Name: Dave Chappelle on Getting the Rights to "Chappelle's Show"
Uploaded: 2021-05-07T17:46:50.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Dave Chappelle on Getting the Rights to "Chappelle's Show"' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-05-07. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Dave Chappelle on Getting the Rights to "Chappelle's Show"' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-05-07. Transcript available.

- The Joe Rogan Experience.
- So first of all, man, congratulations.
You're the first guy to beat the system.
You're the first guy to get fucked over by the system,
go public with it, and then get your money.
I've never heard it happen before.
I don't think it's ever happened before.
- Bro, bro, I still can't wrap my mind around it,
but I do have to shout out Chris McCarthy
over at CBS Viacom.
That guy, you know, when we were working this out,
his approach was someone who was actually trying
to resolve something.
- Came through.
- It was amazing, man.
- It's amazing, it's a happy ending,
'cause usually those artists gripes,
they never get resolved,
not to where the artist feels comfortable or happy with it.
- Right.
- They always feel bitter and angry,
they got fucked over, and someone else is a producer,
and they're making millions of dollars off of your work,
and they continue to sell it and make money off of it.
- Well, I could say with a high degree of honesty,
not to say I was never angry about it,
but I don't think I was ever, like, bitter.
By this point in my life, I wasn't bitter.
- You would joke about it, you were angry about it,
but not to the point where it fucked with your head,
but you would joke about it.
- Well, I mean, you know the bottom line is,
no matter what happens to you, you gotta keep going.
- You gotta keep going.
- And bitterness is quite cumbersome.
- Yeah, it's bad for you.
- Right, so, you know, jokes is a way of shaking that off,
or processing something with the alchemy of levity.
- Yeah, holding grudges, bitterness, shit's very bad for you.
It doesn't ever help.
- No, and now we're getting on in age, you know what I mean?
When we were younger, it's fine to hold a grudge.
You didn't realize that, you know.
- You didn't realize it was fucking with you.
What is that expression that, it's about,
oh, it's about jealousy.
The jealousy is the only poison that affects the container
that's holding it.
- Right, that's exactly right.
But bitterness, the same thing.
- Same thing.
- Yeah, it's not good.
- Yeah, it's just not good for you.
You gotta be able to let shit go.
- Yeah, I mean.
- But, in your case, you made a ploy.
Like, you said what happened, how you felt about it,
and they were like, "He's right."
- I think, yeah.
- Let's give him the money.
- It wasn't a court of law.
I don't believe I would've got anything.
- It's kind of amazing.
In a court of law, I think in a court of public opinion,
it was a good time for me to say my piece.
And through the years, it wasn't something that I would harp on.
When I did interviews and stuff,
people would always ask me about it,
but it was something I was actually reluctant to talk about.
It was a lot.
- Yeah.
Well, it's hard for other people to relate to this idea
that you want more money, you know?
You're talking about regular people,
and you're saying this thing, even though it is yours,
it's hard for people.
- Money is, if you look at life, anything in life,
through the framework of money, you'll miss most of the picture.
- Yeah.
- And, you know, in business,
especially at this stage in our careers,
you realize through the years, people play incentives.
You know what I mean?
That if they incentivize a certain way,
then that's the way they're gonna behave.
So what they want is never really surprising.
How they get there is where all the surprises are.
So I feel like I can forgive somebody for playing an incentive.
It's disappointing.
But, what was so remarkable when I walked away from the show, right,
is that, uh, it was against incentive.
So people couldn't understand it at the time.
It was so much money, how could you do that, and blah, blah, blah.
But you know, if I had taken that money and finished the show,
I would have got the money, but I might never have been the same.
- I think it was one of the most gangster moves
in the history of entertainment.
And it made you a legend.
And the fact that you then started doing shows, like,
I heard, like, Dave's doing a show in the park in Seattle.
He's got, like, a box.
He pulls out a speaker and just starts doing stand-up.
- That was in Portland, yeah.
Because, in that sense, it was freeing.
- Yeah.
- Something about, you know, I was geared a certain way growing up,
'cause I wanted to make it in show business.
And boy, that shit fell all the way apart.
And as far as I knew, my career was over.
So where do you go from there?
- Yeah, but your career wasn't over.
You just decided you were gonna just sort of lay back for a while.
- In hindsight, yeah.
But when it was happening...
- You really felt like it was over.
- I'd never seen these things before.
I didn't see anyone else do this and get back up.
I didn't see, you know, and the drumbeat is,
he's crazy, he smokes crack, he's this, he's that.
It was a wild experience.
The way people close to you react to it.
Like I had failed or I'd ruined my life, you know.
And then, you know, when you're cold, that phone don't ring that often.
- Right.
- And then I had over a decade of sitting in that choice.
But I didn't languish in just that experience.
I started doing stand-up for much better reasons than making it.
I still enjoyed it.
I started seeing the places where I was performing.
Normally, when you're like successful in comedy,
you know, you get off the plane or the bus,
you hit, you do the hit, you go back to the hotel,
you get back on the bus, you don't really see anything.
You don't really...
- Yeah.
- Like even now, like this last run we did here in Austin.
And we was here for weeks.
And then I got to see Austin.
I got to find restaurants I like.
I met people that I probably called because I'm in town.
Stuff like that.
And it was like that all over the world.
Not just the country.
I started going around just seeing the world.
I got overwhelmed with this idea that none of my information was first-hand.
I just read it in books.
I heard it from friends.
And I was eager to just see something for myself.
And I kind of entrenched this philosophy that my memories are
some of the most valuable things that I have.
- Mmm.
- These first-hand experiences.
- Yeah.
- Can't take that away from if I reminisce on a nice day,
then, you know, it feeds you.
Remembering something is neurologically almost identical.
I've read to experiencing it.
Any information is valuable.
I call it expensive knowledge.
Right?
It's like your buddy that's a war veteran or something.
You don't want to know the shit he knows if you knew what he had to do
to know these things.
- Right.
- That's what they call expensive knowledge.
I would not recommend quitting your show the way I did.
- Yeah.
- If you can avoid it.
- Yeah.
But the way you did it was so cool.
Because, you know, you kind of drifted off.
- I promise I wasn't trying to be cool.
It was a series of troubleshooting.
It's like, fuck it, man.
Like, what are you going to do?
You got to, whatever you go through, you got to live.
You got to make a way and find your happiness.
And, you know, I'm lucky.
I'm in this, I'm in show business, which is
a pretty, it's a multi-dimensional career path.
This thing could go a lot of ways.
- Yeah.
Especially today.
- Oh my God.
- It's so strange.
- Yeah.
And another time, would I have ever gotten that money?
I don't think so.
- No, because there would have been no social media,
no pressure.
- Right.
No dropping specials on the gram.
No, you know, no comment section.
No moveon.org.
No.
- And if you had gone to, say, like,
the Tonight Show and made a pitch like that,
they probably wouldn't even have aired it.
- No, of course not.
I had a gripe with someone that owned six of the media.
- Yeah.
- What am I going to do?
Tell the media on them?
It's never going to work.
- Right.
They would definitely edit that part out.
Be like, why is Dave's section only four minutes long?
- Yeah, edit it, spin it, whatever it is they do.
But again, you know, all parties involved, I thought,
in repairing that situation and I don't want to go all into
what those conversations were like other than to say,
and this is not like, I'm just happy because they paid me.
It was class act.
It was like-
- That's beautiful.
- It really was.
It wasn't, it was very encouraging.
- That is very encouraging.
- I think that coming up behind us, these kids
are going to be playing in a whole new ball game that we did.
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