a situation
I've never personally been in.
I don't wanna judge him,
but I wish someone had stopped it.
Of course, like anybody.
John Crawford,
a black man that was murdered here
in a local Walmart.
He wasn't doing anything wrong.
Got murdered
by a cop in Beavercreek, Ohio.
In that municipality,
there's only been
two fatal police killings
in the history of that municipality.
The same guy did both of them.
The first guy he shot was white.
Had they stopped him then,
it wouldn't even be a racial issue.
It's just about overaggressive,
overzealous policing.
It's about whatever type
of training he was given.
For whatever reason, this guy killed
two people in the line of duty.
And I don't think the community at large
was satisfied with the repercussions.
There were little, if any.
The phrase Black Lives Matter
is important, but it is deceptive.
This-- This problem is not exclusively
an African-American problem.
It's disproportionately one,
but not exclusively ours.
And the other thing is,
if Russia is, in fact,
exploiting our racist tendencies
to dissolve our union,
then you'd have
to look at something like racism
as a matter of national security.
You've got to shore all the holes up,
then plug them up
and make sure
we're functioning as a cohesive nation.
If the people that execute your laws
are kneeling on people's necks, that's--
You have no country.
You have to stop that shit.
That's why
these people are storming the streets
because they want to save their country.
It makes perfect sense.
[audience clapping]
-Whose streets?
-Our streets!
-Whose streets?
-Our streets!
-Whose streets?
-Our streets!
[David] Have you, in this community,
ever had police trouble?
-Of course, we have police trouble here.
-But you, personally?
Nobody fucks with me.
[laughing]
-You've never been stopped by a cop?
-Of course, but it never went too far.
I keep my hands at ten and two.
I speak respectfully. They keep it
respectfully, but it's different here.
It's small-town.
I see them tomorrow, and they go,
"Do you have your license
and registration?"
"It's me, Dave!"
[laughing]
It's not the typical traffic stop.
Have I been stopped here before
when I was in someone else's car,
and they didn't know it was me?
Uh, yeah, it's happened,
but, normally, nobody bothers me.
They know. Everyone knows.
It's small-town.
If I was doing something crazy,
they'd stop me.
But normally, I don't think they will.
What about if you lived in a bigger town?
Of course.
I got choked out by a police officer
in New Orleans before,
when I was working on a movie set.
Really?
Yeah. I remember running
from one comedy club
to another in Greenwich Village
and was stopped by the police for running,
which is not illegal. I was late.
[chuckles]
The police officer stuck his hand
in my pocket.
We comedians get paid
in cash from running those spots.
So, I had, you know, a lot of cash.
The cop assumed I was selling drugs
and started to put my money
in his pocket.
Oh, yeah. These types
of things happen all the fucking time.
It's not like people are just suddenly,
irrationally getting upset.
There are causes to the sentiment
that the police are not good.
And the police eroded the trust
in the institution.
They can't act like the institution
didn't have anything to do with it.
And do you look
at that episode and think to yourself,
"This could have gone sideways,
and I'd been gone."
-You ever think about that?
-Yeah, of course.
When I was in high school,
it was during the crack epidemic.
And in DC public schools,
we took Street Law classes.
They would teach us
how to engage the police
because the crack epidemic
was so dangerous for kids of color.
It's a thing.
It is incumbent upon us
to save our country.
[clapping]
And you know what we have to do.
This is a fucking election year.
We gotta be serious.
Every able-bodied African American
must register
for a legal firearm.
[laughing]
[cheering, clapping]
That's the only way
they will change the law.
[audience laughing]
Are you writing a lot now?
-Go head, light one.
-Oh man. You are the best.
[sighs]
[chuckling]
You smoke weed, Dave? Just kidding.
-I don't have any.
-[chuckles] Yes, I'm high as a kite now.
I wish.
[chuckles]
How often are you smoking weed?
Not as much as people think. I'm 46 now.
-Does it help you write?
-No. No.
Does it help you perform?
No. I have enormous amounts of anxiety.
Just doing what I do.
And it quelled it, for the most part.
Nobody's going
to live an anxiety-free life,
but it's manageable.
Any of my business, what the source
of the anxiety is? Just life?
I think, you know, with this job,
people take for granted
the emotional wear and tear of doing this.
And I think you have
to preserve your openness.
When you look at a finished product,
one of your specials.
Oh.
-Are you involved in the editing of those?
-Very much.
What about the video
that was released, uh…
after George Floyd's death?
I put it out with a caveat.
I know-- I know that it's unrefined,
but if I refine it,
then it will become, uh, less genuine.
What was the reaction?
That I got?
Most people felt relieved
'cause it touched something
that people were feeling
that wasn't being reflected
in the larger conversation.
Right. That goes back
to my perspective on that which was,
"Oh, here it is."
I knew-- I knew it had to come.
It did come, and there it was.
So, from that standpoint, it was great.
Oh man, I appreciate it.
I don't know how to say this
without it being redundant,
but when I have seen your work,
uh, I've never seen anybody better.
I've just never seen anybody better.
But, I look at you--
-No, stop. No, no…
-No, I do. This is important. I do.
Remember the last time I did your show?
When I was leaving-- I watched it today,
just to remember what it felt like.
And when I was sitting with you,
I thought--
I was paranoid. I was like,
"Maybe this guy doesn't like me."
Then, I watched it afterward. I'm like,
"This guy actually likes me very much."
The questions were real thoughtful.
In a way, it was intimidating to be
on your show, this highly-watched show,
but it felt like an actual conversation.
And, the fact
that someone of your stature--
And remember,
the last time I did your show,
we all already knew you were leaving.
It was this feeling of,
"I might not be able to sit down
and talk to this guy
in this context again."
"I don't know when I'd ever see
David Letterman again."
It was important I told you,
"I'm happy to see you on television.
I'm happy to see you off television.
I'm just happy to know you exist."
I think about the show
you did in the '80s.
I used to live here
when you were on Late Night on NBC.
And I started watching your show,
and I was enamored by it.
The fact that you're here right now,
it's amazing to me.
I think of all the great interviews
with Eddie Murphy and Andy Kaufman,
and all these people I admire,
and the platform that you gave this genre
that I love so much.
So, it's easy for me to do things
if I've seen them before.
And because of your show,
many of the things I've learned to do,
I-- I saw them somewhere.
Well, you're very kind. No, it's--
[audience clapping]
-It's true.
-Thank you.
Uh, we've been doing this show,
and I don't know how many we've done.
And the schedule has been intermittent
and interrupted,
like everybody's schedule.
And each time,
I'm gratified
because the person in that chair,
uh, is so much smarter than I am.
And I would have to say
that the stature you have achieved
in your chosen craft is so well deserved,
my friend.
[Chappelle] Oh my gosh.
Thank you, man. Sincerely.
[clapping]
David Chappelle.
David Letterman.
[cheering]
I'm honored, man.
No, I'm honored.
Good Lord, I am honored.
Okay, all of this stuff is yours.
Come up and get it.
[laughing]
[theme music playing]