Rock Star

By CHRISTOPHER JOHN FARLEY

Start with the pain. 'Cause we all know pain is what makes things funny. So start with the hurt, back when comic-actor-author-ad pitchman Chris Rock was li'l Chris from Bed-Stuy, just another black kid from a poor black neighborhood bused to another poor section of New York City because the school there was mostly white. Go back to the white kids spitting on him, week after week, calling him n______ this, n______ that, picking fights. And poor white kids, he says, are tough. They're not like your suburbanized white kids; they got all this frustration and anger 'cause they're white, for crying out loud, and they're living in America, and they're living as bad as Negroes, for God's sake; so there's no way they're gonna let a scrawny, bused-in black kid from Bed-Stuy have a moment's worth of happiness. "Can you believe Andrew Dice Clay once went to my school?" Rock says, remembering. "He was way older, but that was the kind of student the place produced." He sighs. "That was my roughest time."

There's the pain. Years later, when Rock was 25 years old and on the stand-up circuit, he turned the experience into a punch line. "Ain't nothing more horrifying than a bunch of poor white people," Rock joked in his act. "They blame n_______ for everything... 'Space shuttle blew up! Them damn n______, that's what it was!'"

Chris Rock isn't just getting the last laugh, he's getting the biggest laugh, the gettin'-paid laugh. Maybe he had to get whupped upside the head by some sixth-grader to get here, maybe he had to play a bellhop in Beverly Hills Ninja, but he has arrived and is on Hollywood's hot list.

The 32-year-old comic-actor is currently co-starring in Lethal Weapon 4, the latest installment of the cop-action franchise. He nearly steals the show as the voice of a guinea pig in Eddie Murphy's hit comedy Dr. Dolittle. Rock is co-starring in a comedy-fantasy due out early next year called Dogma, which also stars buzzed-about actors Matt Damon and Ben Affleck and is directed by hot indie filmmaker Kevin Smith (Chasing Amy). On Aug. 21, Rock begins a new season of his critically lauded, superhip HBO talk show, The Chris Rock Show. And Rock recently finalized a deal with HBO to develop new specials and series for the cable channel. "HBO has been known for breaking top comedians, and Chris is the most important to come along in a long time," says Chris Albrecht, president of original programming for HBO. "He's a guy who can get away with being honest in a way that few people can."

Only in show biz would you have to get away with being honest. Rock's been getting away with it for years. He started at age 18 at the New York City comedy club Comic Strip Live. Owner Richard Tienken says Rock's act was raw at first: hooker tells man she'll do anything for $300. Man answers, Paint my house, b_____! But then, hanging around the club, Rock began to see comics like Eddie Murphy (an early Rock booster) and George Carlin at work. Rock's own act got smarter, bolder, and in 1990 he landed a job on Saturday Night Live. "At the time that Chris was coming up, the Def Comedy Jam style became the dominant African-American style of comedy," says SNL executive producer Lorne Michaels. "The shock there was in the language. But Chris was going with the shock of ideas."

People called Rock the next Eddie Murphy at the start of his SNL tenure; by the end, three years later, they were just calling out "Next!" Conan O'Brien, host of his own hip talk show, Late Night with Conan O'Brien, was an SNL writer when Rock was hired. "He was not really in his element," says O'Brien. "He did some funny stuff on the show, but he was operating at 48% efficiency. He hadn't found his voice."

So Rock went looking for it. In 1993 he quit SNL to join the predominantly black sketch show In Living Color. In 1994 Color was canceled. "I guess I was washed up," says Rock. In the end a new home helped save him. "People ask me how the change in my career came about. Was it getting married [to Malaak in 1996]? Was it this, was it that?" Rock says. "When I bought a house I needed more money. So I had to work twice as hard. And in the work on the road, I got better." Rock's 1996 HBO special Bring the Pain was his coming-out party.

Onstage today, he is confident, in control--just like M.J. taking the ball up court. His voice is deeper, more forceful than it has been, gruff at times--like Jesse when he's feeling it. Rock is fearless, making fun of Marion Barry before a black crowd in Washington. "Marion Barry at the Million Man March," he cracks. "You know what that means? That means even at our finest hour, we had a crackhead onstage!"

"The biggest thing that separates Chris from a lot of comedians out there is that a lot of people, especially in the '90s, get by on attitude," says O'Brien. "Chris's stuff is always smart. He's thought out his jokes. There's no substitute for that."

Give Rock an opening, and he'll start to riff. Take the subject of President Clinton. "He's our first broke President," says Rock. "Most of his problems stem from being broke. Even the whole Monica Lewinsky thing. Most Presidents have money--like Bush. Rich men have other people to do their s___ that are loyal to them. Clinton's not rich so he's got like Secret Service and state troopers doing stuff for him. He's trusting them. But the only thing you can trust is the dollar."

No matter how tough Rock talks, no matter how wild his riffs, he exudes likability. This makes him valuable in Hollywood. Joel Silver, one of the producers of Lethal Weapon 4, says Rock "has some of the same qualities as Tom Hanks. He has a warmth and an accessibility."

Still, Rock doesn't get all the scripts he wants. He says the filmmakers behind the comedy There's Something About Mary wouldn't even meet with him to consider him for a part. (Rock says a nonblack female lead had already been cast and the filmmakers "didn't want to go black" for any of her suitors.)

Last year Rock met with Miramax executives, who offered him Ride--a movie that is essentially about a bunch of rappers on a bus. "I thought, 'Man, I'm at Miramax and they offer me this crap,'" says Rock. "Didn't they make The English Patient here?" Miramax later arranged a meeting with Kevin Smith, who cast Rock in Dogma. In that film, Rock plays Rufus, Jesus' 13th apostle, who was written out of history because he dared to reveal that the Savior was actually black. "Chris turns in a true performance in this movie--it's not just a series of one-liners," says Smith. "I think people will walk away from this movie saying, 'Goddamn, he's an actor.'"

Rock plans to stick to comedies for now. "To me, Jim Carrey's most impressive work is Dumb & Dumber," Rock says. "It's society's ignorance about how hard comedy is that people go, 'Now he's really doing something in The Truman Show.' There are 30 guys in Hollywood who could do Truman. There's only one guy who could do Dumb & Dumber."

For Rock, pain has turned to pleasure. He smiles as he recalls a day not too long ago when he was walking around a studio lot in Hollywood and ran into Will Smith. And then he ran into Chris Tucker. And then he looked in the papers and saw that Dr. Dolittle was the No. 1 film. "It's a good time to be a young, black comedian," says Rock, who is looking for a film to do with Tucker. "Of course, that's easy for me to say because I'm one of the people working."

Rock wants to make it easier for the next generation: he's helping launch the Howard Lampoon, a humor magazine that will be based at the historically black college and modeled after the Harvard Lampoon. "If someone would have given me all this when I was on SNL, I would have blown it," says Rock. "I was totally undisciplined. I pretty much have a handle on things now. No matter how good you are, you have to work hard--or you'll only be as funny as the next guy."