Interview (Written): Chris Rock (“Top Five”)

A WGA.org interview with Chris Rock, writer-director of the movie Top Five:

I’ve been poring through some of your interviews and one of the things you said is that Alexander Payne asked you why you’re so brave and commanding in your stand-up, but so safe in film.

You can get away with anything [in stand-up]. In movies, you don’t try anything.

How much is Top Five a response to that, how much are you letting it fly a little bit more?

Definitely letting it fly. Alexander’s is one of my favorites of all-time so those words were echoing in my head while I was writing and while I was filming.

Was it part of the initial impetus? When did you decide, I’ve got this movie in me, and I want to do this?

I guess three years ago? Two and a half years ago? I don’t know, I just felt restless. I was doing a couple movies, and honestly, my agent or somebody was steering me toward doing kids movies — this kids movie about a black family that was going on a ski trip, and they didn’t know how to ski. It’s actually a remake of a big movie in Europe, and there was the fact that, a) it’s so typical what happens when comedians turn about 50, no matter how edgy they are, they end up doing kids movies, and b) my family skis great! They’re amazing skiers!

So there was definitely a crisis in me, like, Am I going to do the ski movie? This is such a lie. I don’t know, it just felt like it would have been horrible to write that. I definitely had a crisis of whatever in me. And it was like, Okay, just write another movie, let me just write what I feel, what do I want to do? I always loved the Linklater movies. They’re really simple, and they say a lot. They get a lot into a small movie, just ideas-wise.

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Do you like writing?

I like writing a lot. It’s the most fun you can have, especially before you get studio notes and all that stuff run through it. It’s like flying. Anything can happen. It’s so much promise in front of you. They’re all The Godfather before they come out.

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So you spend a good amount of your time writing?

I’m a writer. I grew up wanting to be a writer. I wanted to be a comedy writer, but I grew up in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, okay? And not the Bed-Stuy now that’s gentrified, and all the hipsters grew up there…

Closer to the Robert F. Kennedy Bedford?

Yeah. I grew up in the one Billy Joel sang about: “I walked through Bedford-Stuy alone.” I lived there. And there were no writers. Being a writer wasn’t like a real thing — there wasn’t even a bookstore! You know what I mean? So I got into stand-up, but all I ever really wanted to be was a writer, honestly. And if you watched me as a stand-up early on, I didn’t know how to perform, I was very stiff. But I knew how to write a decent joke. Even my acting now, it’s better. It wasn’t great before, because I was a writer, acting!

This is why you’re tight with Louie C.K.

This is why I’m tight with Louie C.K., yes.

He’s a writer first, and then a performer.

Louie’s a writer. We talk about writing all the time.

A trailer for Top Five:

For the rest of the interview, go here.